Wicked Kiss

by Michelle Rowen

  I shook my head. “Forget it.”

  “I heard you were with Julie when she...” His voice broke off. “When she fell.”

  I glanced over my shoulder at him, and nodded. His expression held deep pain.

  “People are saying she did it because of me,” he whispered.

  I shook my head. “That’s not true. Don’t blame yourself.”

  “Why would she do something like that?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  That was when our English teacher, Mr. Saunders, started class. He pushed the thick glasses he always wore, which magnified his eyes to twice their size, back up on his nose.

  “Like I said on Friday—” Mr. Saunders’s back was to us as he wrote on the whiteboard. “We have a quiz today on Catcher in the Rye. I hope you all finished reading it over the weekend.”

  There was a quiz today? I didn’t remember him saying anything like that on Friday. Didn’t matter, though. I’d read the book before. English was one of my best classes. No worries.

  Catcher in the Rye was one of those books that seemed really simple on the surface—almost too easy to read. But it had layers and layers of depth to uncover if you were willing to do the work.

  I tried to focus on the test, but it was difficult. My mind kept wandering all over the place. Still, I finished with twenty minutes left to go before class ended.

  Someone knocked on the door and Mr. Saunders answered it. After a moment, he looked in my direction.

  “Ms. Day?” He peered at me through his thick glasses. “You’ve been summoned to the guidance counselor’s office. You can finish tomorrow.”

  “I’m finished already.” I got up uneasily and dropped my test at his desk, casting another glance toward Colin, who watched me from the back of the class, expressionless, before I left the room.

  I’d spent a lot of time in Ms. Forester’s office during my shoplifting fiasco. She’d tried to make me feel comfortable about pouring out my soul about my parents’ divorce. About my feelings. And I did, to an extent, even though it made me uncomfortable to sit in an office and discuss emotions with someone I barely knew, who had a box of tissues at the ready for the tears of her students.

  “You wanted to see me?” I asked Ms. Forester when I saw her. The door to her office, which was opposite the principal’s office, was ajar.

  She beckoned to me. “Come in, Samantha.”

  Ms. Forester was young, pretty, still in her twenties, with long, dark hair swept back off her face. She wore tight blouses and slim pencil skirts a couple inches over her knees, which I didn’t appreciate, but plenty of boys did.

  I tentatively entered the small office and immediately saw a familiar face in one of the two chairs opposite the counselor’s desk.

  Jordan was here, too. And the look she sent me was sharp enough to kill.

  Chapter 13

  Jordan tore that sour look away from me and twisted a long piece of red hair around her index finger. “Ms. Forester, I told you this isn’t necessary.”

  “I think it is,” the counselor said calmly.

  At least I knew what this was about. Jordan and me—we were bound forever by the horrible, tragic moment of Julie’s death. Jordan had composed herself well, now wearing a mask of indifference. However, it didn’t reach quite as far as her eyes, which still held that sharp edge of pain I’d seen there yesterday.

  I wanted to dislike her as much as I always had, and, really, she hadn’t given me any reason to change my opinion about her. But my heart still ached for her loss. I knew far too well what it was like to lose a best friend—to lose Carly. At least I still had a sliver of hope that she might be found again. But Julie was gone.

  I forced myself to sit down in the chair next to Jordan. “This is about what happened yesterday.”

  “Yes.” Ms. Forester’s expression was grave. “I thought it would be a good idea to talk to you both together. Immediate grief counseling is essential when a close friend passes so suddenly. I didn’t want to waste any time before I let you both know I’m available to you whenever you need me.”

  “Samantha wasn’t Julie’s friend,” Jordan said tightly. “I was.”

  Ms. Forester’s gaze moved to her. “But she was there with you when it happened. You said so yourself.”

  Jordan inhaled shakily. “That’s right.”

  I waited for her to blame me in some way for what happened, like she had yesterday. But she didn’t say anything like that.

  Damn. I hated this so much. I hated that something so real, so brutal had happened. Before, with all the supernatural struggle I’d experienced, I expected bad things around any given corner—but this...it was real. And I couldn’t make sense of it. I couldn’t rationalize someone doing that to themselves. Losing hope in mere minutes.

  “Jordan’s right, I wasn’t Julie’s friend,” I said softly. “But what happened...I don’t understand it. Why would she do something like that?”

  “I don’t know,” Jordan whispered. “I swear she wasn’t depressed before. She never even mentioned Colin. I shouldn’t have said the thing about the modeling agency. She was pretty enough to be a model. But I didn’t know she even wanted that.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” I said.

  That earned me a sharp, guarded look, but instead of saying anything she just frowned at me.

  “You two can help each other,” Ms. Forester said, nodding. “Friends need to come together in times of grief.”

  “We’re not friends,” I said.

  “Definitely not,” Jordan agreed.

