The Roses Academy- the Entire Collection

by Tara Brown

  My skin was blushing and crawling at the same time.

  “Ari, this is Lucas Rainer. He is, well, he lives here too. And behind me is Andy Cromwell. She stays sometimes. We all live here when we’re in town. This is Brandon Green and this is Aleksander.” She pointed to the people in the room. I hadn’t noticed their eyes all on me before that moment. My face flushed and my eyes darted to the floor.

  The rebellious teenager wanted to shout insults at them. Instead, I looked at Aimee as she walked into the large sitting room. She smiled at me, offering a refuge for my gaze.

  “Swimming on your first day?” she asked laughing.

  “I guess.” I winced. I didn’t know what to say or do. Everything in me was at odds.

  Aimee’s smile died when her eyes landed on the huge dude in the corner. She made an odd face, blushed and walked out of the room.

  The big guy’s eyes narrowed as he appeared to ignore her reaction to him.

  “Why don’t we all give Ari a few moments to catch her breath?” The dark-haired, middle-aged woman behind Lydia spoke quietly as she stood, “It was nice meeting you, sweetie.” She walked from the room.

  Lucas turned back and winked as he followed the woman out of the room. I frowned at him, making him smile.

  They all left, leaving me alone with Lydia who sat smiling expectantly.

  “What?”

  “Are you all right?” She still smiled.

  “Yeah, I think so—I mean I’m tired. Who are they? Or should I say, what are they?”

  “They’re different like you and me. They’re the Roses.”

  “What’s a Roses?”

  “Something we can talk about later.”

  “Oh my God, the not answering questions is getting old.”

  “Let’s focus on the fact Lucas thought you were trying to kill yourself in the lake. He is quite sensitive about the subject.” Her eyes grew serious. “We all are. For every person who’s different like us, there are two who have died in misery.”

  “He scared me with the pliers.”

  Lydia laughed. “He used them to remove the metal from your lip, nose, and eyebrow.”

  “He did?” I raised my hands to my face to feel the metal gone. I sighed, relieved. I would need to borrow those pliers for my poor boob. God only knew if it would ever be okay again.

  “I’ve explained to him that your past is such that being a stranger and coming at you with any kind of tool or weapon is a bad idea. Or sneaking up on you, even if the intentions are the best.”

  “That’s the problem, Lydia. It’s not my past—it’s someone else’s. I had a great childhood. I was a weird kid, yes, but my uncle raised me with love. I was loved every day. He was a friend, a father, and a mother. The memories and the pain that the other me had—those are not mine. And I don’t want them anymore.” I held my thin damaged arms out. “I don’t want my scars inside and out, I don’t want my tattoos, I don’t want my piercings, and I don’t want my weaknesses.”

  Lydia sat beside me and wrapped her arms around me. “I know, love. I know you don’t.”

  “I like boys. I don’t want my stomach to knot up and make me hate every man I meet. Just because the other me did things I shouldn’t have and people hurt me. I’ve never been raped, I’ve never been molested, nor have I done things for money that I’m ashamed of. Well, beyond selling greasy food to already fat people.”

  Lydia laughed. “Oh, I know that, honey. Until we can separate you two and get rid of the other, we need to be careful. The other you had a hard life.”

  “It’s ridiculous. I want to run and eat and enjoy life like I did before, like a normal person. Not be some freak that shoves meals down my throat in of fear of running out of food.”

  Lydia stroked my head. “My love, whatever happens, no one is going to hurt you in this house. The guards don’t let bad people in. You’re safe here until we can fix your split-personality situation.” She sighed and stroked my head. “And just for the record, Lucas is single. You know, in case you were curious or wanting to live like a normal girl.”

  “Oh my God.” I laughed. “Just what I need—a strange boy to make me feel less awkward about living in a house full of strangers and ghosts.”

  “Okay, I was just letting you know, for the record. You were blushing pretty hard. He isn’t that strange. Well, in comparison, you’re much stranger.”

