by Sylvia Frost
“Must have been a mistake.” Cynthia’s heart pounded so loudly, she was afraid Lucille would hear it and know. “My name’s not exactly rare.”
“I thought so too. Since I had expressly told you not to go the party. And, since I’m being so generous letting you stay here rent free, I assumed you wouldn’t be stupid enough to make me angry. Again.” Lucille’s voice was getting higher and higher.
“Right,” Cynthia said. That was all she could manage. She pressed her ankle against the cool bronze leg of the bed frame.
“Except…” Lucille rotated herself on the bed, so even though they were sitting side by side, she was able to look her right in the eye. Well, she would’ve been able to if Cynthia wasn’t staring intensely at the carpet. “When I knocked on your door half an hour ago, you weren’t here.”
“I took a walk.”
“Why?”
“To clear my head?” Cynthia said, hiding her improvisation in sarcasm.
Lucille’s small eyes narrowed. “Where?”
“Central Park.” Cynthia’s pulse slowed as, by some miracle, her lies began to dovetail with the truth. She put her palms behind her and leaned back onto the bed.
“Then what’s this?” Lucille bent over and snatched something from the floor.
When Cynthia saw what it was, her palm slipped on the bed cover and she almost fell down.
The mask. She must’ve dropped it in her haste to clean up.
Lucille turned over the wolf’s mask in her hand, and it sparkled as if a noonday sunbeam had it instead of the warm, dim lights from Cynthia’s hanging lamps. Lucille handled it with just as much care as Cynthia had, maybe more.
Her stepmother might be a lot of things, but she never lost her inner wonder for the world of wealth she had stumbled into. She’d never have guessed that this was a stolen prop from the ballet and not a custom-made mask from the Fantas-whatever. Because there really was little difference between the two, except for price.
Cynthia almost felt sorry for Lucille in that moment. She had one of the swankiest apartments in Manhattan and enough money to buy her way into the right charities and country clubs, but in some ways, she’d always be an outsider. She’d always think it was the money that mattered most.
It wasn’t the money that mattered. It was what you did to earn it. Every coin, every diamond, every piece of property… it wasn’t what made them get up in the morning. No, it was the desire to build something. To change the world. To be somebody.
Lucille set the mask down. Her hands were shaking. “This was supposed to be Christine’s. And you stole it and snuck into the party. She wasn’t there at all.”
“No,” Cynthia said, her throat closing up. It hurt to swallow. It shouldn’t have. How many times had Lucille thought the worst of her in the past two years that she had been living at home?
“Just like you stole Reagan’s boyfriend.”
“He wasn’t her boyfriend. They had only met that night—”
“I’ve heard enough, Cynthia.” Lucille held up a hand. Her blood-red nails were the only thing Lucille still liked do for herself. “You are an adult now. You need to start acting like one. Clearly, that can’t happen under my roof.”
“What?” Cynthia rasped. “You can’t kick me out. This is my house.”
Lucille’s smile was almost sad. “It’s really not, honey.”
Cynthia stood up from the bed so quickly the springs whined in protest. She glared at the mask, wishing she could put it under feet and grind it into a powder. “The only reason it’s not is because you stole it.”
Lucille’s eyes narrowed and her hand dropped. “Oh, I stole it now. Tell me how your father leaving it to me in his will is stealing?”
“Because I’m his daughter.” Cynthia slammed her chest with her hand, enjoying the percussive feel on her skin. “He wanted me to go to Pratt for fashion design. He wanted me to be something great. He never would’ve wanted me to be homeless.”
“I know,” Lucille said, shaking her head, even as her eyes never left Cynthia’s. “Think of how disappointed he’d be at how you’ve turned out. A slut with a company slowly going bankrupt, living in her stepmother’s basement, stealing from her stepdaughters because she’s too proud to work like a normal person or, heaven forbid, date like a normal person.”
“Fuck you.”
“Cynthia,” Lucille hissed.
“Fuck…” Cynthia gathered spit in her cheeks and then expelled it out of her mouth, hurling right toward her stepmother’s pathetic face. “…you.”
