But I couldn’t help thinking the stranger outside had been right—I should have taken his hand and run away from this place.
Hours later, I propped my fists on my hips and proudly surveyed the results of my labor.
The bland walls and carpets were still awful, but at least the couch was now cleverly concealed in a brightly patterned spread of royal blue and lime green. A woven rug of rainbow strands adorned the large patch of carpet between couch and wall, with just enough space for the old tube television to remain perched above the two milk crates and wooden board that served as an entertainment stand. Music posters were proudly displayed and barred windows were bordered with bright scarves.
Knock. Knock.
My head snapped up. I glared at the door. I didn’t want to talk to whoever was on the other side. Maybe if I was quiet they’d go away…
Knock!
“I have keys to every room,” the Bulldog informed me through the gray-painted plywood.
“I bet you do.” Grumbling, I walked the short distance from the living room to the front door. Cracking it open, I peered through only to jerk my head back as a meaty palm shoved the door open. The wooden panel slammed into the wall with enough force to shake bits of plaster loose from the ceiling.
Myrtle’s beady eyes glittered at me from the growing darkness outside.
A smile creased her thick features, sending chills of warning through me. “Your father forgot to bring this with him.” A heavy hand lifted a hanger with plastic-wrapped clothing into view. Lines of black and red assaulted my vision.
My eyes widened. “What the hell is that?”
“Your school uniform,” Myrtle informed me, clearly taking a moment to savor my astonishment. “I understand you’ve been told that all our young adult residents attend Saint Damon’s Academy for the Gifted.” She dangled the garments before me, letting me take in the black suit with a purple and red crest over the right breast pocket, a black button-down shirt and a knee-length plaid skirt, black with red and purple stripes.
“It’s plaid,” I finally managed.
“It’s the Saint Damon’s uniform. You’ll be expected to wear it when you start attending tomorrow.”
“This was not in the brochure,” I said. “It didn’t say anything about uniforms—”
“All students wear it. You’ll wear it, and you’ll like it.”
“No,” I stated flatly. No college credits were worth this. There was no way I was wearing some dark anime costume to school.
Her gaze glimmered with greater glee. “By all means, don’t wear it. It will be good for you to suffer the consequences. Please. Suit yourself.” Lips pulled wide into a malevolent smile that could have graced Moby Dick. “I’m sure your father will appreciate a citation so early in his contract.”
What did she mean citation?
It was like she’d be watching Jim and me, ready to pounce when we broke one of the unwritten rules that seemed to run this place. Glaring into the black, beady eyes of the Bulldog, I decided there was no way I’d give her the satisfaction of asking what her citations were about.
I returned my gaze to the clothing.
It was a horrid, twisted Catholic-themed mess, and it looked like I was going to have to take it—and wear it. If I didn’t, I’d give Myrtle some sort of weapon to use against Jim. As much as I was mad at him, I didn’t want to make things worse. I swallowed hard and prayed my face wasn’t betraying my serious displeasure. Or my worry.
“Whatever,” I coughed the word out and snatched the hateful clothing from her grasp. “It’s fine.”
“Bus leaves at seven in the morning—sharp. Be ready.” She was practically salivating, waiting for me to give her an excuse.
I silently called up song lyrics, letting them play through my mind as I met Myrtle’s gaze. Folding the garments over my arm, I forced a smile to my lips and straightened my shoulders.
“How great, it’s just my size,” I told Myrtle sweetly.
And closed the door in her face.
Fuck. Nothing here was as advertised—chances were increasingly likely I wouldn’t find a fancy academy at the end of tomorrow’s bus ride, just a corner store or a souvenir-making sweatshop.
Throwing the nightmare uniform onto the couch, I reached for my guitar, what felt like the one solid thing in my whole world. At the first strike of notes the burning in my middle subsided. Music always worked that way for me, balm for my soul. Space within which I could create anything—be anything. At this moment, I could even feel a little closer to my mother.
