Charcoal Tears (14 page)

Smile for the camera
.

My fingers were shaking too badly to pull clothes on, so I grabbed the sheet off my bed and wrapped it around myself, taking it with me to the shower. I couldn’t wash the paint off without exposing myself, so instead I tied the sheet like a toga and moved cautiously back to my room. The curtains were closed as tightly as I had left them, the window latched. There was nobody in the room. I searched the rest of the house, but Gerald and Tariq were both absent. I wrote a quick note for Tariq and grabbed my keys. The old woman in the house across the street flicked back her curtain as I walked past, and then did a double-take at the bed sheet I wore. She narrowed her eyes and muttered something that I couldn’t hear, but I didn’t care. Some teenage boys whizzed past me on pushbikes and yelled something, but I didn’t register it properly. I was running on pure fear.

I got in my car and drove to the only people who could help me now. The police. Of course, it took that long for me to realise that I had no proof. Every single photograph was in the possession of one of the boys, and now I was sitting in the police station car park wearing a bed sheet and getting strange looks from everyone that walked past. They would think I was either drunk or insane, and one look at my father’s record would form their theory as to how I had gone to sleep with clothes on and woken up naked and finger-painted. I turned the engine over and pulled out of the car park, driving to the boys’ riverfront apartment instead. The doorman and the lift attendant didn’t even blink at my bed sheet, which I found impressive. I rode the lift to the top floor and knocked on Noah and Cabe’s door.

It swung open to reveal Cabe’s face. He cast his eyes over me rapidly, pausing on my red-stained fingers, and then he stood aside. “Sit down,” he said gravely, indicating the couch. “I’ll get the others.”

8

Shopping with the Devil

Cabe returned with Quillan and Noah, and I found myself waiting for Silas to walk through the door. Why I placed all of my trust in the scariest of them—the only one of them that didn’t seem to want me around—was beyond me. Perhaps I was trying to consolidate everything that I had blurted to him over the years with a fabricated sense of meaning, to trick myself into thinking that it was okay to say all those things, to rely on him in the way that I did.

He’s not coming
. 

I explained as best I could, my foot tapping restlessly on the floor the entire time. They kept their reactions carefully under control, which I found myself grateful for. It was hard enough to know how to react to this myself, without having to compute their feelings as well.

“You’re staying here for a little while,” Quillan decided out loud. “Until we can find this guy.”

“Why do people keep assuming it’s a guy?” I asked.

Quillan shook his head at me. “Just a hunch,” he uttered absently, causing a chill to race down my spine.

“I want Tariq to stay with me.”

“It’s best that you keep him separate.” Noah spoke, low and gentle—a tone I hadn’t quiet grown used to hearing from him. “Your father might be a danger, but this messenger is malicious, and so far the only thing he cares about is
you
. He doesn’t care what your brother does one way or another, so it’s best to keep Tariq as far away from this as possible. We, however…” he glanced at Cabe and then at Quillan before continuing, “We can look after ourselves.”

“Alright,” I relented. “But I want the photos. All of them.”

“We destroyed them.” Quillan spoke quickly as he strode for the door, ending the conversation. He turned back to me after a pause, his hand on the door handle. “All of them.”

I winced as the door closed and I found myself face-to-face with Cabe.

“Put it out of your mind, sweetheart.” He clasped my cheeks lightly, tilting my head up. “You’re safe with us. Our security system isn’t hack-able; it’s like a Swiss vault. Knowing Silas, there’s probably some kind of sick initiation trick to get past the vault trolls, like sawing of your right arm in exchange for a code—”

“Cabe,” Noah sighed.

Cabe flashed me a grin, drawing me up. “Come on, we’ll get you some clean clothes and you’ll feel much better. Or at least good enough to go shopping.”

“You want me to go shopping?” I asked in disbelief.

“At best I’ll have a pair of workout pants that might fit you. You can’t wear those to our party tonight.”

“You want me to go to a party tonight?”

“Seph, keep up.” Cabe heaved a sigh, dragging me the rest of the way to his room. I wondered if he were putting on an act to try and trivialise what had happened, but even if he was, I almost didn’t mind. Would it be so bad to let them take over? To give them power over my safety?

True to his word, Cabe found a pair of workout shorts with an elastic waistband and a sweatshirt long enough to almost cover them completely. I didn’t mind wearing the clothes, but he wrinkled his nose at me when I walked out of his bedroom.

“We’ve got a lot to do,” he informed me, shouldering past to enter his room. I trailed after him.

He disappeared into the closet for a second and then came back with my chameleon shoes. He gave me a little push, and I fell back onto the bed. I reached out when I realised he was going to put my shoes on for me, and he smacked my hands away.

“I don’t know anything about girl clothes,” he admitted, pulling me to my feet once he was done. “So this should be interesting.”

“I’m sure you know enough. You probably know how to take them off.” I spoke offhandedly, almost matter-of-factly, but it caused him to smack into the wall before he collected himself himself.

“Did you just flirt with me?”

I laughed. “No, I meant it as a compliment, I guess. I have full confidence in your abilities.”

He shook his head in bemusement as we entered the lift. “Too bad.”

We drove to a sprawling mall that immediately made me wish this shopping trip was over, and he managed to coax me out of the car with nothing more than the bright pull of his infectious smile. It didn’t take me long to realise that he used his stupid happiness to lull me into a false sense of security before tossing me straight to the wolves. The shoe shops were the worst. The women looked at my chameleon sneakers like they were actual lizards, crawling all over their precious stock. Cabe had to accompany me into those shops, because I kept leaving without buying anything. He forced me to get two pairs of formal shoes, and my eyes snagged on a pair of pale yellow ballet flats on our way out of the store, so he bought those too.

