Whispers of Fate: The Mistresses of Fate, Book Two Read Online Free

caught sight of him, her eyes had widened and her cheeks flushed. She’d stared, saying nothing, until her grandmother nudged her shoulder.
    “W-W-welcome to Fate,” she’d managed, still staring at him.
    Tyler had thought she was staring because of his clothes, which were too light for the fall air, or the bruise showing just below the collar of his shirt. He’d covered it quickly, hating that she’d seen it for no reason that he could name at the time. He’d just known that the sight of Tavey Collins made him so furious he nearly cried.
    She was so pretty and perfect in her soft blue dress; she smelled of clean laundry and fresh-cut grass. She’d smiled at him and he’d shaken his head at her in warning, casting his father a glance out of the corner of his eye. Tyler watched his father’s lips curl in a faint sneer around his cigarette, his free hand twitching at his side, as if he was imagining what it would be like to smack the smile right off her face. His father had always seemed to find beauty offensive.
    Tyler moved, stepping closer to Tavey and blocking his father’s view of her. “You should go,” he told the old woman, and felt his father’s attention settle on him like a shadow.
    Frowning, Tavey stepped in front of her grandmother. “That’s rude,” she pointed out.
    Tyler felt rather than saw his father’s body tense. He didn’t like it when women talked back, and the fact that this little princess was only a child wouldn’t make a difference.
    Tavey’s grandmother took her granddaughter’s hand. “I think he meant it to be, Tavey dear,” she informed her granddaughter genially.
    Tavey had frowned, studying him. “Why?”
    “He’s a rude little shit, that’s why,” Tyler’s father said with a snarl. Tavey’s eyes had flickered up his father’s tall form, and her steady, measuring gaze had taken in his slovenly appearance, the reddened knuckles, and dirty, beer-stained shirt. She’d looked at his mother next, at the way she hid her face, at the shoulders that hunched forward as if in anticipation of a blow.
    “I see,” she’d muttered.
    Tyler thought she really had seen, which made his cheeks flush.
    “Just go. We don’t want you here.” He’d waved a hand at their car.
    “All right, then,” Tavey’s grandmother had replied easily, but there was a firmness to the tone that said she also understood the situation and wasn’t pleased. “You all take care and welcome again to Fate.”
    Tavey had nodded in agreement, but her eyes were fierce. “It was nice to meet you ,” she told him.
    Tyler could hear Tavey talking to the old woman as she tugged her grandmother down the cracked sidewalk to their black town car.
    “We’ll need to do something about that. ”
    He hadn’t heard her grandmother’s response because his father chose that moment to cuff him on one side of his head and order him into the house.
    He hadn’t gotten the beating he’d expected, though, for which he could thank his uncle Abraham. Tyler’s mother intended to take him to visit Abraham this afternoon and maybe borrow some money. They’d visited a couple years before, and Abraham had threatened to put a bullet between his father’s eyes if Tyler showed up beaten bloody again.
    The old man, while gruff and a recovering heroin addict, had never laid a violent hand on Tyler, had never shown him anything but rough affection.
    Which was why he’d never understood why Tavey was so convinced that his uncle had something to do with Summer’s disappearance. She’d been running a one-woman crusade against his uncle and had shared her conviction with everyone in five counties. In the years since Summer had disappeared, people had spray-painted “Child Killer” and “Sick Fuck” and “Rot in Hell” on the outside of his cabin, thrown rocks through his windows, and once, shortly after Summer had disappeared, a group of men and women from town decided they were going to teach the old man a lesson and