by Sarah Black
Prince’s purring pulls me back to him. “So demanding.” I bury my face in his soft fur, grateful he wanted a snuggle before I head out the door. “I promise no matter what I’ll bring you home tuna tonight.”
“Meow.”
His tone deepens, pulling a laugh from the pit of my stomach. “Yeah, yeah.” I plop his furry butt on the counter, side-eyeing Poppy as she mutters quietly to whomever called her. Curiosity eats at me, but it’s also nearing half past and I promised Aja. A bag of dry food perches on top of the fridge, a spot I know Prince can get to, but I don’t think he likes this particular brand. I never should have spoiled him with tuna. Or chicken. He’s become incredibly picky.
Little triangles of red food clank into his bowl, and Prince takes one look at it before strutting off. Tail raised in defiance.
“You spoil him.” Call ended, Poppy’s displeasure is focused back on me.
“I do, but he’s worth it.” With one last, longing glance at my furball, I snatch my keys from the bowl and wiggle into my shoes.
“I’ll walk you.”
“Afraid I’ll pass out on the way?”
“Yes.” No humor, no snark, no sass. She really believes I may pass out on the way to Aja’s business.
Frowning at her, I lock up, the snick echoing in the quiet hall. “Who called you?” Inquisitiveness wins this time, my old foe.
Blue eyes flicker to the side as I casually attempt not to look at her. She frowns as hesitation crosses her face. “Joseph.”
I almost wish she hadn’t told me. Nerves spear my gut like tiny little spikes. Each one piercing my stomach as they struggle to plunge their way through. I blow out a breath, remembering my crazy sensei. Inhale for seven, hold for four, exhale for eight. Still, I stumble into the railing, Poppy gripping my arms to steady me.
“Joseph,” I say casually, licking my suddenly dry lips. “H-How’s he doing?”
“I knew I shouldn’t have said anything,” she growls, attempting to drag me back up to my apartment.
Spikes gone, my belly growls. Her abrupt change is helping me to move past that flicker of horror. “I need to eat, Poppy, so unless you’re going to go grocery shopping for me, just walk me to Aja.” I grip her hand. “Please.”
“I thought you worked past this.” Her booted feet stomp down the stairs. Hot pink lace ties up her calves, bowed in the back, her leather pants hugging every curve. Where I ended up thinner than I should be, Poppy grew into her curves by weightlifting.
“I did work past this.” I rub a hand down my face in her wake. The outside door is open to keep the little space from becoming a hotbox of death. As soon as that inner door opens, the cool air flees and a wash of humidity punches me in the face.
I embrace the hit. “Why did Joseph call.”
Poppy’s steps now stutter on the sidewalk, her eyes and mouth pinched. “I was checking up on him.”
The small muscle under her eye twitches, lie. It’s her only tell. Soon the lie will take on a life of its own, making her eye pulse with the beat of her heart. “That so?” I challenge.
“You should take the piercing out for Aja. If you intend to work there.” Subject change. Fine. She continues, “Did Aja talk to you about what you would be doing?”
“No, she just programmed an address into my phone and said to show up at eleven.” I dig my phone out of my back pocket, swiping the screen to bring up the address. “It’s not far.”
“But she never talked to you about what her business is?” Poppy glances at me with a raised brow.
Now that I think about it, her evasion is truly suspicious. I just hope I didn’t agree to work somewhere that would put my morals into question.
Now I can’t decide which is worse—Valentino or Aja. Guess I’m about to find out.
5
Davis Temp Services.
Aja’s business sits on the corner of Main St., Manayunk, Pennsylvania. The white stucco, two-story building holds that downtown Northwest charm with chipped paint and open front windows, yet it’s clean and undisturbed. An odd sense of quiet radiates outward, almost like a vacuum. Not unpleasant, but like my ears are about to pop.
Painted in Aja’s signature script on the front window, the letters flourish at the top while the phone number rests at the bottom in black. I can’t see in due to a painting of an ouroboros on the front, again in her lazy scrawl brought on by years of Catholic school. I’d know the lines of her artwork anywhere—just like a thumbprint is personal to that person so, too, is artwork.
