Forbidden Temptation

Rose took one of the empty seats. Melissa was obviously not alone; someone’s drink sat on the table in front of one of the other chairs. “I shouldn’t barge in on your night out—”

“Alice won’t mind.” Melissa waved toward the dance floor. “We’ll be lucky if we see her the rest of the night. She just broke up with her scummy boyfriend and I think she plans to dance with every guy in this place. Therapy, you know?” A hint of bitterness tinged Melissa’s words. She’d almost ended her engagement a year earlier after catching Mark cheating. Mark’s promise never to stray again had kept the engagement intact. Rose wasn’t sure Melissa had made the right decision.

The true-love veils had made it so much easier to know if a couple was about to make a big mistake.

“Look at her go,” Melissa said with a chuckle.

Rose followed Melissa’s gaze and spotted a tall, curvy woman with wavy brown hair. Her back was to Rose and Melissa, her body grooving to the pounding bass coming from the giant speakers on the wall. Her dance partner could barely keep up, but he didn’t look unhappy about it, his eyes wide with male appreciation as his partner danced off her frustrations.

Alice turned her back on him, a not-so-subtle reminder that she was here for the music, not the man. She looked at the table where Rose and Melissa sat, waggling her fingers at them.

Rose sucked in a swift breath.

Alice’s face was covered with a shimmery silver veil.

Rose called them death veils for lack of a better term. She’d seen several since Dillon Granville’s suicide, death masks superimposed over the faces of the doomed, a gruesome contrast to the true-love veils she’d seen all her life up to that horrible day in Bridey Woods.

The particular death veil Alice wore was one Rose had seen before, six weeks ago on the face of a woman at the grocery store where Rose shopped. Three days later, she’d been found murdered near the Birmingham Zoo. Two weeks ago, Rose had seen the same kind of veil on the face of a cyclist riding in front of her house. She’d been found murdered, as well.

News reports hadn’t mentioned their wounds, but Rose knew what they’d been. Slashes across their jaw-lines and foreheads. Gouges on the soft apples of their cheeks. And a ragged slit across each of their throats, the killing blow.

Two women dead, and Rose had foreseen their murders. How many others hadn’t she seen?

She stared at Alice, transfixed by the shimmer of death on her pretty face. What now? Tell Melissa what she was seeing? She discarded the idea immediately. Melissa might be unpredictable and impulsive, but beneath it all was a solid strain of rationality, and what Rose could see was about as irrational as it got.

Would Alice be more open? How long did Rose have to convince her? Would the killer strike tomorrow?

Tonight?

A finger of dread traced an icy path up Rose’s spine. Was he here already? Hidden by the throngs, watching Alice dance and imagining what he was going to do to her?

Fear rose in her throat, nearly gagging her.

The song ended and Alice crossed to their table. She dropped into the chair in front of the half-empty beer bottle. “Whew! That was fun.”

“Richard who?” Melissa teased.

Alice laughed, her eyes crinkling with good humor. “Exactly.” She turned to Rose. “Hi. I’m Alice.”

“I’m Rose.”

“Sorry—how rude of me!” Melissa gestured to Alice. “This is Alice Donovan, the dancing queen. We went to college together at Bama. Alice, this is Rose Browning, my wedding planner. I told you about her.”

Alice grinned at Rose, the expression grotesquely juxtaposed against the blood-streaked death veil hovering over her face. Rose swallowed the bile rising in her throat and managed a smile in return.

“You should give Rose your card, Alice. Alice just opened a florist shop down the street from here,” Melissa explained.

“Really? I’ll be sure to give you a call,” Rose said, tamping down her growing distress.

“Great!” Alice pulled a card out of her clutch purse and handed it to Rose. “We’re brand-new, but we have terrific suppliers, and I think you’ll be very pleased with our work.”

Rose tucked the card into her purse and took a deep breath, wondering what to say next. A lot of people claimed interest in the paranormal, but even if Alice wasn’t a stone-cold skeptic, would she really believe that Rose could foresee her death? What person would want to hear something like that, much less put any stock in it?

True-love veils had been easier to talk about. Everybody wanted to believe in happily-ever-after.

“Listen, I hate to boogie and run, but the shop opens tomorrow bright and early.” Alice slid her chair back and took a last swallow of beer on the table in front of her. She turned to Rose. “It was nice meeting you. Give me a call and we can discuss what I can do for your business.”

Now, Rose thought. Tell her now. Just blurt it out.

“I’ll do that,” she said, kicking herself for her cowardice. “First thing in the morning.”

Alice flashed her another smile beneath the death veil and headed for the exit.

Rose watched her go, wondering if he would follow her out. Could it be that simple? Was he here in the crowd, waiting for his chance? Waiting fifteen seconds or twenty, enough that nobody would notice him following her, but not so long that he couldn’t catch up with her before she reached her car?

Rose counted the seconds in her mind. Five. Ten. Fifteen…

Nobody followed Alice out of the bar.

Rose clutched her purse and turned to Melissa. “I’ve got to run, too, Melissa—I almost forgot about a meeting I have first thing in the morning.” She rose from the table.

“The new caterer?”

“Yes,” Rose lied, already on her way to the exit, heading off any more questions from Melissa.

Outside, she scanned the street for a glimpse of Alice Donovan. There weren’t many parking places near the bar. Rose had lucked into her spot a few cars down. There had to be a parking lot somewhere nearby—

She spotted a sign that said Free Parking and followed the arrow to a side lot around the corner of the Irish pub. There. She spotted Alice opening the door of a dark blue Camry.

Quelling her fear, she called out Alice’s name, jogging toward her across the narrow lot.

Alice turned at the sound, her brow crinkling until she recognized Rose. “Oh, hi. Did I leave something in the bar?”

Rose faltered to a stop, taking a deep breath to brace herself. “I have to tell you something, and you’re going to think it sounds crazy, but I need you to hear me out.”

Alice’s eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about?”

Rose licked her lips. “I see things. I guess, you might call them visions—sort of. Not exactly.” She grimaced as Alice’s expression darkened. “Do you remember the U.A.B. student who was murdered a couple of weeks ago?”

Alice’s expression shifted from wary to alarmed. “Yes.”

“The day before she died, I saw her riding her bike in front of my house. Over her face was this…thing. I call it a veil—it’s like a shimmery image superimposed over her face. Her own face, only…dead.”

Alice took a step back, her fingers closing around her car keys. “Look, I’ve got to go—”

Rose took a desperate step forward. “I know it sounds crazy. I know it does. But I saw the death veil and then she died. I saw another woman a few weeks ago—the same thing. Her face, slashed and bloody. She turned up dead three days later.”

Alice shook her head. “Why are you telling me this?”