Dark eyes smiled at me.
“That so?” The African Princess lifted a hand and plunged the pin into her doll’s throat with malevolent glee.
My lip hitched upwards before I could stop it.
“Nabila,” Oscar spoke quietly, and I realized he’d moved as far into the corner as he could. “I don’t think she knows.”
“Of course she doesn’t know, Oscar, that’s what makes it fun.” Another pin appeared from the depths of her afro and was positioned between the doll’s eyes. “Fresh ones are always fun.” The pin sunk into the fabric between two scared black dots. Ouch. That doll had a rough life.
“Whatever,” I blustered, rolling my eyes for good measure. “I just feel bad for your hairdresser.”
“Least I have a hairdresser,” Nabila shot back.
“A psycho hairdresser.”
“Please stop fighting,” Oscar pleaded from the corner.
“Stay out of it,” Nabila pointed a pin at him, and he cringed, ducking his head against the wall.
I’d entered the Twilight Zone. It was the only explanation.
These people were insane and suffering the effects of nuclear waste or living above a meth lab or—something. Whatever it was, they were broken, and I was out of here. “Move,” I ordered Nabila.
“Why?” She regarded me belligerently. Another pin appeared from her hair. I tried not to look as disturbed as I felt.
“Because I’m walking out that door, getting Jim and leaving you meth-sniffing weirdos behind.”
She laughed at me, a full-bodied hoot right into my face.
“Leave? Hah!” Pointing her pin at me, she bent forward, gasping for air. Tears started streaming down her face—tears of amusement at my expense. And I didn’t even understand the joke.
Pins be damned. If she wasn’t going to move, I’d move her.
I’d spent a stupid-long day stuck in a car with the dad I barely knew, been accosted by a sunglass-wearing creature, and had lost the only true family I’d ever known. I was pissed off and more than ready to take up the challenge. I had a lot of rage and nowhere to put it.
Except now, I did. Here, with this girl, laughing at me, threatening me with her stupid pins.
No more feeling afraid. Rage was better.
Marching forward, I jammed my finger into her shoulder. “I said, move!”
“Oh, no you didn’t—” She lunged for me, shining pin at the ready.
“Stop it.” A hand pushed me away from Nabila and held me pinned against the tan hallway wall. Shock drew my gaze first to my nemesis, finding her pinned the same way against the opposing side.
We glared at each other for a minute.
Then we turned those glares upon the owner of the hands keeping us apart. The quiet, cringing Oscar had us each held apart as effortlessly as a bodybuilder squaring off against kindergarteners. I was officially too pissed to be scared, which was such a wonderful thing I nearly lost my anger in sheer enjoyment.
“Let me go. Now,” Nabila demanded.
Oscar’s whole body flinched, but he held us steady. “Not until you promise not to hurt her,” he said.
“I’ll make you no such promise, Feeder,” she spat at him, writhing against the wall. “I’m going to rip her face off and you can’t stop me, bottom dweller.”
“Then, I cannot let you go.” Oscar sounded very sorry. Like he figured this was going to come back on him in the worst of ways. It was the strangest thing, but despite the fact he was crazy strong, I’d stopped being scared of him. In fact, I kind of felt obliged to stand up for him.
“Leave him alone,” I told Nabila, pleased with how steady my voice came out. “He’s only doing what the Bulldog told him to do.”
“Bulldog?” Nabila stopped struggling to stare at me in fascination. “Do you mean…?”
“Don’t say it,” Oscar pleaded.
“Myrtle? Brilliant!” In a lightning-fast shift from rage to revelry, she burst into the same deep laugh that had so irritated me a moment ago. This time, I had to work to stop a smile from creeping across my face.
“Oh no,” Oscar mumbled. “Please don’t, the Mistress will hear you. You must be respectful…”
“You’re all right, Fresh One.” She nodded at me with approval and tapped Oscar on the arm. “You can let me down; I’ve decided we’ll keep her around for a bit. Her face is safe for today.” The pin disappeared back into her fro. “I’m Nabila Toussaint and this ridiculous creature is Oscar Hyde.”
