“You’ll leave me alone now.” He stood up and shoved her off the bed. “Go away, Aster. I mean it. I’ve had enough of you driving me crazy. Don’t you think I have enough to deal with? I don’t need you pestering me to death too. Just fucking go away.”
He’d never cursed at her before…never had a reason to. But his client, as he’d begun to call them, had needed him for several days to do something and was keeping him up at night to get it done. When Aster stood up, he could see the tears in her eyes. She cried so seldom that he wanted to tell her that it was all right, that he needed her. But he was afraid. Not that she’d tell, never that, but that on this job, she’d get hurt. Doing what he was for this woman was going to be dangerous. He had no idea why he thought that, but he had a feeling deep in his body.
He thought for sure she was going to tell him off. One thing about Aster, she could peel your skin right off your body with just her words. Instead, she turned on her heel and left him standing there. His door slammed shut and vibrated one of his pictures off the wall, and he heard her stomping for several steps down the hall. Then she giggled and he knew she was skipping the rest of the way to her room. Steele looked over at the woman who still sat in his chair.
“Where are you taking me? I’ll go, but I want some answers first.” She stood up and pointed out the window. He knew that going with her was going to get him into trouble, but he wanted to finish this up so he could find Aster and tell her how sorry he was. “I’m doing this for you and you’ll leave me alone?”
Her nod scared him. Everything about her scared him. Whoever had killed her had really done a good job of it. Not a good choice of words, but they really worked her over. Her body was a mess, her face—he supposed she might have been a beauty—was nearly unrecognizable as it was beaten in on one side. Blood and brain matter seeped from the large hole just above her ear. Her jaw was broken, which was the reason she didn’t speak, and it hung limply at her neck. It, too, had been ravaged. Shivering once, Steele looked at the door his sister had gone out and wanted to go to her. But the client stepped in front of him.
Gathering up his pack, he climbed out the window just as she moved through it. It didn’t bother him any longer when they walked through doors or windows. It did, however, give him the willies when they walked through people. It was one of his rules. They were never to walk through him. If it happened, even accidently, he was finished. They left behind a scent and a creepy feeling when they did that.
The place where she was taking him was pretty far; they’d been walking for a good twenty minutes now, and she didn’t look as if she was going to slow. He was going to take his bike, an old motorcycle that he’d gotten really cheap last year when he’d turned sixteen. But he didn’t want his mother to hear him leave. Instead, he ran after her, trying his best to keep Aster out of his mind.
Aster was his best friend, best ally, and she was also the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. She was special in that she didn’t care what she looked like either. Not like their mother, who thought it was a sin to not have your face on, whatever the hell that meant, before anyone saw you. And heaven forbid you went out into the yard with something less than a designer outfit on. Aster hated that about her as much as he did. And more often than not, Aster would be dressed in some of his toss offs rather than the things Mother picked out for her. He supposed she rebelled more than he did. Mother was forever telling them that with money came responsibilities. Neither Steele nor his sister seemed to be able to figure out what those were exactly.
They had money, or at least their parents did. His father was a surgeon of some renown. Mother was a chemist and had come up with several drugs that cured a great many things. He had no idea what they were, or even what sort of surgery his father did. It wasn’t that he didn’t care, he supposed, but they’d never had much to do with he or Aster, and they had grown used to them living their lives and he and Aster living theirs. They saw the staff more than they did their parents. But lately things had changed in that regard. He wasn’t sure what he thought about his mother retiring and his father taking less and less work at the hospital. Just the day before, their mother had started in on Aster about some things that neither of them had ever thought of.
“It’s high time you started finding a suitable husband.” He’d nearly choked on his soup when mother told Aster that. “And you, young man, will start to find a suitable wife too. One that your father and I will approve of, and not one of those people that you hang around with at that school of yours. We aren’t going to live forever, and we’re not leaving our money to the two of you and some deadbeat you find to shack up with.”