Red Light Read online

  I stalked out of the bedroom and passed Kerry in the hallway. “Guest girl” had apparently decided that discretion was the best route and hastily closed the bathroom door as I passed. She needn’t have worried—I wasn’t going to bother.

  I didn’t say a word, not to her, not to Kerry, as I strode to the front door. I finally surveyed Kerry as I grabbed the latch, and she was indignant and proud as she stood there in my T-shirt, eyes blazing with either tears or anger.

  “You know, maybe if you’d spent more time with me, had a more normal schedule, and given that damn class up,” she said, and this time I actually heard the quiet venom in her tone, “I wouldn’t have had to look somewhere else.”

  I just shook my head, shut the door, and sped down the stairs, grabbing my jacket off the post on the way.

  Shit. Shit. Shit. No way would this get fixed—what the hell was I going to do, I wondered as I walked on nerveless feet to my car.

  *

  I had been trying so damned hard to get somewhere, to something, make myself someone, and it just wasn’t good enough. It was never enough, not for her, not for my mother, and everyone wanted so much…

  I could have forgiven Kerry’s displeasure with my hours because I understood that she wanted to spend more time with me. And it was okay that she was a little into money. I knew where she came from, and besides, it was no big deal to me; I knew I’d get there sometime, anyway.

  But I absolutely could not forgive cheating, no way.

  Memory surfaced, sharp and painful, unbidden, and unwanted, of my parents—of my mother weeping hysterically while my father told her he had been sleeping with his secretary, how she wasn’t the first, how he was leaving. She had clung to him and he threw her off him like she was nothing, then slammed out the door.

  She had scrambled after him, and I had watched from the window as he screamed curses at her as he ran to his car, her right behind him. He obviously hadn’t cared if he hurt her when she’d reached for the door handle and he’d pulled away. He hated her. He hated us. I hated him—but I wasn’t going to turn into my mother either. I wasn’t going to chase anyone who didn’t want me.

  No. Fuck around on me once, fuck around all you want because I won’t be there. That was my philosophy.

  Dammit all, though. I couldn’t bear to stay with her, and I couldn’t deal with going to my mother’s—I’d hear over and over how my foolishness got me what I deserved. I slammed my hands on the steering wheel, once, twice. I breathed heavily and tried to control the heated pulse that raced through my arms, tingling through my palms where I’d hit the steering wheel.

  I drove aimlessly until I reached Father Capodanno Boulevard and South Beach, then passed the drill site from the morning, and God—that seemed such a long time ago.

  Finally, I pulled into the parking lot at the beach and cut the engine. As I got out of the car, the wind wasn’t cold or whipping about too much, but I knew it would get stronger and cooler when I neared the water. I flipped up the collar on my jacket as I crossed the tarmac to the boardwalk.

  Following where my feet led, I finally reached the beach, then the jetty. I climbed the rocks and walked out to the end, then sat, dangling my legs off the edge, staring at the water, the Narrows Bridge to my left and Brooklyn before me.

  I sat there for a long time, letting the salt spray hit my face while the gulls wheeled and kept me company, their lonely high-pitched calls soothing my brain.

  Nowhere, I had nowhere to go.

  The sky changed color as the sun set and the water changed with it. “If you’re in a jam,” Samantha’s voice played in my head, “call—either one of us.” She’d then programmed all of their numbers into my cell phone.

  Fuck. What else could I do? I had nothing until I had my EMT license—I barely owned the college credits I’d earned, considering how long it would take to pay my student loans back. Fuck. I hoped I hadn’t already screwed myself over skipping classes. I stood and stretched, then waved good-bye to the seagulls as I walked back to my car. Before I drove off, I dug my cell phone out of my pocket, called my cousin, and left a message.

  I almost didn’t go—as I pulled over in front of their house in the Silver Lake section of Staten Island (and really, only five minutes from my apartment), I had a moment’s doubt. What if Samantha didn’t mean it, what if Nina didn’t care? What if I was really as alone as I thought I was? But I pushed those thoughts aside. A promise was a promise, and I’d never known either one of them to go back on their word.

