Watercolour Smile by Jane Washington Page A

How’s school? How’s football going?”
    “I speak to you every few days.” Tariq’s worry eased with a small smile. “There’s nothing new to tell you. But you look different.” He paused as we reached the car—Quillan’s BMW. “You’re… I don’t know. Are those new clothes? You seem really happy.”
    I got a person killed .
    I got three people killed .
    That makes four in total. My ledger was really adding up.
    “Sure.” I forced away my niggling depression and jumped into the car.
    Silas drove us back to the apartment building, grumbling about the BMW the whole way, like driving it was stooping too low for him. He parked in the basement, and I had the distinct feeling that he was dragging out Tariq’s discomfort by slowing down when he walked past the Jaguar, sweeping a cursory glance over it. We piled into the lift and I stared at the buttons for the other floors as we climbed.
    “If you guys own this whole building,” I ventured, “what’s on the other floors?”
    “More apartments, a gym, a pool,” he shrugged. “We don’t use the rest of it. We rent it out.”
    Silas disappeared into his own apartment as soon as we reached the top floor, and I sat down with Tariq in the piano room of Cabe and Noah’s apartment, absently picking at the keys as I told him everything that I had been leaving out of our conversations together over the last few months. He almost imploded when I tried to talk about forming the bond with Silas and Quillan, so I skipped over most of the details and only told him what he needed to hear. By the time I got to Aiden’s story, my tears were beginning to make the piano keys slippery beneath my fingers, and as I told him about the last painting I had done, I stopped playing altogether.
    “But how did you know that Gerald did it—or, would have done it? He wasn’t in the painting?”
    “No, I just felt it. I heard him speak.”
    Tariq’s eyes travelled to the window. “This is a lot to take in.”
    “I know…” I softened my voice. “I’ll stay here with you this weekend but then I need to go back to Maple Falls. This guy, whoever he is, will be paying attention to everything that I do. I don’t want to bring you into the whole mess. He left another message for me just before we left.”
    “What message?”
    “Well… no actual message or anything this time. Just a few broken dolls. I must have done something to make him angry. I was starting to think he had moved on—either that, or Silas had secretly hunted him down and disposed of him.”
    “What do you think you did?”
    I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about it… I had just come back from a double-date with Poison. So… maybe it was that.”
    “He’s angry that you went on a date?” Tariq seemed confused. “What makes you think that?”
    “It’s the only thing that really makes sense. If he doesn’t want me to form the bond with Noah and Cabe, he probably doesn’t want me dating other guys either. But that’s not important right now. Will you stay away from Gerald, please?”
    “I guess.”
    “Thanks, Tariq. We’ll send him money in the mail. Enough to live by, but not enough to… you know.”
    “Drink himself to death with?”
    “Basically.”
    He nodded. “Yeah, I know. Want to play a game?” He seemed to be trying to change the subject. There was an uncomfortable look in his eye, and he kept glancing toward the door.
    “Sure.”
    His smile stretched easily, apparently relieved that we didn’t have to continue the conversation, and then he was standing and leading the way back to the media room. He clicked on one of the gaming systems and handed me a controller.
    “We’ll play Nazi Zombies,” he said.
    I stared at the screen: at the boarded-up room, and at my soldier character on screen. I saw a zombie trying to break through the planks on the window, and everything rushed back to me.
    “Are you drinking straight vodka?”
    I blinked, my hands beginning to