Mom had loved country music, so tonight I’d play for her.
Strumming my guitar, I gave voice to Carrie Underwood’s country ballad, changing words at will to suit my mood. My moment.
Tapping my heel, I willed the sound to carry past the gray apartment door. To echo across the barren courtyard.
The music let me breathe. Music always let me breathe. I imagined it sending tremors through desert sand resting in the dry courtyard pool, crashing through Myrtle’s carefully-ordered beige world. If the Bulldog wanted to keep me here, box me in with her rules and beady eyes, then she’d have to deal with everything that went with me.
It was a petty rebellion, but I’d take what I could get.
And suddenly, the apartment wasn’t big enough.
Nowhere near big enough for my rage, for my pain, for my sound.
I didn’t just want my music to echo in velvet strains through that courtyard, I needed to fill it. To drown that dead space in something full of color and life, to show Myrtle all the citations in the world wouldn’t stop me. I wanted my music to be so big, no one could escape it. So powerful it drove deep into the earth below The Milton, shooting through the foundation and making the building quake with the force of my will.
I didn’t stop to think, I let the music carry me along that dingy, desolate walkway, down to the open courtyard. Taking a seat by the entrance, my back resting against the dead tree in the corner, I played.
I played for all I was worth.
Fingers working across the strings, I lifted my voice to the sky. Notes echoed from the guitar in my hands, resonating in the depths of my throat and forming a symphony I’d never heard before. It was melodious and discordant at the same time. It stabbed, it wept, it bled, and it cradled me close.
Somehow, I felt as if I was singing a song of the past, present, and future of this broken space. Twining them all together with the strings on my guitar.
I was drowning in the power of my song, but I had no desire to come up for air.
Until I saw him.
The guy from the streetlamp appeared out of nowhere, fingers curling on the outside of the fence. The one I’d become certain was meant to keep all of us in, rather than keep him out. Up close, he was even hotter, with high cheekbones, a square jaw, and wide, kissable lips.
Those extraordinary blue eyes of his were wide, his pupils dilated.
Staring at him, my fingers gradually slowed. When I stopped playing, I watched him shake his head, as if breaking whatever spell had held him.
Surely, it couldn’t have been my music?
His eyes focused on me and I waited for him to speak, but he didn’t say anything. So I didn’t either.
Finally, after the silence became heavy and awkward, he said, “You’re new.”
“Yeah.”
He fixed me with a hard glare from those surreal eyes. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
“Everyone else was. Guess you were late to the party.” Too bad he was probably a Scary Thing or another prank-loving weirdo. His cologne was one-hundred percent all American beefcake fuckboy and I found it irresistible, a heady mix of jock and poet that left my knees weak and my heart fluttering.
I didn’t usually like guys who wore that kind of cologne, but he was clearly an exception.
“You play like no one I’ve ever heard before,” he said.
My face heated into what I knew was a fire-engine-red blush. Dammit. I hated
blushing. “I do okay.”
“No, it was… it was like magic.”
“If only.” Offering a lopsided smile, I closed half of the distance between us. “But I guess music is one of those things that has power over us, you know? It can say all the things we can’t. It can soothe hurts we didn’t know still ached.”
“It can tear open scars and leave you bleeding,” he added.
“Yes, it can,” I whispered. “What’s your name?”
“Lucas. You?”
“Ash.”
I reached the fence, resting my hands close to his—so close we almost touched. I imagined taking his hand now, asking him to get me out of this building, to take me away from this awful place.
Knowing my luck, I’d end up somewhere worse. But somehow, standing near him, I felt safer than I had in days.
“You tried to warn me about this place, Lucas,” I asked quietly. “Why?”
“I…I didn’t warn you,” he stammered, those awesome eyes searching the space behind me as if expecting an audience—or an attack. “I just…I just wanted to know your name.”
I gave a tiny shake of my head. “Liar.”
