She motioned for me to drop my stuff on top.
Shrugging out of the straps, I slid both pack and guitar onto the polished glass. Given all the horrible people—and things—that already knew my name, I didn’t see the harm in telling her. “Ashley—Ash.”
“Well, hello, Ash. Do you want to get out of those wet clothes? If you don’t have anything in your bag, I’ve got some stuff you can borrow.”
“I’ve got stuff in here.” I patted my backpack. “Uh. What do I call you?”
She’d been in almost constant motion until I asked the question, now in the silence following, she was still. Hovering over the bar, she seemed to study the flowing colors within for a moment. It was hard to believe she was fascinated by colors she must have seen a million times before, so I guessed she was stalling.
After a long moment, she sighed and lifted her head to stare steadily at me. “I think it’s best if you call me Cat.”
“You want me to call you Cat, but it’s not your name?”
She shook her head in agreement. “It’s a long story, and not one I’m about to share at the moment, but my true name is something you’re better off not knowing for the moment.”
Of course, nobody wanted to tell me things when I wanted to hear them.
Throwing my hands into the air, I started marching towards the back. “Whatever. Fine.”
“Ash,” she drew my name out as if she wanted to chastise me but didn’t know how. Or maybe she wanted to chastise herself.
I decided I didn’t care. The past two years had been nothing but lies; whether they were claims that “everything will be fine” or “this is for the best” they were still less than the truth.
“Never mind,” I said bitterly, “no one wants to tell me the truth.”
“Will it help if I say it’s for your own good?”
“No.” I frowned at the black-clad back wall.
“Fair enough,” I could hear a tiny smile in her voice, though it was nowhere near her face when I risked a glance. Water dripped from my hair down the gap between shirt and neck and I shivered. Suddenly warmth and dry comfort were more important than fighting with some stranger who wanted me to call her Cat.
“Which door?” I asked, holding tight to a dry pair of jeans and a fresh t-shirt.
“First on the left, light is a bit funny so give it a minute to kick in.”
The story of my life had led me many places in seventeen years, now it was leading me to a demon club’s washroom.
Flipping the switch, I waited while a tired fluorescent bulb flickered reluctantly to life. Like everything else in Ground Zero, the room was a study in dark, dangerous tones accented by metal and glass.
It grated to admit I liked it. Quite a bit.
Changing quickly, I rolled my wet clothes into a ball and used some of the soft fabric hand towels neatly displayed in a bowl next to the sink to dry my face and hair. I did what I could to fix my makeup, which resulted in scrubbing most of it off. It made me look younger, more the age I was. I scowled at my reflection for a long moment before I walked back to the bar.
Cat was preparing two large mugs with hot liquid. Without warning, the scent of hot chocolate assaulted my memory.
The last time I’d had hot chocolate was six months ago. I’d arrived home from the library to find Mom in the kitchen with two mugs full of steaming chocolate and large fluffy marshmallows waiting for me. Rushing in, I’d given her a hug and taken a gulp, scalding my tongue. Then I’d noticed how pale she was. How her hands shook when they tried to lift the mug. And I’d known the results hadn’t been good.
“Ash?”
Shaking myself, I blinked away the memory along with the moisture in my eyes and focused on Cat. She was holding out a mug with a questioning expression on her unique face.
“Do you drink hot chocolate?”
Biting my lip against another rush from the past, I nodded.
“Okay,” she gave me an uncertain smile and plunked the red ceramic vessel on the bar top. “Why don’t you take a seat—and a minute—then I’ll tell you what I can. There are some pretzels, too, if you want them.”
I slowly eased onto a bar stool.
Picking a pretzel from the bowl she slid in my direction, I dunked it into the chocolate before taking a bite. Part of me worried whether she somehow knew this was my favorite snack, the rest was simply glad to be dry and fed.
While I munched, she reached under the counter and pulled out a large white plastic jar that proclaimed itself to be “protein powder” in bold letters. Popping it open, she began scooping it into her mug. By the time the third spoonful went into the mug, I’d forgotten about my snack and was staring at her with my mouth hanging open.
“Isn’t that dangerous?” I asked as the fourth spoonful began dissolving.
Cat glanced over her shoulder and offered me a lopsided grin. “I have a fast metabolism.” She shrugged, capped the jar and slid it back beneath the bar. “It’s weird, but it works.”
“That must taste like crap.”
“You have no idea.” She took a gulp, grimaced, and walked around to take a seat one stool down from mine. “Well…”
I waited.
She swirled the contents of her mug and took another gulp. The expression on her face made my stomach curl in sympathy—but not enough to stop me from shoving more pretzels into my mouth and following with a gulp of hot chocolate. At least mine tasted good.
“Well…” Cat repeated, her gaze darting between me and her mug.
Clearly, she wanted to put off telling me what had happened as long as possible. This time the ball in my stomach had nothing to do with disgusting drinks.
“It can’t be that bad—can it?” I burst out.
“Ah.” She coughed. “Erm, no, I suppose not. Not after what you’ve already seen.” Straightening, she placed her mug on the counter with military precision. The ball grew larger.
Did I want to know this? Probably not.
