by Helen Scott
Her face displays a series of emotions, before landing on anger. "They'll kill you if you hurt me," she shrieks.
"You mean the laser pointers in the trees?" I ask. I'd noticed as I walked back toward the guys that there were red dots not just hitting them, but hitting the house and the sliding glass door as well. Anyone with any sense would realize that someone aiming a gun with a laser sight wouldn't accidentally aim at the house or window. My guess is that there are lines of laser pointers directed at about chest height and another set at about head height. So long as the butler put us in the right spot all it would take is the flip of a switch to make us think we were being targeted.
Anger morphs to outrage and I know in that moment that I'm right.
Before she can tear into me though I remind her, "Tick tock, Lady White. That gold is past your shoulder now. You can live without a voice or you can die. It's your choice."
"Fine, I'll give you my voice, but don't think this is over," she growls at me.
I've made an enemy out of a powerful woman, but she didn't appreciate the consequences of magic. Now I think she might a little more.
I turn to Crax, whose mouth is hanging open, and wave him forward, since he's the one holding the glowing white bottle. I clear my throat when he doesn't move, which snaps him out of whatever daze he'd fallen into. He takes a few strides toward Lady White, still eyeing the trees warily.
He carefully unstoppers the bottle and holds it in front of her mouth. "Now, sing."
Lady White is actually crying now, making what I had suspected was makeup earlier start to run down her face in big red, pink, and black streaks. A tiny part of my soul twinges at what is about to happen as she opens her mouth and starts singing. It’s beautiful, the opposite of what I'd normally think of when it came to banshees.
When she pauses, seemingly to cry a little more, Crax says, "Keep singing."
Finally, after she sang at least a full two minutes of Ave Maria, the bottle turns a deep purple color. Crax puts the stopper back on and I reach out and run my hand across the gold that coats her arm.
"It'll fade in a couple of hours and you'll be able to move again." I turn and walk away from her and leave the mansion through the same path I entered, not caring if the guys are behind me or not. When I reach the car I lean against the side and wait, knowing they'll probably scold me for my actions, but I don't give a shit. I didn't want my soul twisted and warped because of some magic that got all weird when it couldn't be claimed.
9
Alexis
None of them speak as we head home, except when they stop at my favorite Chinese place to ask for my order. I don’t hesitate to list off all my favorite things, and then I dare them with my eyes to say a damned thing about how much I ordered. Zard opens his mouth, then seems to notice my, “say it and die” look before hightailing it out of the car.
I tap my fingers against my thigh, my gaze darting all around. I could try to escape now, but then I bet these assholes would eat my food. Then I think of Lady White and decide maybe I’ll wait before bolting. I don’t want to be anyone’s property, but I also don’t want the deal’s magic to twist me. But if they ask me to do anything crazy, twisted soul or not, I’ll run for it.
Zard’s back in the car in no time and we’re zooming down the road before coming back to the strange crumbling place that seems to serve as some kind of shop as well as their current home. I try not to think about them growing up here as we climb out of the car. Down the road, trash cans burn in alleys. I know enough to know that homeless people are no doubt warming themselves by the fires. Women linger on the corners, cloaked in shadows, and my stomach gives a little twist. Compared to how I grew up, this was night and day.
I wanted to pretend that Rumple at least gave them the love I didn’t receive, but I’d met these guys. Good fathers didn’t raise men as broken as these three. It seems as if his reputation for cruelty wasn’t just in his professional life.
“Coming?” Zard asks, offering me his arm.
I lift a brow and walk past him.
Crax unlocks the door, cautious of the glowing bottle in his hands. We all enter, and he goes to the back case and types in a code. A gasp slips from my lips as a large, vault-like door swings open, and I can’t help but stare at the hundreds of glowing bottles that line the shelves, covering the walls in the massive room concealed behind the coded-door.
“Are those all voices?”
Crax flinches. “I wish.”
“What else are they?” I ask.
My words seem to fall into the silence. For a minute, none of them look at me, and I’m pretty damned sure that they don’t plan to answer.
But then, Crax begins to point to bottles. “This one is the ability to laugh, this one to cry, this one is her innocence, this one is his sanity.” His voice grows softer as he moves down the bottles. “This one… the ability to have a child. This one is his luck. And this one… ten years of his life. This one is thirty years of hers.”
I curse under my breath. “What the hell did these people want so badly to make these kinds of deals?”
Crax closes the door and locks it back up. “All kinds of different things. But I can tell you, I think nearly every person came to eventually regret their deals.”
“Then why do people keep coming back?”
“Because they’re greedy fools,” Hyde says, his words almost a growl.
Crax’s soft, golden eyes fall onto mine. “Or they were desperate. And unfortunately in this world, there are always people willing to take advantage of the desperate.”
“Amen,” Zard says, followed by a tired sigh.
Crax lifts a hand and sweeps it over the room. “Everything in this room was something Rumple traded for.”
“Some of these things don’t seem to have a lot of value,” I say, picking up a pretty little doll with red hair.
“Rumple was… an interesting man. Sometimes it wasn’t about the actual value of an item, it was the value of the item to the person.” Crax looks pained, like he’s staring at a room full of ghosts. “Which makes this place all the worse.”
