Master of Salt & Bones

by Keri Lake

  Solange moans again and bites her lip. “I want you to fuck me. Fuck me like you’ve never fucked her.”

  With rage pounding through my veins, I walk away.

  Chapter 13

  Isadora

  Present day …

  “What should I play next?” Hands folded in my lap, I sit at the piano, waiting for Mrs. Blackthorne to rattle off the next piece.

  “How did you come to memorize the music?” Whether it’s by nature or intentional, there always seems to be a suspicious edge to her tone.

  “My aunt played it for me once, and I listened.”

  “Your Aunt plays piano?”

  “No. She had it playing in the background, while I was doing my homework. She read somewhere that playing classical music makes you smarter, or something.”

  Her eyes narrow on me while she taps her finger on a book sitting on her lap. “You heard it once. And you memorized it.”

  “Yes. I um ...” I gesture toward my head, trying to think of the word my counselor used to describe it. “Have a gift, of sorts. More of a curse. I can’t listen to a song without my fingers moving.” The thought of how that must look to someone else makes me chuckle, but she clearly isn’t amused, judging by the stern expression still claiming her face.

  This woman is going to be impossible to crack.

  “So, why are you working here, if you have such an amazing gift.” She says this as if it’s not a gift, at all.

  “You don’t believe me, even after I just played it for you?”

  “That piece could’ve taken you months, years to learn. You claim you heard it once. I taught piano for many years. I know what’s possible and impossible.”

  “Would you like me to play another?”

  “I insist.”

  “Okay, then.” Twisting back around to the piano, I set my fingers to the first note of Vivaldi’s Summer. I wish I knew the difference between easy and difficult pieces, but for me, they’re all the same. It’s only the music my fingers tend to stumble through that distinguishes them from one another. The first time I heard this one, I closed my eyes, imagining my every stroke at a spasmic speed, and I could picture every sound from every key I pressed. I’ve no idea what standard note I was playing, or whether sharp, or flat. I only knew sound, and when my ears heard it, my fingers longed to find it.

  My music teacher would toy with me at times, speeding the song up to see if it affected my ability to copy. Not to be jealous, or angry of my talent, but to test my capabilities. No matter what speed, or tempo, I caught onto the keystrokes every time.

  On the last note, I keep my fingers to the keys and smile. Not for Mrs. Blackthorne, but for how quickly I recalled a piece I hadn’t heard in years. One my music teacher played in broken segments, to see if I could assemble it as one fluid song in my head.

  “Vivaldi. One of the more difficult compositions.”

  For a woman whose mind isn’t always reliable, she certainly has some surprising intuitive moments when it comes to music and dolls.

  “My Lucian liked to play for me. He was very good.” As she stares off, the corner of her lips lift with a smile. “He knew the notes, of course.” Pausing, she tips her head, her expression hardening with a frown. “His father hated it. Thought it as a weakness in our son.” With a scoff, she shakes her head. “Can you imagine? The level of concentration and focus of the mind that goes into playing these complex pieces, and he thought it weak.”

  “That’s a shame. I’ve always wanted to learn notes.”

  “Did you not have someone in school to show you?”

  “My music teacher, but the idea of staying alone with him after school gave me the creeps.”

  A slight smile curves her lips. “Isn’t it funny, the way we deny ourselves based on our fears?”

  Absorbing her words, I sit quietly for a moment. “You taught piano. Could you teach me?”

  “God, no. My piano teaching days are long gone. I’ve no interest anymore.” Frail fingers lift, and she scratches her chin. “Lucian still remembers, I’m sure. He could teach you.”

  Seems she’s lost her mind again, if she thinks I’d ask her son for piano lessons.

  “Never mind. It’s not important.”

  “You’re afraid of Lucian, as well?”

  “No, I just … I know he’s a busy man. I’m sure he doesn’t have time for piano lessons.”

  “He has time to fuck the help. I’m sure he can squeeze an hour, or two, to show you some notes on the piano.”

