Wicked Kiss by Michelle Rowen
Snap!
I was back at the mall and I staggered away from Jordan and Julie, bringing a hand to my forehead. They were both staring at me.
“What was that?” Jordan asked sharply. “Did you just have a mental meltdown or something?”
“I—I’m fine.”
She pushed her fingers into her hair to yank her long bangs back from her face as if they were annoying her. “I didn’t ask if you were fine. I don’t care if you’re fine. But you just checked out for a moment there. Blank city.”
I barely heard her. I was reliving what I’d just seen through Bishop’s eyes. He denied to both Kraven and Cassandra that he felt anything toward me more than an inconvenient addiction.
Between speaking with Stephen, losing him in the crowd, and then overhearing the conversation between the angels and demon, I could barely remain vertical. Even though I was in the middle of the mall surrounded by people, I’d never felt so scared and alone.
An inconvenient addiction.
He was an angel of death who’d been alive for...I didn’t even know how long. I knew nothing about him. All I had were words. And those words were giving me no comfort today. None at all.
“You are a very beautiful girl.” A woman with a clipboard approached us.
I forced myself to look at who was talking and to whom.
The middle-aged woman with long auburn hair and blue eyes, wearing a black designer suit, swept her gaze over Julie.
Julie pressed her hand against her chest. “Me?”
“Yes. Let me take a look at you.” The woman grasped her chin, tilting her head from side to side. “Exquisite. I’m a modeling scout. I think you might have what it takes.”
“Really?” she said with excitement.
“Yes. My name is Eva. And you?”
“Julie. Julie Travis.”
Eva took her hand and squeezed it. “A pleasure to meet you, Ms. Travis.”
She handed Julie a card before she walked off, sending a casual glance over her shoulder at me and Jordan as she went.
Julie beamed. “Can you believe that? A modeling scout thought I was exquisite.”
“It’s probably one of those agencies that charges a lot of money for your portfolio and don’t do much else,” Jordan said.
Julie gave her a sharp look. “That’s not nice.”
“I’m sorry, but it’s true. I mean, it’s just the mall. Do many people usually get discovered here?”
“You’re mad that she didn’t even notice you.”
“I’m already signed with a real agency in Manhattan. I don’t need some Trinity-based agency to represent me.”
“Whatever. It’s not like she gave Samantha a card.”
“I don’t want a card,” I said.
A strange tingle went down my arms, like an unseen breeze. I frowned and glanced around to see what caused it, but there was nothing.
Stephen said that just before stasis, the cold increased. But this wasn’t cold...more like a bit of electricity charging the air.
Weird.
Jordan gave me an appraising look. “She’s way too short. I mean, look at her. She’s practically a hobbit.”
I’d had more than enough of these two for one day. “I’m leaving.”
I had to find Stephen. I’d do another sweep of the mall first. Maybe he hadn’t left yet.
I couldn’t believe I lost him so easily. When I’d been close—so close.
“Don’t let me stop you,” Jordan said, then added, “freak.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to say something cruel or cutting to her back, but I stopped myself. I flicked a glance at Julie, no longer paying attention to our standoff. She gazed over toward the food court.
I tried to breathe normally. “I know you’re not going to believe this, Jordan, but I’m not seeing Stephen. We’re not together in any possible way. I’m not interested in him.”
Her lips thinned. “Like I care who you might be interested in.”
“I think you care too much.”
“And I think you’re an idiot.”
“Nice.” I rolled my eyes. “You know, sometimes pulling your head out of your own ass helps improve your clarity. You should try it sometime.”
I was sympathetic to her pain, but I refused to be completely defenseless here.
“It sucks,” Julie said.
Jordan glanced at her. “What does?”
“Everything. My life, it’s just so depressing.”
Jordan eyed her. “Join the club.”
“Sometimes—” she sniffed and dragged her hand under her nose “—it all gets so overwhelming. Like today. I felt good when I got here. I felt good until just a moment ago. And now I feel...so sad....”
“Stupid Stephen,” Jordan said. “He put everybody in a bad mood.”
“You know how much I hate seeing you so hurt over that jerk.”
Jordan flicked an uncomfortable glance at me, before returning her gaze to Julie. “Let’s talk when we have more privacy, okay?”
Julie let out a shaky breath and turned to face us. Her eyes were filled with tears. “You shouldn’t let him get to you, Jordan. You shouldn’t. He doesn’t deserve you.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t. It’s just like me and...and Colin....” Her bottom lip wobbled.
“You’re not into Colin, are you?” I asked. I wanted to leave, but I couldn’t while she was in the midst of this impromptu meltdown.
“I didn’t think so, but now that I think about it.” She inhaled shakily. “Just another example of someone I thought wanted me who only wanted to use me.”
