Kiss of Death (The Briar Creek Vampires, #1) by Jayme Morse & Jody Morse (4 page)

Lexi wished that she could call Justin. Once,
when she changed the security code on her cell phone, she had
forgotten what she had changed it to right after, and was locked
out of her phone for a few days. He helped her hack back into it.
Maybe he could help with this too, she thought, glancing at her
phone. She knew that he wouldn’t mind her calling so late, but she
didn’t want to wake him up. Thinking hard for a few minutes, Lexi
tried to rummage through what little memories of Austin she did
have.

She typed “Bruno,” which was Austin’s
childhood Beagle, and pressed enter. The computer responded with an
“incorrect password” message. She tried his name, only to find that
it was also wrong. She went through a list of words, ranging from
his favorite childhood food to his Aunt Gloria’s name. All
wrong.

Just as she was about to give up, Lexi
noticed a word written in black Sharpie next to the mouse pad.
Squinting harder through the darkness of the room around her, she
was able to make out the words “Bloody Mary.”

Deciding to give the password one last shot,
she typed the words and pressed enter. “Welcome, Austin,” the
screen announced immediately. Her jaw dropped and she let out the
breath she had been holding.

Waiting for the computer to load, she
wondered what Austin’s password could mean. Was he an alcoholic?
And what guy drank Bloody Mary’s anyway? Tomato juice and alcohol
(which didn’t sound like they went very well together anyway)
sounded more like a girly drink.

When the computer was ready to use, Lexi
closed Austin’s Instant Messenger, taking note of his username –
QBAustin87. She assumed that QB stood for quarter back and that 87
was his football number.

Lexi pulled up Facebook in a browser window.
Austin’s email and password had been saved and were ready to
log-in. Although she knew that she probably shouldn’t, Lexi hit the
enter key. It was her one opportunity to find out all that she
could about Austin.

His homepage loaded to reveal dozens of
notifications. She quickly set his Facebook chat to offline before
anyone could notice he was logged in, and clicked to view his
profile. Austin’s profile picture was of him at a party, dead
center of a group of self-absorbed looking guys, holding a plastic
red cup. Beneath his white baseball cap, he wore a huge, cocky
grin. His Hollister t-shirt radiated conceitedness. Lexi had to
stop herself from rolling her eyes. Had she known her cousin, she
probably would have avoided him. She absolutely hated those
types.

Lexi recognized Dan, the bossy guy from the
funeral, standing on Austin’s left. She looked at the tagged names
and didn’t recognize the other three guys in the picture with
them.

Lexi browsed through the rest of Austin’s
photos. Picture after picture was of the same exclusive group, each
seemingly taken at the party of the week. As she got to the oldest
pictures, she was greeted with various photos of a smiling Austin
in his football jersey. The oldest and last photo was of Austin
with his arms around a pretty brunette. Lexi moused over the girl
and the tag read “Mary-Kate Lawrence.” Where had she heard that
name recently?

Lexi clicked on his wall, only to find five
pages of “I can’t believe you’re gone” and “I miss you already”
comments. Anxious for information about his life, she decided to
try his messages instead.

The most recent message was from the pretty
brunette named Mary-Kate Lawrence. Lexi opened it. “Don’t worry
baby. You’ll get used to it. Meet me later tonight and we’ll try it
again xoxo” Looking closer at the date, Lexi realized that the
message was sent on the same day Austin had died. Going into his
sent folder, Lexi was unable to find any previous messages to
Mary-Kate.

As she scrolled down through the rest of his
messages, Lexi quickly realized that she wasn’t going to find
anything else that was interesting. Most of the messages just
mentioned football practices or addresses to the next party of the
week. Nothing, besides that one message from Mary-Kate, seemed
unusual or out of place.

What could Mary-Kate have been talking about?
Lexi wondered, shutting off the laptop. At first, Lexi thought it
might be sexual. Then again, she thought, Austin did not look like
the type of guy to have any problems in that area.

Glancing downstairs again to make sure that
all of the lights were still off, Lexi slid back into Austin’s room
to return the laptop to his desk.

