Twiceborn (2 page)

“You’re right,” I said, splashing my burning face. Summer in Sydney was always sweltering. Maybe I was coming down with something.
Sure, something that puts blood under your fingernails.
I felt ill. “Thanks.”

I checked my reflection again. The concealer definitely needed some work now. My face was pale and sweaty, and mascara had oozed onto one cheek. My eyes had a haunted look, but that was nothing new. I dug my makeup out and got to work, ignoring the way my hands trembled. A slash of red lipstick. Mascara.
Come on, Kate, pull yourself together.
I scraped my hair back into a no-nonsense ponytail and clipped a fake fall of hair to it. It matched my own auburn colour and turned my modest ponytail into a luscious length that reached my waist.

Much better. The woman in the mirror looked maybe twenty-five. She was no supermodel, but dressed like this she was definitely a head-turner. Most importantly, she looked nothing like the dark-haired pregnant woman in the frumpy maternity dress who’d waddled into the bathroom five minutes ago.

Time to put it to the test. I had a job to do, and I could worry about mysterious blood later. With the heavy carry-all settled comfortably on my shoulder, I sashayed out of the bathroom and down the corridor, putting a little extra swing into my hips as those red stilettos tapped their way past the crowd at the lifts. I breezed past Sunnies Dude, still stationed at the opening of the corridor, on the look-out for a pregnant lady who would never leave that bathroom.

My swaying denim skirt and long legs had the desired effect. His head swivelled, checking me out as I went past. I concentrated on projecting a calm I didn’t feel as my stomach roiled, but I doubt his gaze got as far as my face. I wondered how long they’d wait before one of them had to brave the ladies’ bathroom in search of their missing woman. Wouldn’t want to draw the short straw on that one.

I strode away to make the drop, ponytail swishing against my bare skin. As I left the centre the heat hit me like a furnace blast. Even down here in the canyons between Sydney’s skyscrapers summer lay hot and heavy. A busker with a saxophone made a half-hearted attempt at jazz, looking like he’d rather be almost anywhere else. At least it wasn’t Christmas carols.

Sweat sprang out on my face, under my armpits—even my feet soon felt sticky in their strappy red heels. Not the greatest choice for walking. The balls of my feet were burning already. Thank God I didn’t have far to go.

I ducked into an arcade that led through to George Street. Where
was
I going? My steps faltered. Stopped. What in hell was wrong with me? How could I forget something like that? Shoppers and office workers sneaking home early streamed past as I scrabbled through my carry-all for the familiar beige envelope in a sudden panic. I couldn’t even remember seeing it as I’d changed. Some courier I was.

But it was there, right down at the bottom under wigs and stomachs and all the rest of my gear. Maybe a little crumpled. If pristine condition was part of the deal I was screwed. I breathed a sigh of relief as I hauled it out, then stopped short at the address on the front.

Well, not even an address. Just a name.

Mine.

“What the hell?” I leaned back on the glass shopfront of the nearest boutique, feeling the thumping bass beat of their music vibrating against my back, and stared at the shaky handwriting.
Kate
. Nothing else. No address, not even a surname. Could it be some other Kate?

I turned it over and broke the thick wax seal. Who was I kidding? It had to be for me.

I drew out the single sheet of paper inside. No weird shiny disks this time.

You are in danger
, it said.
Do not go home or try to contact anybody. Go straight to a hotel and wait for me.

That was it. Frowning, I turned it over to be sure there was no more. No signature, or any explanation of how the writer meant to find me at some random hotel. And I was supposed to take this seriously?

I shoved it back in my bag. Yeah, right. Like
that
was going to happen.

CHAPTER TWO

By the time I got back to the The Dress-up Box, that sick feeling I’d had in the bathroom had come back big time. My stomach had been hesitating between diarrhoea and throwing up all the way back from town, but now it seemed pretty committed to the throwing up idea.