He gave Nabila a doubtful study. Shifted that study to me.
I smiled reassuringly at him. “You guys obviously know who I am, and I think we’ve decided not to kill each other, for now. But I’m still getting the hell out of here.”
He slowly relaxed his arms and allowed Nabila and I to peel ourselves off the hallway walls.
“But you can’t go.” He blinked in confusion. “Not until the contract is up.”
“Contracts are never up,” Nabila added, bitterness dripping from every word.
“Contract?” I flicked my gaze between the two of them. Unless they were rich, addicts usually twitched uncontrollably or had really bad personal hygiene. As shabbily dressed as Oscar was, he wasn’t moving with the constant jitter Ole Grinch had, who’d lived in the alley behind my apartment in Portland. Nabila’s gaze was steady, her eyes didn’t drift off in differing directions and her skin—as far as I could tell from her face—appeared to be a healthy brown. I’d seen a fair number of Meth-heads before, and the two before me just didn’t fit the bill.
Something I was afraid was pity appeared in Nabila’s dark eyes. “Oh Freshy, he really didn’t tell you a thing, did he?”
I tried to make my hands stop shaking. They refused to cooperate.
I knew Jim had been keeping things from me, but I hadn’t wanted to know what those secrets were.
Shit. If my life were a rap song, it had a terrible chorus.
Breath kept hopping in and out of my lungs in small hiccups. It was the kind of moment that should be relegated to bad trips and overly dramatic teen TV. It shouldn’t have been real, and it shouldn’t have been mine. Mom, how could you leave me to face all this alone?
Magnified eyes regarded solemnly from within their circular frames. Hands reached out hesitantly, then stopped. Like he wanted to offer comfort but didn’t know how. The bars across the windows continued to allow strips of sunlight in, a constant reminder of just how much this place resembled a prison.
“Tell me what?” I finally croaked, so quietly I could barely hear my own words.
“Your pa,” Nabila told me, “he made a deal with our demon. If he tries to walk out on the contract, he dies.”
Chapter Nine
Jim? Demon? Contract?
It wasn’t until my shoulders slammed into the wall with enough force to knock the breath from my chest that I realized I was backing up. A demon was holding Jim’s soul until he worked out his contract?
The most frightening thing was the fact that none of this sounded as crazy to me as it should have.
Jim had somehow gotten money for Mom’s funeral. He’d lost his soul in the middle of that same funeral. And he was scared.
A neatly wrapped nightmare.
We can see things others can’t, Ash, Mom had said. Always be careful. People either distrust what they don’t understand, or they try to use it. People who see the truth can be valuable weapons for those who’d hide it.
Was my weird talent the reason Jim had been so determined to bring me? But that didn’t make any sense. Mom’s talent was part of why he’d left us—and he had no idea I’d inherited her abilities.
A sickly sensation swirled through my middle.
“Geez, Freshy, you gonna puke?”
My gaze snapped up to find Nabila watching me. She sounded far too cheerful about the prospect of me losing my lunch all over the floor. I looked down. The carpet was such a sickly tone of warmish gray, there was a chance vomit wouldn’t even show.
“
Do you want a paper bag? I could fetch you one,” Oscar asked.
Maybe. I held up a finger and focused on breathing through my mouth—slowly. Letting my legs go, I slid to the floor. My butt landed on the ugly, thin carpet. More breathing, in and out.
It was a close call. But finally, I was able to whisper, “No.”
“Would you like me to help you up?”
Tilting my head up to look at Oscar, I let the back of my skull thunk into the ugly-assed wall. “No, thank you,” I told him in an oddly calm voice. “I’d like to sit here a minute longer.”
“Shall I get you water, Mistress?”
“Please, call me Ash,” I said somewhat desperately. If he called me by name, maybe things would feel more normal. “Why do you call everyone Mistress?”
