No way. I didn't even remember hearing someone come in. Ade's wide eyes told me she hadn't either. But Ericka's last text had come in not more than a minute ago. Was it a time-lag?
“What the hell do we do?” Ade's whisper was almost completely imperceptible. Immediately, I pulled back the trap door, threw in the magazines and shut the case. More footsteps echoed as the feet in question climbed another flight of stairs. Soon I could hear someone outside the bedroom door. Ade's face said it as clearly as I ever could have.
We are giga screwed.
The door opened and shut with a click. A loud sigh â a man's. A
young
man's.
Hyde
? I shot to my feet but Ade put up a hand to stay me, shaking her head with a frown and a finger to her lips. She was right. There was no way of knowing who that was and trespassing was still an offense listed in the New York penal code. Luckily there were piles of clothes to hide behind.
We hid. The young man plopped onto the bed with another heavy sigh. I pressed my back against the corner, tucked my feet in behind the waves of fabric. Ade had wedged herself behind a rack of shoes. She was too close to the door, but it was too late to move. I expected the worst. But the young man didn't seem interested in peeking inside Beatrice Hoffer-Rey's fashion wardrobe. I barely heard him move. From what I could tell, he simply stayed on the bed, silent. Waiting.
Ten minutes passed and suddenly I heard footsteps â heels. Movement on the bed. The sound had caused the young man to stir, but he didn't move further. The door opened.
“What are
you
doing here?” Beatrice's voice dripped with venom.
“What's wrong? You were expecting your new boy toy?”
Anton's sneer was a jackhammer to the chest. My heart ricocheted into my throat. I saw Ade's jaw drop from the other side of the closet.
Beatrice laughed with arrogance. “Oh, don't tell me you're still sore about that.”
“While my dad's rotting in jail, you're screwing the asshole who put him there. Yeah, I'm still sore about that.”
There was something curious about the tension in his voice. It whispered beneath the bile â a breath of hesitation, or a quiver. The anger was unmistakable, but for some reason he seemed distracted.
A chair scraping the ground. Then something clattered onto the table. I knew there was a vanity mirror that took up almost half the wall opposite the bed. I'd rummaged through each of the little drawers. As I sat in the corner hugging my knees I hoped to God I hadn't left something out of place.
“Your father's in jail because he did something illegal. Can't be helped.” Another clatter, light and thin â jewelry?
“Can't be helped? My father is in jail and you're going to parties?”
“Aren't you?” I could almost picture Anton's snarl. “Between the girls that leave your loft in the morning and the ones who swarm in at night, I'm surprised you have any energy to visit your father at all.”
“What did youâ?”
“And let's stop with the righteous indignation, shall we?” The chair dragged again. Heels clicked towards the closet. Oh God. “We both know your concern over your father's wellbeing has had more to do with securing your trust fund than familial love.”
The closet doors breezed open. Ade nearly fainted behind the shoe rack, her eyes locked onto mine, wide with horror. But no sooner did Beatrice open the doors than Anton strode up to her and grabbed her wrist.
“Who the hell do you think you are saying that shit to me? You have no idea what I've done for my father. None.” His face was red and he was breathing hard, but the way he was looking down at her, his hand gripping her skin hard, pulling her body closeâ
Oh God stop, Deanna. Stop, stop, stop.
Yes, my mind had gone there. Nobody had to tell me how twisted it was. But there was just something so off about the way her grin slid up to him, how comfortable she looked in his graspâ
I said stop, Deanna. Stop, stop, stop.
Gracefully, she slipped her shoes off and threw them into the closet without looking. With a quick tug, she adjusted the fur coat over her little black dress and closed the door behind her. Ade mouthed at me from her hiding spot, and while I had no idea what she was saying I knew it was either “we have to get the hell out of here” or “have I totally lost my mind or is something else going on here that I sincerely wish was not?” I was thinking both.
Beatrice laughed. “Oh, I'm sure.”
“I've done a hell of a lot more than you've even attempted.”
Ade started to fiddle around with her phone, maybe texting Ericka. My fingers were too frozen to even attempt it.
“Oh yes. Like blackmailing that poor girl into ruining Hedley's son.” All the warmth drained from my face as Beatrice snickered. “I'm still a little embarrassed you tried something so... juvenile.”
“I had to. Hyde was going to ruin us.”
“So you threatened to sell a teenage swangirl to an organized crime syndicate? Oh Anton.” She was laughing full out now. Nice to know that my weeks of utter horror amused her so. “Isn't that a little over the top? Darling, there's a simple kind of beauty in subtlety.”
