Feather Bound (23 page)

I realized how embarrassing it was to act like the clingy jealous ex. And yet my fingers were clinging to the doorframe anyway.

Hyde frowned, maybe wondering how I had found out, but he brushed me off with a shrug. “I gave Beatrice the company, remember? There are still business arrangements I have to take care of. More importantly, this isn't your problem anymore.” At least twice during his diatribe, he checked the sky.

“Oh? It's as simple as that, right? Randomly handing someone you loathe your father's company and meeting her at hotels in the dead of night is no big deal?”

His eyes were glued to the sun, half-submersed below the horizon. “Leave, Deanna.”

“But–”

He pried my fingers off the doorframe and with a rough jerk, flicked my hand aside. A throbbing pain seized my chest and for a moment, I couldn't breathe. “Please,” he whispered and shut the door.

With my eyes to the ground, I slowly dragged myself away, my fingernails digging into my palms. Slogging down the sidewalk, I was about to hail a cab when I noticed the stretch limo parked on the other side of the street. A tinted window rolled down.

Crap.
Anton?

Calmly, he waved me over. I briefly entertained the idea of running off in the other direction, but I knew that if I wanted information I'd have to cross the street and get it from him. So I did.

“Get in,” he ordered.

My mouth dropped. “
Excuse
me?”

“Get in, or do you want to explain to Hyde why you're still around and talking to
me
?”

I was really tired of being given orders by douchebags. “Easily solvable.” With a defiant look, I simply walked around the other side of the limo.

“Really?” said Anton, once he'd rolled down the other window.

I folded my arms, grateful for the distance between us. “Sorry, I don't make it a point to get into tight spaces with guys who threaten me with rape.” And after the bastard rolled his eyes, I added, shortly, “What do you want?” Though I could guess.

“I thought you'd be here,” he said with a lazy drawl, flipping a newspaper over his lap in his finely tailored suit like a little business twat in training. “Even though I told you to meet me at my place. Couldn't resist getting the truth straight from the horse's mouth, could you?”

“Whatever. How did you find out about Hyde and Beatrice?”

“Coincidence, really,” he said. “I was at the hotel myself, you see – a business meeting.” His slimy grin suggested otherwise. “I saw him in the lobby with Beatrice.”

My stomach clenched and I felt about as ready to throw up as if I'd kissed Anton. I steadied my breath.

“You talked to Hyde,” he went on. “What did he tell you?”

The expectant look on his face, almost desperate, made me squirm. “He told me he was at the hotel for business.”

Anton smirked, shaking his head as his arms crossed over his chest. “And just now, I told you I was at the hotel for business.”

Pursing my lips, I stared at the tinted window. “Except, you're disgusting.”

“All men are a little disgusting, Deanna.” His lips spread even further, like a disease, across his face. “Don't you want to find out how much?”

I almost left right there, but Anton called me back with a laugh. “Get in. We'll wait here,” he said. “Then, once he leaves his house, we'll follow.”

We? “Why?” I folded my arms over my chest as though it'd create an extra bit of distance between us. “Why do you care about what Hyde and Beatrice do together?”

He stayed silent, throwing the newspaper onto the table next to his wineglass. The creases on his face deepened with his frown and while he crossed his legs his arms were stiff over his lap. “My father's gone to jail,” he said, finally. “Though Beatrice has the company, she still won't pay his bail. She won't even help with his case. The bitch wants him to stay in prison. I want to know why. Did she strike some sort of deal with my bastard fake-cousin?”

He grabbed the glass on the table and downed an angry gulp of the wine sloshing inside. But it was all wrong. That wasn't the scowl of someone who was worried about his father, or indignant over how his faux-mom was treating him. It was something different entirely.

“And you need to follow Hyde just to find that out?” Something wasn't adding up. “Couldn't you just confront her? Why would you need me to come with you? What–?”

His glare charred the words before they could leap off my tongue. “You can leave if you want, Deanna. But are you telling me you don't want to know what's going on?”

I couldn't, because I did. And yet I blew him off anyway, beginning down the sidewalk with slow, careful steps. But then, when I'd gotten far enough away, I quickly snuck behind a parked mail truck. I wasn't lying when I said I wanted to know.

It was getting darker. Dad, Ade and Ericka were going to kill me when I got back, but this was more important than curfew. I hailed a cab and slipped inside. “Just hold on for a bit,” I told the driver. I'd put the extra minutes on Ericka's tab. She was eating our food, after all.

One minute, two, ten. The sun had finally checked out for the night. Soon, I saw Hyde walk out his front door. With heavy, plodding steps, he called a cab and took off.

This wasn't happening.

With one smooth movement, the limo merged into the traffic. Anton was on the move.

“Follow that limo,” I told the driver and though he gave me a “look”, he went along with it anyway. I was now officially a stalker.

As I sat there, rigid, in the cab following Anton following Hyde, the spineless part of my brain prepared itself for denial, diligently gathering up every memory that could possibly disprove the conclusion the masochistic part had already jumped to. They weren't – no. Beatrice may have been that kind of person, but Hyde wasn't. Hyde could barely choke down his bile when Beatrice had tried to hit on him at the ball. It was business. Beatrice had something on him and he was negotiating. Trying to find a foothold back into the company. They did it on TV all the time. For Anton, the most disgusting assumption was always the right one, but regular people just didn't function like that. Hyde didn't.

