Page 19 of Killer Kiss

I didn’t fit in here. Neither did my sister. These people weren’t her family.

Eve’s voice was quiet when she pushed a flyer into my hand. “I’m starting up a dance class. You should come. Let us get to know you. When we all trust each other, maybe we can actually try working together. For Fawn.”

I stared down at the paper in my hand and then up again.

My gaze met Augie’s.

His blue eyes were hard. Closed off. An anger burning behind them so brightly I just knew there was no way in hell this man was ever going to give me anything. He’d already made his mind up about me. I didn’t know what Fawn had told him, but it clearly wasn’t anything good.

The hate behind his eyes was enough to make me never want to step foot inside these walls ever again. I crumpled the flyer into a ball. “No thanks. Come on, Scythe. We’ll find our sister ourselves.”

5

OPHELIA

“I’m sorry, miss. But I can only give that information to family.”

My first impulse was to tell the officer on the other end of the line that I could gut her like a fish if she didn’t tell me everything the useless Providence Police Department knew about my sister’s disappearance. But I sucked in a deep breath, kept my pace even along the sidewalk, and tried to smile through my frustration. “As I said before, I am family.”

The woman sighed, clearly as frustrated with me as I was with her. “Then you should have no problem getting the information you require from your family contact.”

My family what? “Who exactly is that? My mother?”

The woman’s nails clacked over a typewriter. “No, it’s a male relative, I believe. Augie Mitchell.”

You had to be fucking kidding me.

“Are you seriously telling me you won’t give me any information about my sister’s case, but you will tell her random strip club coworker?”

“Miss, the occupations of family contacts are none of our concern. Mr. Mitchell has been the contact for this case ever since the woman in question went missing. In fact, he was the one to report her as such. I’m sure you understand we have a lot of ongoing cases here, and we cannot be explaining each and every update of all of them to every family member. One contact per family. Yours is Mr. Mitchell. Anything we know about the case that can be shared with the general public, he already knows, and your best bet is to get that information from him. Now, is there anything else I can help you with?”

I hit the red ‘end call’ button. “Fucking useless,” I muttered, yanking open the door to Jezebel’s florist while a tinkling bell sounded overhead.

Jez glanced up when I entered, but she was with a customer, discussing a bouquet of flowers I mostly couldn’t identify. So I wandered up to the front counter, stopping to take a whiff of a fragrant bunch in a vase filled with water.

Jezebel was as tall as I was, but her hair was blond and her skin fair. She’d been the freckled, nerdy weirdo the other kids had teased at school because she was so long and lanky and awkward.

While I’d shouted at them all and threatened to flush their heads down the toilets, Jezebel had never reacted, just letting their comments slide right off her.

Or so it seemed.

I wasn’t convinced she didn’t see their faces every time she stuck a blade through the heart of one of her targets.

But it wasn’t my place to pry into her head. I was her friend, not her therapist. And fuck. I had enough problems of my own.

Jezebel left her customer umming and ahhing over whether to pick the red-and-white, romance-themed bunch, or the yellow-and-orange combination that reminded me of sunshine. Personally, I would have gone for the black and red ones that screamed of Jez’s love for death but were, unsurprisingly, wilting away in the corner, clearly unloved by anyone but the two of us.

Jez popped herself up on a stool behind the counter. “When she’s done, I’ll put the ‘back in five’ sign up and we’ll drink that coffee.” She eyed the two to-go cups I’d brought in with me.

I nodded but was too impatient to wait that long to needle her for information. The fact bloody Augie Mitchell was the only person the police would talk to was really just fueling my irritation. “Have you seen Eddie around lately?”

Jez recoiled like I was a snake ready to bite her but kept her voice down, eyeing her customer. “Eddie Sinclair? Are you joking? God, no. Why would you even ask me that?”

I sighed. “Fawn’s gone missing. One of her new friends mentioned Eddie’s name when I asked about her. They wouldn’t tell me anything more, but who else would take her?”

She started rattling off a list of names, families of targets and enemies of my mother, until I waved a hand at her. “Okay, okay. I get it. It could be anyone, but they said Eddie, and he’s a good place to start.”

She trailed her finger along a rose stem before pressing her fingertip to one of the thorns. It pierced her skin, a perfect crimson droplet pooling at the site.

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