Ben had set up The Dress-up Box in an old warehouse space, cool and cavernous, with windows along the back wall too high to open and too dusty to let in much but the vaguest hint of daylight. Row after row of costumes packed the floor, leaving a warren of little pathways in between. Magic happened down those paths. Anything from a romantic velvet ball gown to a Cavalier’s feathered hat could be waiting around the next corner. We stocked wigs, shoes, swords, hats and any other item of fancy dress you could imagine. Our neighbours were smash repairers and auto electricians, but being in an industrial area meant cheap rent, and the business didn’t rely on passing trade anyway. No one experiences a sudden desire to dress up as Zorro or Cleopatra just because they see a costume shop.

I paid off the taxi and staggered in through the big roller door at the end of the drive. We left it open all day anyway, to let in some light and air, so most people ignored the front door.

Ben perched on his customary stool behind the counter, face stuck in another pulpy thriller. He wouldn’t read a decent book if you paid him, but show him some third-rate Clive Cussler knock-off, and he was your man. He’d let his dark hair grow long enough that its natural curl gave him the look of a Greek god. All he needed was a laurel wreath and a white robe, though he cut a pretty fine figure just the same in jeans and a T-shirt.

He looked up at the sound of my heels on the concrete floor and laid the book down.

“How’d it go?”

I wobbled to a stop, one hand groping for something to lean on. The rough brick wall was all that held me up while I focused on not heaving my guts all over the floor. Dust motes spun lazily in the late-afternoon sunlight streaming in through the roller door, and my vision danced too. Ben’s handsome face flickered as if I were watching him on a badly tuned TV station.

“Kate? You okay?”

He came round the counter in a smooth movement, long legs eating up the distance between us in three steps, hands reaching out to steady me. A familiar scenario. Ben had been holding me together for months now. Dark, worried eyes searched my face as I breathed in the familiar woodsy scent of his aftershave. He smelled of forests and bracing fresh air. His hands were warm on my bare arms as he half-carried me past racks of costumes to the tiny staff kitchen at the back.

He pushed me into a chair and felt my forehead, hand lingering almost in a caress. “What’s the matter? You’re all clammy.”

My skin prickled with heat, as if a million tiny spiders crawled on me. I shut my eyes against a wave of nausea and lay my head back against the cool bricks behind me. “Feel sick.”

“Getting-a-cold sick or throwing-up sick?”

“Throwing-up sick.”

“Let’s get you to the bathroom, then.”

I felt his hands on my arms, ready to help me out of the chair, but I shook my head. Even that much movement hurt.

“Just let me sit here.”

“Hang on. I’ll get you a bucket.”

He left and I heard him clattering around in the laundry room next to the kitchen. Thank God for Ben. Always so practical.

It wouldn’t be the first time he’d held a bucket for me either. I’d given him plenty of practice in the first few weeks after the accident, trying to drink the pain away, or drink myself to death. I hadn’t much cared which. What was the point of existence without Lachie? I’d been lost in those first agonising days, and only Ben’s persistence had pulled me through.

My sister had tried to help, but she still had kids, and I didn’t, and it formed an impossible barrier between us. Mum tried too but eventually she had to go home to Brisbane, which left me sitting alone in Lachie’s room drinking till Ben had dragged me out of there with a job and a bracing, no-nonsense kind of friendship.

“Here.” He shoved a bucket at me, and I had to open my eyes. My vision darkened in that same alarming fade-to-grey thing it had done in the bathroom at the shopping centre. I tried to focus on his face. His eyes were a deep, warm brown, now full of worry. He had lashes any girl would kill for—long and lusciously curled. Seemed a criminal waste. He steadied me as I swayed on the chair. “You’re not going to pass out on me, are you?”

“Can’t make any promises.”

“What happened?” He tested my forehead with the back of his hand again, checking my temperature. I inhaled his comforting pine forest smell as he leaned close. “You were fine when you left here.”

“I don’t know. It came on all of a sudden, after I changed disguises.”

“You had no trouble, then, with the outfit?” He grinned. “No running required?”

“Told you it’d work. You guys are so easily distracted.”

“What about the pick-up? What was the big rush?”

The pick-up had been booked with less than an hour’s notice. I’d barely had time to pull my outfit together and make it to the address—a house in The Rocks—in time. There’d been trees there. Lots of trees.