Hyde's taxi dropped him off outside a townhouse on West 12th Street. Anton stopped a few yards away, far enough not to draw attention but still close enough to watch Hyde enter the complex. I paid the cabbie and ducked behind a tree, my breaths grating my throat.

It's business.
Stop being stupid, Deanna.

I clung to the image of Hyde pushing Beatrice's hand away from him as the moonlight poured in from the arched windows, lighting the grimace on his face.

We waited for a long time, Anton and I. More specifically, I waited because he was waiting, though I couldn't tell what he was waiting for.

And then I couldn't take it anymore.

I strode up to the limo and pounded on the window. It rolled down. “So? Where is this?” I demanded.

A pompous mixture of amusement and satisfaction twisted Anton's greasy face. “This, Deanna, is where my father lived before your boyfriend had him hauled off in cuffs.”

“I'm assuming you have keys.”

“You followed me all the way here, didn't you?” He laughed, positively delighted. “Should have come with me, if for the alcohol at
least
.”

Spit in his face,
my instincts ordered without a beat missed. I would have. But Hyde had been in there for too long. “Look, if you're going to just sit there and jack off or something, then fine, but at least give me the damn keys.”

Anton smirked. “I might like you after all.”

I crossed the street and climbed the steps to the front door, shuddering as I felt Anton slide next to me. Jangling a group of keys in my face, he pinched a slick bronze key – the smallest on the chain – and stuck it in the lock.

And yet I followed Anton inside. Bathed in the foyer's blinding white, I stared past the piano and up the stairs. Beatrice was laughing. My legs seized.

“She wouldn't.” Anton quietly ascended the steps.

I leaned against the railing. I have to go. This is stupid. I have to go. I'm going right now
.

“I knew it, you fucking
whore
!”

Anton's growl was a punch to the gut that left me winded and grasping the railing. I climbed the stairs, crumbling with each step because I couldn't stop myself.

Last step. I could see them around the railing. Beatrice in negligee, backing away as Anton rounded on her. And Hyde, off in the corner, watching lifelessly.

He barely had his underwear on.

The sound that broke off my lips couldn't have belonged to me, but it must have, because suddenly Hyde was looking at me. In that moment, he evaporated. He was a ghost, his face pale as if all his blood had leaked out of him, pooling on the rug at his feet.

I ran back down the stairs, out the door. I couldn't remember how I got inside a taxi, but suddenly, somehow, I was there, crying in the backseat and wishing Hyde Hedley had stayed dead.

A TALE: REPRISE

 

 

I woke up in a sweat and didn't know why. I lay in bed in the dead of night, my eyes tracing a trail of broken plaster on the ceiling. I breathed, slowly, clutching the sheets to my body as the dream continued to wash over me.

 

 

I knew the words. I'd known them since childhood. I rose out of bed, stepping on the floor with careful steps.

 

I could see the moonlight now, streaming into my sister's bedroom. I sat at the table and looked at the moon, my elbows on the wood, my hands cupping my chin. I stared at the sky, just as Hyde had.

Just as Hyde had.

He'd checked the sky. He'd checked it twice, maybe more. He'd begged me to leave when days ago he'd have done anything for me to stay.

He'd held me by the candlelight in a room he'd booked just for us. He'd touched my cheek and heated my lips with kisses. And then he'd given his company away.

 

I thought of her – Beatrice. I thought of her anger as she was spurned by him – and then of her smug smile as she stood triumphant in the bathroom. Of Hyde's anguish. The envelope she handed him.

Blackmail.

A feather was all it took for Anton to put me in chains. A secret. Just one cost me my freedom, cost me nearly everything.

 

The last four words simmer and dissipate – and suddenly I remembered the way Hyde had looked up at the sky so desperately, and shuddered a gasp so violent I felt it throb against my chest.

 

It couldn't be.

 

He builds a house and they marry. Their children sing every day
.

 

It
couldn't
be.

My mind was racing – the secret smiles, the seductive touches, the tender feelings. Memories of Hyde. I sifted through them until I was left with just one: the one of Hyde in Beatrice's room. His hollow eyes.

And then I knew.

19

CURSED

 

“Hyde, pick up.” My back pressed against the lock on the bathroom door. My hands shook so badly my cell almost slipped through my grip.

“Hyde, pick up, please.” Each ring went unanswered. I wanted to yell and toss my phone against the wall, but it was 4 o'clock in the morning and there were three other people in the house, plus a particularly temperamental baby. Gritting my teeth, I held myself back from kicking the door and dialed Hyde's number again.

“Please, Hyde.” I shut my eyes to keep them dry, but they welled up anyway. Still no answer. He wouldn't. No, he probably couldn't. Hyde was ashamed – just like I had been when my feathers first came out, and when Anton had threatened me. But I couldn't just leave it alone. I needed to hear it from him. I had to see him.

No answer. I'd have to leave a message instead. “Hyde, can you please call me back? Please. I need to talk to you. It's OK, I'm not mad. I just need to…”
Tell him
, a voice hissed in the back of my mind.
Tell him you know.
My voice wavered and without meaning to, I hung up.

Power. That was the explanation Anton had given me that night – one word, simply uttered, while his face broke into a horrifying grin on the other side of the iron bars. There were so many ways to cage someone. So many ways to take what you wanted from them. But swans were different. Each feather in your hands was a guarantee of absolute obedience, a contract they didn't make, but one they couldn't break. It was absolute power, both tantalizing and horrific. And Hyde… Hyde was…