Richer Than God

by Amelia Wilde

  Two fingers to the side of her neck and all of me freezes. I hold my own breath. This is the only way to know if she’s still alive, to quiet my own thrashing heart. Alicia falls silent.

  There’s nothing there.

  And then—

  A pitiful flutter.

  Relief is a heart attack. I gather her into my arms and stand up, blinking Reya and Alicia back into their places. Not here. Brigit is too light in my arms. If I leave her this close to the top of the building, she might float away. It’s fucking absurd, and I know it, but knowing is subsumed in the drive to get down to the floor below this one. It’s safer there. We’ll be safer.

  She’ll be safer. Not from me. But from the rest of the world. My thoughts scramble, switching places with each other. She’s so light. Small. Too fragile for the things I did to her. For the things I’m going to do.

  “Was it the light?” I murmur to her on the way to the first landing. My mind casts around for an explanation. “It’s not very bright in the attic.”

  Problem-solving during this killer relief and murderous fear is impossible. Above us, soft thuds tell me that Reya is following. She catches up at a hidden entrance to my rooms and comes in behind me before the door can shut and lock. Reya’s a silent shadow all the way to my bedroom, where I lay Brigit out on the bed and sit down next to her.

  If she’s dying, I’m dying.

  Her breathing is shallow, but it’s happening. Her eyes move back and forth behind her eyelids. And her arms and legs—they’re not tensed, not wracked with pain. Relaxed. She’s relaxed.

  But this is still wrong.

  I check her pulse again. A weak response. This is not how her heart usually beats. If she knew I was this close, it would be hammering. “What happened?”

  Reya steps to the side of the bed, her shadow falling across Brigit’s pillow. “Her roommate said she wasn’t hungry at breakfast,” she relays, her tone as careful as I’ve ever heard it.

  “So she didn’t eat?”

  “A few bites of toast, and then afterward, she had tea.”

  Tea. “What do you mean, afterward?”

  The pause tells me everything. I pick up one of Brigit’s hands and rub the delicate skin on the inside of her wrist. “Tell me what the fuck you mean by tea.”

  “One of the other girls made her a cup of tea.”

  “Who?”

  I know who it is. That doesn’t make me want confirmation any less. It will save time if Reya opens her mouth now. A significant period of time.

  Reya weighs her response with care, and the air in the room seems heavier.

  “I swear to fuck, Reya, if you don’t tell me, I’ll punish them all until I find her.”

  “Savannah.”

  I lean over Brigit then, my heart climbing the walls of my body. Her lips are slightly parted. I can’t ignore how pink and welcoming they are and kiss her. It’s meant to be perfunctory—a research mission—but it becomes a silent question. Please wake up. Please, please. I would never say it out loud. I would die before I said it out loud, but it’s a bright knife through my chest.

  The kiss ends so abruptly that Reya gasps. I swipe a sleeve over my mouth. I want the taste off me. Tendrils of lost feeling try to embed themselves against my lips. Reya jumps out of the way when I spit on the carpet. She’s horrified.

  I’m fucking horrified.

  Because I would know that taste anywhere, beneath any other flavor.

  “What is it?” Reya’s on the verge of panic. “What is it, Zeus?”

  “Poison. Do you know who you need to call?” Carina Jain is a physician who works at a hospital ten minutes away and keeps a cell phone on her twenty-four hours a day. I’m the only one with the number. We have a deal, much like all the whores at Olympus.

  “Yes.”

  “Get her here.”

  I’d make the call myself, but I’ll be damned if I leave Brigit’s side right now. Reya takes out her own phone and dials the number. She puts the cell to her ear. “Is there anything I should—aside from the fact that it’s poison, should I—”

  “Tell her that the poison came from my sister.”

  Reya’s shoulders sag a little, but she only nods.

  I keep my fingers on Brigit’s pulse. It’s unsettling as fuck in here, like being in church.