His whole body jerked in obvious surprise. “No. What? You can’t possibly—”
“I know what I saw,” I said, not bothering to add I’d felt his lie. “But literally everyone in here has tried to fuck with me, so I guess I appreciate the effort even if you aren’t going to explain it.”
“Guess I appreciate that appreciation.” He flashed a grin.
Pure, unadulterated lust shot through my veins. Holy shit, the guy had a smile that could light up the Milton—which was really saying something. Anyone with a shred of decency would warn people off this place.
He backed away from the fence. “I gotta go. Maybe I’ll see you around, Ash.”
“Yeah, maybe.” I shrugged, desperately trying to appear uninterested.
What the hell was he doing, sneaking around the outside of The Milton so late at night? Despite his lie, my weird sixth sense didn’t show any red energy or scary gray auras around him. Still, that didn’t mean he wasn’t a regular, human burger casing the joint. Logically I should tell someone about dudes creeping around outside the gate, but at this exact moment, I figured anything that was bad for The Milton had to be good for me.
I watched Lucas walk away, and I knew, without a doubt, I would see him again.
Chapter Eleven
That morning I jerked awake, sitting straight up from a dead sleep, my old couch pillow clutched to my chest and a scream trapped in my throat. Holding onto the pillow, I desperately tried to make sense of the panic racing through my body. I must have passed out on the couch after returning to my apartment last night.
A quick glance confirmed the apartment was exactly as I’d left it, and despite the terrible feeling in my chest, I wasn’t bleeding. So I’d had a nightmare, a freaking grand mal nightmare.
Holy shit, what had I just dreamed?
Fractured pictures swirled through my head, flashing from one red-hued scene of faceless misery to the next with dizzying speed. Only, there’d been more than that. There’d been a man, holding me, kissing me…
A man with crazy blue eyes and a killer smile.
Lucas. I’d dreamt about Lucas.
I’d held his face in my hands, his body against mine. I’d wanted more. Demanded more. Pleasure had rocked me to my toes. But then, things changed… I tried to catch hold of the pieces of my dream, but the thoughts seemed to evaporate at my touch. Leaving me with nothing but an aching pain over my heart.
Well, that boded poorly.
I’d known Lucas for less than a day, and he’d already taken a starring role in a freaky pleasure-pain dream.
Yay me.
Trying to stretch out the kinks, I hurried to get ready for my first day of school. Maybe this was when things got better, when Vegas stopped sucking and started being awesome? I did my best to bolster my spirits while I spiked my hair and donned my ridiculous Saint Damon’s uniform.
I needn’t have bothered with positive thinking.
The rest of the morning took its cue from my dream, making a fully rounded shit sandwich.
It began sliding downhill when Nabila greeted me with a lazy, supervillain-worthy grin while we waited out front of The Milton for the academy bus. She was probably still gloating over yesterday and my epic display of gullible—the bitch.
“So, did your Pa get a citation?” she asked.
“For what?” I asked, confused.
From his position slightly behind Nabila, Oscar looked down and shuffled his feet. “Not here, Nabila.”
“Yes, here,” Nabila said. “I need to know.”
“Mistress can hear you…”
“She could damn sure hear Freshy last night, couldn’t she?” Nabila’s grin widened and my stomach sank, twisting inward on itself. “Everyone heard her.”
That had been what I wanted, hadn’t it? To rock the foundations of the building and make them pay. But in my rage and desperation, I’d forgotten that every bit of my rebellion could be used against Jim.
Still. That wasn’t my problem, was it?
For the next six months, I was supposed to be the kid in this situation. That’s why I was stuck with Jim in the first place and not setting out on my own. Of course, things never worked out that way. I didn’t get taken care of—I took care. As unfair as it was, that’s just the hand I’d been dealt. I didn’t get to be a kid.
Which meant I was responsible for Jim. “Sorry,” I mumbled. “I didn’t mean to be so loud.”
“Liar,” Nabila said.
