Kiss of Death (2 page)

There’s a snigger from Plum after “bonny laddies,” and I can’t say I blame her. Lizzie and Susan, of course, laugh along; Plum could be giggling and pointing to a mutilated corpse and they’d titter dutifully. But as the stage slowly, dramatically, becomes bathed in blue-green light, its edges touched with violet, and Mac Attack start to play, the laughter dies on their lips.

Sometimes you can tell straightaway that people are really good at what they do. An actor nails her first line, or a dancer lands onstage with a stunning leap. And from the first chord, we all know that Mac Attack are as good as Hürti Slärtbärten sucked lemons. The song is in a minor key, haunting and powerful, immediately capturing my imagination. And it hasn’t escaped our attention that the keyboard player, the flautist, the guitarist, and the double-bass player are all boys, with really good legs. Which we can tell, because they’re wearing kilts.

Boys in kilts, playing soulfully. The audience settles back, entranced already.

And then comes the sound of a violin, sweet and melancholy, like a voice singing sadly in the distance.

If with me you’d fondly stray
Over the hills and far away …

It’s an old folk song I recognize. But I’ve never heard it sound like this before. The violin makes it seem like an enchantment, as if the melody is casting a spell to throw a net over your heart and drag you away, as if the fiddler were the Pied Piper of Hamelin. And as he walks slowly onstage, playing the song, a hushed ripple of excitement runs through the entire row of girls. We all lean forward as if pulled by invisible strings.

Because he’s gorgeous. He’s got that classic hot-boy body: wide shoulders, narrow hips, strong muscly legs (which, of course, we can check out easily because of his kilt). His calves, in woolly socks pulled up just below the knee, have Taylor raising her eyebrows in approval. I know she hates guys with skinny calves. He’s wearing a T-shirt, and his arms, flexing as he plays the violin, are just as strongly defined with muscle as his legs. The idiot lead violinist of Hürti Slärtbärten was waving his fiddle around as if it were a toy in a vain effort to impress the audience, but this boy is playing it as sweetly as if it were a part of his body, his concentration entirely on the music he’s making.

Wow. He’s a total heartthrob.

And then, as he steps into the spotlight in the center of the stage, I get the shock of my life.

Oh my God.

Because now that he’s fully in the light, I can see his face. His hair is cut very short to his nicely shaped skull, nothing to distract from his features, which are instantly familiar to me: the gray-green eyes, the straight nose, the high cheekbones. The full, pink lips. Which—
God help me
—I should certainly be able to recognize.

Since I’ve kissed them.

It’s Callum McAndrew. Dan McAndrew’s twin brother.

Of course, I’m not the only girl here who knows Callum. Taylor, beside me, stiffens in recognition: she came to Scotland too on our quest to find out who killed Dan. She met Callum in circumstances none of us ever wants to think about again.

And farther down the row, I hear an urgent whisper as Plum informs Lizzie and Susan of the identity of the lead fiddler in Mac Attack. Plum knew Dan really well—
really
well. He was a core member of Plum’s It girls and boys-about-town, partying hard with them. Callum is Dan’s opposite, not a party boy at all. But he certainly knows Plum; his ex-girlfriend, Lucy Raleigh, was one of Plum’s whole superrich, supertrendy clique of entitled, glossy hair flickers.

I slump in my chair, unable to take my eyes off Callum as he coaxes sweet, hypnotic music from the violin tucked under his chin. You’d never know it was the same instrument that produced such awful screeches for Hürti Slärtbärten. And yet the sound inside my head is much closer to horrible screeching than to Callum’s exquisite playing.

How can this be happening?
I think hopelessly.
St. Tabby’s girls and Callum McAndrew in the same auditorium?
I feel like my past is not only rearing up to haunt me, but slapping me in the face over and over again. I can sense Alison and Luce’s anger as strongly as if it were a red mist hovering around me. And as if that weren’t enough for me to deal with, up onstage is Callum McAndrew, looking like a god and playing like an angel, which means that no girl present is going to be doing anything but gushing on about him, Googling incessantly to find pictures of him, and giggling madly whenever his name is mentioned for weeks to come.

Talk about blasts from the past. Every time I think I’m free of Dan’s murder, that I can make a fresh start, it pulls me back, and now it’s as if I’m drowning in it.

