If Looks Could Kill

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Epilogue

Prologue

Madison could hear the voices coming from the bedroom, and she was afraid.

She was twelve, nearly thirteen, so it wasn’t a matter of being easily frightened, or even a matter of not knowing what went on in the world—she did. Her beautiful, volatile mother had married the equally volatile and temperamental artist Roger Montgomery, and ever since then, voices and sounds had often come from the master bedroom.

But tonight…

Something was different. It wasn’t just the usual passionate argument that was going on. They weren’t hurting accusations of infidelity at one another. There was a different voice in the room, a hushed voice….

A menacing, sexless voice that sent shivers racing along Madison’s spine. The voice was evil. Madison knew it. She told herself that she was being fanciful—that it might even be her mother’s voice, since Lainie Adair was such a highly acclaimed actress, known for her uncanny ability with accents.

But it wasn’t her mother. Madison was certain.

She knew that her mother wasn’t playing games or acting out some sex fantasy. Someone, something…evil…was in the room.

She wondered if Roger was there, as well. She didn’t know. She could hear her mother’s voice, rising, falling, a note of hysteria, of pleading, in it. Then she heard the whispered, sexless voice again. The different voice.

The evil voice.

The voice that made her skin crawl.

Without thinking, she’d come out of her own room, and now she stood in the hallway, a trembling wraith in her oversize cotton T-shirt. She moved along the hall, anxious to reach her mother, but at the same time afraid. She’d never been afraid this way. She could watch the most gruesome horror movie without flinching; she was always willing to accept a reckless dare. She had defied the very real possibility of monsters in the closet or under her bed as a young child, telling herself that she simply wouldn’t be afraid. The darkness didn’t frighten her; she wouldn’t allow it to.

But tonight…

Oh, God, she was terrified. It was the voice. That voice, with its undercurrent of sibilant, menacing evil. The hallway seemed to be a million miles long, though it couldn’t have been more than forty feet from her doorway to her mother’s. The harder she tried to make herself move, the more weighed down she seemed to be. Fear constricted her throat, so she couldn’t cry out, and yet she knew that she shouldn’t cry out, that she couldn’t let the voice know she was coming.

She had to move, to see the person connected to the voice.

She wanted to run, but she couldn’t, because something terrible might happen if she did.

Except that something terrible was already happening, and she absolutely had to be brave. She had to stop the evil.

The evil was in the air around her, pressing down on her. It made the air thick and heavy, so that it was a struggle just to walk down the hallway. It seemed to make the door to her mother’s room swell and bulge against the doorframe, while the light within seemed to radiate out in strange shades of bloodred evil.

She tried to be rational.

Surely her mother and Roger were just fighting.

She needed to be calm, rational. To pound on the door and remind her mother that she needed a few hours of uninterrupted sleep. Of course, if Lainie was fighting with Roger, it was quite possible that they would make up before Madison even reached the door, and then, if she went storming in, well…

She wished she would interrupt Lainie and Roger at some wickedly sexual enterprise, but she knew she wouldn’t.

She knew. God help her, she knew.

She could feel what her mother was feeling, and Lainie was afraid. She was being threatened, and she was trying to argue in return. She was speaking desperately, in a placating voice. She was trying to…

Madison went dead still, shaking, drenched in an icy sweat. Because she wasn’t just feeling what Lainie felt.

She was seeing! Seeing what Lainie saw.

And Lainie saw a knife.

Big, glinting silver, wickedly sharp. A butcher’s knife. Madison had seen it before, in the kitchen. It belonged there, in the block of chef’s knives that sat on the counter. It was raised high in the muted light of the bedroom, high above Lainie.

Lainie watched…and through her eyes, Madison saw.

The knife slashed downward with brutal, merciless strength.

Lainie screamed, but Madison didn’t hear her mother’s cry, because she was screaming herself, doubling over. Feeling. Feeling what her mother felt.

The knife.

Tearing into her. Through flesh and muscle. Ripping into her, just below the ribs.

Madison staggered and began to fall. She leaned against the wall, feeling the agony of torn flesh, the chill, the fear. She gripped her middle and looked down, and she saw blood on her hands….

She was cold. Blackness was surrounding her. Her hand on the wall, she struggled for support. She tried to talk, to scream again, to cry for help, but the blackness overwhelmed her, and she sank to the floor.

“Madison. Madison!”

She woke to the urgent sound of her name. She opened her eyes. She was lying on the living room couch, and Kyle was there, Roger’s son. Eighteen now, five years and a few months older than she was, a dozen years older in his superior attitude. Black-haired, green-eyed, Mr. Jock, quarterback of his football team. She hated him half the time, especially when he called her “squirt,” “airhead” or “bimbette.” But when his friends weren’t around and he wasn’t busy impressing the cheerleaders, he wasn’t a bad kid. Solid. Down-to-earth. When she was convinced she was a product of the most dysfunctional family of all time, he told her to stop whining, that lots of people had step-and half brothers and sisters. In fact, if he hadn’t been her step-brother, she might even have had a crush on him. But since he was, she wouldn’t even let herself think about that.

Okay, so maybe she had a few more than most. And okay, so Lainie was an unusually cool mom; in fact, she was hot. It wasn’t so bad to have Lainie for a mother, or Roger for a stepfather. Her real dad, Jordan Adair, was a world-renowned writer. And who actually cared how many stepmothers she’d had, huh?

Sometimes Madison hated Kyle, but other times, when she had reached the pits, he could make her laugh. And sometimes, sometimes, he even made her feel warm. As if she belonged somewhere.