We shuffle up the stairs; Isaac behind us and Alex in front. The chains around her ankles knock against the steps and then drag ominously across the hardwoods on the upstairs floor. I can’t wait to get down the hall so I can get Alex away from all of the eyes staring at her as if she’s a sadistic serial-killer walking Death Row.
“I really don’t want to leave you alone with her,” Isaac says telepathically and I open up my mind to him fully.
“But you have to,” I say. “Harry will be around, maybe even inside the bathroom without me knowing it—I’ll be fine.”
“Oh, so now you think I’m some creepy peeper,” Harry says and it makes my head snap around because I thought he was still in the basement. Of course, I don’t see him anywhere.
“You’re going to have to stop doing that, Harry!”
We make it to the bathroom door and stop just outside of it; Alex looks at me curiously.
“Ah, I see,” Alex says, “talking about me in a way that I can’t hear.”
I look at her sadly, hoping she’ll understand.
Alex shrugs. “It’s alright. I guess it just depresses me a little because I no longer have anyone to communicate with telepathically.”
This comes as a mild shock to both Isaac and me.
“What happened to Ashe?” I say.
Isaac is just as curious.
Alex’s gaze strays toward the floor. She looks both dispirited and indignant. “He became Alpha of his own pack and went to Nova Scotia.”
“Why didn’t you go with him?” Isaac asks, more interested in the information on his enemy than her love-life.
Alex narrows her eyes at him, but doesn’t answer.
“Can we go in now?” she says, looking at me.
I know my sister and that reaction was definitely an embarrassed one only masked by an outer layer of animosity.
Isaac looks at me briefly before I slip inside the bathroom with Alex.
I run the bath water for her and leave her in there alone long enough to go across the hall to Isaac’s room and grab her something of mine to wear. She’s already sitting in the tub when I come back. Her tiny shorts, underclothes and white t-shirt are ripped in half and lying on the floor.
“I was going to unlock you so that you could undress.” I set the clean clothes on the counter.
Alex shrugs and leans back against the deep tub, resting her arms over her chest awkwardly since the chains confine them to about one foot apart. She stares up at the ceiling for the longest time as the water gushes from the faucet into the tub. Eventually, I’m the one turning the water off because it’s getting so close to the top that if she makes any heavy movements it will run over the sides and soak the floor. I twist the knob lastly on the cold and it squeaks off, leaving a constant drip, drip, drip.
It’s kind of weird being in here while my sister takes a bath; not like I’ve never seen her naked before, but we’ve never hung around and watched one another bathe. At first, I had been looking only at her face and how filthy the water is becoming so fast, but I can’t help but notice and blatantly gawk at the number and size of scars she has all over her body.
“Alex…what happened to you?”
She doesn’t even look down, or directly at me for that matter, but she knows what I’m referring to. She sighs and stares at the ceiling for a moment longer.
“Fights. Turning. Same thing that happens to you.”
I shake my head slow and solemnly.
“No,” I say, “I don’t have scars like that. And the first fight I’ve been in with someone non-human was the one you saw today with Rachel.” I move closer and sit on the edge of the tub, looking down at her, heartbroken and knowing. “How did you really get those scars?”
I notice the center of her throat move as if she’s swallowing down the truth and her eyes can’t seem to stay on mine.
“I wanted to get away from Mom,” she says going back a little further than I expected, “and I planned to run away once before my fourteenth birthday, but I didn’t want to leave you behind.” She stops abruptly and locks her eyes on mine. “Dria, I’m not blaming you for anything so don’t look at me like that.”
Maybe I was starting to feel like she was blaming this on me. I straighten my face and let her continue.
“For a little while, I thought Ashe was the best thing that ever happened to me. He was so protective and I felt like I was on a pedestal. He worshipped me. But I started to see what was really going on not the first or fifth time he attacked me, but…,” her nostrils flare all of a sudden and her eyes turn black. I start to move away from the tub, but just before I do, her naked body calms and she closes her eyes, taking in a deep breath. When she opens then again, her eyes look natural.