  “Whatever.” I rolled my eyes, letting the older woman patronize me.

  Aimee walked back into the room. “I brought you something.”

  “What?”

  She laughed bitterly. “It’s a science experiment, sort of. I want to see what happens when you use your talents on someone who can go back. I was kinda bummed that I missed you knocking Luke out.”

  “No, are you insane? I ruined my life sending my uncle back. I’ll never do that again.” Fear flooded me as I leaned away.

  “Probably.” Aimee nodded. “But the person I brought you has a ruined life already. I just want to see if you can fix a life.”

  “No.” I looked to Lydia for support but she just shrugged.

  “Can’t hurt. If the life is already horrid, then how can it get worse?” She smiled softly. “It will take away the craving. You must learn to feed the beast inside you. Controlled feeding. Otherwise, you will get hungry and you’ll eat. It’s a fact.”

  Aimee went back to the hall, then returned dragging a young girl dressed in tattered clothes with train tracks running up her arms. The needle marks were obviously infected and her glassy eyes showed her fear. I’d seen that face before. I was pretty sure it was in a mirror and I had a bald head.

  “Aimee. I can’t,” I spoke softly, certain Aimee didn’t understand what she was asking me to do. Before Aimee could even open her mouth to convince me, my hands started to sweat. I wanted to touch the girl. The sensation flooded me, pulsating the way it had before.

  “Just go with it,” Aimee encouraged. “I know the feeling. Just do it. You have to.”

  I parted my lips to protest but my hands reached forward, pulling me up from the couch awkwardly. Letting go, I left Lydia’s warm embrace and walked to the girl, as tingles overwhelmed me. At the last second, fear registered in the girl’s glassy blue eyes. A look of horror hit her as I put my hands on her rail-thin arms. The vibration came instantly and sweet ecstasy overwhelmed me.

  Lydia’s voice floated above, somewhere in the black space, “Stay conscious. Stay with it.”

  I ignored her. The girl and I shook as if we were riding a train. The air sparkled as a picture formed between us. The girl faded, becoming a ghostly version, but it wasn’t her I was watching.

  I was stuck on the movie being made in the air.

  An image of the girl before, before the drugs and whatever else had landed her at Lydia’s. She looked different, clean. Clean but also scared as she packed her bags to run away. She hurried down the road and paid to board a bus. She gazed out the back window as she rode out of town, tears streaming her cheeks.

  The image changed, just like it had when it was a movie of my uncle. In this new version the girl was walking down the road again with her bag in hand. She stood at the bus stop about to board. Instead of getting on, this time she trudged with her heavy bags to a house. An older woman opened the door and pulled her inside, shaking her head as the girl told her what had been happening. The woman took her bags and put them in a flowery bedroom. In the next image the girl was older and holding a baby. She was smiling at a man with a gold wedding band on his finger. Her house was small but it was full of love. She wore a silver necklace with an L pendant. The necklace hung in front of me as the picture faded and the girl vanished along with the sparkling air.

  Hesitant, I lifted my hands, touching the silver necklace for just a second before it dropped to the floor. I bent down and picked it up, running my thumb over the warm metal.

  “Angel of mercy, did you see that?” Annabelle whispered.

  I glanced back at the crowd in the ha
ll watching me. Everyone had the same stunned expression.

  “She’s okay.” I swallowed hard. “I think she went to a better place. I didn’t kill me. I don’t think I killed her.”

  “Dude!” Aimee smiled brightly. “That just played like a movie in the air. It’s almost like you opened a portal. No, you did. That was a portal. I honestly don’t believe what I just saw. I eat people’s souls and I don’t believe in this magic.” Aimee turned and faced Lydia who was clasping her hands together and beaming.

  Tears slid down my cheeks but it wasn’t the old me crying. It was the new me, the bald and scared me I didn’t know too well.

  “I can save them all.” A new hope filled my heart. I could sneak back into the orphanage. I could fix their lives. I could save the kids.

