Kill Me Softly (2 page)

I'll see you soon. I love you
. …

Mira knew her godmothers pretty well—and she'd known that if she suddenly disappeared, Bliss and Elsa would assume she'd gone to the one place she was always pestering them about.

So she had to leave them chasing a false trail.

From November to June, Mira had written love letters to herself, and to a boy she invented, who supposedly lived in San Francisco. It had been a game at first—a plot that could be abandoned if she changed her mind. But the closer she came to leaving, the more determined she was to go through with it.

She'd sent the letters back and forth from two email accounts; and yesterday, she'd printed out a few prime examples—
I can't believe we're doing this! I can't wait to meet you!
—and planted them in her desk drawer.

She knew Elsa and Bliss would ransack her room once she disappeared, find the not-very-well-hidden letters detailing her plans to run off to San Francisco to visit “David,” and decide that was where she'd gone. But even if they suspected the printed letters were a trick … once they broke into her email account (with the help of the password she'd written on the Post-it on her desk), and saw eight months' worth of progressively more impassioned messages … they'd be convinced.

Her godmothers hadn't raised her to be devious—and she usually wasn't. They'd never suspect she was deceitful enough, or crazy enough, to carry out such an elaborate plan. But turning sixteen was supposed to be special. She was willing to break the rules to ensure that it would be.

“Crap, I have to parallel park,” Rachel muttered. Mira blinked her eyes open. Rachel had lowered the radio volume and was clutching the steering wheel tightly with both hands. The wet black road gleamed under the streetlights. Mira could see the bus station up ahead.

“Pull over; I'll do it,” Matt said.

“I can do it, Matt, god!”

Mira leaned forward between the seats, eager to just
go
now that her destination was in sight. “You don't have to park. Just drop me off.”

“You sure?” Rachel asked.

“Positive.”

A moment later, the car jerked to a stop across from the station—and Mira got out, hauling her bag after her.

It was raining harder now. The drizzle had turned to a steady patter, fat drops splashing her face, her shoulders. She waved good-bye to Rachel and Matt, then waited until the street was clear and ran across, tightening her toes so she didn't lose a flip-flop in the process.

“Good luck!” Matt yelled out the window.

“Be careful!” Rachel shouted.

“Thanks!” she yelled back.

Mira shoved through the bus station's grimy glass doors and went to the ticket counter, where she bought a one-way ticket with a handful of damp bills. She was shaking with excitement when she dumped her bag on the floor behind the last person in line, and sank down on top of it to wait.

She watched the clock tick by for almost an hour—until she heard the announcement that her bus was boarding, and the line started shuffling sleepily forward.

Mira wasn't usually a person who broke rules, who did things she wasn't supposed to, who lived dangerously, who took risks.

But a week before her birthday, she boarded a bus to Beau Rivage—the city where she'd been born, the city where they'd buried her parents.

The one place her godmothers had forbidden.

S
IX DAYS BEFORE HER SIXTEENTH BIRTHDAY
, in a casino café called Wish, in the heart of Beau Rivage, Mira ordered her third lemonade of the night and spread a few cold French fries around her plate—artfully, so it looked like she was still eating, not just taking up space. It was one in the morning and she was alone in a strange city, with her duffel bag next to her, a play cracked open in front of her—and she had nowhere to go.

This was not the triumphant homecoming she'd imagined.

She was shivering from the air-conditioning. Her hair was even wavier than usual, made wild by the humidity and tangled from all the sweaty, plodding walking she'd done.

She needed a place to stay, but she was too young to rent a hotel room. Too skittish to camp outside. She'd trekked to three cemeteries that day, wanting, if she couldn't stay overnight in Beau Rivage, to at least see her parents' graves before she left—but all she found was sunburn and frustration.

By nightfall, her enthusiasm had vanished. The inviting seaside city became a neon ruin. Dark figures stole through the shadows. Lights from the casinos rippled and flashed, drumming her eyes with violent starbursts. Humid air clung to her like an unwelcome admirer—and she'd hurried into the Dream Casino to shake it off.

That was how she'd ended up at Wish.

Casinos were open all night. She'd figured she could sit in the café, maybe doze off with her head on the table, and no one would care. But now that she'd been there three hours, Mira was starting to think her predicament was obvious. That some gambler would see a “helpless” girl in a frilly blouse and shorts and hit on her. Or some slot-playing grandma would spot a “runaway” and call the police. Or both.

She had the kind of innocent exterior people felt comfortable harassing: heavy-lidded, sleepy eyes, and a soft-featured face that made her seem gullible, though she wasn't. She kept her head down so as not to encourage any well-meaning Samaritans. Or perverts.