“We were going to forget about that,” Jordan said pointedly.
“I can’t forget! And—and now with the modeling agent and you saying how ugly I am.”
Jordan gasped. “I never said you were ugly!”
“You said that a real modeling agent wouldn’t want me. Wouldn’t care about me. That I am so ugly that nobody wants to be my friend. I know it. It’s been like this all my life. It’s why my mother left us.”
Jordan and I exchanged a worried glance. This was going from bad to worse.
“Relax, Julie. Seriously.” She held her hands out. “Let’s go get a coffee downstairs and chill out. It’s been a stressful day, but there’s no reason to freak out.”
Julie was crying now. I just stared at her in shock. I hadn’t heard any rumors that she was unstable in any way, but this was definitely unstable behavior, to say the least. And her massive mood change seemed to have come out of absolutely nowhere.
“Sometimes,” Julie said in shaky bursts, “I hate life. Everything about it. It’s too hard. I wish I was dead.”
“Don’t say that. Come on...” Jordan reached her hand out.
Julie just shook her head. “Goodbye.”
Before we could do anything, say anything, or even make a move toward her, she took hold of the railing...
And threw herself over the edge.
Chapter 10
Jordan’s ear-piercing scream sliced through me like a knife. I raced to the railing to look over with horror. Julie had crashed onto a food court table and now lay there, her limbs at awkward, unnatural angles.
“Oh, my God,” I whispered, my throat closing. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, what I’d just witnessed happen right in front of me.
Chaos swept through the first floor, through the whole mall. Screams and cries of horror fille
“Why?” The anguished word wrenched from Jordan’s throat as she gripped the railing next to me. “What happened? Why would she do that?”
I couldn’t speak. And nothing I said would help this make any sense.
I stayed with Jordan as we hurried downstairs, but it was too late. The fall had killed Julie. The ambulance attendants confirmed she was dead. Jordan started to sob, and she clutched onto me tightly as if she needed something—anything—to anchor her.
Making everything that much worse was the fact that down here, so close to the swell of people who’d witnessed Julie’s suicide, my hunger didn’t let up for a moment. My heart pounded, and I put some distance between myself and Jordan and everyone else as soon as I could, trying to think. Trying to rationalize what happened.
I failed.
Nothing could explain this. Nothing could make it better.
The police arrived and asked Jordan some questions.
“I don’t know why she did it.” Jordan’s words were raspy, her face tear stained. “She was fine. All day. All week. She wasn’t upset or anything. But she—she just lost it.”
The police officer took her statement, then they took mine, which was basically the same thing. A teenager had committed suicide in public.
I didn’t like Julie, but I never would have wished for something like this to happen to her.
It wasn’t right. Seventeen was way too young to die.
Jordan was in shock. She’d stopped talking and just started to tremble. I directed her away from the food court and into an alcove of the mall. She pressed her back up against the wall and called her father to come pick her up. She was in no shape to drive home.
I gave her the bottle of water I had in my leather bag. She took it from me with shaking hands and took a sip. She didn’t complain that it was room temperature.
“It’s my fault,” she said, her voice hollow and broken. “She was so happy about the modeling agent. I felt bad about Stephen so I had to bring her down. And—and this happened.”
She’d sunk down to the floor, her long legs pulled tight up against her chest. I braced my shoulder against the wall. My hunger swirled the longer I stayed in this busy mall, but I couldn’t just abandon her here. Not like this.
“It’s not your fault,” I assured her. But really, I didn’t know what had triggered Julie to end everything in such a horrible, final way. “Was she depressed? Like not just today, but maybe clinically depressed and on medication?”
“No.” She frowned. “I mean, I don’t think so. She never said anything to me.” She drew in a ragged breath. “I didn’t even know she was still into Colin. I should have known. She was my best friend.”
My heart clenched for her. “Is there anything I can do?”
Finally, this seemed to break through to her. Her brows drew together and she looked up at me through red, puffy eyes. Her perfectly applied makeup was only a memory now. Her gaze hardened. “It’s probably your fault this happened.”
I stepped back, my stomach souring. “You know I had nothing to do with that. I barely knew Julie.”
“You stole Stephen from me. And now my best friend is dead.” Tears streamed down her cheeks. “Anything else you want to destroy today?”
My face burned from her words as if she’d struck me, but I refused to hit back. Not this time. “I’m sorry she’s gone, Jordan. I know how much you cared about her.”
There was nothing I could say to make it better. It looked like I could only make it worse by staying. So I left.
If I’d seen any signs of what was going to happen—what Julie was going to do—I would have done whatever it took to stop her. But as the moment played over and over in my mind on my way home, I couldn’t think of any clues to what triggered her mood change. One moment she was fine, the next she was suicidally depressed.