Lucille didn’t move, only let the spit trickle down her cheek. Her eyes were closed, and the line of her shoulders underneath her oversized red robe was dead straight. Cynthia realized why the robe was familiar now. It used to be her father’s.
That fact should’ve made her angrier, but instead, it made Cynthia stumble backward into the chair. If she had forgotten how much every single one of her bones ached, landing reminded her
With the back of her hand, Lucille wiped away the spit from her face and opened her eyes. They weren’t angry anymore, or if they were, it was such a cold, quiet kind of fury that Cynthia was more afraid than if Lucille had been screaming.
“You have no idea, you spoiled little bitch, what your father wanted.”
Cynthia opened her mouth, but she didn’t have words. She wished she had just left when Lucille told her to.
“Ever since he died, I’ve seen the way you look at me. Like I don’t deserve to still be here. Like I put cyanide in his coffee and rewrote the will myself.” Lucille pressed her red-nailed fingers to her temple, as if she was finally acknowledging a decade-old migraine. “The fit you threw when I pulled you out of Pratt…” She shook her head.
“You took the money that was supposed to be in my college fund and used it for yourself.”
“Your college fund money?” Lucille laughed, and it sounded a lot like the wind through the November trees when there weren’t any leaves left to blow down. “Oh honey, there was no money left for your college fund.”
“What?”
“Your father was up to his eyeballs in debt when he died. Do you think I went around selling everything because I wanted to?”
“No.”
“Yes, you did.” Lucille’s eyes narrowed.
Cynthia crossed her arms. “Then why are we still here? How can you afford the cooks or the clothes—let alone this house?”
“Because I worked smart,” Lucille said, her voice gravelly, but also sounding somehow twenty years younger. “I got in contact with all the best investors and learned how to manage what we had to pay off what we didn’t. His cellar was worth a pretty penny too.” Even with her dyed-blonde hair limp around her face she looked tough. “I got shit done, Cynthia.”
It was almost a romantic story, Cynthia thought. Except it was a total lie. There was no way her father had been in debt. Even if he were, Lucille wouldn’t have hidden it from her for the past ten years. Lucille didn’t care about her that much. Right?
“I’ve been tough on you,” Lucille said, “because I don’t want you to end up like him. Working yourself to death for some business that is going nowhere but down. Sleeping with anything dumber, prettier, and poorer than you.”
“Dad never—”
“Oh please, honey, wake up. Your dad was millionaire more than a hundred times over the moment his father died. I’m an ex-hairdresser from Jersey. Of course he slept around. That’s what rich men do.”
Cynthia wanted to throw up. In fact, she was pretty sure she was going to. Her stomach roiled and churned. The room spun. She couldn’t even feel her ankle anymore, although if she tried to move it, it pinged with pain. It made a sick kind of sense. She knew her father hadn’t been doing well before he died, but they had always had so much. ‘Not well’ usually just meant a pony instead of a thoroughbred for her birthday.
She closed her eyes. For some reason, she was brought back to that stupid ballet recital again. She was wearing her
pink tutu, and the stage lights had been so hot that it had made her heavy makeup run. But she hadn’t been able to stop smiling, even though she had just lost her front tooth.
Until the bows came. She had looked out in the audience and couldn’t find her dad. Instead, there had been his young, pretty girlfriend with a funny accent and bad manners. But Cynthia had loved her anyway. Because she had been there.
“But I’m tired, Cynthia, I really am. I don’t know what else to do to get through to you. To get you to quit your stupid company and get a real job. I thought if I let you stay here, I’d at least be able to help. “
Opening her eyes, Cynthia regarded Lucille. She expected her to be crying. Although, she wasn’t sure why. She had never seen her cry before. For a long time, Cynthia had thought that was because Lucille didn’t have a heart. But maybe it was something else.