Alex looks dead at me. “I always worried you’d be the one who turned out like Mom,” she says. “I guess I was wrong about a lot of things.”
“You’re here now,” I say. “And maybe I’m giving myself too much credit in thinking I can read you because you’re my sister, but I get the feeling you were the one that left Ashe.”
She nods reluctantly and looks away from me again, plunged into thought. “Yeah,” she says, “I looked in the mirror one day and saw Rhonda Bradley. That was the day I left.”
I smile down at her.
“Then you’re not like Mom at all. You’re Alexandra, my sister and my best friend.”
She smiles carefully at me and a few tears stream down her face.
“Here, let me help you wash up,” I say, standing up and moving to the end of the tub where her head is. I take up the nearest bottle of shampoo—pricey salon stuff, so it’s probably Zia’s—and squeeze a little into my hand.
Alex leans up to let me get all of her hair and I work the shampoo into a lather.
“I punched him in the face last month,” I say.
“Who?”
“Jeff. He beat her up again and I rushed to Georgia to see her in the hospital.”
Alex never turns around. She just listens as I scrub her hair with my fingertips. This kind of news is nothing out of the ordinary so she understandably finds no reason to be shocked by it.
“He showed up with apologies and the same old shit, huh?”
“Yeah,” I say, “and flowers, too—I don’t ever want to see her again, Alex.”
This, however, does provoke extra interest in her. She turns her head to the side enough so that she can see me.
I look down at her soapy hair and can’t bring myself to face her. What I said about our mother made me feel like a horrible person, so I can only imagine what she’s thinking about me right now. But what I said is the truth. The last time I saw my mother as she was laid up in that hospital bed and was more excited to see the man who beat her than to see her own daughter, was the day I knew that I never wanted to see her again.
“You’re right to feel that way,” she says and casually turns her head away again.
The air is rife with silence, except for the steady dripping of water. For a moment, I even stop scrubbing her hair because the quiet in the room has caught me off-guard.
“Dria…I really am sorry for everything. I feel like I haven’t slept in four months. Not peacefully anyway. I was supposed to protect you like I tried to do when we were kids, but when it came down it, I was weak and I’ll never forgive myself for how I turned out.”
My fingers stop moving in her hair and I say behind her, “You didn’t try. Alex, you did take care of me when we were kids. And you can’t blame yourself for how you turned out. It was forced on you.”
I take the cup on the nearby counter and fill it with water to start rinsing the shampoo from her hair.
“So you punched him, huh?’ she says with a smile in her voice. “Did you bloody his face? I hope you drew blood.”
I laugh gently behind her and pour more water over her hair, tilting her head back a little to keep from getting soap in her eyes.
“I’m glad you’re here, I really am,” I say.
&
nbsp; “Me too.”
I move away from the tub and walk to the window overlooking the tree-enveloped backyard of the house below. Daisy waves up at me. I nod subtly, glad she’s where I secretly told Harry I needed her to be just in case Alex decided to try sneaking out the window.
Then I walk over to the bathroom door.
“I’ll let you finish without me,” I say, placing my hand on the doorknob. “Clothes and towel are over there—yell at me when you’re done and I’ll unlock you so you can get dressed.”
Alex glances over at the casual lounge pants and random Sailor Moon t-shirt Camilla gave me, sitting on the counter.
“Are those my pants?” she says, leaning up to peer over and get a better view.
“Uh, yeah I think they are, actually.”
We smile at one another for one more moment and I shut the bathroom door softly behind me.
Chapter 18
IT TAKES ALL OF the time Alex spent alone in the bathroom, and then some, for Isaac and me to decide that neither of us knows where Alex is going to sleep. Or, who’s going to babysit her while I’m babysitting Aramei. I can’t take her with me. Trajan will have her head on a pike.