I stare at him before setting the doll gently back down on the countertop, and I hate that something inside of me gentles. “You guys really don’t like this job, do you?”
“It’s like slitting your throat slowly,” Hyde says, and I hate how factual his words are.
Shit. Would I want to have these burdens on my shoulders? I shake myself. I will not feel sorry for these assholes. I will not!
“Let’s eat,” Zard says, lifting up the bags.
Crax nods and leads us back up the stairs. He hands out everything at the table and the guys go to the pristine white couches and sit down, flipping on some football on the TV.
I stand looking at all of them. “Are you sure we should eat on these couches? They seem so pretty.”
Hyde huffs, “Yeah, Rumple caught me eating a granola bar on one once and broke my eardrum.”
Crax stiffens. “I didn’t know that.”
“There’s a lot you fucking missed away at your little golden college.”
“I said I was sorry!”
“Sorry doesn’t cut it.” Rage flashes in Hyde’s eyes.
Tension sings between them, and I get the unexplainable feeling that so much hurt strings between all of these men, to the point that they’re ready to explode. It doesn’t seem to matter to them that the man who deserves their wrath is dead. They’re hurting, and they want to hurt someone else to make it better.
I move between them and set my bag on the coffee table. Opening my package of sweet and sour sauce, I decide to make the ultimate sacrifice, even though I don’t know why. I lift the cup over one of the white chairs. Suddenly, all eyes are on me. I turn it over and the bright orangish-red liquid spills onto the chair as their mouths curl into O’s of surprise.
When I flip it back and set the cup on the table, Crax stutters out, “Wh-Why did you do that?”
“Because Rumple
is dead.”
“We know that--” he continues.
“Do you?” I lift a brow. “Because it seems to me all of you are angry at him, but you’re taking it out on the only people left who will let you… which is each other. And that’s fucking sad.”
“You don’t understand anything,” Hyde grumbles, but the rage has vanished from his eyes. The poor guy just stares at the dripping sweet and sour sauce like he’s waiting for Rumple to emerge from the grave and beat him again.
Shit. That soft spot inside of me is growing.
I grab napkins from the bag and smear the sauce around, both cleaning it up and making it worse at the same time, while they stare in shock. And then I put the remainder of the napkins down and sit on them, reaching for the rest of my food.
“You’re incredible,” Crax says.
I freeze, clutching my plastic container of chicken. “Ah shucks, no need to flatter me. My ego is big enough.”
He shakes his head. “I mean it… the way you shut things down now. The way you handled Lady White.”
“No, Crax--” Hyde begins.
“We don’t want to own you, Alexis. I hope you know that. We’d planned to have you work the shop, but I think I have another deal for you.”
“I thought you couldn’t change deals,” I say.
“We can’t change them per say, but we can adjust them.”
“I’m listening.” I continue eating my chicken, trying to play it cool, even though my heart pounds.
“What if you helped us collect the remainder of our debts? The work is harder and definitely more dangerous, so we could change it so that instead of owning you forever, we only own you until the debts are collected.”
“We don’t need her,” Hyde snarls.
“Do we really want to be stuck with each other longer than we have to be?” Crax asks, his voice strangely tense.
Hyde stuffs a giant piece of beef into his mouth and seems to dismiss Crax.
“I for one am enjoying our brotherly time,” Zard says, flashing a smile. “But working with Alexis would be fine too.”
Crax looks at me. “What do you say?”
I choose my words with care. “So if I do this… if I make this deal… the magic won’t go crazy, and I’ll get my freedom?”
“Yes.”
For the first time in my life, I lift my hand to a Stiltskin brother. “Deal.”
Crax shakes my hand, and I’m shocked when a golden light explodes from our touch and dances around our hands for the longest moment before fading. And then I’m left touching him. Crax. He wasn’t the first man who’d ever kissed me, but he sure as hell was the first man who left me breathless. And as we stare at each other, time seems to melt away.
I remember him. I remember him so well.
I’d been eating at a diner outside of the crappy hotel I was staying in for one night before continuing my run from Sterling City. There hadn’t been anywhere else to sit, and he’d awkwardly asked me if he could sit with me. In those days, I didn’t trust much, but I trusted more than I do now. We’d settled into a conversation that felt so easy and comfortable, that my heart had fluttered. When he laughed, his laugh seemed to radiate through me. And when he told a story, I’d found myself lost in it.
How could I have known it was all a game to him?
I tug my hand away and focus on my food, trying to calm the racing of my heart.
“So we do debt collecting together tomorrow!” Zard exclaims.
“Oh joy,” Hyde mutters.
But I ignore them all. This wasn’t about our past. This wasn’t about their father. This was about earning my freedom, and I’d be damned if the soft spot I was developing for them turned into anything more than that.
10
Alexis
I’m still grinning to myself as I lay down to go to sleep over my stunt with the couch. They hadn't realized what a sacrifice I was making by dumping the sauce that I love so much, but when I stole food from each of them, I think they started to realize. I may or may not have heard a mutter of 'Where is she putting it all?'
Amateurs.