  Still, I hesitated before I rang the bell, then forced myself to do it anyway. Samantha opened the door, her eyes wide as she took me in.

  “Holy shit, Tori, what the hell?” She grabbed my arm and dragged me through the door.

  It took me a second before I realized I hadn’t changed since the practice drill.

  “No, no, I’m fine, it’s just moulage, you know, makeup,” I protested against her probing hands.

  “Christ, Tor,” Samantha said, “let’s get you cleaned up before you scare the shit out of Nina.”

  “Where is she?” I asked as we walked in.

  “She’s, uh, indisposed at the moment.” Samantha led me to a bathroom. “Wash up, I’ll get you a clean shirt.”

  *

  Washed and wearing a shirt of Sam’s, a drink in my hand (scotch on the rocks, another family trait, only Nina did hers neat), and safely ensconced on their sofa, I sat next to Samantha and across from Nina as they waited to hear what I had to say.

  “Oh, hey, you’ve switched to ice?” I asked Nina, glancing at her glass before I started.

  “No,” she smiled, “it’s just ginger ale.”

  Interesting, I thought, and filed the information away in my head with everything else. I took a sip from my own glass, closed my eyes, and inhaled slowly.

  I told them my sorry tale. “You know, maybe she was right,” I concluded, musing aloud, “this was my fault. Maybe I should have quit the EMT class, or just quit some of my other classes so I could have spent more time…”

  I glanced up and saw that Nina seemed ready to burst, but Samantha held up her hand and waved for peace.

  “Ah, Tori, don’t you know a vampire when you see one?” she asked me gently.

  “Hey,” Nina interjected as she stood anyway and ran a hand through her hair, “Kerry’s not a vampire, not a real one, anyway.” She grinned at Samantha, who grinned back, an amazing flash of light.

  “True, that,” Samantha conceded, “but, Tori,” she turned back to me, pressing another scotch over ice into my willing hands, “she fucked it up, not you.”

  I sipped and considered.

  “Let’s go get your stuff,” Nina suggested into the silence.

  “I don’t want to go back there,” I said, shaking my head vehemently. They were probably still fucking, I thought, fucking in the apartment I’d helped pick, in the bedroom I’d painted, on the bed I’d goddamn bought. Dammit.

  Maybe I should have quit school altogether and gotten a different job—like the one Kerry always said I could get in her firm. But that would have meant giving up everything I’d worked so hard for—

  “Come on, Victoria, where’s that Del Castillo blood?” Nina teased me lightly. One thing I had to admit, the Del Castillo blood was definitely prepotent: we all had such similar faces. Sure, we had different eye color, hair color, even different shades of skin, but we all had the same almost too-large eyes, the same curve of lip, the same bone structure.

  There was, again, no doubt the Del Castillos were a very pretty bunch, and Nina was probably the prettiest of us all, I thought, though she was the only one who didn’t know it. Hell, I considered as I sipped from my glass, maybe that’s why she was the shortest of all the cousins, too. All that concentrated…whatever it was…became beautiful.

  I shook my head and grimaced—I’d been staring at my cousin, the one who was about to save my sorry ass, and had caught myself admiring her lower lip, which was slightly fuller than mine.


  “What do I need to go back there for, anyway?” I asked instead, trying to cover up that I’d been lost in thought about something other than my heartbreak. I didn’t really feel heartbroken. I felt cold, and where I wasn’t cold I felt nothing. The more I drank the colder I got.

  My peripheral vision found Samantha smothering a grin at me. Caught. Ah, well, at least Samantha had a sense of humor, and I grinned in return as Nina grasped my shoulder. She crouched before me and I stared at my drink, clunking the ice around in circles.

  “You need your books, Tor.” Her fingertips grazed my chin. “You need your notes.”

  Her eyes were such a light blue fading into gray at the edges, so unlike my light brown ones that were now probably ringed in dark, dark green since I’d been drinking.

  I tossed my head away from her touch and shrugged.