  Ms. Forester flipped through the folders in front of her, gazing down at the small lines of handwriting. “Samantha, you’re friends with Carly Kessler, right? She recently left town. Not in the same tragic way as Julie did, but it’s still an unexpected loss.”

  The mention of Carly was like a sucker punch to my gut. “It was.”

  “Don’t ignore your feelings. Be real and work through them. It’s the only way to deal with these emotions.” She shook her head. “I wish I could do something to help these kids before it comes to this. It’s the fourth time since Friday a student has taken their own life.”

  My gaze shot to her. “Fourth time? The fourth suicide?”

  She nodded grimly. “Marville High had three deaths on Friday. There have been several others in Trinity in the last week, too.”

  I remembered the newspaper article. “Three friends. They all died together. But why?”

  “I don’t know. All I do know is none had any documented history of depression or anxiety. Teen suicide is too prevalent already, but this recent rash makes me wonder if something’s happening to push them to take this horrible step. Perhaps it’s an online bully or some other trouble we’re not hearing about. I hope not. I hope no one else is headed for the same fate.”

  “Me, too,” I whispered.

  When Jordan and I were finally dismissed, with Ms. Forester’s cell phone number in hand in case we felt we had no one else to talk to, I worked through it in my mind. Four suicides in less than a week—and many more before that in the city. The four I knew about were students, but none were known to be depressed.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Jordan said in the hallway, voicing my thoughts. “Julie was fine. I spent hours with her yesterday and she was fine.”

  I remembered the moment when Carly was swept away from me, taken by the Hollow. I’d completely lost my mind with grief and panic, scrambling to get her back
—and if it hadn’t been for Bishop I would’ve been lost, as well. At that moment I would have done anything to save her.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said shakily.

  She looked at me strangely. “You really mean that, don’t you?”

  “Of course I mean it.”

  “Something bad is happening in this city.” She got a faraway look in her green eyes. Then she pulled something out of her small Burberry bag and showed it to me. It was a business card for DMM: Divine Model Management. “Remember the modeling scout who stopped and talked to us? She touched Julie just before she went all crazy.”

  “And?”

  “And...” She frowned hard. “I don’t know. I just get this gut feeling that she had something to do with this. Julie was fine, she was happy, and we were planning a trip together over winter break. You don’t make plans for the future if you’re thinking about killing yourself minutes later. Do you?”

  What a bleak thought. But I had to admit it was a valid point. “I don’t know.”

  She shoved the card back into her bag. Her brows were drawn tightly together. “It has to be something else. The modeling scout—when she touched Julie...it was like she drained her happiness away and left only misery behind. So much that she couldn’t deal. Maybe...maybe the same thing happened to the other girls who killed themselves, too. Maybe it’s all connected.”

  I stared at Jordan, who seemed to have morphed into a tall, redheaded Nancy Drew. “That’s crazy.”

  She hitched her purse strap higher on her shoulder. There was a wild look in her eyes. “Is it? It’s like that kissing mob I’ve been hearing about. I’m sure I saw one of them—I saw him kiss a girl and when he was done and ran away, she looked wrong. Like he’d hurt her by kissing her. I thought it was only my eyes, but she was all glazed and weak, before she snapped out of it. And I swear for a second she had these weird black lines around her mouth—like the ones that some dead people have been found with.”

  “Where was this?” I asked evenly, heart pounding.

  “At Crave.” She eyed me. “You’re not giving me a look like I’m crazy. Do you think it might be true?”

  “I don’t know.” The fact that Jordan had seen anything like that had completely thrown me off. Up until now, I’d basically assumed everyone was somehow fooled in this city and didn’t realize there were dark things lurking around the corner.

  But that was irrational. Of course some people would notice something amiss. Especially those who were hypercritical. That would definitely be Jordan.

  “And then there’s Stephen,” she continued, as if she didn’t particularly care it was me to whom she was spilling this info. “I mean, I don’t know exactly, but there’s something bizarre going on with him. He tells me that it’s over, but—he got this look in his eyes yesterday...” She shivered. “I know he doesn’t mean to hurt me. I know it. I need to see him again.”

  As much as I desperately needed to find Stephen again, he and Jordan coming face-to-face was a bad idea. I didn’t think she’d survive another confrontation without triggering his hunger past the point of no return. “Not a good idea.”

  She glared at me. “I forgot for a second that you were drooling all over Stephen.”

  Just when I started to let my guard down around her she had to unsheathe her claws and draw blood. “That’s not true. Look, Jordan, I know you don’t like me, but you have to trust me on this. Stephen is bad news and you need to stay far away from him.”

  “I forget. Why am I even talking to you right now?”

  She walked away before I could say anything else.

  No, the two of us would definitely not become friends. Ever.