  A flare of discomfort snakes beneath my skin with her comment, until I’m left wondering which of the help he’s fucking. Giulia? Or one of the other maids I’ve seen bustling about over the last two days?

  “Even with half his face ruined, he still manages to charm the ladies.”

  Maybe the ones he’s attracted to.

  The image I found the night before comes to mind, and as much as I want to ask her what happened to him, I believe I have to be careful around Laura, and treat every question as a possible trigger. “He’s always had a way with the ladies, then?”

  “My God.” Rolling her eyes, she shifts on the chair. “In school, they literally wouldn’t leave him alone. He attended an all-boys school but there was a sister campus, as well, and those girls …” She shakes her head. “No shame, at all. Sending him notes of what they fantasized doing with him. I found one in his schoolbag at the start of his sophomore year. A girl who claimed she’d adored him since elementary. Respectable daughter of a bank CEO. Yet, she described an addiction she’d developed to … doing things, while thinking of him. Disgusting.”

  A part of me wants to chuckle, while another part of me feels as if her words are directed at me, somehow, though I have nothing to do with her son. “Sometimes … a person just wants to be noticed.”

  “For the wrong reasons.”

  “Of course.”

  “Some, he did ignore. Others, I’m sure he indulged. Boys will be boys, and all that. He was handsome, athletic, and it didn’t matter what age they were, women just gravitated to him.”

  “Did he ever love?” I don’t know why I’m asking these questions. I shouldn’t be asking, but I slept with the image of his face, his sad, morose face, and I can’t stop thinking about it.

  “Lucian loves, in as much as he’s capable. Whether it’s for an hour, a day, or a week. But I don’t think any woman will ever have his heart completely. The closest was his only son.”

  Studying her for a moment, to be sure she doesn’t slip into another hallucination at the mention of Roark, I nod and rise up from the piano bench. “Would you like to go for a walk, or something?”

  Following a light knock, Giulia stands in the doorway, straightening her posture when Laura twists to face her.

  “Pardon the interruption, ladies. Miss Amy is here for wardrobe.”

  “Ah, fantastic!” Laura turns around, her eyes as lit with just as earlier, when the doctor stood flirting at her side. “Time to find you some proper clothing.”

  Oh, Christ.

  “I don’t know …” With her finger pressed against her cheek, Laura tips her head in the reflection of all three mirrors that are set before a fitting platform, where I stand on display in her bedroom. “Looks too garish, if you ask me.”

  I’m guessing Amy is in her thirties, considering the youthful, wrinkle-free glow of her face. Her style reminds me of something more bohemian, in patterned pants and an airy, off-the-shoulder top. Strings of necklaces dangle from her neck, different sized beads that match the colors of her pants.

  I stare down at the outfit she’s chosen for me: a white, flowy peasant top and jeans, with a thin braided leather necklace. A little too hippy for my taste, but better than the tweed suits I imagined she’d show up with.

  “You asked me to choose a wardrobe appropriate for a nineteen-year-old. Not you, Laura.”

  I’m guessing this chick is one of few who gets away with talking to her like that. In some ways, I envy her. Her ha
ir is flipped to the side, highlighted from the strands of darks and lights weaved together, and when she smiles, it’s the straightest, whitest set of teeth I’ve ever seen. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to steer you wrong,” she whispers, leaning in as she tucks only the front of my shirt into the jeans.

  “What else do you have? Any dresses?”

  “Oh, I … I don’t do dresses.” In truth, I stopped wearing dresses when I was about twelve and Abigail Watson told everyone in the class that I had too much hair on my legs. I began shaving soon after, of course, but never bothered with dresses, or shorts, for that matter. Not even when I worked a summer at a marina.

  “I did bring one. But I’m guessing you’d think it too garish.” Amy rolls her eyes, clearly offended by Laura’s earlier comment.

  “I want to see it on her,” Laura insists, and I’d give anything right now for the platform below me to open up and swallow me whole.

  When she turns around, Amy’s eyebrows lift in silent apology.

