Seductive Shadows

by Marni Mann

  “You haven’t told them anything,” I said. “How would they know?”

  “They read the text you sent Dallas.”

  It was their phone; it made sense that they’d read my texts.

  “Why does it matter that I have a father?”

  “Don’t you understand yet, Charlie? You’re becoming relevant. And that relevance compromises their plans for you.”

  I didn’t understand. Not any of it. I pressed my hands against the sides of my head, trying to piece it all together, but no answers formed. Only more questions. None of it made sense—not the things he had shared or what the mansion stood for, or why any of it was important. I needed to know what plans they had for me, why I was in danger. What was worth him breaking all the rules to save me.

  I faced him. The confusion, the questions, the games—all of it made me flushed. ”What the fuck is going on inside that house?”

  His face slowly turned ashen. “I thought my warnings would have been enough to make you want to leave, and I wouldn’t have to reveal the truth…the truth about me. I should have known you weren’t going to give in that easily.” His tone was despairing, desperate. “I still feel the less you know, the better off you’ll be.”

  It did nothing but intensify my curiosity.

  “And I still want to know.”

  He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “It isn’t going to help you.”

  “Tell me, dammit! Tell me what the hell those people have planned for me.”

  After what felt like a small eternity, he put his glasses back on and gripped the door handle again. “They’re going to kill you, Charlie.” It fell like a stone in the space between us. “If I don’t get you out of the country, they’re going to kill you. I’ll be witness to your murder...” He trailed off again before he finished, the impact of his words hitting us both.

  “I’ll be the one to call your time of death.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  When I was a kid, my bed had always been a place of comfort and escape. I would close my door and imagine being anyplace but in our apartment. Lilly would bang around, staggering drunk through the living room or making sick, retching noises through the night while she threw up in the bathroom. She would torment the walls of the kitchen with thrown pots and smashed glasses. When I was older, she’d rummage freely through my purse, and her frail frame would wear clothes she’d taken from me without asking. As far as I knew, my bed was the only thing she hadn’t violated. My soft mattress was the one place I felt safe. Between those sheets, I could forget it all. But as I lay in my new bed, in my new home, within walls where no one had violated anything, I could find no comfort.

  They’re going to kill you, Charlie.

  I draped Lilly's tattered sweater over my shoulders; the memories attached to it offered no safety. Air came through my lips in short bursts; tightness squeezed my throat and neck. There was pressure, a gnawing that expanded with each breath, a sickness that moved in crests and troughs. My eyes opened to shadows; they closed to fear so intense I began to dread the darkness behind my shuttered lids. A pattern formed: closed and open, closed and open. I didn’t want to face it, but there was nowhere I could hide from it.

  How did I get here?

  I’ll be witness to your murder...

  Those words repeated over and over, our entire conversation running through my head again and again. It had replayed since he’d dropped me off three blocks from my apartment. I felt his pain as I took each step, his shame as I ripped the clothes from my body, his angst as I crawled into bed.

  I’d asked for the truth, and he told me everything. He didn’t just care for the girls when they got sick, perform their physicals and draw their blood; he watched them die. He called their time of death. He allowed them to be murdered—girls like me who sold their bodies inside the mansion. But there were others as well, men and women and children, orphans and runaways—forgotten ones, kidnapped or snatched off the street or lured in by false promises. And we all had to meet their criteria: we had to be healthy, we couldn’t be addicted to drugs or ridden with diseases, and we couldn’t be missed by family or friends. We were all loners. Victims in some way.

  The girls like me who worked at the mansion were recruited three to six months before their scheduled deaths. The Doctor didn’t come into our wings to chat or pamper us with attention. He was there to make sure we remained happy, that we were satisfied with our employer, and that we didn’t become restless before our orders came in. If he felt that one of us was regretting our decision, he fixed it; he made those regrets disappear. And the surveillance didn’t end when we stepped out of the limo: our calls and text messages were monitored, houses and apartments were bugged. They were able to follow up on the Doctor’s efforts, to eavesdrop on our feelings and intentions and our interactions with others. The men and women who were taken from the streets weren’t given these accommodations or lavished sexually until their death; they were placed in a coach bus, unconscious, and delivered to the mansion. Hundreds of thousands of people go missing every year. These were just some of those whose disappearances went unnoticed.

  I’m also going to call your time of death.

  Once the order was received, the Doctor would supervise while an executioner carefully administered a serum used to induce death. It had to be done in such a way that it wouldn’t affect the viability of the organs. A shadow team of surgeons flown in by the buyer and on stand-by for the procedure would then conduct the extraction. Once the organs had been collected and packed in ice, the team would be back on their buyer’s private plane to sell the organs to the highest bidder, and the bodies would be disposed of…somewhere in the depths of the mansion. The brothel was nothing more than a front, a way to service a clientele who had connections all over the country, a place to launder dreams and hopes and turn them into horrors. He wouldn’t tell me the number of deaths that occurred inside those walls each year; I didn’t know the value of each body. But I didn’t need to know. His expression explained it perfectly.

  And I was a complication in all of this.

