The Muse (Interracial Mystery Romance) (Dark Art Mystery Series) (12 page)

On the side, a man stacked long poles attached to what looked like fireworks. A woman rode an elephant through the gate.

Dear God. I’m trying to avoid a murderer from killing the people I love, as I try to stop
the people I love from killing themselves, and Hex is putting on a bloody circus!

I shut the curtain and took off my clothes, button by button, with each one that I loosened a pounding headache hammered at my skull. No pain killer would fix it. The headache had been birthed long ago, in the moment I realized my family would always need me and that there was nothing I could do about it.

I’d tried to get free, but things became worse.

As soon as I turned eighteen I left for the navy. I started boot camp the day after graduation, so ready to get away from everyone that I raced into training without even a bag of clothes. Guilt hit me at times, but I could always swallow it down back, always push it to the back of my mind and think about something else.

God, those were the days.

I turned out to be an excellent sailor. I dealt with any of the abuse that the recruit division commanders threw my way. By the end of boot camp, I’d graduated with a promotion and they recommended me to one of the best aircraft carriers traveling the sea, the USS Constellation. Sea duty lasted for three to six months. We sailed off to the Gulf Coast, under the dark blue sky that glittered with so many stars. I spent hours upon hours lying on the deck and staring at them with a huge smile on my face. The sea air tickled my nose. The waves rocked me to sleep at night and during the day they kept a steady rhythm of movement to push me along my way. The

surrounding waters soothed me. It went on and on, never ending or breaking apart until land approached, and even then the presence of the sea remained.

And the women at port.

I met hundreds of them—exotic ones with bronze silky flesh and thick hair that kept me busy thinking about them as I worked on the ships, daydreaming about when I would see those beautiful faces again. I’d made love to so many pretty ladies that my brothers at sea nicknamed me lover boy.

And then the letter came. My chief petty officer called me into his office to read it to me.

After he finished, he gave me the option to separate from service due to family emergency, with the possibility of returning later if I could still pass the necessary standards.

What else could I do but say yes? For god’s sake, the cops had pulled Hex out of bodies upon bodies of dead woman.

A knock came from the door and pulled me from my memories.

“Yes?”

“It’s me, sir. Can I come in?” Reece asked.

I grabbed my robe from the edge of the bed and put it on. “Go ahead.”

She entered with a big box in her hands. “I’m sorry about what happened. I’ll have a new nurse and security in place upon the hour.”

“Thank you. What’s that?” I pointed to the box she set on my mahogany nightstand.

“Those orange blossom candles you asked for yesterday. Do you want me to light them?”

“By all means, yes.”

“How many?”

I glanced at the candles in the box and thought about all of the insane things that had happened in the past few days. “All of them.”

“Okay,” she called back as I went into my bathroom and closed the door. “How is

Dayanara doing?”

“As fine as can be expected.”

“Did she say anything?”

“No. Well . . . nothing that made any sense.”

“What did she say?” Reece asked.

“Nothing. Go ahead and take off for the night. If anything else crazy happens, I’ll contact you.”

There was no way I would repeat Dayanara’s words.

“Snyder is coming,” Dayanara had said as blood leaked all over her. “Snyder found a way to come back from the dead.”

Well good for Snyder and me. Maybe this time I’ll get a chance to kill him like I’ve done
in my dreams.

In the bathroom, I rubbed my eyes and laughed out loud at the absurdity of Snyder’s return.

He’s just a bag of bones rotting in the ground while I walk the earth cleaning up his
messes.

The image of a bloodied, fifteen year old Hex flashed in my head. I’d picked him up from the hospital three days after the navy honorably discharged me. Shadows had soaked the cold room. Hex was nothing more than bones in loose hanging skin. His eyes had lost the joy that had swum in them when I’d given him a hug and left for the navy. His fingers trembled any time he moved. He didn’t talk for a month, just sucked his thumb and cried. Grandma took a flight from Cuba and moved in with me to help Hex come back to himself.

Then one day at the breakfast table, Hex turned to me, took his thumb out of his mouth, and cried, “I didn’t save them like I promised.”

His psychiatrist was the one who’d encouraged Hex to paint, to put all of his pain and grief into his art. Two years later an old rich woman spotted his work at a local festival near our house in Key West. She spent the rest of her weeks searching for the artist. When she discovered it was Hex and arrived at our house, all of our lives changed.

That sweet fragrance of orange blossoms infused every air molecule in the bathroom.

How long have I been standing here?

Still dirty and in my robe, I opened the bathroom door to see if Reece was still in there.

She’d left so long ago the dozens of candles had melted down an inch or two. I must’ve been standing there for a huge amount of time, thinking about those dreary days.

“That’s Elle’s scent.” I inhaled the aroma some more and got into the shower.

Warm water caressed my skin. Bubbles and earthy soap lathered and washed away the

spots of blood that had seeped through my shirt and pants. Yet, my whole mind concentrated on Elle’s smell. I closed my eyes and imagined another day, one that could never come. A moment far off in time where dead girls didn’t sprout up in gardens and a deranged woman didn’t sneak away with a paint brush during her scheduled art time and stab herself in the wrist, just to be free of life and all the mounting remorse inside her heart.

The fragrance of orange blossoms was so thick the sensual aroma seeped into my flesh and filled my chest.

I sank into lovely visions of Elle and journeyed to a starry night, in a distant land, where Elle stood before me naked, begging me to stroke my fingers through her hair and capture her mouth with mine.

Chapter 9

~Elle

My dreams always began this way.

I ran fast, so fast my feet swelled with pain and my legs wobbled in exhaustion. Cold rain
battered my face and dripped into my eyes.

