Poison Kissed (7 page)

I hadn’t been with a man in a long time, and my sparkle-parched body itched at me to act. I wasn’t taken, not really. In my dreams, maybe. But Vincent had a girlfriend, a pretty blue water fairy named Flora. She was my friend, too. Did I care? “Vincent—”

“You’re so beautiful, Mina.” He dipped to tease warm lips along my jaw. “Bet he never tells you that.”

Curiosity and temptation chewed through my reason, and I sighed and sank my fingers into his fragrant hair, drawing him gently on. It felt so good to be touched. He nuzzled me, kissing just below my ear, where my pulse thudded. Sparks danced over my scalp, forcing pleasured melody from my lips. My eyelids flickered and threatened to close.

I crept my hand to his chest, where his heartbeat beckoned. The tense, steady thump of his pulse spread over my palm, sank through my flesh into my bones, teasing me like hot spicy music. I murmured, and I felt him smile, his whisper tempting. “You like that. I knew it. We’re meant to be, Mina. We don’t need Joey tellin’ us what to do.”

Lightly he caressed the sensitive place at the small of my back. I shivered under those delicate fingertips. I crushed his hair in my fist as he kissed his way back along my jaw. His lips lingered at the corner of my mouth, his sweet bourbon flavor a rich lure, the shy bitter taste of his loneliness drawing me closer than rash seduction ever could have.

My lips parted, anticipating his kiss, a deep satisfied purr ready in my throat. I should go with him. Forget sparkle, memory, revenge. Just go with him, taste him, feel his desire rise with mine, pin his hot male body down beneath me and share some meaningless warmth and pleasure, before we had to wake up and remember how insignificant our sad little lives were.

No one’d ever know. Joey didn’t have to find out.

His lips hovered an inch from mine, a final question laced with bourbon and intoxicating hope. But it wasn’t right. I wanted those lips to taste of venom, wanted to feel shifting flesh roil under my hands, inhale the hot melting scent of mint. I wanted the hair wrapped around my fists to be blond.

I yanked Vincent’s head back to glare into his eyes. “Stop right there and I won’t kick your skanky ass into next week.”

He groaned and tugged away, scowling. “Dunno what you think you’re saving yourself for.”

“And you can leave that right alone, smart-ass. I should tell the boss everything you just said.” My body still ached, and I dragged my hair straight, my face hot. Infuriating, that he’d crept under my skin so effortlessly.

“Think he’ll believe you after tonight?” A sly glint ignited in his eyes, and the truth nagged at me, irritatingly transparent.

All part of Vincent’s plan. Seduce me while I was weak and needy. Blackmail me into helping him. Fix it so I couldn’t tell without seeming like I was to blame all along.

Icy anger spiked, and a deep furious hum built in my lungs. “You cunning little shit. I don’t want any part of it. Fuck off.”

That wounded look again. “Think about it, Min. He’s using both of us. We’re worth more than that.”

Laughter sputtered, it was so ridiculous. “Vincent, you’re just a human! You’re not even faeborn. No one takes you seriously. What you gonna do against Diamond? Ange Valenti, the toughest vampire son of a bitch in town? Kane, for fucksake? You start playing with the big kids, and they’ll tear your eyeballs out—”

“Joey’s never gonna want you!” Bitterness splintered Vincent’s tone flintsharp, his handsome face tight. “You think you’re special ’cause you’re a girl? Because once he took pity on you? You’re just a resource. You’ll fight for him till you bleed dry, and one day they’ll kill you and he’ll just shrug and scowl and get himself another slave.”

My heart stung. “Yeah? Guess that’s how he picked you up, then.”

“It’s what he does, Mina! Jesus, can’t you see how he leads you on? You really think he’ll lower himself to fuck a needy sparkled-up whore like you?”

We stared at each other, tension stretching the air between us like hellblack glamour. We’d been friends since I was eighteen. We’d known each other too long to pull punches, and we knew exactly where it hurt the most. My throat ached. This time, we might really be over.

Against my thigh, my phone shrieked.

I pulled it out, my ears ringing sourly.
Cy@ back. ru sure??? xxC.

I swallowed on sticky virusblood residue, and my body burned. I was sure, all right. I just wanted it all to go away.

Vincent sucked in a breath, dragging shaking fingers through his hair. “Fuck. I’m s—”

“Forget it.” I shoved past him, banging into his shoulder with mine. He didn’t follow me, and after a few seconds, icy consonants rippled my skin as he cursed.