The irony is, of course, that I brought this whole disaster on myself. I was the first person to sign up for the school half-term trip to Edinburgh. I was desperate for a distraction: my boyfriend, Jase, has been AWOL for almost two months now. He’s texted me, we’ve Skyped every now and then, but those brief flashes of contact have almost made everything worse, like throwing crumbs to a starving person.

I miss him horribly. I miss holding him, kissing him, wrapping my arms around him, diving my nose into the smooth hollow of his neck to smell his body. I thought it would be easier the longer he was away, but it’s only got worse; missing him is like a hole in my stomach, fist-sized, fist-shaped, as if someone put their hand inside me and pulled out an essential organ.

So I was hoping Edinburgh would give me a little relief from the pain. New sights, new scenery, and, most importantly, somewhere with no memories of Jase. Every time I turned a corner at Wakefield Hall, every walk I took in the grounds, I half thought I’d see him, sweeping leaves, pruning trees, or just striding toward me, his face lighting up at the sight of me.

Some distraction. Instead, I’ve dropped myself into a pit of snakes.

two
“THEY’RE VERY FAMOUS IN NORWAY”

“They practically need bodyguards,” Taylor says, looking over at Mac Attack, who, postgig, are sitting in the foyer of the arts center behind a table piled with copies of their CD. Girls are swarming them as excitedly as if they were the stars of the latest teen vampire movie. The organizers of Celtic Connections are trying to coax the mob into an orderly queue, without much success.

“They look pretty freaked,” I say, nodding at the organizers; one of them just dared to get between a band of fourteen-year-olds and Callum, and nearly got trampled for his trouble.

“Yeah, they do,” Taylor says. “But, y’know, they’re asking for it. Wearing kilts in front of a bunch of girls.”

I giggle, realizing she means Mac Attack.

“They probably didn’t know that every single school in Edinburgh was going to bus in a load of kids,” I offer, looking around the foyer; clearly, the idea of young people playing in up-and-coming folk bands has been marketed to as many schools as possible.

“Not just Edinburgh,” Taylor says. “Us, and them, too.” She nods over at Nadia, who’s surrounded by a small coterie of equally well-groomed St. Tabby’s girls, sipping drinks they’ve got from the foyer bar. I’d bet money Nadia’s plastic glass doesn’t just contain diet Coke. “Which ones are Alison and Luce?”

I point them out to her, and her eyes widen.

“I thought you said they were kind of sporty and scruffy,” she says, staring at Alison and Luce. “Wow. If that’s what the sporty girls look like at St. Tabby’s …”

I shake my head.

“No, they’ve got really smart since I left,” I assure her.

“I hate to say it,” Taylor mutters, “but all together in a group, they’re pretty scary. It’s like Plum just kept replicating.”

I nod, knowing what she means; it looks as if every single St. Tabby’s girl not only traveled up to Edinburgh with hair straighteners, a bulging makeup bag, and a pair of killer heels, but took plenty of time before the concert to make herself perfect. The Wakefield Hall contingent, by contrast, came up from London on a train that was delayed a good hour and a half by some “youths larking about on the line” at Doncaster, to quote the train conductor.

“Keep going and run them over!” Plum had drawled. “Only language they’ll understand!”

And after hearing various announcements (“The youths are still on the line. The police have been called,” “The police are attempting to remove the youths,” and, finally, “I’m happy to report that most of the youths are now under arrest, but one is still proving obstreperous”), you couldn’t help having some sympathy with Plum’s position. Because those larking youths meant that we’d limped into Edinburgh after over six hours on the train, too late to go and drop our bags at the boarding school where we were staying for the half-term week; we’d had to come straight to the arts center where Celtic Connections was taking place. We felt dirty and travel-stained, and the contrast provided by the shiny, pretty St. Tabby’s girls wasn’t doing us any favors.

“Are you going over to talk to them?” Taylor asks.

I shake my head.

“Not like this,” I say frankly, looking down at the jeans and hoodie I’d worn for traveling. “I feel all scummy.”

One of the great things about Taylor is that she tells things as they are. Lizzie Livermore, fluffy, giggly Lizzie, would immediately have burst into streams of assurances that I looked absolutely fabulous and just needed a touch of lip gloss. Taylor, however, glances at me and nods.

“Yeah. I’m a bit stinky, and you probably are too,” she says frankly. “I’d kill for a shower.”