Maybe it was because Lucille had spent her whole life trying to be her father’s perfect socialite wife, to be anybody he would love instead of trying to be somebody who could love herself. Maybe if Lucille had been in charge of her dad’s finances before he died, there would’ve been some money left over. Maybe he wouldn’t have worked himself to death trying to save the unsaveble. Maybe Lucille would’ve been able to understand what Cynthia wanted to be. Who she was.
But she didn’t and she hadn’t. No tears fell from her eyes. Her lips didn’t even pucker. It was like she didn’t feel anything at all.
Cynthia took a deep breath and sniffed back the tears she couldn’t shed either. “I’ll be gone in an hour.”
Chapter 17
Rex had been fourteen when his father took him to his first board meeting. Compared to the rustic homeyness of the farmhouse, the office space they rode up the elevator to reach had been so… clean. Sleek. Alien. A very human kind of power pulsed just under the surfaces of the space-age desks and monogrammed leather bound notebooks. Working out of it always felt like being a general waging a war from inside an enemy fort, but even after Rex had taken over the company, he hadn’t remodeled.
That morning his father had walked stiffly into the board meeting, wearing his suit like a costume as he raised his hand, and said “Good morning, gentlemen.” After a few buzz-word laden preambles, the rest of the members revealed they were planning on voting his father out. At that Father had gone even stiffer, freezing for a moment, until he sneered and used the power of his werecall infused voice to command them to change their votes.
It had worked. But it hadn’t fixed the reason why they wanted to vote him out in the first place. Father was too wild, too aggressive in his hostile takeovers of other companies, and most importantly he was unpredictable in his dealings with clients. A true wolf.
At eighteen Rex took over the company.
At nineteen he was one of Forbes’s youngest billionaires.
At twenty his father died.
The day after his father’s funeral, Rex shifted for the first time. It had happened in his bedroom on the night of a full moon, and there was nothing majestic about it. After thirty minutes of his limbs shriveling, internal organs feeling like they were silly putty in the hands of a sadistic God, and fur piercing through his skin, he found himself curled up on his bed. There were so many strange smells, strange instincts, and he was at the mercy of all of them.
He remembered thinking, How could I have ever thought that this was power? Being controlled by an animal? Being mastered by the universe instead of mastering it? Truthfully, he had dreaded the change the moment his mother had told them his father was dying. The moment she had revealed what exactly what death mean for their family. For her. By the time Rex had become an entire wolf, all he had wanted was to change back.
So he had.
He hadn’t shifted since.
He told Samson he had, of course. His brother was too much like his father to understand why Samson would reject his wolf. Rex even played pretend at hunting, leaving the gate open, going as far as to purchase a mold of a wolf’s foot to leave false prints. It was silly, but better than being stuck in his gangly awkward animal form. Or worse.
How wrong he had been.
This form was not awkward. It was glorious. Out of control. Dangerous. Terrible. Monstrous. But glorious. His whole body felt free to just experience the world as it was instead of trying to mold it into what it should be. Yes, some human part of Rex was horrified. But his human side had lost.
As Rex galloped through the north end of Central Park, he crossed the stream in a single bound before slinking underneath a stone footbridge. This form was graceful and responsive, even more so than his human one. The sun had finally risen and light was coming down in shafts through the loosely-packed trees.
The woods felt a little bit like a movie-set, and Rex was very aware of the distant voices of people. The territory wars and the supposed death of the last werebeast had happened over a hundred years ago, but humans couldn’t forget something so bloody. If they saw a wolf as large as him roaming Central Park, at the very least they would call the police.
There were even rumors that the Federal Bureau of Supernatural Investigations hadn’t been disbanded, and their motto made the threat they presented clear enough. “Mors monstris remedium.” Death is the cure for demons.
So, his hunt would have to have a few detours. Only a minor inconvenience, really. The scent of his mate lingered on Rex’s nostrils, and it made its wolf’s heart sing a song with only one lyric.
Mine.
Rex shook his fur, expelling some of the morning dew that had dampened his pelt. The voices in the distance were beginning to get closer, and worse, another scent was threatening to dislodge his mate’s.