I stalked along beside the mirrored wall, past a gaggle of twirling drunk fairy girls in stiletto heels and satin party dresses, a redheaded vampire girl in black vinyl and industrial ear piercings jabbing a helljuice syringe in her arm, three fat spriggans in drag playing drinking games with a bottle of blood.

In a dim smoke-wreathed corner, Iridium hunched one misshapen shoulder against the glass, ironsharp claws glinting as he stroked a pretty young girl’s bleached hair. His glamour flickered sweet lies, a clean slim blond boy with pale mismatched eyes. The girl smiled and leaned closer, and over her shoulder, Iridium winked slyly at me beneath a fall of dirtybronze hair.

My stomach churned. None of my business, right? But Iridium’s sense of fun was grotesque and dangerous. He wore barbed wire wrapped around his wrists, for fucksake. I walked up and tapped her on one satin-strapped shoulder, giving my best crazybanshee glare. “You making moves on my boyfriend, bitch? Clear off or I’ll scratch your eyeballs out.”

She stared at him, twisting long green nails in her dress. “What? You never . . . goddamn it.” And she flounced away with a pained scowl.

Iridium twitched, some deformed muscle in his back spasming. He couldn’t stand upright, and he had to twist his crooked hips and cock his head to look me in the eyes. He grimaced in pain. “Wasn’t very nice. Cripple can’t get laid in peace?”

The stink of his rust-rotted wings slicked my tongue with salt. “Since when did you ever just get laid, you sick freak?”

“Do what I have to.” Coppery teeth glinted, a shark’s inviting grin. “Should try it. Might like.”

“Screw you.” I spun and stalked away.

His grit-on-iron laugh followed me, taunting. “Some girls just die, Mina. You and Joey can’t save them all.”

An angry yowl trembled my lungs. But he was right. I couldn’t.

Forget Vincent and Iridium. Forget Joey, like he’d surely forgotten me until he needed me again. There was only vengeance.

Echoes of the pain I’d suffered last time I tried this stung deep in my temples like wasps, only a dim reflection of the blinding agony of memoryslash. I’d learned nothing, only the same images I’d always seen, over and over until I screamed and clawed and begged Cobalt to stop, my ears bleeding scarlet into his dirty hair.

Why did I do it? Why was I so convinced that somewhere in the hellscraped cavern of my soul, I’d repressed some clue that’d lead me to the killer?

Maybe there was no answer. My mother died, screeching for help, and I’d never find out who or why. I’d spent years forging my body into a weapon. But until I found my target, no kill could satisfy me.

My heart twisted tight like a wrung-out rag. Stupid tears flooded my eyes, and my ears popped like a wet thunderclap. My nose swelled and ached inside as if I’d stuffed it with sparkle hours ago. I tried to picture her face in my mind, her kind pewter eyes, her smile, but the image kept blurring, washed out like a watercolor as if I couldn’t remember what she looked like.

Fingers slimed my wrist, and I whirled, my nails striking out.

Yellow limbs recoiled, long fingers hiding a pointy face. A wet sniffle, a sob.

I backed off, shaking. Violet. It was just Violet, lank green fairy hair tumbling over skinny shoulders. Her ragged wings trembled. Bruises shone with tears under her tired eyes, matching the new one on her chin, where fresh teethmarks gleamed wet. “Please, Min. I got nowhere to go. Can you just spot me—?”

“I can’t right now, okay? I’ll call you.” Remorse twitched, but I shook it off and walked away. I didn’t want to see Violet, the ugly, pitiful ghost of Mina-past. She wasn’t my problem. We make our own luck. Right?

Besides, I needed all my cash for Cobalt. Without it, he wouldn’t help me.

I strode down a metal ramp that shuddered to the band’s cruel beat, the music thudding up my calves, resonating in my bones. My metal heels cracked loud on the steel floor, a harsh, comforting rhythm of my own making, a quantifiable cosmic reaction to my presence that proved I was alive, and not just swept-together fragments of some ghastly memory.

A couple of drunk faeborn kids smoking a ragged joint slouched on the floor against the wall, misshapen legs sprawled in grimy jeans, half-formed wingstubs stretching beneath ripped T-shirts. Not all the faeborn were as well-camouflaged as Joey.

One looked up as I passed and winked at me, eyes slitted like a cat’s and glazed bright. The tart pot smoke galvanized me, and determination clenched my fists like steel as I approached the dim vestibule that led to the fire exit. If I achieved anything tonight, at the very least I’d remember my mother’s face for a few more weeks.

I rounded the corner too fast, and blundered into warm, pliable glass.