Even Plum, Susan, and Lizzie, who usually look as if they’ve stepped out of the pages of
Teen Vogue,
are a distinct step down compared with the miniskirt-wearing, high-heeled St. Tabby’s girls. Plum and the Plum-bots’ latest daily uniform is leggings, a long sweater, and slouchy boots, and that’s what they all wore to travel in, but I’m sure that they all had much tighter and sexier outfits lined up for this evening’s outing. There’s a department store called John Lewis that advertises that it’s never knowingly undersold: well, Plum is never knowingly underdressed.

Till now.

“Girls!” Miss Carter says, waving us over to a small table beside the bar where her girlfriend and Aunt Gwen are standing. “I’ve got us in a scratch dinner, since our timetable’s been messed up by the train delay. Tuck in!”

“Oh
God
!” Plum exclaims in horror, looking at the admittedly unappetizing wraps laid out on the table, lettuce as limp as a used tissue protruding from each one, grated cheese the color of a tangerine dribbling out onto the plates. “Is that
cheese
? I’m lactose intolerant.”

“I’m lactose intolerant too,” Lizzie chimes in. “
And
I don’t digest wheat well at
all
.”

“Today is just one
gigantic
source of
misery
after the other,” Plum says with a sigh. “I was hoping at
least
for a salad bar.”

“What’s this?” Taylor asks, picking up a bottle of something bright orange.

“It’s called Irn-Bru,” Jane, Miss Carter’s girlfriend, informs her cheerfully. “It’s like the Scottish version of Tango. Only a bit different.”

“Looks like Sunkist,” Taylor says. She twists off the top and tilts the bottle to her mouth. “Yum,” she says enthusiastically, after sipping. “It’s kind of weird, but yum.”

“What’s it taste like?” I ask, taking a bottle myself.

“Orange and coffee,” Taylor says thoughtfully. “And water. Like I said, weird. But in a good way.”

“Cool.” I take a pull at the bottle. It’s got a slightly Red Bull feel to it, like a mild energy drink. “Mmm! I like this!”

I look around as I swig from the Irn-Bru. The arts-center foyer is really overdue for a makeover; it looks like it was built in the 1970s and hasn’t been touched since. From a design module we did last term, I recognize the yellows, browns, and oranges of the swirly carpet, the low ceilings, and the Formica-covered tables and matching, equally chipped chairs as classic seventies. The lighting is fluorescent and about as flattering as a size-S tube dress on a size-L girl. The only positive thing to be said about the decor is that you could tip bucketfuls of lurid orange Irn-Bru onto the carpet and no one would ever notice.

“They could sell those CDs three times over,” Taylor says, indicating Mac Attack, who are still signing away; even though quite a few girls are clutching their CDs, now adorned with the signatures of all five boys in the band, the table is still surrounded, because the fans are hanging around, staring adoringly at their new idols.

I can’t completely blame them. Callum is by no means the only handsome one in the group. The flautist is a square-jawed, stockily built guy with impressive shoulders and a sprinkling of brown freckles over his wide nose; the guitarist is tall and lanky, with a tangle of dark red curls, and as he looks down at the fourteen-year-old girls eagerly holding out CDs to him, he has a twinkle in his hazel eyes that makes me warm to him. He looks like an older brother being nice to his younger sister’s friends.

And then, of course, there’s Callum, sitting in the middle, looking bashful at the attention.

“He doesn’t look that happy,” Taylor comments.

“He never looks that happy,” I say. “Or at least, he didn’t when I knew him.”

“Yeah,” Taylor says. “I only met him once, and it wasn’t exactly …”

She trails off, but I know precisely what she means. Remembering the circumstances under which Taylor, Callum, and I all found ourselves in a ruined tower on his family’s Scottish estate wouldn’t bring a smile to anyone’s face.

I feel sad all over again, thinking about what happened. And just at that moment, Callum happens to look my way. Our eyes meet, and I see the shock of recognition in his, followed, almost instantly, by a welter of confused emotions. Surprise, naturally; sadness, just like mine; and something else, too, something that echoes what I’m feeling now as I look into his gray-green eyes. Another memory.

Because the last time I saw Callum, we kissed.

But I knew, after Dan’s death and what happened in that tower, that Callum and I could never be a couple. Too much baggage, too much bad, sad history. I thought it was best to close the door and move on quickly, never looking back.