Pushing off from the bridge, Rex jumped into the clear, shallow creek below it. The wet coldness of the water on his paws startled his senses. Rex scrambled up onto more solid ground. Central Park’s soil felt compacted and dead underneath him. So many worms and organisms were missing. He lowered his snout and sniffed, expecting to find nothing but the stench of pesticides. Instead, his mate’s scent filled him, stronger than ever.
His ears pinned back against his head and he wanted to jump up on his hind legs and yip. When he had let go, his wolf had found her. Effortlessly.
Delirious with joy, Rex lowered his mouth and licked the ground. His far away human self recoiled at the motion, and his wolf’s happiness ended soon too. Another flavor mingled with his mate’s aroma. Cat.
Enemy.
Rex had to bury his snout completely in the dirt to keep from howling his anguish.
He had been so sure that his mate had run from him. From his wolf. From their bond. Why had he never considered the other possibility?
That she had been stolen.
There wasn’t a second to spare. Rex sprinted to follow the scent, slipping through the trees like an arrow shot perfectly straight, even though the target was far. He only breathed when his lungs protested. His paws touched more air than ground. The voices of the tourists crescendoed as they neared.
Rex swerved, almost falling into a small ravine as he slipped into the woods. He couldn’t be seen.
It wasn’t just the police some hapless tourist might call. There were rumors that the FBSI hadn’t been dissolved all those years ago, and if they discovered Rex, they wouldn’t just kill him. They’d torture him until he revealed every other member of their kind he knew still existed.
Rex shimmied on his belly into the underbrush, just as a group of women stampeded above him. Their cloying scents disturbed his trail and he couldn’t help but growl. Thankfully, they were too lost in their chatter to notice.
When they passed, Rex resumed the hunt. He knew it was dangerous, but he didn’t care if he ruined the whole species as long as she was safe. As long as he had her. His human side shrunk back from the force of the feeling, the bond, and the damage he knew it could do if left unchecked, but that only gave his wolf more control.
His mate’s scent grew stronger and stronger as he followed her trail. So did the c
at’s. Eventually, the narrow path returned back to the creek, which had widened into a brook. At the end of it was a stout waterfall, and beside that waterfall was Bane Stilskin.
He sat on a park bench, dressed in a suit and slacks, legs crossed, leaning back like he hadn’t a care in the world. A smirk toyed with the corner of his mouth. Dangling from his finger was a single blue high-heeled shoe.
He twirled it once, and tilted his head, his cat’s eyes glimmering with cruel delight. “Well, fancy meeting you here.”
Chapter 18
List of Employees of Boxes & Brooms
1.) Cynthia Cinders—CEO, Chief Executive Officer, takes no salary, owns 75% of company. Yourself. Do you really not know who you are, idiot?
2) Emma Golden—Creative Director and Head Designer, 30k per year, owns 2% of the company. Perfectionist. Always needs things to be “just right.” Very particular about thermostat settings for office. DON’T BUG HER ABOUT THE LOGO.
3.) Marian Sherwood—CTO, Chief Technology Officer, 50k per year, owns 15% of company. Hacker extraordinaire. Not very good with people. Can kick Robin Loxely’s ass at hacking. Actually, you know, went to MIT.
4.) Hikari Waters—CFO, Chief Finance Officer, 40k per year, owns 5% of company.
Keeper of the books. Quiet. Daydreamer, but diligent. Note: Don’t go into office and rearrange her stuff no matter how messy it looks. She is sensitive about “trinkets” and “thingamabobs.” Also may be hoarding silverware from kitchen.
5.) Robin Loxely—Founder of Merrymen Security and Coworking Space Owner, owns 2% of company. Everyone knows you’re a thief and a snoop, Loxely. Stop reading my journal and go back to hacking the Fed, or whatever illegal nonsense you’re up to now.
The offices for Boxes & Broom were located on the third floor of the Loxely building. It was the only place in Brooklyn Cynthia had ever seen that actually looked like NYC did in the movies. The walls were exposed brick, the floor plan open, the bean bags numerous, and the Wi-Fi fast enough to make your head spin. The best part was the rent wasn’t even terrible.