  With a huff, I step down from the platform and make my way to the bathroom for the dress, which I find hanging on the rack beside the wardrobe of clothes Amy brought with her.

  White and linen, with thin straps and a hook and eye closure bodice, it’s everything I loathe. Reminds me of what the rich tourist women wear on the beach, when they’re trying to update their social media. I reluctantly change into it, horrified to find it fits me perfectly. My only hope at this point is that Laura will hate it as much as I do. The lines on my forearms practically scream for attention, and there’s no hiding them, or my tattoo. Crossing my arms in front of my body, at least, shields the worst of the damage. The few on the outer part of my forearm could be mistaken for injury.

  The moment I step through the bathroom’s threshold, the first gasp tells me I’m doomed.

  “Oh, my, Amy. That is … perfection. Absolute perfection!”

  Shaking my head, I don’t bother to climb the stage of shame so they can ogle me from every angle. “Truly, I can’t do dresses.”

  “You have no choice, my dear. You’re representing me. Do you think Giulia likes the uniform she wears for cleaning?”

  “No.”

  “On weekends and after hours, you’re welcome to wear what you like. While you’re serving as my companion? You’ll wear what I like. Are we clear?”

  Ugh. I can’t even look in the mirror. I feel like a fraud. Like a child trying on high heels for the first time and stumbling about in them. It’s unnaturally feminine. “Yes, of course.”

  “What is that on your arm there? A tattoo?” The disapproval in Laura’s tone sounds like she said it around a mouthful of worms.

  “Yes.” She’s not the first, oddly enough. Hard to believe anyone still scoffs at tattoos, as common as they are these days, but that’s Tempest Cove.

  “What does that even mean, invulnerable?”

  I glance at Amy, whose curious expression tells me she’s just as interested in my explanation as Laura. “Nothing, really,” I lie.

  “In my day, we called those tramp stamps.” Laura chuckles, running her finger over her top lip. “I always wanted one, though.” Her unexpected remark at the end caps the snarky response cocked at the back of my throat. Not bothering to elaborate, she waves her hand in dismissal. “What shoes do you have to go with this dress, Amy?”

  For the next hour, I stand before the mirror, like one of the many dolls encased in the other room, until I have an entire wardrobe of clothes I’d have never chosen myself. Not that I’m complaining, since the entire cost of it was courtesy of the Blackthornes.

  By the time Amy leaves, I find myself stuck in the white dress again--at Laura’s request.

  “It really is flattering on you. I’m not one to admit such things so freely, as you know.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Do me a favor, will you?”

  “Sure.” Anything to get the hell out of this room.

  “Go to the library and fetch me some books. A good selection of them. I’ve already read these at least twice in the last two months.” She points to a stack of books beside the bed that ranges from thrillers to bodice rippers. “Take those ones back.”

  “You like historical and thrillers?” I gather the dozen, or so books, into my arms, my muscles twitching to keep from dropping them.

  “Griffin used to call my romance novels ridiculous. I find it interesting, the one thing our marriage lacked was the one thing he found ridiculous.” Her comment brings a smile to my face.

  “If it makes you feel better, my aunt thought they were ridiculous, too. Frivolous reading, she called it.”

  “Was your aunt ever married?”

  “Once. He cheated on her.”

  Scoffing, she turns her head toward the window. “It’s the nature of men to cheat. What else would we hate them for, if they didn’t?”

  “I’ll grab the books.” Taking the elevator to the first floor, I hurry toward the library that I remembered from the tour with Rand. My hope is that no one will see me in this absurd dress and the strappy sandals she insisted I wear with it. At least they don’t have a heel and cover my unpainted toes.

  Once in the library, a familiar curtain of relief passes over me, as if I stepped into another world. It’s always been that way for me, a source of escape when things became too stressful. As a child, I’d get lost in worlds and fairy tales that were far from where I lived. Magical stories of princesses and princes, knights and maidens. It wasn’t until I got older that I realized life didn’t imitate fiction, at all. In fact, if I wanted a more accurate account, I should’ve been looking through the memoirs of broken children and homes, because not even Cinderella, who had a pretty shitty home life, had to wake up with a junkie for a mom.