A light bulb lit up inside her head. She
realized that Mary-Kate was the girl that blonde girl and her
friend had been talking about earlier today. Her last name was
Lawrence.
She
was the mayor’s daughter who had been the last
person to see Austin before he died. One of the girls had made it
sound like Mary-Kate was a slut, so there was a chance that the
message really had been referring to something sexual, but the
girls also made it sound like Mary-Kate had been involved in
Austin’s death. Before she drifted to sleep, Lexi couldn’t stop
thinking about what they could have been doing that night.

*

When the sunlight poured across her face the
next morning, Lexi groggily got out of bed and stumbled her way
downstairs. A note on the refrigerator read: “Went to the grocery
store. There are bagels for breakfast. Don’t get into any trouble.
Love, Aunt Violet and Mom.”

Glancing at the digital clock on her cell
phone, Lexi realized that it was nearly 12 o’clock. Between
Mary-Kate’s Facebook message and being back in her old bedroom,
Lexi had tossed and turned all night. While the room brought back
lots of good memories, some of those memories made her miss her
dad. She was able to push away her thoughts of him while she was
living in New Jersey, but being back in Pennsylvania made them come
crashing back to shore.

One memory in particular was a “royal” tea
party. She had given her dad a Burger King crown to wear, while she
pranced around her room in a Snow White costume.

He had said, “Well if I’m a King, then that
makes
you
Princess Lexi,” and the nickname had stuck. She
had heard Tommy complaining about it to her aunt later, saying that
her father shouldn’t be putting such silly fantasies in her head.
Tommy thought she already acted like a spoiled brat, and calling
her “princess” would eventually just make her head even more
swollen than it already was. Still, her father had continued with
his nickname for her.

Even though Lexi was a kid at the time, she
still remembered what her father smelled like – citrus and the
forest. She could have sworn that the scent of his cologne still
lingered in the room.

Not sure what else to do with herself, Lexi
went downstairs to eat breakfast. She grabbed a blueberry bagel out
of the bread box and cream cheese from the otherwise empty fridge.
Her aunt and uncle must have been too upset to go grocery shopping;
there was a tiny carton of eggs and a case of Budweiser on the
bottom shelf, but other than that it was completely bare.

Lexi couldn’t stop thinking about the message
from Mary-Kate that she had read the night before. Though she
couldn’t put her finger on what, there was something about the
message that unnerved her. Lexi wondered if Dan knew what Mary-Kate
and Austin had been doing the night he died, or if he knew if they
were dating, period. Didn’t guy best friends tell each other stuff
like that? She knew that if she had a date planned, the first thing
she would do is call her BFF (not that she had one). Maybe she
would ask Aunt Violet for his number later.

There was a newspaper at the kitchen bar. She
picked it up, curious to see if Austin’s obituary had been
published yet. It hadn’t been.

Flipping through the newspaper, she spotted
an advertisement of the annual Briar Creek carnival. Lexi
remembered going to the same carnival as a kid, eating cotton
candy, drinking fresh squeezed lemonade, and spinning on the
Tilt-a-Whirl until she was about ready to puke her guts out. The
advertisement said it was taking place a week early this year, on
this coming Sunday.

The last time she went to the carnival, Aunt
Violet and her mom took her and Austin out of pre-school early so
that they could go to it. They weren’t allowed to go at night, when
the older kids went. It struck Lexi as odd now that Kevin had also
been at the carnival. He probably should have been in school.

Why hadn’t Gabe been at the carnival too? He
had been Lexi’s age, so it would only make sense for him to have
been there to ride the Go-Karts or try to win a goldfish. For some
reason though, no matter how hard she tried, she simply could not
remember him. She guessed that maybe his mom had been one of those
mothers who were more protective of the youngest child. She decided
to ask her mom about Gabe later.

Throwing the rest of her bagel away, Lexi
gazed longingly out the window at the L-shaped in ground pool that
sat in her aunt and uncles backyard. She wished she could go
swimming, but the water was green, indicating that it had not been
cleaned yet for summer. Still, it was too nice out to stay cooped
up in the house all day.