My feet find their way to the corner steps that lead to innocuous-looking wooden French doors. The knocker a big cat. Delicate lines etch out each defining curve while a ring sits between pointy teeth.
Poppy’s hand snaps out before I can reach the handle that looks suspiciously like a tail. Knowing Aja and her obsession with predatory cats, she probably had that handmade. My fingertips graze over the wrought iron lovingly, her essence woven into every inch of the outside. I can’t wait to check out the inside.
“I can’t believe I’ve never been here before.” Frowning, I turn to my sister. “Have you been here before?”
She scrutinizes the knocker and handle with a frown. “A few times.”
“This doesn’t look too questionable, Pop.” My smile falls at the tight line of my sister’s mouth. “What is it?”
“You should take out the piercings.” Her mouth turns down into an amusing frown.
Crossing my arms, I eye her. “Why?” There’s no way I’m pulling out the hoop in my nose or the medusa, the pure silver gleaming in the reflection on the side window.
“It’s your funeral,” she grumbles, before yanking open the door. “Come on.”
My ears pop as my feet cross the threshold into a swarming flurry of activity. A fresh pot of coffee gurgles in the distance as laughter bubbles up, merging the two into a harmony that eases my soul. Simple, rectangular desks rest up against one another in a set of four upon a distressed, wood floor.
Overhead, black beams zigzag in that industrial look, creating the illusion that the ceiling goes much higher than it should. Sunlight spills in from the front window, highlighting a small seating area of white couches and a glass coffee table. Mugs of coffee sit in varying degrees of consumption while cakes and pastries rest on little napkins.
My lungs open to the freshness of the room, vastly different from the newsroom, but still holding that same hustle and bustle that invigorates my soul. Giving me something to act upon and keeping my internal demons at bay. A space where I can work and forget who I am.
What I am.
Poppy drags me through the open room, each person we pass quiets to stare openly at us. Their calculating and assessing eyes dampening the mood of the room, shifting the ambiance from friendly to hostile. Clearly, they aren’t too open to fresh meat. I’m not any more welcome here than at the newsroom where I graduated from floundering intern to glorified intern.
“Back to work, bitches!” Aja’s booming voice rings out just ahead in the next room. Her curvy frame steps into the doorway, her hair swept up into a perfect dread bun. Her black leggings with heels and a bustier makes her look like a hard ass. “I ain’t payin ya to stare at my girls, now am I?”
Chatter picks back up, but the warmth doesn’t return.
I’m just wondering what girls she’s referring to, us or the ones her bustier has on display.
“Aja,” Poppy growls, hooking her arm and pulling her and me into a backroom and up a set of spiral stairs. Squished beside each other, Aja shrugs a shoulder, deciding to follow my temperamental sister blindly.
She clearly has more faith than I do. We stumble out onto a landing with more white leather furniture and open windows. The scent of fresh pine tickles my nose.
“What were you thinking?” Poppy has lost all sense as she whirls on Aja who stands her ground. It would take a hell of a lot to get Aja to back down. She just isn’t that kind of person.
“I was thinking” —Aja’s hea
d swirls as her attitude comes out to play, and I bite my cheek to keep from laughing— “that our girl was put in a precarious position. My business gave her a reason and it looks like your employer” —I don’t miss the stress on that word, or the odd reference to her business, or Aja’s brows creeping into her hairline—“just wants a plaything.”
“Wait. What?” It’s my turn to whirl on Poppy. “Plaything? His dick was wet not twelve hours ago with someone else. What in this world would give you the idea I’d roll with that?”
It doesn’t matter how gorgeous he is or how much my body reacted to him. My standards wouldn’t allow for it. I didn’t spend a decade building myself back up only to fall down a hole of male usage.
“Not here,” Poppy hisses. “They don’t even want me here.”
“You want to get into that? Here? Now? Because I will and you won’t like that outcome.” Aja’s patience snaps, the vein in her neck bulging and letting me know she’s about to lose it.
