It was practically a done deal until something triggered an episode of psychosis. He destroyed that family’s home and badly injured two of his foster sisters before the police arrived to restrain him. He landed in juvie for a year before being spat back into the foster system. Months went by before I could track him down. A lot of money exchanged hands before I finally got him relocated to Saint Amos.
Times like that, I honestly wished I’d had parents I could turn to. Having legal guardians to sign off on legit paperwork would have been so much easier than all the palm-greasing I did. But my parents were long dead, and after we escaped from the Ghost House, I no longer trusted anyone except my brothers.
Luckily, money can buy just about anything.
“Good,” Reuben says. “Now your shoulders. You have to dance with your whole body.”
“It’s really hard without music.”
“You don’t need music,” Rube says.
On cue, I tap my thumb against the back of the seat.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
Rube glances up at me, and gives me a ghostly smile. “All you need is a rhythm.”
Cass and Apollo pick up the beat, Apollo with one of his rings against his glass, Cass tapping the back of the tin he keeps his weed in.
And Trinity starts to dance.
Her hips sway, and her shoulders undulate to the slow, steady beat we create.
“That’s it,” Rube murmurs. His head hangs low, his lips brushing the top of her head. “Do you feel it?”
I expect Cass to make a snide comment—he’s got a fifth-grader’s sense of humor—but when I look over at them all I see is a most familiar hunger.
That’s how our Ghosts would look at us, a sinister voice hisses.
My jaw clenches.
No. This isn’t the same. That was a sick, contaminated lust. This is pure and natural.
That’s what he said about us. That’s what we were.
Pure. Innocent. We were the cure for our Ghost’s perversions. Our lot in life was to ease their suffering—a sacrificial offering to appease their depraved hedonism.
And they accepted us time and time again.
I falter on the beat, but Cass and Apollo don’t even notice. Taking my cigarette with me, I stalk into the bedroom.
There the darkness swallows me, shields me, comforts me.
But my respite is brief and bittersweet.
That’s what she is. Pure. Innocent. Is she our cure?
I try to block the voice, but clapping my hands over my ears does nothing.
You know what you have to do, don’t you? To her, to them.
I go to the back of the room and lift up the corner of a mattress.
Killing Gabriel won’t make the pain go away, Mason.
Not for you, not for them, not for her.
When I don’t find what I’m looking for, I clamp my lips over the filter of my cigarette and shove both hands into that cool dark as smoke burns my eyes.
“Looking for something?” Cass asks, sinuous as a fucking serpent.
I rock back on my heels and snatch my cigarette from between dry lips. “Where is it?” I grate out.
“If I can’t have my smack, then you can’t have your—”
I spin around and grab him by the throat, pressing him into the solid wall. He chokes, and then chuckles into my face. “That shit’s unhygienic as fuck,” he says hoarsely.
“Where. Is. It?”
“You don’t scare me, Boss. Never have, never will.”
I can barely see anything in the dark, but there’s a glimmer of light where his eyes are.
I bring my cigarette up, instantly mesmerized by the red glow on his wet corneas. He blinks, but he doesn’t close his eyes.
“She’s messing with all of our heads,” Cass whispers. “Let’s get her out of here. We don’t need her.”
“You need her,” I counter, bringing that glowing ember closer to his eye. His cheek lights up faintly but he doesn’t even bat a fucking eyelid.
“Do we?” He shrugs and lays his hand casually over the stiff arm pinning him against the wall. “I thought we didn’t need anyone.”
“Just tell me where it is,” I say through my teeth. I hate how my voice shakes, but I’m past the point of being able to control it.
“That shit’s like slapping a fucking Hello Kitty band-aid on a gunshot wound,” he says. His voice drops low. “Come on, Zach.”
He’s right, and that makes me feel even more pathetic for allowing myself to be caught between shame and guilt and utter desperation. “I just need—”
“I know what you need,” Cass cuts in quietly. “And I told you before, all you gotta do is ask.”
His hand slips off my arm. Fabric rustles. Then he grabs hold of the hand holding my glowing cigarette. “Just not the face, bro. That’s my moneymaker.”
I clamp down on a near-hysterical bark of a laugh as I let him guide my hand down.
“We should try for a smiley face. Nirvana style. What do you say?” His voice is tight, light, steady.
I don’t know how the fuck he so easily accepts my breakdowns.
“Fuck,” I grate, squeezing my eyes shut so I can’t see that tempting glowing ash. “Cass, no.”
“Come on, you pussy. I’ve had worse.”
“Fuck off.”
“Jesus, the tension’s killing me,” he says through a grin I can hear but not see.
So fucking easy for him. For them. I should never have drawn the short straw. Rube would have made a better leader than me any day. Any of them would have. But it was me. So I had to man-up and fucking lead them.
“You know it’s the worst part, right? The waiting? You fucking know it, Zach. So just do it, you cunt.”
He guides my hand lower and closer, until my knuckles graze his bare skin where he’s hiking up his shirt. I trail his skin with the pad of my thumb. My chest is so tight I can barely breathe, and what little air does come in feels like I’m sucking it from a fucking chimney.
Hot. Full of ash.
“Fuck,” I say again, trying to ignore the erection straining against my jeans. Pain and pleasure—I’ve never had one without the other.
“Cass—”
“Just fucking do it,” he grates.
My thumb skims over a puckered burn mark. Then another. Another.
“There.” He sounds as breathless as I feel. “Right there.”
“Christ.”
My lungs fill with powdered brimstone as I press the tip of the cigarette into his flesh.
He stiffens, letting out a short, soft gasp. Then he shoves me so hard I fall back and land on my ass. I’m anticipating the boot heading for my stomach, but that just makes the impact ten times worse.
My breath rushes out in a pained grunt I can’t possibly keep quiet. I roll onto my side, curling up as he kicks me again. Then he’s gone, orange light blooming against the back of my eyelids before the room goes dark again.
I open my fingers and let the crumpled cigarette fall out. Then I bring my hand close and lick off the streak of ash smeared over my palm.
The almost constant ache in my wrists and ankles fades away as I lie there listening to Apollo tapping out a beat for Trinity as she dances for Reuben.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Sounds like the leaking pipe in the back of the basement, doesn’t it, Mason?