  Fifteen minutes later, Carina arrives, her hair slung over her shoulder in a thick braid. She examines Brigit without comment, and then we sit her up. Her head lolls against my shoulder, and another pang of fear shivers its way through me. I hate it. It’s like a switch has been flipped. For so long, I was a shell. Now I’m a beating heart. It’s fucking terrible. I push all of it away in favor of getting the antidote down Brigit’s throat.

  The change is immediate. Color comes back to her cheeks and she stretches, wriggling her toes, but she doesn’t open her eyes. Carina holds back the covers so I can put her in the bed, and then she puts a hand on my elbow.

  “That’s all,” I tell her.

  “Zeus.” I meet her dark eyes and find something like concern there. “This isn’t Demeter’s first attempt.”

  At first, I think she’s asking. Of course it’s not my sister’s first attempt at poisoning a person. Not by far. I already know that. “What are you saying?”

  “We’ve had a few cases at the hospital.” Carina seems to make a decision. “Did something happen?”

  I laugh, too loud for the room. “If I told you everything that has ever happened involving my sister, we’d be here for days.”

  “Recently, then?”

  “I’m not her keeper.” What I want is for Carina to go back to her job and wait for my calls. I want everyone out of this room, except for Brigit. “If you’re asking me to reason with her, don’t waste your breath.”

  “No, I….” She looks tired. Carina swings her bag up over her shoulder again. “Be careful,” she says. “All of you.”

  Reya escorts her out, their voices low in the hallway, and I turn down the lights.

  Strip off my jacket and pants.

  Unbutton my shirt and discard it.

  And then I climb into bed next to Brigit.

  At first, I can’t stand it—no woman has ever slept in this bed. Ever. And the feel of her slim body next to mine is overwhelming. I would imagine it’s like being colorblind then flooded with color—or sensitive to the light and held out in the sun. It’s so intense that I have to get out of the bed for several minutes and collect myself.

  “What the fuck is happening?” I ask the dark.

  Then I get back in. Brigit shifts and rolls, and somehow she ends up curled against me, her spine against my chest. I search out her wrist and enclose it with my fingers.

  Her heart beats.

  I let her sleep there all night while I keep watch.

  19

  Brigit

  He’s in my dreams.

  Or he is my dreams. Buttons on a clean shirt. The rasp of an expensive jacket against my clothes. He’s covered me head to toe. Is my head hidden from the world too? It can’t be, because Zeus kisses me, a deep, searching thing. It’s the last thing I feel before I lose the last feeling in my lips. So strange.

  It shifts, and I’m thirsty, drinking, but my mouth doesn’t work the way it should. It’s hard to drink from a moving target when I’m propped up against a mountain. A rock wall. A sheer face. I get the sense I could pound my fists against it all day, and the only result would be bloodied hands.

  It’s so bright out.

  I close my eyes against the light and roll over, successfully tipping myself into the darkness between dreams. There’s nothing here. It’s a relief. I float along the surface of consciousness, touching it but not truly immersing myself in it, for a long time.

  When I finally do manage to open my eyes, it’s because I’m hungry. The pinch in my stomach is a familiar one, but it’s been some time since I felt it. The toast—the toast is the last thing I remember. Then the tea. And then…

  And then the he
llscape stairs, and Alicia, and hitting the floor.

  Heat skims over me, head to toe. I could pretend to wonder where I am, but the answer is obvious without getting my eyes to focus—Zeus’s bed. It has to be his, because all the sheets smell like laundry detergent and him.

  It’s one thing to get fucked on someone’s bed. It’s another thing to be tucked into it, deeply adrift in dreams.

  I’m awake now, and I can’t lie here anymore. Because I could lie here. It’s the most comfortable bed. It probably cost a fortune. I would give anything to hide under the sheets and never get out, but that’s not an option for me. I push them off me and prop myself up on one elbow, looking for him.

  The room is empty. Lights adjust slowly, as if they know I’ve just opened my eyes and need a second. The sliver of sky I can see through the curtains is dark.