And there it would have stayed. If it weren’t for this accident of fate that’s brought us together, staring at each other across the foyer of the Edinburgh Arts Center as a pack of fourteen-year-olds bay for his attention like yappy Chihuahuas.

“Huh,”
Taylor says, reaching for a wrap, handing me one. “Here. Eat that. And when you’ve finished, you can fill me in on exactly what happened between you and Callum. I mean, I know you kissed, but from the way you’re looking, it was more like what you’d call”—she pauses, concentrates, and attempts her best British accent—“
a full-on snogfest
,” she concludes triumphantly, sounding so funny that I crack up laughing. Which, mercifully, makes her cross enough to distract her from further speculation about Callum and me …

“Are you Scarlett?” says a male voice, just as I’m chugging the last drops of my Irn-Bru. I cough, wipe my mouth inelegantly with the back of my hand, and nod in the direction of the guitarist from Mac Attack, the redheaded one with the nice eyes. The teachers supervising the younger teens are rounding them up now, though it’s like herding cats, and the Mac Attack boys have sold every one of their CDs and T-shirts; the table they were sitting at is completely bare.

The guitarist leans over, partly because he’s a lot taller than me, partly because, from the way he looks quickly from side to side, he has something to say he doesn’t want anyone else to hear.

“Callum’s in the greenroom,” he says. “He asked me to pop over and see if you’ll come back for a word with him. It’s a madhouse out here.”

“Um, okay—”

“Ewan! Will you sign my T-shirt?” a girl asks, tugging at his arm, staring up at him adoringly. “You’re my favorite out of all of them!”

“Wait here a wee minute,” he says to her, rolling his eyes at me as he turns to shepherd me off. I dart a look back at Taylor as I go: her eyebrows are raised in two straight black lines, and she lifts one hand to her mouth, kissing her palm sexily in a reference to what she knows about me and Callum.

Thanks,
I think sourly.
That really helps, Taylor.

Ewan whips me in double-quick time through the auditorium doors, down the central aisle, and up onto the stage. I’m so busy skipping along to keep up with him, jumping over the wires and white tape on the stage floor and dodging the amps, that I have no time to anticipate what it will be like seeing Callum again; so when we nip down some stairs in the wings and push through a door at the bottom, I’m catching my breath, still unready.

Like Ewan, Callum is still in the black Mac Attack T-shirt and kilt—I assume his is the McAndrew tartan—which he wore for the gig. His wool socks are pulled up to the top of his calves, which means I can see his knees and part of his muscular thighs as he moves.

This doesn’t help.

He’s laying his violin in its case, wrapping it in a white cloth as carefully as if he were swaddling a baby.

“Package delivered,” Ewan says breezily. “Um, I’d better get back, eh? There’s kids out there still want their T-shirts signed. We’re on fire, man!”

He nods at me and dashes back out again. Callum closes the violin case and snaps the clasps shut, making more of a production of it than he needs to.

I understand why. If I had anything to do with my hands, I’d be concentrating on it just as hard.

“Hey, Scarlett,” he says eventually, finally meeting my gaze.

“Hey,” I say back, shifting from one foot to the other, wishing in vain that I were wearing something a little smarter than jeans and a hoodie. “You were really good. All of you.”

“Yeah?” He reaches up and rubs one hand over his short hair, looking sheepish. “It went okay, I thought.”

“You should sing more,” I offer. “We were all saying it.”

“Oh, man.” Callum looks really embarrassed. “I feel such an eejit when I sing. But it seemed to go over okay.”

Callum doesn’t have the ideal personality for the front man of a band: he’s not someone who loves to be in the spotlight. His twin brother, Dan, was the one with all the charming, attention-seeking genes. Dan would have done a much better job than Callum of talking to the audience between songs, all that banter and joking that a good front man can do. Callum just mumbled the names of the songs before each one, and then raised his violin bow gratefully, like someone who would much rather be playing than talking.

So it had been quite unexpected when, called back for an encore, Callum had bashfully announced that they would be doing a traditional song called “The Blooming Bright Star of Belle Isle,” cleared his throat, and started to sing, in a light, melodic tenor:

“One evening for pleasure I rambled
To view the fair fields all alone
Down by the banks of Loch Erin,
Where beauty and pleasure were known.”