Muse by Rebecca Lim Read Free Book Online Page B

harpy. Something ancient, mythical, made up. A cautionary tale, a fable. Unreal.
    I’m bent over my burning left hand, struggling to contain the pain, and Gia reaches out to me, but I pull away sharply. When I’m feeling this way, I’m dangerous, and people invariably get hurt.
    Once — two lifetimes ago — I made myself a promise that my time would soon come. That one day, not too far away, it would no longer be about just surfing the next wave, just holding on, just surviving; it would be about me . And that time is now . Because staying safe, doing nothing, keeping out of sight, has never been my way. I know it now for a truth. The Eight have forced me to be so many things that I’m not, for far too long.
    ‘I can’t do this any more,’ I tell Gia and Felipefiercely through my pain. ‘If I don’t get out soon, I’m going to go mad. You both work for me, right? I hold the purse strings, I call the shots?’
    Gia nods, frightened by something in Irina’s expression. Felipe is very still, watching guardedly with his dark, arrogant eyes.
    ‘So you’re going to start doing things my way,’ I rasp. ‘I’m done with waiting. I don’t care how you do it, or what it costs to make it happen, but I want you to find someone for me and bring him here. Now. His name is Ryan Daley.’
    Gia’s unusual eyes widen at the unexpected request, and her dark brows snap together as I rattle off Ryan’s mobile number — committed to memory two lives ago — and the URL for the social networking site Lela Neill befriended him on.
    ‘Bring him here? Now?’ Gia mutters. ‘With the schedule you have?’ She pulls a slim, black device out of a pocket of her leather jacket and inputs all of the information I’ve thrown at her, jabbing furiously at the device’s seamless face. ‘What if he won’t come?’
    ‘Make him,’ I snap. ‘Tell him: Mercy is alive and badly needs your help — use those exact words and I guarantee you’ll have his immediate and undividedattention. Book him on the next plane out of wherever he is. I mean it. The next plane. Got that?’
    Gia stops tapping for a moment, her eyes mystified. ‘He really is that “important” to you?’ She makes talking marks in the air with her free hand. ‘I didn’t think you were serious. Everything’s always a matter of life and death with you, even when it isn’t. You go through guys like they’re bottled water, like they’re completely disposable. It honestly can’t wait until after we leave Italy? It’d be a lot less complicated to set up.’
    I shake my head. ‘Find him for me. It’s the most important thing I’m ever going to ask you to do. Ever. So don’t mess it up.’
    Gia’s eyebrows shoot up. ‘But we’ve got three more full days of commitments here in Milan. Final fittings; dress rehearsal; runway show; dinner and afterparty. Even if we get the guy here, like, today , you can’t just walk away from this thing. You’ll never work again. You know that, don’t you?’
    I give a short laugh, half-way between amusement and despair. ‘Just get him here, and Irina Zhivanevskaya shall meet her commitments.’
    Gia gives me an odd look before nodding and jamming the hand-held device back into her jacket pocket. She turns to Felipe.
    ‘Irina’s right,’ she says briskly. ‘We need to move . I can go looking for this Ryan guy as soon as we’re on the road. The sooner we leave, the better. We’ll take the route I marked out originally, no arguments. You weren’t Irina’s driver the last time we were here. I know what I’m talking about, so you may as well put the map away.’
    Felipe’s eyes clash with Gia’s as he angrily gathers up the road map and shoves it back inside his overcoat along with the status pen. He rises to his feet with barely concealed irritation.
    Gia turns to me and says reassuringly, ‘Okay, the deal is: we get through today, then the next day, and one more day after that, and then we’ll go home. It’s