She put on her flip flops and went outside.
Lexi had only been in Briar Creek for a couple of days and she
already felt as though she were becoming more low maintenance than
she had been at home. At home, she would never be caught dead
outside of the house without eyeliner, let alone in sweatpants.
Looking across the street at the little green rundown house, Lexi
stopped dead in her tracks. Gabriel lived there. The last thing she
wanted was him seeing her in her sweats. Before she could go back
into the house and change, she saw one of the dark curtains move to
the side.
Shit
, she cursed in her head and forced herself to
calmly walk back to the front porch.

As she was about to open the front door to go
back inside, a silver Ford pickup truck pulled into the driveway. A
short, burly man got out of the truck, carrying an overflowing
basket.

“Hello, there,” he greeted her, with a
friendly smile on his face. “Are Violet and Tom around?”

Although she hadn’t actually looked for Uncle
Tommy this morning, she assumed that he was also out. “No, I’m
sorry. They’re not home. Can I help you with something?”

“I’m Greg Lawrence, Austin’s football coach.
My family and I were unable to make it to the funeral. My wife and
our daughter, Mary-Kate, put some things together for Tom and
Violet,” he explained, handing the basket to her. “Please tell them
how deeply sorry we are for their loss. He was our star player. My
daughter was also very fond of him.”

So, the mayor was also Austin’s football
coach. Meaning, Austin was not only seeing the mayor’s daughter,
but he was also seeing his football coach’s daughter.

“I will,” Lexi smiled at him. “Thanks for
stopping by.”

As the mayor got back in his truck, Lexi
thought that, out of the corner of her eye, she saw a movement
across the street again. Was Gabe…or someone else…watching her?

*

That night at dinner, Lexi sat across the
table from her mom and picked at her chicken breast, mashed
potatoes, and green beans. Though it had been a long time since she
and her mom had eaten anything but a salad or vegetarian takeout
for dinner, the past few days had been extremely unnerving and she
could never eat when she was stressed.

“Um, Aunt Violet…can I have Dan’s phone
number?” Lexi asked.

“Sure,” Violet said, drizzling more gravy on
her potatoes. “You like him? He’s a very nice boy.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Lexi wondered why she hadn’t
thought of that reason as an excuse. She hadn’t known what to say
if Violet asked why she wanted his number. Her aunt seemed pleased
that she had asked for it, so maybe an excuse wasn’t too important
anyway. “He seemed nice enough,” Lexi lied.

“He was asking about you, you know. He thinks
you’re cute.” Violet’s eyes danced up excitedly at Lexi.

“He asked about me?” Lexi was taken aback.
She hadn’t sensed that he was attracted to her, but it also may
have explained his reaction to the possibility of her having a
friendship with Gabe. Maybe Dan told her to stay away from him
because he was just jealous. He might have even made up that story
about Gabe hurting an animal.

Her mom, who had remained quiet until now,
cleared her throat. “Don’t get too attached, Lexi. We’ll be going
back home in a few days.”

“I won’t. Oh, Aunt Violent, I just remembered
that Greg Lawrence stopped by today with a basket that his wife
made. He asked me to send his condolences. He seemed really
nice.”

“Oh, Mayor Lawrence is a very nice man! He
was Austin’s football coach.”

“He mentioned that he was his coach. He also
mentioned something about his daughter…Mary-Kate?” Lexi couldn’t
help but notice that Aunt Violet seemed troubled by her
question.

Violet took a large gulp of her wine and
choked. Recovering she said “Oh. She’s had a crush on Austin for
years.” Violet gripped her glass so tightly Lexi thought it might
shatter into pieces in her bare hand. Setting the glass down, she
tentatively continued, “He never seemed to like her though – not
the way she wanted him to. Poor girl never let it go.”

“I see. May I be excused?” Lexi asked. When
Violet and her mom both nodded, she got up to put her dishes in the
sink, mostly to conceal her worried expression. If Austin had never
liked Mary-Kate, why had she sent him that message, which could
easily be a sexual reference? Did he want to just be friends with
benefits? Lexi was starting to question whether they had even had a
relationship.

Had Austin even been with Mary-Kate that
night? Or was she just stalking him? Whatever the message was
about, it sounded like something Austin didn’t want to do.