Rose scent pinched my nostrils, and alarm ripped through my reflexes like electric shock. My pulse bolted, a scared rabbit. I jumped backwards, agile, and landed with a metallic snap on my toes, my knees bent, balancing tight on quivering ankle tendons and luck.

Diamond laughed, a deep crystal tinkle that hacked at my nerves. His long glass-spun hair glinted, crackling over translucent skin. “Surprisify you again, bluebell?”

I sneaked a slow deep breath, stroking my jittering nerves calm. My cheek still stung where he’d rubbed it into the ground earlier, but his insults stabbed my pride deeper. Swiftly I checked left, right, behind him. He was alone, and my palms itched. I wanted to rip his pretty transparent face off. But the rule said no fighting at the Court, and if Joey caught me breaking the peace, he’d have my skin.

I sucked in another breath, damping down the earsplitting yowl that threatened to burst from my throat. “Let it be. No fight.”

“If you say so. Actu-mally, I was looking for you.” He fluttered closer, quartz wings glittering, and his shadow rippled dim on the floor like a watery reflection. He wore tight dark jeans and a slashed black shirt with no sleeves, typical fairy show-off, and glimpses of his glassy skin shone violet and green in the nightclub lights over faint scarlet veins like webs. Shorter than the average fairy, bulked up instead of slender, the outlines of his hard muscles defined. Long straight hair like optic fiber, perfect face, his sculptured fairy weirdness doing nothing to disguise long rainbow lashes and liquidberry eyes and ripe sulky lips.

Yeah, okay, so he was fuckable. Strip-him-naked, chain-him-to-the-bed-and-play material. If I wasn’t his sworn enemy and up to my eyeballs in unrequited fuck-me for another man, that is. And it was a pity such a magnificent body belonged to Melbourne’s most magnificent asshole. Them’s the breaks, I guess.

Diamond settled on the metal in front of me, uncannily silent. Too close. The warm rosy wind from his wings teased my hair back, and my gaze drew to the pulse that throbbed scarlet in his tight faemuscled arm, and I wanted to duck away. But Diamond was Ange Valenti’s new golden boy, going places like a rocket. If he wasn’t merely taunting me, this could be an opportunity to deal.

I swallowed, and stood straighter. “What you want?”

“Same-same thing your musky friend Vincent wanted, of course.” He sniffed at me like a cat, showing that wicked smash-me grin, and his wind chime voice clattered cold down my spine.

I forced a laugh, though my guts crunched tight and hot that I’d let him trick me again, and speared him on a sharp smile. “Fuck you.”

I tried to shoulder past him, but he planted his hand on the wall beside me, trapping me close to him with that shiny arm. “Not that. You’re wastified at DiLuca, Mina.”

Was he watching me? Following me? Cold glassfae insight stroked my face, seductive and ugly at the same time. A misty memory flashed, the two of us kissing, hot and breathless, his hands on my ass and sugarbright sparkle shining in my blood like starlight, and I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t real.

My face flushed, and I snarled and cracked his mindtouch off with a sizzling soprano chord, swatting his arm away. “Was it the
fuck
or the
you
that you didn’t understand?”

“Do the snake and his wormatrons ever let you think? Or do you just obey?” Diamond’s garnet eyes glinted under goldsparked lashes, studying my face, coolly analyzing me with prickly faespell.

“You don’t know anything about me, okay? Give it up.”

“Like to know about you, Mina. Really would.” He slipped me another dark rosy grin, his wings twitching.

I caught his meaning, and angry spit filled my mouth. “The day I rat on him to you is the d—”

“No rats, little mouse. Just tastyliciousness for you.” He tilted his head, seductive silver sparkling in his eyes. “I’ll give you more money. More responsibility. More respectimacality. It’s a brave new world down at Valentino’s these days. Come see for yourself.” And he actually dared to touch me, his claws a dark caress of promise on my cheek.

A hot poisoned warble vibrated my larynx, and I slapped his fingers away. “You’re lucky I don’t shatter your lying face off. I’m not having this conversation, okay? I never saw you.” And I spun to shoulder past him.

“I’ll tell you who murdered your mother.”

Melody jammed in my throat like a stuck gumball, and my skin shrank cold. I halted.

Diamond’s lips twisted in rosedark amusement. “Them’s expensive whisperings, though. Might involve a pinch more rat-icality.”

My heart somersaulted. How could he know anything? How did he even know she died? This was my secret mission, my hidden heart’s desire. Diamond was guessing. Had to be.