I never anticipated that these sorts of petty things would be harder to figure out than more obvious things like whether to send her away or keep her chained in the basement. I thought that Isaac’s solution with the new shackles was the worst of it.
“I can stay with her,” I say.
Isaac and I are downstairs in the hideously yellow kitchen while he makes a sandwich. I spin around on the bar chair to see him as he moves over to the cabinet beside the fridge.
“No way in hell I’m leaving you alone with her like that,” he says as he rummages through the cabinet. “She could cut your throat in your sleep.”
“What if we make her a pallet on your bedroom floor?” I say, slouching my shoulders as a defeated breath drains right out of me.
He leans up with an unopened bottle of mustard clutched in his hand and looks at me like I’ve just said something dumb. He walks over to his foot-long sandwich on the counter and sets the mustard down.
I crinkle my nose up at it. I hate mustard.
“I know,” I say with a long, deep sigh, “but I really don’t want to put her back in the basement like a prisoner. Maybe if it didn’t stink down there and mold wasn’t growing on the walls, it’d be okay.”
Isaac pops the lid on the mustard and squeezes a sloppy line down the length of his sandwich with the mayonnaise and about a hundred random other things he put on it before. Then he puts the mustard away in the fridge.
“Want half?” he says, folding the top bun over onto the mound of meat and condiments.
“You know I don’t like mustard.”
His shoulders fall and he looks down at the sandwich briefly. “Sorry, babe. I forgot.”
“I’m not hungry, anyway,” I say, gazing off toward the kitchen entrance where on the other side of the wall, Alex sits in the den with shackles on her ankles and wrists. “I can’t eat with what’s going on.” My voice is distant.
Camilla runs into the kitchen, staring across at us with wide almond-shaped eyes. She turns her head to gesture toward the den and her long, silky ponytail swishes around when she looks back at us, restlessly. “You might want to get in there,” she says, pressing her hands on the doorjamb.
My heart sinks and I jump off the barstool faster than Isaac can get around the counter. Camilla moves to the side so that we can push out ahead of her, but then just before we get to the den entrance, Isaac moves me behind him and we stop. “Just wait,” he says.
Slowly we come around the corner to peer into the den, but we stay out of sight without putting any effort into actually hiding.
“Go ahead,” Alex says looking up at Rachel from the couch, “show everybody how you can win a fight with a girl in chains—you’ve already proven how you can win a fight after six other bitches hold me down first.”
Rachel snarls and her head sways gently around in a grinning, snide motion.
Alex reaches into a bowl of Chex Mix I had given her, sitting on the edge of the coffee table. She looks absolutely unafraid of Rachel, even makes it a point not to look directly at her much as if to show just how worried she is that Rachel is standing there. Zero worried. I’m a different story. My palms are sweating.
“Isaac—”
He reaches back and gently touches my wrist, “I won’t let it go too far,” he whispers, still keeping his eyes on Rachel and Alex.
“Well it’s not right that Adria’s sister is chained up,” Camilla says softly behind me and I feel her body pressing into my back as she tries to see between us.
I hear Rachel say, “You think you can just come here and be accepted because you’re Adria’s sister—wrong—It took me months to gain their trust.”
“Yeah,” Alex laughs and pops a pretzel in her mouth, “I hear you wore these same chains.” She stops chewing and brings the chains on her wrist up to her nose and sniffs. She pulls away with a mild disgusted expression. “Definitely smells like a skank wore them at some point.”
She reaches impassively into the Chex Mix again and pops another piece in her mouth.
I just wince and grab Camilla’s hand without knowing it’s her hand at first.
Rachel’s smirking face becomes much more heated; both sides of her nostrils flare up as she presses her lips together tightly.
I catch a confident smile in Alex’s eyes and then I hear crunch, crunch as she happily chews. A few seconds pass and when Rachel hasn’t decided on what to say, Alex swallows and looks up at her, cocking her head to one side. “Do you like watching me eat?” She bats her eyes.
