As soon as she heard the shower start, Shannon tossed on some clothes and raced down the hall and down the stairs to her room. She rushed through a shower and put on a little more makeup than usual. There was no reason there should be any visible signs on her face of anything that had happened the previous night—at least nothing that could be covered with concealer. Still, she tried, as if this fresh mask could cover and hide her secret from everyone.
She lingered in the hallway near the main entry until she saw Lindsay go out the door, then she made her way to the kitchen for some breakfast. There was only one other person in the cafeteria so early. Julie. Gabe's girl.
Shannon liked Julie. She was sweet and damaged in the way that made Shannon feel less like a freak for being in her company. Though the girl's relationship with Gabe had done a lot to heal the psychic wounds of her brief time of forced prostitution, there was something that lingered behind, like a faint perfume. If it was bottled and sold it might be called Wounded Doe.
Julie had a sweet face and gently curling auburn hair. She smiled when she saw Shannon and nodded toward the empty seat beside her. Shannon smiled and nodded back and went through the line to grab breakfast. It was waffle day at the house which was a bigger deal than it seems in casual mention because Phyllis didn't just make waffles. She made every kind of waffle and waffle topping you could think of, all from homemade batters. She used long-held secret recipes which she refused to share with anyone. Not that anyone else really cooked much at the house.
The whole event was so momentous that waffle day only occurred once a month.
Shannon got a chocolate chip waffle and a blueberry waffle, loaded up with butter and Phyllis's special secret waffle syrup, grabbed a glass of milk, and joined Julie at the table.
“Waffle day!” Julie exclaimed, as if it were a national holiday.
“I can't believe the girls are sleeping in on waffle day,” Shannon said.
“They probably don't track it like we do.”
Julie seemed suddenly lost in thought. Shannon only had to follow her line of sight to see what had caught her attention: Gabe crossing the expansive cafeteria space and heading their way. Gabe was the most laid back trainer at the house. Shannon had more than a few amazing nights with him in the years before Julie had arrived. He had always been Shannon's favorite. Out of all the men there, he somehow always came off as the least criminal.
Sun-bleached surfer-blond hair, well-muscled, tall, beautiful with an easy way about him that you could trust.
He sauntered over to their table. “Waffle day!” he said, as excited about it as Julie had been—or else teasing her because he'd probably heard her nearly shout it moments before he'd entered the room. He pulled her out of her chair and swept her into a romance-novel embrace, dipped her, and kissed her dramatically.
“Have breakfast with us?” she asked shyly.
It didn't matter how long Julie had been with Gabe, she still got giggly and shy around him. It was cute. But it always made Shannon long for what she knew she would never have. She hated how jealous it made her feel of Julie. She didn't want to resent someone she genuinely liked so much.
“Can't,” he said. “I'll have to take mine to go. I've been tasked with the errands for the house today.”
“Can I come?” she asked.
Gabe got an evil glint in his eye. “Oh yes, you can come, but it will have to wait until I get back.”
She blushed. “You know what I mean!”
“Sorry. Can't. Top secret house stuff. I'll bring you back a toy surprise if you're a good girl while I'm gone. Will you be a good girl?”
“Yes, Master.”
He kissed her again, then went to grab some food. “Hey Phyllis! I need one of those Styrofoam to-go thingies!” he shouted over the bar. “And coffee, black!”
Julie sat back down, a sort of dazed starstruck look in her eyes. She sighed in a dreamy way, and then dug into her waffles. Shannon took that as her cue to dig in as well.
“Oh. My. God!” Julie said.
“What?”
Julie lowered her voice. “Who are you playing with?”
“Huh?”
She pointed. “The rope burns.”
Oh shit. Shannon had spent a good twenty minutes putting on makeup to cover something that wasn't coverable and hadn't even noticed the damn rope marks on her wrists.
“No one,” she said.
“Oh come on. I promise I won't tell. Is it Jake? He's hot. And he looks at you sometimes.”
“He looks at me because he thinks I'm a freak,” Shannon said.
“You're not a freak.”
Mina seemed to appear out of nowhere then, like a vampire reforming out of mist. She put her tray down on the other side of Julie. “I swear, I woke up this morning to my period and I just knew it was waffle day.”
Both Shannon and Julie looked at Mina like she'd grown a second head.
Mina plopped down in the chair. “Judge all you want. I swear to you I am cycling with waffle day, which works for me.”
Shannon tensed when she noticed what Mina was wearing. Black leather pants. Black corset. Boots. It was what Shannon thought of as Mina's murder-wear: The Sadistic Sophisticate Collection. She always wore it when she and Brian went out on a job—supposedly getting rid of dangerous people who compromised the house or had broken the house's rules and contracts.
How could there be this many people for them to kill? Shannon thought the guys were careful with everything. She suspected Brian and Mina had developed their own projects that were independent from the house though she couldn't begin to guess how they compiled their kill lists.
Brian had some serious issues that went well beyond what he'd done to Shannon so many years ago. He seemed to have a need or just a deep enjoyment not just of hurting people, but taking life. And apparently Mina had a growing taste for it as well.
Mina was a strange one. When she'd first come to the house, Shannon had some insane idea that somehow they would bond and be best friends. After all, Mina had awful scars on her back, too. She'd seemed to be just as wounded as Shannon in many of the same ways. So of course they'd be the closest of friends, right?
At the time, Shannon had been enraged Lindsay had brought somebody already scarred—both physically and emotionally—to the house to sell. If Mina was still good enough to sell, why had that option been taken off the table for Shannon? Why had she become the property of the house? An indentured spa worker? This wasn't exactly the type of enslavement she'd fantasized about. It was her own personal elevator music hell.
When Brian first bought Mina, Shannon had felt scared for her. But when he didn't hurt her, and instead seemed to love her, Shannon was once again back to What the hell is so wrong with me?
Shannon wasn't good enough to sell, but Mina was. She wasn't worth enough to be spared torture from Brian, but Mina was. And now Mina was just like him. Some switch had flipped inside her. There had been some interpersonal drama Shannon hadn't been privy to, whereupon Brian had released Mina. While free and presumably getting her life back, she'd been kidnapped by a guy in Japan named Matsumoto—a repeat customer of the house who had been very interested in buying Mina and hadn't taken it well when he'd been outbid by Brian.