  The rest of the day was a blur. I couldn’t concentrate at all. I kept going through what Stephen had told me about stasis, what happened with Bishop and the thought that the modeling agent could have somehow stripped away the happiness from Julie so much that she had to kill herself.

  But, no. That couldn’t be it. What happened to Julie was a tragedy, a senseless tragedy. That was all it was.

  If nothing else, school was a distraction. Because when I got home, there was nothing to keep my mind off my problems.

  After a couple hours of feeling shut out and hopeless, the walls began to close in on me. I couldn’t stay here and do nothing while everyone else was doing something.

  I decided to go to Crave again. It was a good enough place to restart my search.

  At just after seven o’clock I left the house and walked two blocks toward the bus stop at a clip.

  “Going somewhere?”

  I’d noticed him already, but he’d stayed silent and I’d tried to ignore him, hoping he’d go away.

  “Out for a walk,” I replied tightly.

  Kraven picked up his pace to walk next to me. “I’m stalking you. I know you like that word.”

  “Suits you.”

  “A job’s a job.”

  The bus came along right when I arrived at the stop and I got on it. Kraven followed close behind me.

  I took a seat at the back, as far from the handful of passengers as I could get. The demon took a seat across from me.

  I eyed him warily. “Bishop’s busy tonight?”

  “Giving Blondie his full and undivided attention. Jealous?”

  Something inside me tightened unpleasantly at that. “Why would I be jealous?”

  He casually stretched his arms across the seats and leaned back. “Oh, no reason, I suppose. True love dashed into the rocks below the cliffs of Teenland. It’s a heartbreaker. All I can do is witness it and shake my head sadly.”

  I ignored the commentary and fell silent for a few minutes, staring out the window as the city lights rushed past. Finally, I couldn’t take it any longer. I twisted in my seat to look at him. “What’s the latest on the gray situation?”

  “About five-two, never smiles. Quite miserable, really.”

  I glared at him. “Other grays. Not me.”

  He waved a hand flippantly. “Totally under control. In that ‘hard to find, we have no real idea what we’re doing, we’re going to be stuck in this city forever’ kind of way. Heard you witnessed a suicide yesterday.”

  I cringed. “At the mall.”

  “Friend of yours?”

  “Acquaintance.”

  “You don’t seem too broken up by it.”

  “I’m broken up.” My throat thickened. “Nobody should go that way.”

  He shrugged. “I’d like to push a few people off a high cliff if I had the chance.”

  “Like Bishop?” I asked, watching him carefully for his answer. In the memory meld I’d seen how close they once were. That was probably my biggest surprise. By the way they interacted now, I would have thought they’d always been enemies.

  Kraven had been willing to do anything to help Bishop restore his sight. And I believed at that time he’d meant every word.

  He rolled his eyes then moved his attention to the road zipping past outside the bus window. “I can think of a few other choice ways he should go. But we’re one big friendly team right now, aren’t we? All for one, one for all.”

  “Are you?”

  That earned me a look. “Someone’s rather combative tonight.”

  “Didn’t expect the company. Feel free to go back to a reasonable stalking distance when we get off this bus.”

  “We’ll see.”

  I stopped talking for another couple minutes. “Can I ask you a question?”
/>   “You can ask. I might not feel like answering.”

  My grip tightened on the strap of my leather bag. “How long ago was it that you and Bishop were grave robbers? A hundred years ago? More?”

  His head whipped in my direction and for a second, his amber eyes glowed red in the half darkness of the bus. “Somebody’s been doing a little research.”

  It was enough of a reaction to let me know I’d struck a nerve. I shifted in my seat and the vinyl squeaked. “You don’t seem ashamed.”

  “Should I be?”

  I almost laughed. “I just accused you of being a grave robber. Yeah, I’d think you’d be ashamed of that.”

  “Dead people.” Kraven shrugged. “What do they need that they’re buried in? We needed it more.”

  “You were poor?”

  He didn’t answer for a moment. “Let’s just say we were underprivileged.” He went silent, studying me curiously. “How did you learn about this, anyway?”

  “I have my ways.”

  He snorted. “So cryptic. I’d normally appreciate that if I wasn’t slightly uneasy about you knowing stuff about my past.”

  I’d struck gold when it came to serious information about the brothers. I couldn’t stop digging now. “You and him...you got along well. You wanted to help him fix his eyes.”

  The amused look faded from his face. “Nearly forgot about that.”

  “Did you help him?”

  “Can he see now?”

  I twisted a finger nervously into my hair, loose around my shoulders tonight since I’d taken it down from its tight ponytail the moment I’d gotten home. “I figure him being an angel kind of fixed any previous problems.”

  “You figured that, did you?” There was now a sour note in his voice.

  I lowered my voice. Even though we were far from the people at the front of the bus, it still made me nervous that anyone might overhear. “I know he killed you, but it doesn’t make sense. Why would he do that? You two cared about each other.”