“If you don’t want to, you know, tell me… that’s okay.”
Her brows rose. “No, I don’t want to tell you. But unless I miss my guess, you just spent hours on a dark highway because you couldn’t cross a boundary. And you don’t know why. Clearly, someone needs to tell you. Do you have a preference?”
I considered my options: Jim, Nabila, and Oscar. Possibly Nash.
But I couldn’t go back to that apartment before I knew what was going on. And who knew when Jim would get home? I sighed. I could talk to Nabila and Oscar—I was supposed to have done that hours ago, before Jim’s lame note drove me to escape. But Cat was here and she’d helped me…
And for some stupid reason, hearing bad things was easier when it was an adult telling them.
“You.” I cleared my throat. “I’d like you to tell me. Please.”
“Alright, then.” Her chest inflated as she drew in a long, deep breath. Letting it out, she held my gaze. “You can’t cross the city limit because you have a contract binding you to Las Vegas. You can’t leave Vegas until it’s up—or until the demon holding that contract moves somewhere else.”
Chapter Fourteen
What! I was bound to Las Vegas?
Hot chocolate threatened to choke me.
Coughing it back into the mug, I gaped at Cat like a fish that had just been dragged onto the lakeshore. The dark walls of Ground Zero pushed in on me, compressing already stressed lungs. Cat’s expression was unreadable in the blue and purple shadows of the room.
She must be wrong—mistaken. Or she was lying. She had to be.
I didn’t have a contract binding me; that was Jim.
The mug was taken from my frozen fingers and placed carefully on the bar top beside me. With nothing left to hold them steady, my fingers started to tremble. Pulling my hands into a tight ball in my lap, I studied the woman across from me.
She sat quietly upon the stool, still in the manner of a cat patiently waiting for a mouse to run into its mouth. The comparison made me shiver
, and made me remember she wasn’t human. I’d met more people with the power to scare me in one week than I had in all the rest of my fifteen years combined.
“You’re wrong,” I finally managed. “You can’t know that. You don’t know anything about me.”
“Oh?” One dark brow rose in an elegant arch. “I know you were propped against an invisible barrier that only stops you; and that if any of the drivers tonight had enough awareness to fill a teacup they’d have noticed and driven straight off the road.”
I gulped. “That doesn’t mean I have a contract. I can’t have a contract,” my voice rose, desperation threading it with high, crackling tone. “Jim sold his soul, not me.”
“Uh-huh.” Cat sounded like my old music teacher did when they waited for me to work my way around to the point of the lesson. Only I didn’t want this lesson. I didn’t want any of this.
My arms crept around my body. “I don’t understand.”
She blew out a breath and leaned forward, propping her elbows on her legs so she could look me in the eye. I realized her eyes were a deep, deep purple. I’d never seen anything like it in real life. It was a fantasy color. Something Manga and fake contacts tried to emulate—and failed to match. “The demon world is rather old-fashioned, Ash. Children are regarded as minors until they reach majority at twenty-two.”
“I-I still don’t understand.” I felt like I was back out in the rain, freezing and alone in the dark. “I’ve got six months. I’ll be an adult in six months.”
“Not in the demon world,” she said.
“I… I don’t understand.”
“Minors don’t have legal say over themselves—they have guardians.” Cat paused, clearly expecting me to grasp the point.
I stared at her. My head was willfully thick; it didn’t want to figure this out.
“Oh jeez,” she muttered. “Is this Jim your father?”
“Yes…”
“By blood?”
“Yes…” My voice had gone so small it was barely audible.
“Then according to demon law he’s your guardian.”
“Wha— what are you saying?”
“He sold himself, yeah? Then you’re part of the deal.” Cat slid from the seat and rolled her body in a fluid motion, like she wanted to shake the statement away.
Each word slowly penetrated my thick skull.
Contract. Jim. Guardian.
I’d had to go to the apartment with him. I had to go to the school. I couldn’t leave Vegas because I was part of the deal.
“Oh, God. No.” I gasped.
My body lost its purchase on the stool and would have crashed to the floor if Cat hadn’t caught me.
She lowered my shaking form to the floor while I struggled to breathe.
No, no, no. How could Jim do this? Did he hate me? I wanted to jump to my feet. To shout and wail. To fight something. Anything. But my body was as numb as my soul. And my soul wasn’t even mine anymore.
I slumped over in a defeated heap.
Barely able to breathe, I stared blindly at the floor.
There was dust under the bar. And a lost earring with a sparkling black stone watching me from beside a table leg, I noticed in a strangely detached manner. I knew I should be full of rage. Full of anger and spite. Yet all I could feel was cold.
When people looked at me would they see the gray, like I had with Jim?
“Am I soulless?” I whispered.
“Oh, kid. No. You’re not soulless. Or a monster. You’re just caught in a deal that should have had nothing to do with you.” The hand rubbing my back was gentle, but for the first time the voice belonging to it crackled with repressed emotion.
Was Cat mad for me? The thought gave me enough strength to ask, “Is this what happened to you?”
Her hand paused. “In a way.”
“Oh.” I considered that for a moment. “Am I going to become what you are?”