  Gulping my drink, I looked around me as I thought about myself and my life: fucked-up home, fucked-up academics, and fucked-up life while I sat on the perfect sofa—all clean lines and espresso-colored leather. Perfect.

  Perfect Nina’s perfect world. Perfect wife, perfect life, and then I remembered: she’d fucked my girlfriend first. Ex. My ex-girlfriend.

  I had to know.

  “When did you guys fuck?” I asked her and was instantly sorry. Still, as guilty as I felt, I wanted, I needed to know, and Nina knew exactly who and what I meant.

  She pulled her hands away and stood.

  “We were kids, Tori,” Nina sighed, and ran her fingers through her hair, “and that’s not what it was. We were just kids.”

  I nodded as if I understood. I did, but that didn’t stop me. “Yeah…so?” I continued. “Did you fuck her? She fuck you?”

  Samantha stirred next to me and set her glass down on the coffee table.

  “Okay,” she announced and stood, clapping her hands together, “this is where I excuse myself.” She walked around the table toward Nina, who gave her an odd look.

  “You can stay, Sammy. There’s nothing you don’t know.” Nina gestured her back to the sofa.

  Samantha shook her head and gave her one of her diamond smiles as she closed the scant distance between them. “I’m not worried about that, love,” Samantha said softly, and put her arms around her. She kissed her softly, fully, as Nina returned the embrace.

  God, they were so perfect together—it fucking killed me as I watched them, the fucking axe that drove through my ice, and once again I flipped from cold to heat because, as upset as I was about Kerry, I’d never had what these two did. My jealousy moments before was petty compared to this.

  Samantha murmured something into Nina’s ear, who nodded in response.

  “All right,” Samantha agreed, and turned to leave the room. She stopped and pointedly stared at me. “You,” and while her expression was very serious, she smiled anyway, “be nice. Nina’s your friend, not just your cousin, okay?”

  I nodded agreement, and Sam held my gaze a moment longer before she walked away.

  I didn’t love Kerry, not the way Samantha loved Nina, not even the way Nina loved me, and I knew I was missing something, a vital clue that would give me the answer I wanted.

  Nina cocked her head to one side, her auburn-touched hair long and flowing, draping over her shoulders like a shawl. “What do you need to know, Tori?”

  Samantha had shut off a light in the corridor as she’d exited to the stairs, and the shadow that reached back into the living room leached the rest of the color from Nina’s eyes, making them flash silver as she neared. I stood to face her.

  Her walk was catlike, almost predatory, and the dim light from a table lamp winked from the ankh that hung about her neck from an incongruously pink ribbon, part of the whole Angel tour cancer thing she’d done, I supposed. Dammit.

  At thirty-one, Nina still appeared twenty, but her face—something was different, even as defined as it was, something was…gentler, softer, than I’d ever seen there before, subtle, but still more pronounced than I had noticed that night at Nox.

  I shifted from one foot to another to dispel my growing unease, knowing that I shouldn’t have asked about her and Kerry, but I couldn’t back down, either. That would have been too…too humiliating. Of all the cousins, Nina was the one I loved the most, the one I was compared to, the one I wanted to be. Oh, hell, I’d practically grown up in her childhood bedroom. But not only that, we were both Del Castillo: we had the same blood, the same pride. No way could I back down.

  Nina tossed her head again to clear the long strands that fell over her face and crossed her arms over her chest.

  My expression, my stance were arrogant, and I knew it, but even though I stood just that much taller than she did, she seemed completely fearless as she stared back up at me, through me, one brow arched perfectly as the color flooded back into her eyes and deepened. I wondered for half a second what color mine were, if they were mixed brown or if they’d shaded almost completely green as Nina read me, completely and correctly. I knew, because I knew her: same blood, same temper, but she’d always hid hers from the world better. Yet another thing she did more competently than I did.

  “You wanted to know something, tough guy?” she asked me again. She was hurt, she was furious—I knew that, because I knew her.

  “Yeah,” I drawled, my own anger and frustration at the surface because no matter what I did she was better than me, so much better that she was willing to help me out of my sorry situation, which I probably could have avoided if I’d been more like her in the first place.