Nabila snorted and plunked down on the floor next to me, pulling another pin from her hair and tracing patterns on her doll with it. “Because he’s a Feeder, Freshy. Feeders are at the bottom of the food chain.” I continued to stare at her as she idly poked at a black-marked eye. She must have realized I had no idea what she was talking about because she added, “They’re cattle. Demon food.”
“What?” I yelped. “They’re going to cook you?” Jumping to my feet, I faced the door as if expecting it to present inspiration. “We’ll call the cops and—”
“No! Freshy, sit down and shut up. I’m gonna tell you how it is this once—so I’ll never have to do it again.” Nabila heaved a sigh. Shoving herself off the floor, she went and perched on half the kitchen box.
I didn’t sit, but I did shut up and trail after her.
“Look, Oscar’s a Feeder cuz that’s what he was born. They’re families with demon heritage who were bred to provide food. They don’t cook them.” Nabila paused for dramatic effect, gazing at me from behind her poor, tortured rag doll. “They suck their energy. That’s what demons eat. Energy—that’s their life-force, Freshy. Feeders generate lots of it, but can’t use it themselves. A perfect match made in hell.” She said it like it should have been the most obvious thing in the world.
A pinpoint emerged from the doll’s chest.
“But… but…” I decided it was time to sit again and promptly slid back to the floor. Did I see life-force? Was that the colors my weird talent showed me? “But Jim isn’t a Feeder. What do they want with him?”
“Your pa? Who knows.” Nabila’s dark eyes rolled to the ceiling, then back to me. “He do anything special?”
I shook my head. “Not that I know of. Used to lose money at the slots. Took off on his wife and kid a decade ago without a second glance, if that counts as a talent,” I grumbled and immediately felt guilty. Raking fingers through short strands of hair, I watched dust mites waltz in the bands of light before me.
“Most don’t come back,” Oscar said quietly.
Guilt crawled a little higher up my throat.
Yeah, I was pissed at Jim—and rightly so. But he had come back. He’d tried to be there when we needed him. I could hate him for leaving, but not for making sure I wasn’t alone in the world. I studied Oscar for a moment, not needing to ask whether he spoke from experience.
“Oscar’s pa got husked when he was a baby,” Nabila said. “Only got his ma, an auntie, and a couple cousins now.”
It was official; I was in an evil, demonic Hogwarts, and I really wasn’t looking forward to meeting Bizarro-Dumbledore.
“Husked?” I asked warily.
“Drained,” Oscar explained in a low voice. “Sometimes, demons take too much, too often. Sometimes Feeders want them to.”
Disbelief shaped my mouth into a bell. “Suicide by demon?”
Magnified eyes shut and dropped to the floor. Oscar’s body seemed to pull in on itself, arms curling around his middle like a plant drying up in fast forward. It almost made me reconsider giving up hugging.
Nabila scoffed lightly, shrugged. “Mostly, they get hooked and can’t stop.”
“Having your life force sucked by a demon is addictive?” There was no way anyone would ever… Oh, for fuck’s sake.
They were screwing with me.
Mom always said I watched too many bad, supernatural movies—and surprise, surprise, she’d been right. I didn’t need my weird talent to work to see the writing on this wall—her “answers” were all one big, fat lie.
I pressed my palm into my forehead. “Hah hah, you got me. Good job, you fooled the newbie. I’m all new to Vegas and your lame, barred apartment buildings, and crazy drugs. Go mess with other people. I’ve got unpacking to do.”
“You think it’s pretend, Freshy?” The chuckle that emerged from Nabila would have better suited a hundred-year-old voodoo priestess. “You’ll see. Don’t expect me to hold your hand when you do.”
“I prefer my hands without pins stuck in them,” I retorted.
She grinned, revealing a slash of white teeth in the dull shadows of the hallway. “It’s not your hands you’ll have to worry about. Come on, Oscar, we’re leaving.”
“Okay, Nabila.” Pale eyes looked regretfully at me for a long moment. “Sorry. It was nice to meet you, Mist— Er, Ash.” He bobbed his head, slinking down the hallway and through the door after Nabila.
I was supremely grateful when he swung the door closed behind him.