Like a switch had been flicked in her head.
Every time I closed my eyes I saw her falling over the side of the railing, like a song on repeat. Over and over.
Between Stephen’s chilling revelations of what was to come for grays, to eavesdropping on Bishop’s conversation about inconvenient addictions, to Julie’s suicide, I couldn’t deal with anything else right now. I especially couldn’t handle being around anyone who triggered my hunger.
I went directly home and locked the door behind me, dropping down to the floor, and finally released the sobs I’d been trying so hard to hold inside.
* * *
For the rest of the day, I did my best to avoid the world. It was my new hobby. It served me well for six hours of solitude. However, the pizza delivery guy had smelled much better than the pizza had, which was so unsettling I barely managed to eat more than half the pizza.
Mom called to say she’d arrived at her fabulous resort in Honolulu, and was going to start exploring immediately. Even long distance she sounded every bit as thrilled about her spontaneous trip as she had here. Angelic influence had some serious staying power. I missed her, but I told her to have a good time and not to worry about me.
After the call, I distractedly flipped through Catcher in the Rye, our current read in English. I’d read it before, so all I really had to do was refresh my memory.
It was late when Cassandra got back. The angel went directly to the refrigerator to get herself something to eat—more Chinese food leftovers.
From the kitchen doorway, I warily watched her prepare a plate. She looked over her shoulder at me, and her eyes narrowed.
“You didn’t tell me you kissed Bishop,” she said. There was accusation in her tone.
I cringed. “Good evening to you, too.”
She put her plate down and spun to face me, her eyes flashing with blue light. “Do you know how dangerous that was?”
Her words were harsh and unexpected. My eyes filled with tears.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her brows drawing together. She drew closer to me. “I’m sure you know it’s dangerous. I don’t have to tell you.”
“I didn’t know he had a soul at the time. Neither did he.” Not much of an excuse, but it was true.
Her frown remained as she studied me. “You’re upset.”
I inhaled shakily and ran my hand under my nose. “You could say that.”
“Why?”
“Oh, let me think.” I tried not to sound sarcastic, but failed. “I’m a soulless monster you and your buddies have the authority to knife in the heart at any given moment.” I chose not to share what I’d learned from Stephen—or even that I’d seen him. Not yet. And not with her. “Other than that, I—I witnessed somebody kill herself today.”
Her face blanched. “Kill herself?”
I nodded. “It was terrible. Right in front of me. She jumped to her death.”
Her mouth worked, but nothing came out for a moment. “Just like that. No warning?”
“No.”
I tried to swallow past the lump in my throat.
“Where were you?”
“The Trinity Mall. I’m sure it’ll be in the paper tomorrow. Probably already on the internet tonight.” I shivered.
She opened her mouth as if to say something, but then closed it. Her grave expression didn’t change. “I’m sorry you had to witness something like that. You’ve had to deal with so much.”
All I could offer was a meager shrug. “I just wish I could have stopped her.”
“Some things can’t be stopped.?
Cassandra didn’t touch her food, instead throwing it in the garbage as if she’d lost her appetite. I wasn’t sure what to make of her change in mood.
“I’m going to bed,” I said. It was late. I was tired. And whether I liked it or not, I had school tomorrow.
“You need to stay away from him,” she said as I turned to leave the kitchen.
I froze and looked over my shoulder at her. “Who?”
She just looked at me patiently. “Bishop’s mind isn’t working right because of his fall—because of the burden of his soul. He tries very hard to ignore this and do his job anyway, but if he was fully lucid, he’d see the risk of being anywhere near you.”
I grappled for something to say. “I don’t want to hurt him. It’s the last thing I want.”
“If you’re not careful, that’s exactly what you’ll do.”
There wasn’t anything else to say, or nothing that came immediately to mind. I escaped to my bedroom with thoughts racing, and a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.
After failing to get any real answers out of Stephen, I was at a temporary loss with my plan of action. I’d have to look for him. Maybe he’d contact me again.
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
Too many maybes.
Tomorrow was Monday. I had school bright and early. I hadn’t given up hope so much that I planned to start cutting classes. Going to school represented my continuing hold on my future—and that I had a future to hold on to. Despite any drama I faced outside of McCarthy High, I’d keep up my grades so I could go to my first choice college next year. One day, my life would be far outside of the Trinity city limits.
It would happen.
I sat at my vanity table and brushed all the tangles out of my long, wild mane of hair. I planned to get it cut to a more manageable length so I wouldn’t always have to pull it back into a ponytail, but I hadn’t gotten around to it yet.
I stared at my reflection for a long time, trying to see some sign of the supernatural in my eyes. I knew it had to be there, since I had enough of it swirling around inside of me, but they looked the same as always. Brown. And currently filled with anxiety.