“No.”
I flinched at the ferocious bite in that single word. Still, her intensity was bizarrely reassuring. Cat sounded very certain. Which was good. I liked her more than anyone I’d met in Vegas so far, but that didn’t mean I wanted to be her.
The question clawing my insides pushed through my throat, “What happens to me?”
Cat gently pushed me upright and handed me a bar napkin. Lips quivering, I took the black paper square and pressed it to my face. “I don’t usually cry all the time,” I told her through it.
“You seem like a tough kid.” I peeked over the top of the napkin to see if she was messing with me. Her lips quirked upward, as if she knew exactly what I was thinking. “I mean it. You’ll get through this. ”
“How?” My mouth formed the word, but no sound reached my ears.
“However you need to.” Her purple eyes caught the light illuminating the bar, giving them an unusual glow.
Scrunching the napkin into a ball, I sat forward. “My dad, who I barely know, sold my soul. I live in a horrible prison that pretends to be an apartment. I go to school with creatures who treat some people like food. It’s awful. They call them Feeders. And the teachers are evil. Really evil. How can I win against that?”
“Win?” She gave a single, soft laugh. “Winning depends on your point of view.”
“My point of view is not being here,” I snapped.
“Then it needs to change. You can’t fight every war with the same strategy, Ash.” She waited until I met her gaze before continuing. “Victory changes with each battle. We can’t only fight when we think we’ll win. Especially when we don’t understand the prize. As some famous person once said: we fight the fights that need fighting.”
“How?” My hands flailed outwards in exasperation. “How do I fight head-spinning monsters and evil wardens? I don’t have super strength or crazy precision with a wooden stake.”
Cat poked a finger into my chest, right above my heart. “You define the war. You define what victory means.”
I glared at her. “That’s so not helpful. Who do you think you are, the demonic Yoda?”
Another soft, bitter laugh huffed from her. “Nope. Just someone who’s played this game for a while and still isn’t dead.” She flowed to her feet and held out both hands to help me up. “Use what you already have, Ash. You’ll see.”
Chapter Fifteen
The Milton loomed before me, an unwanted break in the brightly-dressed night that was Paradise, Las Vegas.
I was back.
I scowled at the building as every step drew me closer to its entrance. I didn’t want to be back. But I was part of Jim’s deal. And Cat had told me I had a choice: I could wait until the demon who held the contract sent people to find me and drag me back, or I could march back on my own, head held high.
Given the option, I’d picked the path of pride.
I tried to hold defiant lyrics in my head.
Music was my weapon, my protection against the misery. I would go back and stay with Jim because right now, I was next to powerless. Soon I’d find a way to change that. For now, I’d to toe the line.
Go to class.
Do my homework.
And hide my rebellion until it was too late for them to stop me.
Notes of power and strength and steel churned in my mind. Gave me the will to put one foot in front of the other and make my way into the dark entrance yawning like the mouth of a Halloween horror house.
I walked straight through the courtyard, not giving in to the urge to look to the sides and see whether Myrtle was savoring my return. Part of me hoped so. I was taking a hunt from her—a small victory.
Cat said I needed to savor those wins. So I would.
Pulling one of the most vindictive songs I knew to mind, I began to sing aloud as my feet hit the flat cement slats traveling from the courtyard to the second floor. Letting a tale of revenge take flight from my lips. The beat was a hollow ring of boots against cement. I added to it, beating palms and elbows against the metal railing. So what if it was the middle of
the night? Let everyone in this depressed enclave hear Ashley Alcantara was changing the war.
I banged on doors and stomped my feet all the way to the door of two-eleven.
The door was ajar.
That didn’t concern me—I hadn’t bothered to lock it. Couldn’t remember if I’d even shut it. Shrugging, I shoved it open and reached for the light switch.
Hands reached from the dark and yanked me deeper inside.
I fought my unseen attacker, trying to claw and kick, but my arms were pinned. I couldn’t get a good angle. The door slammed behind me. Everything was black. Strong arms pushed me against the wall, holding me. Terror closed my throat, destroying any hope of screaming.
Rustling sounded. Something scraped against the wall. I tried kicking out, but only found air. Rapid breath echoed. There was more than one assailant.
My heart plummeted to my feet.
Oh God. There’d be no changing the fight or escape, because I was going to die in this hallway.
I’m sorry, Mom. I’m not making it to LA.
Screwing up my eyes, I turned away, cheek pressing against the cold hallway wall. “Go ahead. Get it over with.”
“Ash?” My assailant asked, surprise coating his words.
I knew that voice. My heart peeked out from the edge of my boot.
“Oscar?” I gasped.
“I did not think it was you. Many apologies, Mistress.” The arms pinning me to the wall abruptly released. I slid to the floor on rubbery legs. My heart was still trying to determine whether or not it was safe to start beating again. So was I.
“What are you doing?” I forced the question out, wincing at its crackling, high pitched tone.
“Nabila, this is not the father. It’s Ash.” I didn’t need to see Oscar to imagine the recrimination on his face. “We feared the worst when you were not here for our meeting. The door was open. The father had left a note…”
Rock and Ruin Page 12