He paid for everything on his credit card, and laughed every time I got squeamish.

“I feel like a ho,” I eventually said, as we rested beside one of the mall fountains, sharing a bag of cinnamon doughnuts.

He snorted. “I hope you’re joking.”

I shrugged, and he stole my doughnut, popping it into his mouth. I glared at him, not used to people stealing food out of my hands, and his smile softened. He reached out, brushing cinnamon from my chin; and just like that, I was putty in his hands all over again. He dragged me through dress shops and handed me—plus his credit card—over to the sales women, giving them a strict time limit.

They all kept trying to sneak glimpses of him waiting outside, leaning against the second story railing of the mall with his soft brown hair curling over his forehead and his golden-brown eyes sparkling around with amusement. He looked like a movie star, and I was pretty sure they thought that I was his ho as well. Finally, with my arms piled with bags and my mind full of misplaced guilt from needing to break out of a sex industry I wasn’t actually part of, I escaped the mall and bundled back into the jeep.

On the drive home, I planted a finger in Cabe’s face. “I know your secret.”

He grinned. “What?”

“You’re Satan, hiding in the body of a teenage boy.”

“You’ll need to extrapolate, sweetheart.”

I rolled my eyes at him. “You trick people with your face, and then torture them. You cast all of that happiness out like a string of bait, and like the fools that we are—we pick up the other end and allow you to lead us to slaughter.”

He threw his head back and laughed. “Wow, you really know how to paint a pretty picture, don’t you, Seph?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

He slapped the steering wheel once, his laughter tumbling over me. After he gained control of himself, he asked, “Are you trying to say that you like my face?”

I averted my eyes to the window, watching the other cars pass us. We were driving very slowly, and I couldn’t help but suspect that Cabe wanted to prolong our outing. I was too embarrassed to say anything more, and eventually he quietened and caught my hand. I suspected that the grip was supposed to be soothing, or companionable, but the conversation that I had eavesdropped on earlier rushed back to me and I stared even harder at the window.

We drove the rest of the way in silence and he helped me take the bags up into the apartment before making excuses and leaving me by myself. I piled everything onto Noah’s bed, because his room was closer, and then I pulled out every receipt and wrote the prices down in the back of my English notebook. Even though I couldn’t afford the things that Cabe had forced me to purchase, and even though I was well aware of their propensity for taking control of my life… I still wouldn’t allow myself to accept this kind of help. The little black numbers printed innocently along the bottom of each of my receipts blinked back at me as I copied them, as if to enquire after my discomfiture. I couldn’t even explain to myself why it felt wrong, only that I needed to pay back this money, even if it took me years to save it up.

I sorted through the mess of fabric, pulling out a yellow thing that looked familiar. The saleswoman had called it a bandage dress, and had gushed about it for a solid few minutes, so I guessed it would do. It was edged with white lace around the hem and neckline, and it fit snugly, ending a few inches above my knees. I tossed it to the side and hunted through the pile for the small bag of underwear, setting that aside as well. I folded the other clothes neatly and hid them in the bottom of Noah’s closet, not wanting to take up any room. I tipped the underwear into a nearly empty desk draw, figuring that he probably wouldn’t look in there, and then I left the apartment and walked down the hall. I was still a little embarrassed about the way they had reacted to by marks the day before, so I knocked first. Quillan opened the door and stood aside for me to enter.

“Where is everyone?” I asked, trying to stand there unobtrusively and be polite.

“Silas is… well, Silas. And Noah is with Cabe, getting things ready for their party.”

“Why are they having a party?”

He motioned me in, and I followed him to a room off to the side of the kitchen, where a dining table strewn in paperwork was baking in the glow of the afternoon sun. The cherry-wood tone of the furniture gave the room a toasted appearance, and the obscene urge to sniff the sunburnt air grasped me. He sat and waved at a seat, inviting me to join him. I seated myself and tipped back in my chair to catch more of the sun.

“Appearances are important to us,” he said, watching me with a muted fondness, like perhaps it pleased him to see me comfortable. “You won’t understand why just yet… but in time, things will become clearer. This school is the last one in Seattle that they haven’t been kicked out of, so their attitude inside its walls has changed drastically to prevent any trouble. We paid a lot of money to have them admitted with their records; we can’t have them messing it up now. Even so… they need a way to remind people of who they are. A gathering outside the jurisdiction of the school is the perfect setting to re-establish certain things.”

His response surprised me, and I sat up a little straighter, trying to puzzle it out. Cabe and Noah didn’t exactly seem the type to skip school or fail classes. They didn’t even seem the kind to be overly concerned about their reputation. “Why do they keep getting kicked out?”

Quillan stood and disappeared into the kitchen for a few minutes, returning with a mug, which he pushed into my hands. I sniffed it, and then sipped it, lingering over the mix of coffee and chocolate. “Thanks—” I halted, seconds away from calling him
Mr. Quillan
.

“Just call me Miro, it’ll make it easier in the long run.” He sounded strained.

I didn’t entirely understand the sudden stiffness in his shoulders that hinted at discomfort. Under any normal circumstances it might have been normal for him to feel awkward, but Quillan and I weren’t normal. We had
never
been normal.

“No offense,” I joked, “but Miro is pretty much the least authoritative name I’ve ever heard.”

He offered me a crooked smile and then looked down at one of his papers, falling silent while he neatly annotated sections of whatever he was reading. I sipped more of the coffee to busy myself.

“Well call me whatever you like then,” he eventually said. “I don’t really mind. Outside of school, of course.”