ANGEL EYES
By Nicole Luiken
Published by Nicole Luiken at Smashwords
Copyright 2013 Nicole Luiken Humphrey
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to toehr people. If you would like to share this book with antoher person, pleasure purchase and additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Other Books by Nicole Luiken
Young adult fiction:
Violet Eyes series
Violet Eyes
Silver Eyes
Angel Eyes
Dreamfire series
Dreamfire
Dreamline
Frost
Unlocking the Doors
The Catalyst
Escape to the Overworld
Adult Fiction:
Kandrith series
Gate to Kandrith
Soul of Kandrith
Writing as N.M. Luiken
Running on Instinct
Dedication
For the members of my Facebook fan page who have nudged, encouraged and cheered this book into being, especially Katherine Morrow for crying, “But you have to!” when I told her I wasn’t planning to write a third book.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Dale Smith, Aaron Humphrey, Jennifer Kennedy, Madeline Wells and Barbara Galler-Smith for alpha- or beta-reading the manuscript (in some cases both). Double thanks to Barbara Galler-Smith for also volunteering to line-edit the final draft.
Chapter One
ANGEL
Frowning, I returned from my upstairs scouting mission to where I’d left Maryanne in the dim, chilly vestibule of the frat house.
“Well?” she asked impatiently, raising her voice to be heard over the rock ‘n roll music. “Can we go in to the party now?”
I pulled her back outside into a quieter space. “It’s worse than I feared,” I said in a gloomy voice.
She sighed. “Angel, it’s a Halloween party.”
“It’s a security nightmare.”
She crossed her arms under her black cape, showing a flash of red lining. “What, specifically, is the problem?”
“It’s loud, crowded, and full of masked people I can't identify.” I ticked off the points. “If you screamed, no one would be able to hear you over the music. The crowd will make it very easy for us to become separated and will impede me if I need to move fast. But the masks are the worst: a dozen criminals could be lurking among the partygoers, their faces and age disguised.”
“It’s a Halloween party!” She gritted her teeth, which looked weird with fangs.
I waited hopefully to see if she’d stomp her feet. Better yet, I wanted to see if I could get her to take a stand and overrule me. Maryanne sometimes seemed to forget I was her employee as well as her friend.
“I have an idea,” I said brightly. “Let’s go back to our dorm room instead and watch TV, eat some popcorn, maybe paint our toenails.”
“Angel!”
There was the foot stomp, a little weak because of the high heels she was wearing, but not bad.
“Maybe Ed Sullivan is on,” I continued. “He’s so dreamy.”
Her blood-red mouth fell open as she realized I was messing with her. “I’m going to get you later.” She marched past me.
I intercepted her and slipped inside first. Bodyguarding 101: always go through doors before the client. I took my job seriously and, all kidding aside, the party was not ideal from a security standpoint.
I jogged up the stairs and stood just inside the second floor party area, doing another scan.
Paper skeletons dangled in corners, and orange and black crepe paper streamers swooped across the walls. Jack o' lanterns flickered on the refreshment table. Great for couples wanting to make out, not so good for bodyguards.
My nerves tightened to alertness. If I were a kidnapper, looking to make a cool twenty million by ransoming media mogul Kenneth Jones's daughter, I’d do the grab tonight.
Maryanne poked me in the back. “Move,” she whispered. “No one knows who I am, remember?”
I could’ve told her that both I and the Historical Immersion security knew her true identity, and that there were always leaks, but I took a deep breath and swallowed the words. Nothing bad was going to happen—because I wouldn’t let it.
Maryanne mistook the determination on my face for something else. “You’re not mad, are you?” she asked, tentatively touching my shoulder. “About the costume I mean?”
“Nah. I’ve always wanted to be green.”
Finding a Halloween outfit that met both my criteria and Maryanne's had been a major pain. As her undercover bodyguard, I required clothing I could run in. No tight skirts or swirly capes or high heels. No bulky padding, no plastic masks with tiny holes that would restrict my vision or ability to breathe.
I’d wanted to go as a volleyball player, but Maryanne had shot down my suggestion—and numerous others.
She required my Halloween costume to make me look ugly—the same as my day-to-day clothes did. She'd been quite upfront about it when she hired me. "No offense, Angel, but I spent enough time standing in your shadow in high school. Besides, you already have Mike, don't you?"
Since she was the client—my first real client—I'd dressed to please her. So while Maryanne had been running around the Historical Immersion as a cute 1960s-era co-ed complete with mini-skirts and peasant blouses, I’d been stuck wearing hideous clothes like ruffled pink gingham blouses and a vintage beehive hairdo as “Frumpy Angela”.
Maryanne fussed with her own hair. "Do I look okay?”
"Way better than okay,” I told her truthfully. For Halloween, she’d dressed as a vampire, complete with slinky black evening dress and fangs she’d commissioned from the town dentist—fake ones not yet available on the 1963 market.
She nervously tucked a glossy brown curl behind her ear. “Do you think Jordan will like it?”
“A sexy vampire in a killer dress? All the guys will be drooling, not just Jordan,” I said, simultaneously trying to boost her confidence and encourage her to notice boys other than Jordan.