  I stare up at the levels upon levels of books that stretch all the way to the ceiling and smile at the possibilities. An endless selection of stories that line shelves upon shelves. Anxious to begin, I spin around, and as I crash into a wall, the handful of books in my arms tumble to the floor. “Oh, shit!”

  Turns out, the wall is actually a body. The same body I ran into the night before, with the solid arms and a smattering of chest hair peeking through his unbuttoned shirt.

  Without bothering to look at his undoubtedly pissed-off face this time, I kneel to the floor and gather the fallen books. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Can’t seem to avoid you,” he says, with an edge of annoyance.

  I frown at that, slightly offended.

  Shiny patent leather shoes become knees, as he drops down beside me and picks up a few of the novels that have landed on their pages, splayed in such a way that makes me cringe. “My mother’s choice of literature hasn’t changed, I see. Unless this belongs to you.”

  My cheeks heat with embarrassment, as he hands me a book, its cover a shirtless man groping the exposed thigh of a woman whose dress is hiked up, his face buried in breasts that bulge out of a demi-cup bodice. Recalling Laura’s earlier comments about her husband’s disapproval of her reading, I frown harder, my forehead practically cramping with the effort. I swipe the book out of his hands. “Nothing wrong with it, if it did.”

  “I never said there was.”

  I finally lift my gaze to his, just catching the diversion of his eyes. A downward glance shows my own cleavage sticking up from this stupid dress, and I quickly straighten, rolling my shoulders back.

  A gentle grip of my arm stiffens my muscles, and when he turns my forearm over to the scars, his brows lowering with what I’d interpret as disgust, panic blooms inside my chest. I want to pull away, but my body is frozen in shock, while I wait for him to ask why I did this to myself. How could I mutilate my own skin, and worse, for what purpose?

  It’s a question I can’t answer myself, except that it felt good at the time. It felt good to release that pain and rage that left me feeling like I could explode. As if I was releasing all of the toxins in my life and decontaminating my blood of all the demons, like an exorcism.


  His thumb passes over a cluster of skinny scars, the worst of my pain permanently written in my skin, and my face feels like a sealed-up volcano, with all the pressure and mortification kettled inside my head.

  Without a single question about them, he releases me and passes me the last book. Stack clutched tight to my breasts, I do my best to hide the flush of my chest. The evidence of my humiliation.

  Fingertips grip my elbow, the soft strokes from before still lingering on my forearm, casting a chill across my skin as he guides me to my feet. Once upright, he releases me, stuffing his hands into his pockets.

  “I don’t suppose a set of side mirrors would do you any good.”

  The tension from seconds ago is tamped down by my offense. “No more than a horn for you.”

  His jaw shifts as if this amuses him. A gesture that I don’t find amusing. “Yet, you’re the one who can’t seem to avoid running into things.”

  “Maybe if those things didn’t blend into the wall, I’d take notice of them.” Oh, my God. I didn’t even mean to spew that one. The fact is, this man is unblendable, if such a word exists. He’s the kind of mysterious, imposing presence that could shrink any room he walks into. Intriguing and majestic, in spite of his scars.

  The humor in his eyes hardens with malice. “Nice dress. I’m sure my mother loved picking it out for you. I’ve no doubt it gets boring dressing up dolls all day.”

  “I am not her … dress-up thing.”

  What?

  Again, his lips twitch as if he’s holding back a laugh, which only stirs my frustration. “I suspect you’ll have a closetful of dresses by the time she’s done playing with you.”

  My jaw comes unhinged, while my mind scrambles for a proper insult to throw back at him. Gaze dipping to his outfit, which, if I’m being honest, really does look good on him, a fact that only pisses me off further, I tip my head with a smirk. “I see she chooses your wardrobe, as well.”

  What is it about this man? Twice now, he’s brought out this nasty side of me, like he wants to fire me for my insolence.