They might not have had love growing up but they had clearly never spent time without food, and it showed. My first year away from home had been an adjustment to say the least, and a lot of the time I hadn't been able to afford to eat. Now? I never missed an opportunity.
That being said, the amount of sodium I'd ingested earlier in the evening was alarming even for me. I can practically feel my body swelling with it. I need water. Stat.
My mind is twisting and turning everything I'd seen and heard since the brothers collected me anyway, so I know I'm not getting to sleep any time soon. I haul myself up, out of bed, feeling the puffiness in my fingers and toes as I start to move through the room. The t-shirt I had worn to bed is just long enough that it covers everything it needs to, so I don't worry about putting anything else on. It is the middle of the night and I'd heard the guys all go to bed, so I'm not worried about them seeing me.
I twist the handle of the door to my room as silently as possible, just to be on the safe side, and when the door swings open without a squeal or whine, I'm grateful. My feet pad down the stairs with less than a whisper on the carpet and I move into the kitchen like a ghost. Their kitchen is still a mystery to me so I go through each cabinet, cupboard, and drawer methodically as I look for some glasses or a mug or something.
Finally, I open a cupboard and on the top shelf are some glasses. They look fancy, and the fact that they are on the top shelf makes me pause, but I don't want to keep searching and risk waking one of them up. I push up onto the counter so I can reach the high shelf and snag a glass, setting it down carefully before I slide down the lower cabinets until my feet touch the floor.
A small light turns on and for a moment I'm worried that I've tripped some kind of alarm. When I spin and hear a throat clear at the same time I know that one of them has found me out, and probably just got a good view of my ass and the pair of panties I was wearing as I got down from the countertop.
Zard is standing there, leaning against the wall doing his best James Dean, or maybe he's just sleepy. "Nice ass," he says as he moves toward me. "Need help finding something?" He picks up the glass I'd just retrieved and put it back on the top shelf with ease, no climbing on countertops for him, before moving two cabinets over and retrieving a more normal-looking tumbler for me to drink from. He hands it to me and I take it, my fingers brushing against his as I do so.
He inhales sharply, and my eyes jerk to his where I see the lust fire in his eyes.
I clear my throat and back away and say, "I was just getting some water. No escape attempt. Don't worry."
"I know you won't try and escape, at least not yet, unless you have a better plan than what Crax came up with this evening," Zard says with a shrug as he pulls a glass out for himself. He moves to the fridge and pulls out their gallon jug of milk, pouring himself a tall glass that he takes a long pull from. When he's done he literally says "Ahh," which was something I thought was only in TV and movies. "Did you want some?" he asks, lifting the jug of milk in offering.
"No, I was just after some water," I say quietly, trying not to think about the fact that his bicep bulged when he lifted the milk toward me, or the fact that he wasn't wearing a shirt, and definitely not the fact that his pajama pants are so low slung it’s almost indecent. His Adam’s Apple bobs and I find my mouth even drier than it had been when I came downstairs.
"The good water is in the fridge. It's filtered and tastes way better than tap, trust me on this. I grew up on this stuff." He pulls the large acrylic pitcher from the fridge, the kind with the filter built-in, and pours some into my glass.
"Thanks," I mumble before picking it up and drinking half of it in one go.
"Thirsty?" He raises one eyebrow at me, clearly meaning for something more than just water.
"I think I just got what I needed," I say, trying not to squirm under his heated gaze.
"Ne
eded, maybe. But what about what you want? You're not as sly as you think, Alexis. We all see the way you look at us, and I'm sure you see the way we look at you. We're all adults. We can do business and have some fun on the side if that's what you want?" The longer he speaks the lower his voice drops until it's like a purr in my ear, while my whole body vibrates with desire.
"You want me?" The words slip from my mouth before my brain knows what I'm doing.
"Isn't it obvious?" Zard says as he nods downward. My eyes flick away from his, traveling down his body, taking in the peaks and valleys of the muscle that covers his form until it lands on the tent of his pajama pants. My heart kicks like an untamed horse, rearing up and kicking at my ribs until I almost take a step toward Zard. Almost.
It’s as though he senses it though because he takes a step toward me. His whole being invades my space and he’s not even that close. We wouldn't even have been chastised at a school dance. But he felt like he was touching me with that intense gaze of his. The liquid gold of his eyes seems to swirl the longer I look at him.
I know I should tell him to back up, to give me some space, hell, I should just take my water and go back to my room, but my mouth won't work. He has probably started to wonder if I'm an idiot because it's been so long since I said anything, but I feel like a war is going on in my body between my baser instincts, which are telling me to rub up on him like a cat in heat, and my brain, which is trying to remind me that, technically, he owns me and the power imbalance between us shouldn't be overlooked.
He takes another step closer and I can feel the heat radiating off his body and surrounding my own. It brings his scent with it, spicy and musky like some of the best men's cologne out there, but I'd be surprised if the way he smelled in that moment came in a bottle.
Zard's hand reaches out and his thumb smooths across my cheekbone as he continues to watch me. It moves from my cheek down across my lower lip and I can't help my reaction as my tongue darts out and swipes over the tip of his thumb.