Something in my tone must have come through, because Maryanne sighed. “Look, I know you and Jordan don’t get along—”
Major understatement. Jordan constantly sneered at Frumpy Angela’s clothes and fashion-sense.
“—but he’s one hundred percent hot—”
Maybe, if you liked gene-sculpted perfection. Personally, I was rather fond of the bump on Mike’s nose.
“—intelligent—”
I repressed a snort. Obviously she hadn’t read the security report her dad had mailed me. Jordan possessed only average smarts.
“—and he digs me, even though he doesn’t know who my dad is.” From her expression this was clearly the clincher.
When I'd known Maryanne back in the 1980s, she’d been slightly nervous. Not a risk taker, but she'd been reasonably confident of her attractiveness. From her dad’s hints, I surmised she'd been burned a couple times since then, pursued by guys who were only interested in her father’s money.
I found it a little sad that the closest she could come to a normal life was hiding out in Historical Immersions, which, despite their educational slogan: ‘don’t just study the past, live it’, were really rich people vacation spots. And that her best friend doubled as her bodyguard.
Time to be a friend. “Okay,” I said, “I promise not to pick on him tonight.” I steered her to the left. “He’s over there. Go wow him.”
> Maryanne cast a smile back over her shoulder and approached Jordan. While she flirted, I hung back against the wall.
Scanning the room, I saw four other vampires swishing around. Great. I would have to keep a tight lock on Maryanne or risk mistaking her for another black-wigged, black-caped bloodsucker.
I was already jumpy when a husky college boy came up behind Maryanne and reached into his pocket. I almost clocked him before I recognized Brad, one of Jordan’s friends, and saw that his ‘weapon’ was a putty and pipe-cleaner spider.
He dropped it Maryanne's bare shoulder. She shrieked, which was, of course, what Brad wanted. He’d come in his football uniform. How lame.
"Let me." Jordan ‘helpfully’ brushed the spider off her shoulder and onto the front of her dress, almost in her cleavage.
I plucked the spider off Maryanne. “Yum, spider.”
"Thanks, Angela.” Maryanne shuddered.
Brad recoiled. “Angela?” He smiled uneasily while edging away. Last week, for fun, Maryanne had told him Frumpy Angela had a crush on him. He’d been avoiding me ever since. “Uh, great costume.”
I’d taken Maryanne’s ugly requirement to extremes and come dressed up as Frankenstein's monster. I'd foregone a mask and painted my face green with theater makeup, dyed my hair temporarily black and slicked it back. A few artistic scars crawled across my forehead and cheeks.
The choice of costume was a joke, one Mike would have shared if he'd been there.
"Tasty spider," I said and popped it in my mouth.
Brad brayed a surprised laugh.
Ow. The pipe cleaners jabbed my gums. "Find more bugs. Pretty lady want blood?" I asked Maryanne through clenched teeth.
"Yes, thanks," Maryanne said absentmindedly to me while she leaned towards Jordan. "So now I know why you've been growing a mustache." He wore a black vest over a white silk shirt and a red bandanna over his sun-streaked brown hair—a pirate with a plastic sword and a too-pretty face.
I stuck my arms out in front of me and lurched off toward the refreshment table. After spitting the spider into a trash can, I poured Maryanne a glass of tomato juice and grabbed myself a handful of "eyes" to munch. The grapes were by far the healthiest food there.
Around me people discussed Martin Luther King Jr. and the September bombing of a Baptist church in Birmingham. To keep things interesting, the Historical Immersion project overseers had randomly assigned people different sides of issues of the day. I had gotten both pro-civil rights and pro-Viet Nam.
As always, I kept a weather eye on Maryanne. I needed to stay reasonably close to her, in the guise of a nerdy friend, without alerting possible kidnappers that I was her bodyguard. If they knew about me, their plan would include me.
As one of the violet-eyed—a genetically-engineered subspecies Homo sapiens renascentia—I was smarter and more fit than most people, but a Knockout patch could still take me down.
Before I could deliver the tomato juice, Jordan led Maryanne onto the dance floor. A Beatles tune, “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” spun on the record player.
The sight of Maryanne’s hopeful smile made me sick to my stomach. Don’t fall in love with him. He’s a phony.
Kenneth Jones had mailed me background checks on everyone in Maryanne’s classes and dorm. I’d looked hard, but hadn’t discovered any red flags in Jordan’s file. His parents owned a chain of popular restaurants and were wealthy enough to indulge their only son with the gift of a few months in a Historical Immersion. He had no criminal record or known drug habits. I didn’t really think he was a kidnapper, but I suspected he knew exactly who Maryanne’s true father was.
With Maryanne, he was all flirtatious smiles, but I’d caught an avaricious sneer on his face when she wasn’t looking. Plus, he was unkind to Frumpy Angela, supposedly Maryanne's best friend. A smart man didn't diss a girl's best friend. Mike would have—
Maybe my true problem with Jordan was that I missed Mike. I tried to remember where on the road Mike would be this week. Denver, maybe?
I wondered if he was missing me, too.