  My breath goes out of me. I don’t know if I’m disappointed or relieved that I’m alone. It does mean I have a minute to test out whether my body has come back. Toes, check. Knees, check. My arms work. My fingers flex. Whatever the hell happened at breakfast—was it today, or days ago?—doesn’t seem to have done any permanent damage.

  I test out walking next.

  There’s no strange vertigo or tilting hallways, which I take as a good sign.

  Instead, there’s curiosity, which is not good. I don’t need to get caught up in learning about this man. I don’t. I’m sure I don’t. But I’m here in this room, and there’s nothing to look at other than his bed—black, with black covers—and the archway into a massive walk-in closet. There’s also an attached bathroom that’s bigger than some of the two-bedroom apartments in the city. All of it is bright, except for the furniture. All those dark pieces remind me of anchors, holding down the room.

  Maybe they hold him down too.

  I get up the courage to walk past the closet, and that’s when I see them.

  The artwork.

  Frames, really. That’s all I can see from here. Black frames on white walls. They look simple but not cheap. And I can only see one corner of one painting in the floor-to-ceiling mirror. Another corner peeks out at the edge of the glass.

  Paintings?

  I have the sense that an alarm might go off if I cross the threshold, but after a thorough search for anything resembling a camera, I decide to risk it. My reflection winks across the glass. I look thin. A bit on the pale side. Soft.

  The closet is bigger than I thought. And one wall—the inside wall, the one I couldn’t see from the main bedroom—has a neat row of paintings in it. They’re real paintings, judging by the brushstrokes, and they are the only art I’ve seen inside the whorehouse. There could be other paintings in the women’s rooms, but they wouldn’t be like this.

  How can I look away? It’s impossible, because they’re so riveting. Art class in school was a joke compared to what’s in front of me. Paintings of people. But that doesn’t do it justice.

  The first painting is of a woman I’ve never seen. I’m instantly jealous of her, this painted figure. She’s against a dark background, and it sets off the lovely curves of her. The swells of her breasts. She’s naked, but she stares out of the canvas unflinchingly. Even though she is covered in paint.

  Not just the brush strokes that make up her body, but markings—long swipes of paint in dark-rust and midnight-blue. Someone has marked her with these colors, with their fingers and hands—possessing her. My own body responds to the thought of being marked that way. Possessed that way.

  Zeus has done that, without paint.

  But to see it here, as art—it takes my breath away. In the lower right-hand corner of the piece, a slim white card is tucked in the corner. Possession, it reads.

  “Brigit?”

  Reya’s voice shocks me to the core. I was lost in a fantasy world involving paint and a painter and someone looking at me the way this painter must have looked at this woman, and I scramble for the door. Reya waits on the other side of the threshold, her hand to her chest. “Oh, thank God,” she breathes. “I thought you were missing.”

  “I’m here. I didn’t….” I can’t think of anything to say. “I was stretching my legs.”

  “Good. That’s good.” She looks me up and down. “If you can walk, then the worst is probably over.”

  “The worst of what?” There are a lot of terrible things on the agenda for my time here, and a good long nap wasn’t even in the top ten. Embarrassment creeps back in. “I know I passed out, but—”

  “It was more than that.” Reya swallows, and her eyes dart away from mine then return.

  “What was it?” The floor sways briefly, but I hold myself up. I haven’t been here very long, but it’s unnerving to see Reya look nervous, like someone’s lurking behind Zeus’s bed. That’s impossible. It’s snug against the wall, and nothing could hide there. I come out of the closet, trying my best to make the movement look natural. The bedframe is solid. Nothing underneath there either. “Reya?”

  She blinks, and I realize she’s been lost in thought. “Zeus wants you downstairs.” Reya hustles me into the bathroom and makes amenities appear like magic. A toothbrush. A comb. A swipe of blush for my cheeks. A washcloth. Little by little, she puts me together until I’m pale and soft in a strappy dress that skims my knees. Finally, she pushes my feet into ballet flats. “Good,” she says. “Let’s go.”

  I don’t want to leave the bedroom. Reya’s set expression is a warning, but I don’t know what it’s about, and part of me wants to dig my heels in and refuse to go until she tells me.