Claiming the seat on the kitchen box, I dropped my head into my hands. “Great, Ash. You’ve just marked yourself as a massive tool.” I couldn’t believe I’d bought that ridiculous story of Feeders and demons and contracts. I mean, sure, Jim had a contract. Contracts were what adults signed when they borrowed money, rented apartments, and took jobs.
Whereas I had an overactive imagination and sleep deprivation.
Sucking in a lungful, I held it until the worst of the burning in my eyes subsided.
I wished Mom was here to laugh at me, then make me a cup of cocoa and tell me everything would be okay. I missed her so much it was a physical ache radiating through my bones.
Tomorrow, I’d start reading her journal, keep her close.
Tonight, I had to get us settled. At least a little.
Forcing myself to my feet, I surveyed my apartment for the next year. I think the appropriate term was ‘bare bones.’ Everything was tired and bland, like four-day-old oatmeal had been channeled for inspiration—a space made for crushing the spirit of everyone who dwelt here.
The beige tsunami made my artistic sensibilities queasy.
Fine. I cracked my knuckles outward, pretending I was a prizefighter about to take on the reigning champ. Calling it furnished was being more than generous, but whatever. I’d haul up the rest of our stuff and start making this place less soul-destroying.
Once that was done, I’d figure out how to dig myself out of the social pit I’d just fallen into, because I refused to have my months at the academy wasted by stupid bullies and dumb-assed pranks.
Oh, and I guessed I’d better deal with my father—I needed to know the real story about his new job.
Chapter Ten
“Jim, how can you working at a casino be a good thing? I might have been only seven years old when you left, but I’m not stupid.” I dropped the final box from the car in the middle of our living room-kitchen and faced my father, fists propped against my hips. Jim’s gambling had been the final straw in my parent’s fractured relationship. Ten years later, and I could still feel the pain of knowing my father had chosen a poker tournament over me.
Jim dropped his armful of boxes and garbage bags stuffed with clothing beside my pile and gave me what I assumed was his best effort at a sad-puppy face. “I’m sorry, Ash, but it’s a job. And I need the work. I’ve got to report for training.”
“What’s this casino, and what’re you doing there? It’d better not be running card tables.”
He sighed and reached for the branded jacket he’d dropped on the worn couch earlier. “I’ll do whatever I need to, Ash. Jobs are scarce. We need the money.”
A cold, hard lump formed in my stomach.
“I can’t bel
ieve you’re planning to leave me alone on our first night here,” I snapped. He’d left me once for his poker and “easy money,” nothing to stop him from doing it again. “Wait, on second thought, I can believe it. That’s exactly what you do.”
I faced the wall, unwilling to let him see the hurt I knew was written across my face. Or, even worse, the fear. I didn’t want to be alone in this sad, strange apartment tonight. But I’d stopped letting myself be afraid of being alone the day I’d realized Jim wasn’t coming home.
No more nightlights. And no father to chase the imaginary monsters away.
Now the monsters I feared were all too real.
“I’m sorry you feel that way, Ash. I’m not here to gamble—I’m done with that—I just want to provide for my little girl. I hope you’ll see that soon.” He sighed. “Stay in tonight, tomorrow we’ll finish getting everything set up. We’ll make this work, I promise.”
Fabric rustled. I pictured Jim slowly putting on his jacket, waiting for me to turn around and wave him off to his new job.
I didn’t move.
“I’ll see you in the morning, kiddo,” he said quietly.
There was another long pause, then his footsteps sounded along the hall, and I heard the front door close behind him, the security bolt sliding in with a dull thud.
My lip quivered.
It had been a long time since I’d had a father. I wished I knew what to do with him. The news kept telling me times were tough for finding work, so I guessed I should be grateful Jim had a job. Even if it was one I didn’t like and the word “contract” kept making me uneasy.
Knowing I wouldn’t be able to relax—and forget about sleeping—I set about attacking the pile of boxes and heavy-duty garbage bags that contained the sum total of our possessions. Hopefully, the work would drive out thoughts of contracts, unwanted neighbors and confusing fathers.
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