She was right. I had meant it—every single note. I just hadn’t meant for those notes to strike Jim—it wasn’t him I wanted to hurt. “Fine. Whatever. I did it.” I lifted my chin. What was done was done. There was no point regretting it now. “The place needed some entertainment. I played some music. Big deal.”
And I’d needed to make a point.
“I can’t believe you didn’t hear her,” Oscar said in a low voice.
As we piled on the bus, he whispered into my ear, “She was screaming in pain.”
I snorted. “Please. My singing isn’t bad.”
Nabila grinned again and took another pin out of her hair and stabbed it into a tiny doll dangling from her keychain. “I’d say you had balls, but it’s obvious you didn’t know what it would do to her.”
Whatever, they weren’t tricking me again with their demon bullshit.
But... if Myrtle was really pissed, then who knew what she’d do to Jim.
Pulling out my phone, I stared at the screen. I should probably call, see if he was okay. Then I got mad all over again—why did I have to call him, the father who didn’t come home last night as promised. He was probably playing slots and forgetting he had a daughter.
Instead, I pocketed my phone and sat back in my seat, waiting for whatever was next on this morning’s shitcoaster of doom.
I wasn’t to be disappointed.
Saint Damon’s Academy for the gifted was everything I never knew I didn’t want.
It was worse than turning up naked in the middle of a school play.
Because apparently, I’d be studying in what had to be the most depressing, most gothic church ever constructed in the American Midwest.
The structure screamed “we gave up on God because of dead people in the basement.” Spikes of iron laced the pointed rooftops, black soot bled down every hunk of stone, and stone gargoyles leered from every corner. It looked like the original church-goers had built it, realized they’d accidentally created a portal to hell, and then tried to use it as a jail.
And, when that failed, some enterprising asshole went and made it a school.
Panning the desolate stretch of pavement running between road and building—oh joy, a paved exercise yard to complete the jailhouse look—I reluctantly stepped off the school bus. Gathered before the doors of the reclaimed church was a mixture of students all dressed in the s
ame uniform as me—black, with purple and red plaid. The youngest student appeared to be about my age, seventeen, which the oldest looked to be pushing twenty-two, maybe even twenty-three. Surrounding students, building and pavement was a high metal fence with two rows of curving spikes along the top.
This time I had no doubt it was to keep people in, if people was the right word.
The whole thing reminded me of People Are Strange by the Doors. That was exactly the vibe I picked up here.
Different packs milled around the grounds, marked by movement and hairstyle rather than clothing. The two beings I did know abandoned me to fend for myself, but that wasn’t unexpected. They’d already fucked with me, so why stay? Oscar slunk off to join a group, all of whom seemed intent on avoiding attention and remaining in the shadows. While Nabila marched off to join a group of girls who had pouches and strange beads that might have been bones hanging from necks and belts. They seemed focused on mouthing words at each other.
I wondered if I’d see Lucas.
Correction, I hoped I’d see him, but part of me knew that was in vain—I somehow doubted he was St. Damon’s material.
Cutting a slice through the middle of the gathering was a group of students who moved like alley cats.
A mix of girls and guys of all ages, they had angular features and hard gazes. Their quick, almost feral motions involved heads twitching and bodies shifting in a manner I’d label predatory. Their eyes moved, as if searching the crowd for an opportunity to strike, preparing to cut the weakest out of the herd simply for sport. I didn’t need Nabila to tell me that messing with those students would be a seriously bad call.
The rest, so far as I could tell, were oddballs—just like me.
I’d lived in enough rough areas to know that the tiniest hint of insecurity was a recipe for disaster—especially on the first day. No new school, no matter how prestigious, could stop the torture of newbies.
Freshies, Nabila would call them.
They’d already gotten one over on me, I wouldn’t give them any more.
Squaring my shoulders, I pasted a tough expression on my face and marched into the center of the cement patch. Thank goodness I’d found the time to spike my hair, line my eyes heavily with black and paint my lips in crimson. This academy could force me into their lame uniforms, but I’d still be me.
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