  The mansion hadn’t anticipated my art exhibit coming together so quickly, or that I would develop a public presence because of it. I had a living relative now, and I’d established relationships with Professor Freeman and Cameron Hardy, both prominent men who were well-known in certain highly-visible circles. I had become relevant to others, and that was a threat to their anonymity, to their ability to remain within the shadows. I had been employed with them for four months, which was well within their average time frame, but I probably would have lasted six. The Doctor said my clients had developed a distinct fondness for me. That didn’t matter to the mansion or its board. My order had been expedited.

  Had the Doctor revealed his identity because he couldn’t carry the guilt of murdering his own daughter? Would he have said anything if I didn’t bear the markings of an upcoming execution? I didn’t know. I was the first girl he had attempted to save. And because he was one of the owners, he knew everyone else involved, their connections, means, and capabilities. He knew they would be able to find me if I just stopped working there. That was why I needed to escape, change my identity, and hope they wouldn’t track me down. Leaving the country was my best chance.

  He had always referred to the mansion as they. But really, it was we. He was just as guilty as the executioner who stuck in the syringe and the team who dissected the girls.

  Girls just like me.

  When he had finally finished speaking, there was a brief moment when I ignored my own response, my own terror and disgust at what he’d revealed, and stared at the man across from me, trying to see him for what he was now that I knew who he was. I truly felt sorry for him. That he had entered this world, the decisions he had made, who he had turned into. I couldn’t help but feel that somewhere under those dark layers of evil was a decent man—someone trying to make things right, who would be deserving of forgiveness and capable of forgiving himself, and to
cast light onto his own shadows. I didn’t know if I could ever call him Dad. But there was a part of me that hoped to be able to someday…the part that was seeking her own forgiveness. The part that had learned from her own mistakes.

  Before the limo came to a stop three blocks from my apartment, I gave him the answer he wanted. I would allow him to help me, to attempt to spare my life, to leave everything and everyone I knew, and I accepted the plan he had put together with a few requests of my own. The way he described the alternative, I would be dead within a week so I really didn’t have a choice. I had one more day left in the city, one final shift at the mansion, and then I would be boarding a private plane.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  I didn’t call Cameron to let him know I was on my way over, and I didn’t send him a text. I couldn’t risk using the phone that belonged to them. It would be safest to just show up at his place instead. I took a quick shower, tied my wet hair in a knot, and threw on the same outfit that I had worn the night before. I wouldn’t be returning to my apartment, so I grabbed a small bag and packed Lilly’s sweater, a few of my paintbrushes and a change of clothes.

  I stood at the call box outside of Cameron’s building and buzzed his studio, holding my breath and hoping he’d be either there or in his apartment, and not on campus.

  His reassuring voice came through the intercom. “Hello?”

  I exhaled relief. “Cameron...it’s me.”

  “Charlie?” He sounded surprised. “I’ll buzz you in.”

  I had tossed and turned for hours, trying to prepare for this moment. But it was impossible. I couldn’t lie in my bed dwelling on it anymore. I had to get it over with.

  The Doctor had tried to talk me out of doing it at all; a good-bye wasn’t in my best interest, given the situation. I could tell he’d been concerned that I’d give away too much about the mansion. But all I wanted to do was tell Cameron the truth about me. I needed him to hear it before I disappeared, before I fled. I needed him to know that I might never be coming back. I needed to see him one more time.

  The elevator door slid open. I found him in the center of the studio with a brush in his hand and a canvas in front of him. An overhead light shone directly on him, the sunrise not yet filling the entire space with pink glow. He wore a pair of paint-stained jeans and no shirt; his magnificent tattoo was in full view, spreading across his back, embracing his shoulders and caressing his scars. He’d always painted fully clothed when we worked together. His bare flesh, his exposed wounds brought a new level of intimacy and honesty to his art, as if he were pouring himself into the fiber of the canvas. I moved to his side, taking in his work. This was a new piece, one I hadn’t seen until now. It was nothing like his usual style. It wasn’t abstract, wasn’t filled with color.

  It was us.

  A black and white image of my naked back adorned his canvas, my shoulder blades protruding slightly, the two side-by-side freckles an inch past where my bra strap would have been had he not painted me nude. The top of my ass rested at the bottom of the canvas and my legs were wrapped around an image of him. His tattooed arms were crossed and bound around me; his head was tucked into my neck, and mine was nestled into his. He hadn’t included our faces. He didn’t need to. There was so much emotion in the image of just our bodies. It was pure and raw and real.

  I couldn’t pull my eyes from it. “You’re giving me your strength,” I said.

  He turned toward me. “You need it.”

  He was right.

  He looked tired. “Have you been up all night?” I asked.

  The tip of his fingers touched my waist. “Come here.”

  I couldn’t fight his words, his pull. I didn’t want to. I took a small step as he drew me into his bare arms and held me with his face buried in my neck. He matched the painting.

  With every breath he exhaled, the resolve that had grown in me on my way over seemed to diminish a little more. I wanted to give him me—all of me. To have him carry me across the hall, to become entangled in his legs...

