Mirror of My Soul by Joey Hill (book club recommendations .TXT) 📕

she said softly. To him. To his family. To the children whose photos were on the desk, who wouldn’t have him as they grew up. For them, it would be a tragedy, a loss. For her, it would have been a gift from God.

She straightened, went to the elevator, set it to go to the top floor. If she had died that day, a guard wouldn’t be dead. Natalie wouldn’t be in his hands now.

Do you know how it would tear my guts out to lose you?

Tyler’s voice. Rough with need and love, desire.

Some things just weren’t meant to be. But she really wished it had been.

When she got to the top floor, she took the service staircase up to the roof, stepped out into the mist that had become a light rain, the clouds and gathering darkness dulling the earlier promise of a sunny morning. She was watchful, looking before she stepped out, but he came into view almost immediately, directly across from her. He stood at the roof’s edge, not up on the ledge, but next to it. He had Natalie standing on it, though, his hand holding on to the collar of her shirt, the nape of her neck. Her body was trembling, cheeks wet with tears, eyes round with terror. Her hair was frizzy with the humidity, streaked with the rain.

“Miss M—”

When he yanked on her collar to keep her still, her arms flailed and latched on to his side. He shook her off. “Shut up and be still.”

There were bruises on her arm where he’d handled her. She was wearing a pale

pink cotton shirt and a pair of jeans on her tiny hips. Sneakers that looked no longer than half the length of Marguerite’s hand. The new earrings winked at her. She took in 171

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every detail of Natalie’s appearance and used it to steady herself before she turned her attention to her father.

Prison had changed him of course, but it surprised her nonetheless because he had lost so much weight and become lean, burning up with his hatred, far beyond that fateful turning point when she was fourteen. His hair had thinned. The lines of his face were as deep as wounds, the mouth thin and harsh. Evil had completely taken him so there was no way he could live among the world and normal people not see it,

recognize the danger and shun him. She thought about the way she had described herself to Tyler, the teenager who could not be close to others, not only because of her own desires and problems, but because of what the others sensed about her. The evil had stamped them all, but it could end here. She wouldn’t, couldn’t let it take Natalie though.

“Marie.”

She inclined her head. “I’m here. And I’ll do what you want. Just let her go back down the stairs.”

“She’s special to you. I know that.” Marguerite wondered if it was fanciful

imagining, the red tint that seemed to glitter like blood in the once rich golden brown eyes. His voice was a chain smoker’s voice, the vocal cords scalded by nicotine. “I know everything about you. You thought changing your name would do it, didn’t you?

You’ve been my only focus for twenty years, Marie. There wasn’t a single moment I didn’t know where you were. Did you think you could carry her face, her soul and I wouldn’t come after you?”

“No. I knew you would come one day.” And she realized it was true. She’d lived every day of her life holding herself back from love and friendships, knowing it. But love and friendship had been given to her anyway, offered freely. In Tyler’s case, insistently. She knew that even if Natalie hadn’t been involved, Chloe would have fought him because he was attacking and destroying what belonged to Marguerite. Just things. Ceramic cups, dolls, even the ring on her hand now… But those things

symbolized something far more important. The only thing that mattered. Love. It was more important than survival.

Which is why she was glad she’d left her message with Chloe. That Tyler would

know she hadn’t intended to leave him. Hadn’t wanted to, ever.

“I always knew you’d come back,” she said evenly.

She walked across the roof toward him, feeling the breeze lift her hair. Thought of Tyler’s fingers threading through it, loosening it. He loved her hair. Had loved making it tumble down. Natalie’s eyes, the irises the color of dark chocolate, watched her approach. The child’s lips quivered, the involuntary flow of terrified tears making her upper lip wet.

“Do you ever think about Mom? David?”

His fingers tightened on Natalie and she whimpered. “Don’t talk about them.”

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“Me too. I miss them every day, Dad. It hurts to be without them. Like a burning inside that never stops.”

Their eyes were locked. In that one brief moment, she sensed he was unable to look away, her words reestablishing their bond. It made her think of all the submissives whose minds she’d plumbed, tearing past the curtains to find their souls and hold them against her heart. The outpouring of emotions had been a bath for her own soul which she’d thought was forbidden the same experiences, forbidden to come out into the light and love. Like a Goddess of the Underworld, she’d pulled those souls to her. Now she kept moving across the tarred roof, all vestiges of civilization far below and prepared to take the plunge into her father’s blackness.

“You…” He shook his head, breaking the contact, denying with his body language the words she’d spoken. “You always were her. You look like her, spoke like her. You were my little girl, but then you took her over, possessed her.” Natalie yelped as he thrust her forward, as if he was using her as an extension of his hand, pointed in accusation at Marguerite. “So you could infect me with your poison.”

Marguerite forced herself not to look