  “You don’t know that you can save them all. Some yes, but for others, it could get worse,” Lydia warned, reading my mind.

  “I have to try. I can’t leave them there in the orphanages. They’re children.”

  “I know, sweetie. One day at a time though.” She maintained her peaceful smile.

  “You’re very lucky to have such an amazing talent in this life,” one of the guys said.

  “I don’t feel lucky.” I glanced up at the huge man I assumed was Aleksander. He looked like one.

  “You are.” He smiled, making my feel funny inside. “Trust me.” He turned and walked away.

  Lucas was leaning against the wall, watching me with his striking eyes. His presence made my uncomfortable, probably because of the tears soaking my cheeks. They all made me feel that way.

  Needing to be alone to process it all, I walked to the front door and out to the yard where I strolled along the edges of the guards, putting my hand up against the barrier. It was magic. I was magic. Aimee was magic. Lydia was magic.

  What was Lucas?

  He was different, but how?

  As I passed by the street again, I smelled something. It was like incense, but not a burning smell. It was yummy. I wanted to smell it more. It was subtle as if riding on the wind but carried a great distance.

  “Ari,” a voice whispered from beyond the barrier.

  “Hello?” I turned and scanned the street. I was alone except for passing crisp fall leaves brushing against the cold cement. The leaves scratched their way across the guards as if protesting being forced to go.

  “Come to me.”

  “Who are you?”

  The cool wind turned warm for a second. I wasn’t alone, but I couldn’t see anyone. The scent became more potent, scaring me as the wind picked up. I looked around more, noticing the trees on the sides of the road weren’t moving, even though the wind was so strong it nearly blew me over. It was like my own personal storm.

  A hand grasped my left shoulder, hauling me back. I turned to see Lucas who seemed to search the street. “Come on.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me away from the pavement.

  “Why?” I let him haul me away from the wind, even though the angry version of me had fantasies of hurting him.

  “You can’t hover at the guards. You’re taunting them.”

  “Taunting who?” I stopped walking and I jerked my hand from his. “What are they?”

  Lucas shrugged. “They don’t like us.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  “It’s something you need Lydia to explain, or Ron. Anyway, it’s a Roses problem and until you’re a Rose, it doesn’t concern you.” He put his hand out again to take mine. I frowned at him and walked the other way, letting the cautious side of me win that argument. The street urchin in me hated boys touching her. She had her reasons and I didn’t want to know them.

  I strolled through the trees to the backside of the house and down to the dock and sat on the cold wooden bench.

  Confusion wasn’t quite the word, but it was all my feeble mind would come up with. I was in a constant battle with myself.

  Part of me was intrigued by Lucas. He was hot, there was no denying that. And he was always watching me, not in a creepy way. Like maybe he liked me too. But the old sunny and fun me, wasn’t the only person debating whether we liked boys or not.

  There was a shell of a human in me, broken and injured. She didn’t like anything.

  Except the house. She didn’t want to admit it, but she liked having people who let her live with them.

  Old me, desert Ari, wanted to go home to my uncle’s desert diner. I wanted to be back in my old town, running in the desert, loving the feel of the dry air. I wanted things to go back to normal.

  Not that I didn’t like living there, I did.

  But I also knew I needed to find my uncle. I needed to see him again and for him to want to be my family again. I fingered the silver necklace I had put on with my uncle’s ring on it and wondered about touching my uncle again.

  If I could change him back to what he was. If I had fixed that girl, I could fix him.

  Chapter 5

  Is this chemistry or science?

  Ari

  I walked down the stairs, wondering if Lucas was back from his trip. He’d been gone for weeks, weeks I’d spent oddly thinking about him in my unending free time.

  In my months at Lydia’s, I’d discovered they traveled a lot. All of them. Everyone except me, Lydia, and Annabelle.

  Aimee and Aleks were the means to nearly every trip out of the house. No one came or went using doors or cars. It was weird. They traveled by thought like Harry Potter characters.