Rachel slams her palms down on the coffee table, leaning over and glaring at Alex, eye-level. “You have no idea who you’re screwing with,” she growls.
Alex leans toward her, boldly, “Neither. Do. You.”
They’re practically face-to-face, their noses only a few inches apart. When it looks like a draw, they both pull away at the same time, neither of them letting the other believe they are the slightest bit intimidated. Rachel stands up straight again and crosses her arms. Two of her six friends step up behind her as if to have her back, but she throws up her hand in a harsh gesture, telling them to back off.
They step away with their figurative tails between their legs.
“So, rumor is you were infected by a Vargas bastard, too,” Alex says injecting a tiny bit of mock laughter. She continues to eat, appearing more interested in her food than in Rachel.
“Yeah,” Rachel says and her hip pops to one side. “So what if I was?” She gets a chance to inject laughter now and a devious grin tugs one corner of her lips. “Don’t think for a second that means we’re related in any way.”
Alex stops chewing and finally looks up at her with that oh-hell-no look on her face. “Yeah, you don’t have to worry about that. Trust me. I’d slit my wrists before I considered a blood relation to you.”
“I can help you with that,” Rachel says, sneering.
I’m really getting tired of this back and forth, but Isaac insists I stay put and maybe he’s onto something. Camilla is pressed so closely behind us now I feel her breath on my shoulder. I glance back once at her and she sort of smile-grimaces and whispers, “Sorry,” before pulling away just a little. Really, she wasn’t bothering me, but that’s just Camilla.
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch a glimpse of Nathan and Daisy standing in the hallway on the opposite side of the den. Daisy looks as worried as I know I do, but Nathan looks thoroughly excited.
I just roll my eyes.
“So who was it?” Rachel says, suddenly showing a tiny bit of curiosity without letting down her wall of hatred. “That infected you?”
Alex crunches away a few last bites, brushes her hands together to wipe away any leftover crumbs and then she leans her back casually into the couch. She goes to cross her legs, but forgets the chain around her ankles and tries
again more strategically.
Nathan’s grin is getting bigger and bigger. Daisy notices and she elbows him in the ribs.
Alex looks up at Rachel, purses her lips and says, “Why do you care?”
Rachel sneers. “I don’t care, you stupid rogue freak. It was just a question.”
Alex jumps to her feet and the coffee table is sent flying across the room as she shoves it away to clear the barrier between her and Rachel.
Camilla yelps behind me and grabs onto my bicep, practically digging her fingernails into my skin. But I barely notice; I push past Isaac and step into the full light of the den with Isaac at my side.
Alex and Rachel stand toe-to-toe, black claws at the ready down by their sides, eyes like black, endless pools of rage.
Nathan is like a little boy in the bathroom with a Sports Illustrated magazine.
“Isaac, do some—”
“I thought this pack knew all about what went on in the Vargas family?” Alex growls, the tiny black veins rising to the surface of her skin all around her eyes and cheeks.
Rachel moves in so close that they could kiss if they didn’t hate each other so much. “I only care about what goes on with them when they threaten us here.” She looks Alex over quickly, her dark eyes flashing for a brief, detestable moment. “Like why you’re here and why I caught you sneaking around. I don’t waste any energy on your kind outside of our pack!”
“Wow,” Alex says, sneering, “he must’ve really screwed you over, huh?”
Oh great…that tone of hers was a taunt if I’ve never heard one.
Rachel’s entire face flares up; her lips twist open, revealing her teeth and a series of raging lines deepen around her mouth and nose. “He?” she rips the word out. “What makes you think it was a guy?”
Alex laughs a little and her smirk grows.
“It’s obvious. Whoever infected you only wanted you long enough to get his rocks off. Maybe you were infertile. Or, maybe he just got tired of the missionary position—”
Rachel jumps on Alex and pins her to the couch; her claws tight around Alex’s throat.
The Ballad of Aramei Page 19