“Let’s back up a second,” I suggest.
“No!”
“Hell no!”
“I won’t be outnumbered here.” Steel laces up my spine. “I’ll admit it’s an odd beginning, but I need the money, Pop. We discussed this earlier.”
Prince needs to eat. I need to eat.
“Not like this,” Poppy pleads.
“And what, working at the club for Valentino is any better? Tell me my choices here, Poppy, because you know as much as I do that I’m a lowly intern no matter how much pull Rodger has.” There is only so much one man can do, and I feel bad enough for taking advantage of him thus far. “Pop, I still have to pay back that student loan.”
“I told you college was a waste of money.” Poppy points at me, the argument on the tip of her tongue. The one saying we would never be the kind of girls to live like others.
Aja snorts, giving me a head shake. It’s an argument we’ve been over countless times. One that doesn’t change. I needed a bachelor’s degree just to get in the door of the newsroom. There is no more getting a job out of high school and I wanted more. My body yearns for more.
Yet I’ll never tell them that working for the paper didn’t fill that void inside me. Because it just wasn’t other.
“You never even gave Valentino a chance.” But I know she’s grasping at straws here, and I doubt she even wants me at the club with her. Why she keeps going back and forth is more disturbing than anything else.
“I probably won’t either.” Not after what I witnessed, and not after he tried to bribe me afterwards.
“Then it’s settled.” Aja claps her hands, while Poppy marches over to the window gazing out, her shoulders hunched at losing the argument. She won’t dare to bring anything else up, not in front of Aja.
“What do you do here?” I poke at the white leather chairs, afraid to sit on them. “Why is it so clean?” That, more than anything else, bothers me. Why keep everything so pristine? White doesn’t stay clean. And Aja? She is far removed from clean.
Her smile is all teeth while her eyes light up with a gleam that makes me take a small step backwards. “Mmm, you in for a ride, my little dove.”
“See, when you do shit like that, it freaks me out.” Regret slices through me like a sharp knife.
“I’ve got to go.” Poppy stomps past us, her shoulder bumping into mine, throwing me off balance.
“Poppy, what gives?” My hand snaps out, grabbing her leather jacket as I twist her back toward me.
Tears bubble in her eyes, confusing me. All of this over a job? “You are wasting the person you are truly meant to be and dragging me along with you.” Her voice cracks as those tears spill over onto flushed cheeks.
That bond I was once so grateful for strains, snapping under the weight of her anguish. I swallow past thick emotion that swells in my throat. “I don’t understand.” We had the plan to live like normal teens, adults. Not diving into something that leads to bloodshed.
“And that, Penny, is the problem.” She twists her body, jarring my hold and forcing me to let go with a step forward as she flees the tiny room.
My eyes linger long after her body disappears from view. A wedge sits between us, and I have no idea when I lodged it there.
“Hey, come on, you want to meet the crew?” Aja’s hand on my shoulder grounds me in positive memories. Of the three of us against the world.
What changed?
“I don’t know what I did.” I blink away my tears, refusing to allow them to fall and admit my defeat.
Brown eyes bore into mine. Compassionate and understanding. Her words shatter that illusion. “Sometimes it isn’t what we did but what we didn’t do.” Her grip on my shoulder tightens once before letting go. “Come on.”
“You still didn’t tell me what you do here,” I remind her as she moves fluidly toward the stairs.
“I know.”
“I hear my babies are upstairs!” Mama Davis’s voice booms through the open floor plan, echoing off of every wall. Her tone full of power and steel.
“Ya just missed Poppy.” Aja kisses her mom on the cheek.
But another set of brown eyes bore into my soul, sucking out every single secret I hold. At least that’s how she always made me feel. Even though I swear she’s a magician, she always has the uncanny ability to make me feel right at home with her hugs.
“You look like shit. And you haven’t been eating.” She shakes her head, clucking her tongue as she opens her arms.
Like a child, I fall into them, burrowing my head into the crook of her neck and allowing all of my worries to fade away. That’s the magic of her hugs, her superpower.
