King for a Day (The King Trilogy #2)(12)
Author: Mimi Jean Pamfiloff

~~

I see his pale gray eyes watching me through the crowded market, and I know I should look away, but I cannot. I have watched him since we were children playing together in the ocean while our fathers fished together.

My younger sister, Charis, catches me staring and thrusts her elbow into my ribs. “Hagne, you are marrying his brother. Look away.”

But I cannot. I have forever dreamed of belonging to Callias, lighting candles and reciting my words of power for as long as I can remember. Why did the gods not grant my wishes? Why? Because to marry Draco is death to my soul, to my heart.

Charis reminds me that I am lucky to be wanted at all, that our family serves Draco’s. We are Seers. They are chosen by the gods to rule us.

“Seers?” I whispered aloud.

“What the f**k is this?” a deep voice mumbled.

I glanced up at Mack hunching over in the open doorway just as he fell over.

CHAPTER FOUR

I helped a very weak, yet still conscious, Mack up off the floor and over to the couch. His face was bruised, his lower lip was puffy and split in two spots, and his clothes were torn in several places.

“What happened to you?” I asked, trying not to panic.

He rolled onto his back, groaning, his arms doubled at the waist.

“Okay. Don’t move. I’ll…” Dammit. I didn’t know what to do. “Get you some ice.”

I scuttled over to the kitchen and found a towel in a drawer. I pulled some ice from the freezer and bundled it up.

Mack winced when I placed it on his brow.

“Mack, who did this to you?”

“Talia,” he groaned.

“What? How? Why?” I moved the ice to his swollen lip.

“Because she’s f**king psycho, and I turned her down.”

He wasn’t making any sense. “Turned her down for what? Where were you?”

“She caught me leaving Anna’s hotel room.”

I was completely lost. “Anna? Who’s Anna?”

He groaned. “You met her at the 10 Club party. She was with Talia.”

I did remember her. She looked like Talia’s plastic surgery twin. “Is that who you went to see? Anna?”

He nodded. “She’s here in San Francisco with Talia.”

Well, I guess that’s what Mack didn’t want to tell me. Because I wouldn’t have let him go. Talia and Anna were friends. So why did he think he could go to Anna for help, let alone trust her? Idiot! Look what that got you. But…wait.

“Mack, you’re trying to tell me that Talia, who weighs a hundred pounds, beat the crap out of you?”

“Ahhhh…” he groaned. “I think she broke my rib.”

“Did she have a baseball bat?” I couldn’t comprehend how that anorexic twig had done this.

“No,” he grunted. “With her fists. She’s really strong—a spell she acquired from King.” He rolled to his other side. “Ahhh…I think she fractured my arm, too.”

I blinked. Okay…I made a mental note to be more respectful of Talia next time our paths crossed and to look up that “ability” in King’s catalog later.

“I think we should get you to the hospital,” I said.

“There’s no time,” he grunted. “Get the paper from my back pocket. I can’t reach it.”

He maneuvered himself a little to give me access. “No groping,” he said.

I smiled. At least he was feeling well enough to crack jokes. “You caught me.” I carefully slid my hand inside and pulled out a letter. I unfolded the sheet of paper and skimmed it. “Is this what I think it is?”

Mack nodded. “Yes.”

It was the list of King’s outstanding deals with the 10 Club members. “How did you get this?” Or more importantly, what was he forced to trade for it?

“Anna got it for me.”

“And?” I asked.

“And nothing.”

“Mack, what deal did you make to get this?”

“Doesn’t matter,” he mumbled with his eyes closed.

“Does she know King is missing?”

“She suspects, but part of the deal was that she wouldn’t say anything as long as you and I take out Talia.”

I blinked. “Huh? Did you say ‘take out’?”

“Yes,” he groaned.

“But aren’t they friends?” Why was this so confusing?

“Anna hates Talia. It’s a competitive thing.” Mack wrestled his way upright and opened his bloodshot eyes. “Keep your enemies close.”

“What a psycho,” I mumbled.

“I told you this wouldn’t be easy.”

“She really wants us to kill Talia?”

“Yes. And I agreed. It’s a done deal.”

Oh crap. Mack was serious.

I blew out a breath. Kill. I have to kill someone. Me, Mia Turner.

“Don’t feel bad, Mia. She’s a piece of shit, not a human being.”

“But to kill—”

“She’s a monster,” he whispered. “She’s hurt hundreds of people. Nice people. Because she’s obsessed with staying young, and she takes people’s lives to do it.”

I shook my head in disgust. “How?”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s either her or us.”

“I just wish we’d had the chance to discuss this. Killing someone, even a bad person, isn’t something I think I can do just to get a list.”

“No, killing Talia is the price for Anna’s silence. Getting the list cost me something else.”

“What?”

He winced and looked away, ashamed.

I cringed. Oh no! He didn’t. It was starting to make a little more sense. Talia spotted Mack leaving Anna’s hotel room. Talia was competitive. Talia propositioned Mack, and he turned her down. “You had sex with Anna, didn’t you?”

“It wasn’t that bad. I’m just not into sadistic, one-hundred-year-old women.”

“Anna is a hundred?”

“Give or take a decade.”

I couldn’t believe it. The woman only appeared to be…well, I wasn’t sure. Like Talia, she looked like one of those women from the tabloids who’d way overdone it with the plastic surgery, then piled on five pounds of makeup over that train wreck she called her face. But she didn’t look a hundred. Maybe fifty pretending to be twenty.

“Talia is a hundred and five,” Mack added.

“Okay. I’m officially impressed and disgusted.” The hundred-year-old surgery twins moved to the top of my “most creepy people alive” list.