She was reading
A Streetcar Named Desire
for the nth time, mouthing words she'd nearly memorized, when she noticed a guy standing at the edge of her table. She moved her hand to the nape of her neck, worked her fingers through the knots in her hair, and prayed he would go away.

No such luck.

“I'm getting bored watching you,” he said. “You've been reading that book for hours.”

She raised her eyes and saw ripped jeans, black-ink sentences twisting across them like chains. A spiked leather cuff on one slender bronze wrist. A miniature chain-saw pendant dangled from his neck.

And then the kicker:

His hair and even his eyebrows were
blue
. Blue like sour candy, like poster paint. His hair stuck out from his head in spikes, stiff and sharp, and he had a smirk to match. A metal barbell pierced his left eyebrow.

Every part of him seemed calculated to drive people away. Like a plant studded with thorns, or an animal whose bright colors signaled
poison
.

Well, it was working.

Mira wasn't sure if he was flirting with her or harassing her for the fun of it—but she wanted him to leave her alone. And in her experience, the best way to get rid of an obnoxious guy was to be rude to him. She spent so much time being polite that she definitely knew how to be the opposite.

“I'm not here to entertain you,” she said, putting on her coldest look.

The muscles in his tanned forearms flexed as he flattened his hands against the table and leaned over to read her page, undeterred. “What are you here for, then?”

“None of your business,” she said.

“That's probably not true.”

Mira ignored him, hoping he would get bored and leave.

“I'm Blue, by the way,” he said.

She rolled her eyes.
Blue.
Right. “How nice for you.”

Blue turned his attention to her duffel bag then: stuffed to bursting, the coded destination sticker from the bus company still stuck to the handle. “Are you lost? You're not an orphan, are you? My older brother loves seducing orphans.”

The idea was absurd, but the word
orphan
struck a nerve. It always did.

Mira swallowed her initial reaction. “Is that so,” she said flatly.

Blue nodded. “It's a sickness. So for your own safety, I'm going to have to ask you to leave.”

“This is a public place,” she argued. “I can—”

“Actually—” Blue started.

“Blue—you're being nice to her, I hope.”

Mira turned to see a boy in a white oxford shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He was cute, with honey-colored hair and an athlete's physique, but he seemed awkward, even a little embarrassed to be there. His eyes hovered around Mira, like a bee distracted by a flower.

She managed a strained smile, to be polite.

“This is Freddie,” Blue announced. “He has a thing for damsels in distress.” He said it almost derisively, and Freddie ducked his head and mumbled, “No.”

“No, he's not being nice to me,” Mira answered, since Blue was ignoring that part.

“I am being nice,” Blue said. “I'm chasing you away.”

She glared at him. “So I should be grateful you're a jerk?”

“Exactly.” Blue leaned toward her again. “What are you doing here anyway? You're practically camped out.”

“And you noticed because you have nothing better to do than stare at me.”

“Yes,” Blue said. “But it's also because I live here. The Dream is my dad's casino.”

Mira took a shaky sip of her lemonade.
Great.
Maybe he was lying—but maybe he wasn't, and he was going to be a jerk and kick her out, because he could. Then she'd have to trek to one of the other casinos, when God only knew what kind of people were wandering around.

She grabbed her bag. “I have to use the bathroom,” she said abruptly.

Freddie blushed and looked away.

“So you are human,” Blue said.

“You thought I was something else?”

“No.” Blue smiled. “Go ahead. We'll wait.”

When she came back, Blue and Freddie had taken care of her check, and her glass of lemonade and the plate of fries she'd been “still working on” for three-plus hours had been cleared away. It shouldn't have been a big deal—but she'd been clinging to that table like it was her sanctuary. She felt like they'd stolen something from her.

“I wasn't done yet,” she said. She imagined herself trudging through the city again, this time in the dark, her heavy duffel bag chafing her hip, the unnerving scuffle of footsteps behind her. …

“Don't bother thanking me,” Blue said. “It's no trouble to comp your meal and your room. Really.”

“I don't
have
a room here,” she said, with growing irritation. “That's why I needed the table.”

Blue's eyes lit up—and Mira got nervous: he seemed
way
too happy to find out she didn't have a room here. “Even better. I'll get you a room at the Palace down the street. It's a little sleazy—they have heart-shaped bathtubs and pink wallpaper and, uh … yeah.” He gave her a fill-in-the-blanks look. “But no one will come by and grope you in your room. I can't promise you that if you fall asleep in the café.”

She glared at him, as viciously as her face could muster.

Blue shrugged. “You never know. We cater to a filthy clientele.”

“That's so tempting,” Mira muttered. “But no thanks.” She pushed past him and he grabbed her arm, bronze fingers tight against her skin. He didn't look like he was offering her a choice. He was trying to bully her into this, get her to leave the casino with him, and then … ?

