“What am I doing here?”
They boys share a look and I swear I hear the distant chiming of bells.
Goddamn. I really am losing my mind.
“How much was your mother able to tell you?” Bash asks.
“Not much.”
Last night was the first time she actually gave me any useful information.
My mother’s boogeyman thinks I, a Darling, can fix him.
What can I possibly do for him? I can barely hold together my own life.
Bash leans against the wall behind his twin, a dark echo.
I went to school with twins once back when Mom and I lived in Minnesota.
The Wavey twins. The most obnoxious, annoying little girls I’d ever met. They used the fact that they were identical to get away with everything. Including putting worms in my peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
I wonder if these boys are the same.
They look like trouble. They feel like the wrong kind of temptation. Like a pretty tree frog that can kill you with a touch.
I think everyone has a super power, something they’re just inherently good at and mine has always been reading people. Knowing what sort of a person someone is before they speak a word.
I think I need to be careful with these two if I’m going to survive this.
Whatever this is.
“I’m Kastian,” the closest twin says. “You can call me Kas.” He hitches his thumb over his broad, bare shoulder. “That’s my twin, Sebastian.”
“Bash,” the other twin says.
“Hi,” I say to them.
“We’re the nice ones,” Bash says and pushes away from the wall. He comes to sit at the end of the bed and the frame creaks beneath his weight. Even though he’s fully clothed, I can tell by the way the material skims over his body that he’s just as cut as his twin brother, all muscle and bone.
I’ve been alone in dark rooms with plenty of men, but none like the twins.
They could take me easily, in any way they wanted. Fighting them would be like fighting the ocean—pointless, futile.
But why would I?
They look like they’d be a wild ride.
I lick my lips and Bash’s nostrils flare as his attention wanders to my mouth.
When you grow up around prostitutes, you learn a thing or two about tricks.
Mine has always been setting hooks.
“If you’re the nice ones,” I say, “then who are the mean ones?”
The twins share a look.
“Peter Pan?” I guess.
“Meaner than us,” Kas admits.
“Not the meanest,” Bash adds.
“Then who—”
Footsteps sound up the hallway beyond my room. The twins sigh almost in unison.
Bash scratches at the back of his neck. “Get ready, Darling.”
“Why?”
My heart kicks up. There are more?
The footsteps draw closer, the heavy clip of a well-worn sole, the gait of someone who has a mission and will not be swayed from it.
Who is meaner than Pan? My mom never said anything about there being others. I never thought to ask.
When he darkens the doorway, the air gets lodged in my throat.
This one isn’t as muscular as the twins, but there’s something distinctly more sinister about him.
The scar. The eyes.
Three long, jagged scars cut his face in half diagonally from one temple to his jaw.
It’s changed his gaze.
One eye is bright violet. The other pure black.
Goosebumps lift on my arms despite the warm air.
“The Darling is awake,” the newcomer says in a cold, detached tone of voice. He comes over to Bash and steals the last of his cigarette, pinches it between his thumb and forefinger and takes a hit. When he speaks, he hasn’t exhaled yet, so his voice is stilted as he holds the smoke in his lungs. “She started crying yet?”
Kas frowns. “Something tells me this one will be harder to break.”
“They all break eventually,” the mean one says, eyeing me with his unsettling eyes.
I automatically look away, my body singing with a creeping sense of dread. I draw back, try to make myself smaller.
Mom said there was magic here.
What kind of magic is this? I do not shrink. Not usually.
“Vane,” Bash says. “Is that really necessary? She just woke up.”
Sweat beads along my temple and there’s a building terror threatening to spill out my throat.
A scream builds in the base of my throat.
What is happening?
“Don’t be a prick,” Kas says.
The mean one—Vane—finishes the cigarette, narrowing his eyes at me as my heart drums loudly in my head.