  But I hadn’t come here for this. I’d come to tell him the truth.

  That’s exactly what I would do.

  Just one minute more.

  I pushed my nose into his chest, pressing my lips against the inked script and the scars beneath, grazing over the softness of skin. He smelled of salt, of a full night’s work, sensual and inviting. It was a scent I could inhale every day and never grow tired of. Heat poured from him, spilling out of his mouth as he breathed into my shoulder. His fingers tightened around me and began to glide down my shoulders, past my bra and down my spine, coming to rest against the small of my back.

  I could have easily lost myself, shut off every thought and worry. But I pulled myself out of his arms before I let that happen. “I have to talk to you. It’s important.” I took a step back, but I reached for his hand and held it tightly.

  “I figured.”

  I led him over to the couch, my fingers still wrapped around his. I sat beside him and stared into his eyes. The baby blue that I had grown so comfortable with beamed back at me. I wondered how I would ever find comfort like it again.

  Emma’s death had almost broken me, and I knew the pain would be just as devastating when I lost Cameron, too. It was the greater part of why I hadn’t allowed Dallas into my heart. I’d never wanted to feel this way again. But now, I couldn’t help it.

  “I told you that one day I’d share everything with you—my darkness, and the things in my life that I needed to straighten out.” My breath quickened. I’d practiced it all in my head, but that felt nothing like this. I had a hard time holding his stare; it was too intense, too adoring. I didn’t want my words to change that, though I knew there was no way for them not to. “For the last four months, I’ve been working…” I chose carefully. “…as a prostitute. In a…brothel.” That word sounded so odd, so small and harmless compared to what the mansion truly was. I left no room for him to respond. “The job was offered to me and I needed the money…and an escape from my life, as it was at the time. Why I went to work there is…complicated. There’s so much behind it.” Everything inside me cringed as I heard the words leave my mouth. The sound of the truth was so ugly. My actions had been even worse.

  What the hell was wrong with me? Why had I ever said yes to them?

  “And then…you happened. And I wanted to stop. I wanted to leave it behind. I couldn’t give myself to you when I was still giving myself to them, or to anyone else. I couldn’t be that or do that anymore. Not to me. Not to you.” My stare had moved from the floor to my feet and then to my hands. I finally looked up and in his direction. I couldn’t read his expression, his posture. I couldn’t read him.

  I reached for him, putting my hand on his forearm. He didn’t pull away, or flinch. His unreadable expression remained.

  “Say something,” I pleaded. “Please.”

  He was quiet for a second more. “I’m...not sure what to say, Charlie. You say you wanted to stop, to leave it behind...is there something you’re not saying here?”

  I took a deep breath and nodded. “I wanted to quit—I chose to quit—but it turns out that isn’t as easy as I thought it would be. They cater to a very specialized clientele, and…” The next words came out much more slowly. I understood why the Doctor had wanted to keep the gritty details of the mansion from me. And I was going to keep them from Cameron for the same reasons. His knowing the horrifying truth about what really went on there wouldn’t help anything. Ultimately, it could come to hurt him. “I know too much about their operation. They’re not willing to let me walk away. So I’m not going to walk; I’m going to run. And my father is going to help me.”

  Even without the gruesome details, the story sounded insane. Cameron and I had known each other for quite a while now, but we’d never done anything more than kiss. And now he was finding out not only that I was a prostitute, but that my life was in danger because of it, and I was fleeing for my own safety. I wasn’t sure I’d have believed it i
f I had been the one listening.

  He stayed calm. “And where will you be going?”

  “I don’t know. He has a plan.”

  “You don’t know his plan...but you’re definitely going?”

  He wasn’t just asking for details; he was questioning my decision. I released his hands, tucked my knees up against my chest and wrapped my arms around them, making myself smaller. Closing myself off. “I don’t have any other choice. If I stay here, they’ll come after me.” I dug my nails into my shins. “I know how far-fetched all of this sounds. You probably think I’m lying here...”

  “No,” he answered quickly. “I don’t think you’re lying, Charlie. You don’t have a reason to. But you just met your father…are you sure he’s trustworthy?”

  I still wasn’t sure how I felt about the Doctor, knowing now how deep he was in the happenings at the mansion. But since finding out my identity, he had done what he could to help me.

  I nodded. “I trust him. He really wants the best for me.” His eyes searched my face. “You actually know him.”

  “I do?”

  “He’s bought a few of your paintings. His name is Marvin Luna.”

  “The Doctor? The one Professor Freeman speaks so highly of?”

  “Yes. That’s him.”

  His beautiful eyes showed sadness. “And when are you coming back?”

  My heart fluttered. “I don’t know that I am…but I leave tonight.”

  “Tonight?”

  I nodded. He stood from the couch and paced the floor in front of us, his hands tightening and releasing. “I wanted you to know the truth before I left, wanted to tell you about me…I don’t want you to think I’m something I’m not.”

  “Charlie…” He walked toward me, his palms pressed into his cheeks. He ran them up to his eyes and over his head. “I don’t know what to say about this. How to think…what to do. But I know I want to help you.”