“It's the middle of the night,” Blue said easily, charm creeping into his voice. “Come on—Freddie and I'll walk you over.”

Mira's blood was thudding in her ears. This had been a terrible idea. This whole thing … She jerked away from him. Her voice wavered as she said, “Did you not hear me? I'm not going
anywhere
with you!”

Blue's mouth snapped open like he was about to say something else. She didn't stick around to hear what it was.

The overhead lights in the casino blazed an ugly yellow. Mira followed the nauseatingly bold gold-black-violet carpet like it was the yellow brick road. Slot machines dinged and screamed en masse, like monsters at odds with each other. Cocktail waitresses wove in and out of the crowd.

It was 1:38
A.M.
—there was no way she was going to wander the streets. So she found a secluded part of the elaborate fairy-tale garden in the Dream's lobby, climbed past the flimsy rope barricade, and settled at the base of a wisteria tree to wait until morning.

Mira checked her watch periodically, heart drumming nervously at first, wondering how long she could rest there before someone kicked her out. But as 1:50 changed to 2:04 and then 2:15, she relaxed.

She was half asleep when she heard a female voice murmur, “Oh, look at her. I wonder what's wrong.”

Mira snapped alert—and tried to pretend she hadn't heard. Maybe the woman wasn't talking about her. Or, more likely, she was—but maybe she would lose interest and go away.

She heard shoes sinking into the mulch that made up the floor of the garden, along with an annoyed masculine grunt as someone who would rather not be so nimble at 2:30 in the morning climbed over the rope and into the man-made fairy-tale forest.

Mira lifted her chin—just as the guy crouched in the dirt to be level with her.

She guessed he was twenty or twenty-one, which surprised her. She was used to college kids because she lived in a college town, and generally, they were such a mix of tolerant and self-absorbed that they didn't care what anyone did. She couldn't imagine one of Elsa's students checking on her.

But then, this guy didn't seem like a typical twenty-one-year-old.

He wore a dark suit without a tie, his shirt open at the neck. His hair glinted blue-black, and his eyes were just as dark—like sapphires, or a raven's wing. There was something not quite normal about him, something too beautiful, and strange, and she found herself watching him the way she'd watch a fire: captivated, and a little afraid to be so close.

He dipped his head and looked at her like he was waiting for her to tell him a secret.

“You don't look happy,” he said.

“I'm okay,” she said, aware of how false that sounded, considering where she was.

“Are you hiding from someone?”

“No … not exactly.”

His dark eyes were taking her in, shifting from her bag to her wrinkled clothes to the unease that was probably all over her face. “You can tell me, you know. I might be able to help.”

Past him, Mira could see the young woman who'd first spotted her, leaning sideways to peer through the lacy grove of trees. She had dark brown hair, a cute, heart-shaped face, and a cuter body—perfectly showcased by the tight green dress she wore. “Is she okay?” the woman called.

“She's fine, Cora.” He lowered his voice and asked Mira, “So what's going on?”

Mira shrugged. “Some guy was harassing me in the café … so I came here.”

“Some guy?” He raised his eyebrows. “You should introduce us. I'll make him apologize before I kick him out.”

“I don't—oh?” A shiver crawled through her. Her eyes lingered on the blue-black of his hair, the bottomless blue eyes. “You—work here?”

“I run this place,” he said. “Well, more or less. While my dad's away. And I love throwing people out. Just give me an excuse.”

“Uh … I don't think you'll throw this person out. I think he's your brother. But thanks,” she mumbled.

He laughed. The corners of his eyes turned up—and suddenly he was different. The cool expression left his face, and he was smiling. “Blue? Was my idiot brother bothering you?

You're right, I can't kick him out—but let me try to make it up to you. How about a spa session? Dinner at Rampion?”

He started tossing out options, like he'd be happy to give her whatever she wanted; and as he kept talking, she stopped hearing the words as the rush of blood in her head overtook them. The way his eyes locked casually on hers, combined with his body language, the timbre of his voice now that he was being nice made her realize—he was kind of sexy. And when his hand brushed hers by accident, a fizzy shock buzzed through her veins. This wasn't a kid with a skateboard, who smelled like body spray and laughed too hard at dirty jokes. He was something else, someone who lived in a different world, and she liked that.

“No, really, I'm okay,” Mira said, embarrassed that she was reacting to this guy she barely knew, ten feet from where his girlfriend was standing. “I just want to sit here for a while.”

He shook his head. “You can't stay in the garden. What's your room number?” He took his phone out. “I'll deal with your parents. Did you fight with them? Is that why you've got your bag with you?”