Siren by Tara Moss Page A

least the mirror was large, the corners of it fading away to a non-reflective grey. He stared himself down with a dark, unhappy gaze. There was a crease between his brows that displeased him. Even when he tried his best to relax his forehead, his frown remained like an ineradicable watermark. He leaned in until he was centimetres from the glass, staring at his reflection, obsessively tracking the undesired lines beginning to form on his fine face that once had been so smooth. Henoted each new sign of age with acute anxiety: the creases that extended from the sides of his nose to the corners of his lips like the mouth of a ventriloquist’s doll; the lines that fanned out from his eyes like spider’s legs; the hairline that others denied was slowly, irreversibly receding. He cursed the fact he had not acquired a single one of the youthful genes that should have been his birthright.
    One red apple.
    One piece of rye toast. No butter.
    One tin of tomato soup.
    One pinch of salt, but only a pinch.
    Salt made him retain water. He couldn’t afford that. He studiously avoided animal products, too much sodium, cholesterol, oil.
    Twice a day he was in the habit of carefully tallying his intake. It kept him in line. It meant he did not make mistakes.
    For a moment the young man stood side-on to the mirror and studied his unclothed shape. His sinewy muscles were keeping well, the skin on his chest still taut, tanned and smooth. He sucked his stomach in until it pulled back against his ribcage, giving him the narrow waist he was praised for. He was once told it was his low body fat that made him appear older than his years. Nonsense.
    ‘ Ebanatyi pidaraz ,’ he cursed under his breath, words he would never say aloud in front of his family.
    Being constantly uprooted like this made him edgy. He felt unbalanced, discombobulated, alone. The travelling made him weary. He felt older than his years, that was true. He felt old.
    Bijou…Bijou…Bijou…
    She had taken another lover. Why? She was getting on in age now herself, though no one seemed to guess it. She wasstill beautiful, still the star attraction of the troupe, their driving force. She possessed him like no other ever could. It mattered not that he was rejected from her bed for now. She was inside him. Inside him. Inside him. And he inside her…
    And she was not going to get him out.
    Still fixated on his reflection, he reached blindly around the edge of the basin until he found what he wanted. He raised his black eyeliner pencil to his face. A little unsteadily, he drew its sharpened point across the seam of his lashes, giving him the lined eyes of a sinewy jungle cat.
    Bijou.
    This new boy might be in her bed now, but things could change. He could make things change. He would never be far away.
    And he would be watching. Waiting…

CHAPTER 8
    ‘Hi, you’ve reached Mak. Please leave a message…’
    Andy Flynn hung up his phone without saying a word. He felt the urge to throw the thing against the wall and break it into small, useless pieces. He was back in Australia, in Sydney again, a short distance from Makedde, and still they were at an impasse. She knew he was in town and yet she was not answering his calls.
    Fuck it.
    He looked across at the neatly stacked turquoise towels at the foot of the single bed he was perched on, and suddenly felt an extreme tiredness. He had driven from Quantico, Virginia, to Washington, then flown from Washington to Los Angeles, and Los Angeles to Sydney, and Sydney to Canberra. He had arrived home to find that his live-in girlfriend had done precisely what she’d said she would. She had moved out. The house had been neat and empty. She had not left a note.
    And then he had driven here. He could be forgiven for feeling weary.
    Beyond the door, Andy could hear the chaotic, comforting sounds of family. Only the family was not his own, but that of his former police partner. The Cassimatis marriage had survived Jimmy’s long hours in squad