I frowned, letting my head fall back against the wall again as I thought. Yes, lots of trees, and … what else? I remembered a garden, I remembered arriving at the shopping centre afterwards; I even recalled when I’d first spotted the two guys tailing me. But in between? Nothing.

“Kate? You falling asleep on me?”

Why couldn’t I remember? The image of my arms, red to the elbow, dripping blood—that was clear enough. As if I’d been bathing in gore. I shuddered. That couldn’t have happened. Who forgets a thing like that? But then where had the blood under my nails come from?

“I can’t remember.”

“You can’t remember what was so urgent?”

“No.” My voice was very small. “Can’t remember any of it.”

I opened my eyes. Ben crouched beside me, lanky body crowding the tiny room, bucket at the ready. He leaned forward, urgency in his gaze.

“Have you still got the necklace I gave you?”

I blinked. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Have you got it?”

“Geez, what’s your problem?” The necklace sported a little silver man with a Robin Hood-style hat and tunic and tiny wings on the back of his sandals. The detail was pretty good for something so small—the figure was no bigger than the first joint of my little finger. I pulled the charm on its silver chain out of my singlet and he sat back, the urgency gone.

He’d given it to me when I’d first graduated from manning the shop counter to going on these odd little courier jobs of his. He had one too, on a leather thong round his tanned throat.

“Never take it off,” he’d insisted. “Wear it the whole time you’re on the job.”

“What for?” I’d asked, watching it spin on the end of its silver chain.

“It’s always been a good luck charm for me.” His dark eyes had softened. “God knows you could use a bit of luck for a change.”

Well, I couldn’t argue with that, and if it made him happy it was no skin off my nose, though I couldn’t see why he was bringing it up now.

“It’s nothing.” He frowned, lost in thought for a moment. “Tell me everything you can remember.”

Well, that wouldn’t take long. I strained after odd bits of memory that wouldn’t stay still to be caught.

“I went to the address. There was a garden—a big garden.” Big for The Rocks, anyway. Most of the houses there were well over a hundred years old and all crammed in cheek by jowl with their neighbours in neat little rows. “I remember lots of trees. Someone was waiting for me.”

“Man or woman?”

“Don’t know.” I clenched my fists. What the hell was the matter with me? I tried to bring back a face, a voice, anything, but there was nothing but fog. “I guess they gave me the package, because I definitely had one when I got to the shopping centre. Oh, boy, did I have one.”

His gaze was suddenly sharp, predatory. “What does that mean?”

“It was addressed to me. A note telling me not to go home, for God’s sake.”

“A note? On normal paper?”

“No, on the flayed skin of virgins. Of course on normal paper!”

He rose, clearly agitated. I was missing something here, but before I could ask, he thrust the bucket into my hands, looming over me. “Where is it now?”

The intensity of his expression was alarming.

“In my bag.” I gestured vaguely out into the shop.

In a moment he was back with the bag, note in hand. He scanned the brief message. “Shit.”

“What do you mean, ‘shit’? Do you know who it’s from? Why should I check into a random hotel on the orders of some lunatic who won’t even sign their name?”

He said nothing, staring down at the note as if he could read a whole novel in its scant lines.

“Don’t give me that poker face, buddy. If you know what’s going on you’d better tell me.”

He looked up, forehead creased in a frown. “Makes no sense to me.”

Liar. I could tell, the way his eyes didn’t quite meet mine. All those years of practice being married to Jason had well and truly fine-tuned my personal lie detector.

“Don’t bullshit me, Ben.” I put the bucket down and surged to my feet. Marvellous how a little rush of righteous anger could make me forget my heaving stomach and pounding head. I glared at him, nose to nose in the tiny kitchen.

Or nose to collarbone, at least. He towered over me, which meant I always ended up looking like a Chihuahua yapping at a Great Dane when I had a go at him.

“A person I don’t remember gives me a cryptic note saying I’m in danger. How is that possible? A good half-hour of my life has simply disappeared into a black hole. Gone. Have I been drugged? What am I supposed to do now? Go to the police and accuse someone I don’t know of doing something I don’t remember? They’d lock me up.”

“You can stay at my place.” His deep voice had the soothing tone I’d heard so many times before when I’d cried on his shoulder. Now it just made me mad.