“Hey, Mama.” She sighs, her hug tightening. No doubt she will remind me she didn’t give birth to me, but she appreciates the sentiment. She never wanted us to forget the ones who raised Pop and me.
But she did just as much, her and Joe. Her steel kept her strong as she took in not one, but two preteens on the brink of adolescence. Ones who just lost their parents. It wasn’t easy, but it was full of love, and she always stood strong in the face of anything we threw at her. That made her my parent just as much as the ones we lost.
“I hear you need to eat and pay rent.” She takes hold of my arms, pushing me back so she can look me up and down. “Mmm, I don’t think you’re ready to be here just yet.”
“Baptism by fire, Mama. That’s the game I’m playing.” My brows pull low and my face pinches at Aja’s words. Her tone is light and airy, but threaded with a sinister compulsion that indicates I’m seriously missing something important.
She couldn’t possibly know my secret, could she?
Mama lets go, taking a step back, her beauty reminding me that I swear she is immortal. She has clear brown skin without a single wrinkle. Her perfect, straight dark hair just brushes her shoulders, normally coiled and yet just as flawless. High, flushed cheekbones and painted lips smile back at me. Ageless and elegant.
Yet for some reason, I don’t think she wants me here either.
“Why?”
“Why what, kid?” Her wrap dress bunches as she crosses her arms, her eyes glimmering as colors flicker in the irises.
“Why don’t you want me here? Poppy doesn’t want me here either.” I back away, leaning against the counter with the coffeepot.
“It isn’t that we don’t want you here, I just doubt you’re ready to be here.” Her words chill me with her no-nonsense tone and increases the belief that I don’t belong anywhere.
“The family business isn’t something we take lightly, Penny, and you don’t know where you belong,” Mama points out, echoing my own thoughts. “However, I’ll give you a trial period. See how you do here. See what you do. I’ll decide in a week.” She leans in, kissing my cheek and giving Aja a glare.
We wait until she’s far out of earshot and greeting the other employees before breaking the bubble of tension.
“I have no doubt you belong here.” Aja pours herself a cup of coffee, confidence in her voice, giving me
a sense of hope I don’t feel.
“Maybe.” My eyes stray to Mama Davis, her set shoulders and level chin. Every step she makes is a lesson in confidence. An air of how to carry oneself. Her words spoken with fluid grace. Punctuated and empathetic, yet holding an edge of steel when necessary. She sits with her employees, getting down to their level, making eye contact and granting touches of security. An appropriate graze to the shoulder here and a slight touch to an elbow there.
Regal.
Pop and I were never allowed down here, so when Aja said she was working in the family business, needless to say we were both surprised. Even more so when Aja started picking up more and more of the slack. Allowing Mama time off with Christian and at the lake house.
“Give it time.” Aja jerks her head toward Mama. “She didn’t become who she is overnight. Neither will you. And sure as hell not at twenty-two.”
“What about you? You are well on your way to being exactly like her.”
“Hold your tongue.” Her lips pinch in disgust. “Come on, stop procrastinating.” She sets down her mug, panthers do it better. Her obsession with the predatory cats never ceases to amuse me.
She drags me back into the great room and the quartet of desks, pulling me over to one side. Each quartet holds eight laptops or desktops. Various workers type away on keyboards. At nearly noon, not a single person glances at the clock, anticipating lunch. They just keep on working with smiles on their faces.
I envy them that. That pleasure they get with their work. It’s a similar feeling I always got when looking into absurd cases around the globe, that hidden news story that was missed, and writing up an article on it. I love the intrigue, the mystery of those. Mostly because I know they are supernatural in context, the ones who live beneath the radar. Their moves and how they play their games. I never got further into it than I should have. If I dove too deep, I’d fall in head over feet and get noticed. Something we can ill afford.
“Alright. This table isn’t too full, and you can log in to any computer. You just need your own sign in, which I took the liberty to create for you. You’re welcome,” she informs me, while sliding into the chair. Her pants bunch at the back, showing me far too much Aja.