  “I want to know when you fucked,” I said, my voice sounding harsh even to my own ears. “I want to know how she let you fuck her tight—”

  “Watch it, Tori,” Nina warned, “have a little respect for both of us.”

  I laughed as I picked up my glass. “Respect?” I swallowed what was left and let the alcohol burn through me—maybe it would burn off some of the tension, take the edge off the arousal at the thought of my girl, wet and ready, waiting, wanting Nina’s long fingers inside her, filling her, fucking her, probably as perfectly as she did everything else.

  “Yes. Respect, Tori,” Nina answered, her eyes flaring dangerously, “especially for yourself.”

  I chuckled mirthlessly. “Especially for myself?” I mocked, and put my glass back down. I straightened, closed the distance between us, and looked down at the sensual curve of her lip, then into eyes that had gone dark. “Respect this,” I whispered, then kissed her.

  The softness of her mouth surprised me, shocked me out of my anger, and I even forgot about it for about two seconds before the world flipped, and the next thing I knew I was on my butt back on the sofa.

  “You’re doing a really great impression of an asshole,” Nina said, and I stared at her as she stood there, seeming as unflustered as if we’d just discussed what kind of tea we preferred.

  She walked into the corridor, then returned a moment later with a pillow and a blanket and tossed them at me.

  “Sleep it off—you’re not a pleasant drunk. We’ll get your stuff tomorrow. Good night.” She didn’t look back, not even once, as she left.

  A mix of feelings warred in my head for dominance, from shame to guilt to yeah-that’s-right, how-do-you-like-them-apples defiance as I watched her. But under, over, and woven within that reaction was the one thing I really hated to admit: she was right that I was behaving like an asshole.

  I shook my head, disgusted with myself as I kicked off my shoes. Maybe I’d be a better person in the morning.

  *

  Pain lanced through my head when the sun slammed into it through the bay window, and it physically hurt to open my eyes. Nausea jumped in like a jealous twin when my too-sensitive ears picked up a whirring sound from the kitchen.

  It stopped moments later—the sound, not my head—and Samantha walked into the living room carrying a tall glass filled with something red and viscous.

  “This…is for you.” She placed it on the table and sat on the sofa across from me, then wat
ched me, an amused smile playing about the corner of her lips as I struggled against the fierce pounding in my head to sit up.

  “Hold your breath,” she warned as I reached for the glass, “it’s got a bit of a kick.”

  I looked at her blearily through the one eye that I could keep at half mast and nodded as I took the glass. I saluted her with it and, just as warned, held my breath.

  It wasn’t too bad as I swallowed. In fact, at first it was fine—maybe a little salty, but fine. Then the fire started. As soon as my eyes stopped tearing and the roaring through my sinuses settled to a dull red glow, I was not only completely awake, but I also couldn’t have closed my eyes if I’d tried—they needed to cool down.

  Samantha watched me, expressionless, as I choked and simmered. When the coughing and tearing ended and I could finally see her clearly, she stood.

  “You know where the bathroom is—I’ll wait in the car for you.” She stalked away.

  I nodded in agreement to her back, then felt around the floor for my shoes.

  “Nina coming?” I asked.

  She stopped and pivoted, her eyes piercing me where I sat. I never, ever, wanted to get that glare from her again because in it, I understood why she wore a sword around her neck. That look? Deadly.

  “Nina’s sleeping in—she’s not feeling well, and we need to do this soon because she and I have an appointment.”

  “Yeah, no problem,” I answered hastily as I stood.

  “Good.” Samantha nodded and left.

  As soon as I’d taken care of morning ablutions—face and hands clean, breath minty fresh, as my cousin would say, only in this instance it was cinnamon, and head no longer pounding—I slung on my jacket as I hurried outside to meet Samantha, who waited, as promised, at the curb in her favorite automotive toy: a ’74 Nova that shone like black oil in the early morning sun.

  She pulled out of the drive.

  “You know where it is?” I asked.

  “I did know where to send the passes and the car, right?”