Worse than playing a nerd was being away from Mike for so long. Not only did I have to stay near Maryanne 24/7 but Immersion meant immersion. We weren't even allowed phone calls to people in the real world, though Maryanne’s dad, Kenneth Jones, regularly sent packages by mail.
I'd tried to persuade Mike to come with me, even offered to put him on the payroll of my fledgling security company as a second bodyguard, but he'd declined.
His current get-rich scheme was to play pro sports. Mike was super-athletic, but since he was competing against Augmented players, he wasn't quite the shoo-in he would be otherwise. He was playing first base for the Trentham Tigers. With both spring and fall seasons under the new college baseball rules, it amounted to quite a few away games, which I found the pits. When Maryanne's dad had contacted me, I'd accepted the job in part because I was tired of Mike being the one gone. But this was definitely worse. No more Immersion jobs, I vowed.
Maryanne planned to stay in the Immersion another twenty-two days—until John F. Kennedy’s assassination. By then her father would have unveiled his latest ‘mega-project’ and the media frenzy surrounding him would have died down enough that Maryanne could have a life again. I could last that long. But I missed Mike.
What I wouldn’t give just to hear his voice, the way he made my name ‘Angel’ an endearment.
After clearing the lump in my throat, I automatically looked for Maryanne again. She was still starry-eyed, even though Jordan was of the walking-to-music school of dancing.
Tuning out an argument about whether U.S. troops had any business in Viet Nam, I catalogued the other dancers and looked directly into a pair of violet eyes.
The eyes belonged to a plump-cheeked Cleopatra in a black wig with a wide gold collar and a purple dress. She stared boldly at me for a moment, then turned casually away, laughing at a she-devil’s joke.
Alarms clanged in my brain. What was another violet-eyed person doing here? Calm down. It’s just part of her costume. Liz Taylor, the actress that played Cleopatra in the movie had violet eyes. Plus, in the year 2099 everyone colour matches their eyes to what they’re wearing.
I, for instance, was wearing brown contact lenses, as I had for all three weeks I'd been Maryanne's bodyguard—
Because we were in a Historical Immersion, at a time when regular contacts were just coming into common use and coloured contacts were unheard of. I’d had to smuggle in the brown ones along with my Knockout patches.
I stared hard at Cleopatra. Probably she'd just cheated, figuring no one would notice on Halloween. Still, she made me uneasy. I decided to have a chat with her. Find out if the violet eyes were real or fake.
I set down the tomato juice, then automatically checked again for Maryanne.
The bottom dropped out of my stomach on an elevator ride to China.
Maryanne was gone.
Chapter Two
ANGEL
I squashed down my first rush of panic and widened my search area to include the whole room, not just the dance floor. Witch, she-devil, princess, harem girl—
Where was she? I'd cautioned Maryanne not to go anywhere alone, but she hated being tailed to the bathroom. If that’s where she'd gone, I was going to kill her.
Roman, another witch, too-short vampire—Cleopatra. I took a step in her direction, until I saw the lion she was flirting with had fake golden eyes. Cleopatra’s violet eyes were just a coincidence. Move on. Ghost, elf, pirate.
Jordan was talking to Brad again underneath one of the skeletons.
I lurched through the dance floor toward them, staying in character just in case this proved to be a false alarm. “It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to,” Lesley Gore wailed over the speakers.
Jordan, the weasel, turned his back when he saw me coming, but I used my stiff arms to thrust my way between him and Brad.
"Can you believe somebody made a life-size mockup of a UFO?" Brad asked
Jordan, laughing.
"Where pretty lady go?"
Jordan sneered. "I don't know. Buzz off."
I scowled at him. "Tell me where pretty lady went or I hit silly man wearing scarf on his head."
Jordan flushed. "Maybe she's trying to ditch you, Frankenstein."
I was Frankenstein's monster, not Dr. Frankenstein himself. A common mistake, but then Jordan was that—common. “Where pretty lady go?”
“You’re so smart. You figure it out.” He turned his back on me again.
If Maryanne had been snatched, then I was running out of time. I twisted Jordan’s arm up behind his back.
He tried to break free and was astonished when he couldn't.
I spoke into Jordan's ear. "Last chance, weasel, where did Maryanne go? Why did you stop dancing with her?" I twisted harder. I’d break his arm if I had to. Two minutes now since I'd last seen Maryanne. By now she could have been hustled out of the building.
I had a sudden visceral longing for Mike. Someone who always had my back.
Brad stared from me to Jordan, perplexed, not certain whether he should be helping his friend or laughing at the sight of Jordan being beaten up by Frumpy Angela.
"Someone spilled a drink on her," Jordan gasped. "She went to the washroom to clean up. That's all, I swear! Let go!" His voice was a strained whisper—his pride didn't want anyone else to know he was getting his butt kicked by a girl.
So maybe I'd panicked over nothing. But until I saw Maryanne again, safe and sound, I was going to proceed as if there was a kidnapping attempt in progress. Paranoid? You bet. It was part of the job description.
"Who spilled a drink on her?" I demanded in my hardest voice. If this was a kidnapping attempt, the spiller could be in on it.
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