  Men will want you sweet and compliant. The full reality is setting in again. Sleep didn’t chase it away any more than tears would. And more than I want to stay, I want answers from Zeus.

  This is not about reliving the dream. It’s about following orders so I can survive, so I can get through this. Doing what he says will free me from one thing and one thing only—worrying about what to do in this next moment.

  I expect Reya to lead me down to his office. That makes a certain kind of sense. If he’s not in his bedroom, then he should be in his office. Or the lounge. A nervous chill prickles the skin on my back. Would he really train me tonight, with people watching, even after I fainted?

  I think he would.

  But Reya makes a series of turns on the first floor that don’t seem related to his office at all, and then we’re descending a set of stairs that open wide at the bottom like a skirt. They’re gorgeous, grand. I have never once pictured stairs like this existing for a basement. It turns out my imagination has been lacking all my life. The final step puts us on carpet as rich as the rooms upstairs. I get the distinct sense that the carpet here is for noise-dampening purposes. The doors set into the wall—a double pair, and black as night—look like they shouldn’t be disturbed.

  Reya takes a deep breath.

  “Tell me.” I try to make the plea sound less like a plea, but I still feel ghostlike from last night. Or this morning. “What are we here for?”

  She shakes her head and opens the door.

  I should have known what was going to be on the other side. I should have known, because I’ve seen Zeus. I’ve been in his hands. I’ve had his mouth on me. A place like this belongs in a place like Olympus. But the scene rocks me back on my feet. Reya keeps me moving, and the door closes behind us. We’re late to the party. The other girls have taken their places around the room, shadows in lovely gowns. That’s the first thing I notice. There is an audience—a silent one. It’s dim enough that it sets off the whites of their eyes.

  There’s so much here to absorb. A bed against one wall with a heavy frame—it reminds me of Zeus’s bed, only more intricate. There are obvious places for a person to be bound. A pair of leather cuffs adorns a shelf above the bed. A low bench waits in front of a fireplace, and I know instantly the ways a body could be bent over it. A clench between my legs is enough confirmation, and God, what is wrong with me? How can I be looking, thinking about these things when the main event is Zeus?

&n
bsp; I take it in, in a series of blinks. A cross by the opposite wall. Savannah’s naked body, tied to it. The startling white of Zeus’s shirt with no jacket. The tensed muscles of his forearms, perfect and vicious. The light shining down like a halo on them both.

  The whip in his hands.

  The red stripes on Savannah’s thighs.

  Zeus watches me, and understanding rushes in like a new day.

  It was more than that. More than tea. More than a fainting spell.

  “I learned something, Brigit.” It’s as if he’s standing upstairs, completely at ease. He might as well be upstairs, at the center of everything. An illusion—that’s an illusion. It’s not real, the man upstairs, graciously accepting drinks and laughing, a smile on his face. My heart gives three beats in quick succession and then goes quiet, like it could possibly hide from him. “I learned that Savannah hasn’t been kind to you.”

  His hand moves, and the whip snaps across her skin. Savannah’s anguished cry is absorbed into the ceiling, and another red line decorates her skin. He’s been here a while, I see now. The whip is only his current implement.

  “Tell her what you did, Savannah,” Zeus prompts.

  A blubbering sob eats her words.

  For that, she gets another stripe, this one across the center of her ass. Her head drops back and she howls.

  No one moves.

  Why aren’t they moving?

  Someone has to be the one to intervene.

  A droplet of blood drips down from this newest punishment.

  “Stop.” I might as well not have spoken. My voice is still rough from sleep, and Zeus doesn’t bother to turn his head, if he even heard me. I don’t think he can hear me. I’m seized by a horrible fear that I really did die.

  I’m not a ghost, damn it.

  “Confess, Savannah,” he croons, and the illusion of him shatters again, the façade shearing off to reveal what’s underneath his nice clothes and his gorgeous face and his laugh, that laugh. “We’re all waiting.”