Tainted Touch Page 37

  “Eesh!” she shrieks, jumping away from the cold drag of the water. “You sure about this?”

  “Stop making excuses. Wuss.” I hold a hand out to her. “We’ll do it together, okay?”

  She studies my hand for a moment, then places her cool palm in mine. It’s almost like we’re small again; our silhouettes are squat in this angle of sunshine, and we can’t have been older than eight or nine the last time we really sought comfort in each other’s touch.

  Mills takes a deep breath. “Okay. Let’s do this.”

  A shock of sea wind rushes up behind us and yanks tendrils of loose hair free. White noise curves about our eardrums. The tide, calm and undulating, ripples across the delicate bones of our feet as it crawls in to massage the sand. When I look at Mills, her eyes are squeezed shut and her bottom lip is bitten to a thick, dry welt–she knows just where we’re going.

  Out of the lighthouse…and into the waves.

  THE END

  Author’s Note

  Readers: I do this all for you guys. I try to give you something to laugh about, someone to long for…and a truth to hold on to, when you need it. If you got this far, then thank you. It’s always a pleasure to hear from you all.

  As usual, I have many people to thank for help with this beast of a book. Thank you to Christa Desir, Kristen Callihan and Andy Stableford for listening to me go on about it, and reassuring me when I had many “oh god, it’s HORRIBLE,” moments. Thank you to Kenny Wright for the beautiful cover, and thank you to my editor, as always.

  Over the years, I’ve had the pleasure of visiting the cathedral cities of Lichfield and Salisbury; in fact I lived in Salisbury for a while. Both cities inspired the fictional Foxfield, as did Bangor in north Wales, which is where I went to university myself. If you’d like to know what “Hogwarts” actually looks like, go and have a gander at its stunning Main Arts building.

  170 calorie cupcakes exist, my friends. It’s not my recipe to share, but you can find it in the first Hairy Bikers diet cookbook. Trust me–they’re worth staining your iPad cover for (which sounds wrong. Ahem!).

  Perfect Crime by Max Collins (formerly of Eve 6, music fans) can be found on iTunes. If you’d like to understand Cait, Art and Mills a little better, or you just want to imagine that you’re driving along with them, you should hop over and download it at once.

  If you’d like to read more about Aidan, you can find him in my Knives & Flowers books, where he does very dirty things that most men would be thoroughly ashamed of. You’ll also find the lovely deviants from Merchant Deity at Law.

  The Waves is based on a short story I wrote at university (rather than the novel of the same name by Virginia Woolf). Should you ever find yourself in a lighthouse, please don’t suffer in silence. Come out, take a hand, and walk into the waves. They’ll deliver you from the edge of the world.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  lucyvmorgan@gmail.com

  Lucy V. Morgan writes sharp contemporary fiction, usually with a liberal splatter of filth. She lives in England, where she also works as an editor. She spends her spare time consuming lebkuchen, working through her TBR pile, and pretending she’s an urban fantasy heroine in body combat classes.

  She shares lots of teasers on Facebook, so you should look her up right this minute, really, shouldn’t you?

  Visit my website for short stories, news, and pretty pictures

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