  While I learned more about the Roses Academy every day, no one answered my questions outright. It frustrated me the way things were so cryptic and mysterious, and no one was upfront. Not that it kept me in the dark though. Between the snooping, eavesdropping, and the bits of information the others had divulged, I had actually learned a fair amount.

  They were a secret organization of assassins. Real assassins . . . which was creepy.

  They were supernatural beings. All of them. They had weird gifts they believed came from God. Also creepy.

  They killed bad guys, which was a little too kryptonite and radioactive spider for me. But I didn’t mock them out loud, just in my head, earning me looks from Lydia.

  But honestly, their gifts or skills were nuts.

  Aimee ate people. It was her gift. She actually ate them and they died. I did believe her gifts came from God. No one else would be that mocking, making a pretty blonde a monster.

  Lydia was hundreds of years old and a witch who did good magic.

  Annabelle was something of a witch, even though she was deceased. And no one thought it odd. No one but me.

  Andy was a vampire. She was over six hundred years old and rarely spoke. That would have been cool, but she was always watching me as if I were her next meal. Again with the creepy. Fortunately, Andy was hardly ever at Lydia’s. She went to Alaska a lot, where it was dark longer in the fall and winter. She didn’t laugh when I’d asked if she sparkled in the sun. Instead, I got a lesson on the dangers of the sun to vampires.

  Brandon was something called a shifter. This was considered exotic by the rest of the people at Lydia’s. At Lydia’s, being called exotic meant you were a super freak. I’d believed he was nice and easygoing but one day he stopped talking to me. He barely came to Lydia’s anymore.

  Aleksander was an enigma and completely hot, maybe because of it. His constant state of angst and inner pain was unbearably attractive. He had a kind but detached disposition. Not to mention, he smelled like something I wanted to eat, in the sexiest way. I wasn’t against sex, but I also had never been unnaturally attracted to anyone the way I was to Aleks. But I could tell something had happened between Aimee and Aleks. It was never mentioned but obvious anyway.

  Lucas was the biggest unknown though. He had managed to make me obsessively curious without ever sharing a detail about himself. It was like living with a complete stranger who hovered and lurked, stalking you outwardly. For a while I had assumed he was a vampire like Andy until I realized Andy never went outside. The inf
ormative sun lesson ruled that possibility out. Lucas was outside all the time.

  Then I thought he could be like Aleksander, but he wasn’t able to vanish into thin air. Also, he didn’t smell the way Aleksander did. There were days I caught myself staring at Aleks, pondering strange things.

  And while Aleks smelled like every kind of food I loved, Lucas smelled completely different.

  I’d never noticed the way boys smelled before coming to Lydia’s, except when they used too much Axe at school. But Lucas smelled like home. It was the strangest experience, being so comfortable around a boy who lurked.

  It was odd.

  My smelling them all was odd too.

  But it seemed like my little oddities were really nothing, compared to the freaks at the mansion.

  Aimee was the only one close to normal. She treated me like a real friend. She told me all about her life before the Roses. She had been a regular girl with a twin sister and a school crush. Her story of the science teacher drugging and raping students made me curious if I could somehow save Aimee from this fate. The fate of becoming a monster.

  She wasn’t born this way.

  I wondered if there was someone I could touch to fix her.

  She was the only person our age who didn’t look at me and only see the damage—the scars and tats. No one saw me. All they saw was the pain from a lifetime I’d never actually lived.

  At the bottom of the stairs I smelled meat. It meant Lucas was home. My insides tightened thinking about watching Lucas eat his breakfast. Annabelle only ever cooked sausage and bacon when Lucas or Brandon were around so it had to be them. Aleks and Aimee never really ate much.

  When I got downstairs the kitchen was empty and my excitement faded. The smell of food lingered in the air but whoever had eaten was gone.

  “Annabelle?”

  “Yes?” She appeared behind me. I didn’t see her but felt the mist of a ghost.

  “Who was here?” I turned to her.

  “That would be Mr. Brandon. He was here and I cooked him a breakfast.”