Once I arrived at Michael’s house, I didn’t take the time to grab a rock and sling it at his
window. I just climbed the tree and hoped I wouldn’t slip. The jagged bark dug into my skin. The
bottom of my sneakers barely gripped the tree, but somehow I made it to the top in no time. As if
he sensed me near, Michael appeared at the window and tugged it open. It was always that way.

I never had to call or warn him I was coming, he just knew and welcomed me in.

“Did your dad hit you again?” Michael seized my hands and helped me balance as I
climbed over the ledge and into his arms. “That bastard better not have hurt you.”

“H-he didn’t.” I battled with catching my breath. “B-but he came home drunk so I just
left like you said I should.”

“Good.” He held me for a few minutes before letting me go. “My parents are gone
tonight. If I’d known, I would’ve picked you up. I didn’t know until I got home and saw the letter
on the table.”

“Where are they?”

“Another medical convention.” He shut the window. “Are you cold? Take off those wet
clothes. I’ll get you a blanket.”

“No.” I wrenched my shirt up and yanked it over my head. “I don’t want anything except
you next to me.”

I’d dampened his Spiderman shirt. A few raindrops spotted his dark blue boxers. He
remained still, as if one wrong move would make me change my mind. It had happened before,
we would start and I would stop us.

Tonight, I longed for him to be inside of me and could think of nothing else.

Whenever he touched me, my thoughts of Mom going off with some guy and my dad

drunkenly trying to raise me all vanished. I needed that tonight, to get away and fly free as all
the sadness sank below my floating body.

“Are you sure, Ellie?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know if this is a good idea. You’re upset.”

“You don’t want me?” I stopped unbuttoning the top of my pants.

He seized my waist, and pressed his lips against mine. “I want you more than anything
else.”

“Then show me.”

We undressed together, our hands brushing against skin as they pulled and towed away
fabric. Falling onto his small bed, we kissed until our mouths puffed into swollen lips and our
tongues tangled and slid wet paths between us. He kissed me everywhere and I shuddered with
each flick of his tongue against forbidden places.

“Delilah, I love you,” he whispered into my ear.

I flinched. “What?”

“I love you, Delilah.”

“Why are you calling me that? Who’s Delilah?” I pushed him away and fell off the bed,
but no floor met my body. I continued to fall through the air, my hair unraveled, rising high
above my head.

“Fly!” Michael yelled from far up in his bed. “You’ve got to fly if you want to save
yourself!”

“I can’t!” I screamed in horror, kicking my legs and flapping my hands to find something
in the darkness to hold onto. Nothing existed but night and wind. “I can’t see! Help me!”

“You have no light!” Michael called back.

“Help!” Tears spilled from my eyes as I thrashed my legs in the air. “Help!”

“Fly!”

“I can’t.”

“Where’s your wings?”

I woke up with a shriek, covered in sweat, gripping my pillow. A man barreled into my room and wielded a gun. I screamed again and dove to the floor.

“Oh! I’m sorry.” He put the gun down. The whole time he moved his head from side to side and checked the room. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I heard you scream and just wanted to make sure no one was in here bothering you.”

“No. I’m fine.” I shielded myself with a pillow and stood up. My gown was made of thin material. With a quick glimpse, the guard would be able to make out my nipples and possibly the dark hair between my legs. “I had a bad dream.”

“That’s fine.” He bent down, did a quick check under the bed, opened the closet door, closed it, and backed out of the room. “I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

“I’m okay. Thanks so much.” Before he could leave, I called out, “What’s your name?”

“Mr. Castillo asked us not to spend too much time talking to you. I’d better not exchange names or anything.” He crossed through the doorway and shut the door behind him.

I checked my phone. The screen said I had forty missed calls from Michael.

I’m going to have to talk to him eventually.

The dream rushed back at me as I sat down on my bed. Lots of the things in it had

actually happened. I’d run to Michael’s house, just a young and confused girl, looking for someone to love her. Michael represented my salvation in school. When others picked on my ripped and dirt-smudged clothes, he complimented me on them. When most laughed at my scraggly strands cut in no particular style, he begged me to allow him to run his fingers through them. He made me feel pretty and loved. It was only natural that I’d ask him to be my first.

Once he entered me, he’d left something inside my core that wouldn’t let go. It attached us to each other; a thick rope of chains and elaborate locks that bound us together forever.

The first time we had sex, he did call me another name. It wasn’t Delilah. It was some other girl’s name. He did that a lot, even later in our relationship. It took me a while to realize that he actually pretended to not know my name during sex intentionally. It was all a game for him, how fast could he piss me off, how quickly would I return to beg for more.

But the first time he called me someone else, I pretended to not hear him and dreamed that those words he whispered as he moved in and out of me dripped with honey and adoration.

It wasn’t like we were in a relationship together, so I didn’t stop or call him out on it.

But his blurting out another’s name while he took my virginity should’ve been a huge sign to run away.

God, I wish I could run back to that girl, stop her in the rain, and turn her around.

Once Michael got his hooks into people, he dragged them around forever. I had no idea if he ever loved me or simply enjoyed controlling me. One would hope that a person didn’t only thrive off evil and other’s pain. My mom used to say that no one was purely bad, that everyone had some good in them. I dealt with Michael for over ten years and still couldn’t be sure. What part was real? What part was him just setting up another move in his game?

The morning after I lost my virginity, I woke up to him painting me.

“Don’t move, Ellie.” He slid his paintbrush against the canvas in front of him. “You look like an angel with the sun shining on your skin like that, and all that beautiful hair spread out like huge wings. Don’t ever cut your hair. Promise me.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t ever change. Always be my angel.”

“Okay, Michael.”

I tried, but I was only human. Anytime he gave, he took away. When he finished the