“She was Hyde's weakness. Besidesâ” Anton's word clipped off as something flopped to the floor.
Sounded like fabric.
Stop, stop, stop, Deanna, stop
. But even Anton's voice didn't seem quite as firm as it had before. “Besides, Beatrice, what's more juvenile? Threatening some throwaway bitch who means nothing, or blackmailing the son of a dead publishing mogul to get into his pants.”
“Well, technically it was to get the company, now wasn't it?”
“Yeah, but you didn't stop there. You've got to tell me, Beatrice.” His voice dipped low. “What do you have on him? If it were that easy to get him to give up the company, I wouldn't have had to waste my time on that annoying little Brooklyn slut.”
I clamped my teeth shut so that I wouldn't leap up, burst out of the closet and beat them both down right then. I could see Ade's right hand squeeze into a fist from here.
“Really, Anton. Is it so hard to believe that I won him over with my beauty and charm?”
“Tell me the truth.”
“Why?”
“You⦠owe it to my father.”
But he wasn't fooling anyone. Not Beatrice, by a long shot. And not me either â as much as my stomach churned at the thought, I knew there was something more to it. “You really can't hide it, can you?” said Beatrice.
“Hide what?”
His jealousy. Everything in his words dripped with it.
Oh God.
“It's been two months and you still haven't gotten over it. Twenty years old and still a child. All your manly yelling and laughable âbravado' only make it all the more embarrassing.”
She gasped, suddenly. “That. Hurts,” she said. She sounded truly annoyed for the first time, but even the faintest bit terrified.
“End it with Hyde and I'll keep quiet about everything.”
“No.”
“Do something about my father. You have the money.”
“And again, no.” A playful lilt carried Beatrice's words and I didn't know whether it was infuriating Anton or turning him on. It was all I could do not to throw up into Hyde's feathers. “My two-year marriage to your father was a business transaction. I got what I needed and he got what
he
needed, and more. And yet none of this changed the fact that he was vile â about twice as much as you are.”
“He could get twenty years in prison. You're really going to let him rot there?”
“Why wouldn't I when I've got everything I want right now?”
“Beatrice.”
“And so do you.”
“What?”
An awkward pause â awkward for me, anyway. It dripped with a tight, beating tension broken only by Anton's heavy breaths. Something else plopped to the floor.
“What⦠Beatrice, what the hell are you doing?”
“Do you want to know what I did to Ralph Hedley's son? I took his feathers.”
“What?”
Ade and I exchanged glances, eyes wide. Anton sounded about as shocked as I felt.
“Hyde's aâ?”
“Swan,” Beatrice repeated. “And I took his feathers.” I clutched them to my chest. “But you, Anton?”
Something else plopped to the floor. Ade's jaw dropped. The way her face contorted in horror would have made me laugh if I didn't already want to kill myself.
“I don't need feathers with you, do I? You were hooked after a few weeks. I thought you knew as well as I did that we were only playing around.”
“Shut up.”
“All this sudden concern for your father. Where was it when you and I wereâ?”
A crash. The table whined. The sounds of a struggle; and if I didn't know better I'd have assumed Anton was trying to kill her. And then I heard them: a belt buckle clinking, clothes falling to the floor one by one, gasps searing the skin in my ears. Ade's mouth was still open, her head shaking and shaking because it couldn't stop and what else was there to do?
Oh God.
Oh my actual God.
I covered my ears and buried my face in Hyde's feathers in the hope that it would stem the bile currently corroding its way to my mouth. There was no denying it. Anton was doing his stepmom. It was the last part of the Rey Trinity of Crazy, right behind threatening innocent girls with sexual slavery and planning to drug his cousin in order to force him into an orgy with masked Russian models. It was insane.
It was
insane
.
But Beatrice was no better. They were a circus sideshow, the two of them: the filthy, revolting result of having too much money and too little sanity.
And lucky us â Ade and I had front row seats.
Ade was still shaking her head.
Â
I don't know how I got through it. Actually, I wasn't even sure if I were still alive, or if the lack of oxygen I'd deprived myself of for the past hour while holding my breath in order to keep from screaming and screaming had actually killed me dead.
I stared at Ade. She was still shaking her head, except her head was now against the wall, her neck muscles far too weak to even lift it. But it was over. It was over and we'd survived. We'd stared into the deepest bowels of hell and come out breathing.
Beatrice was taking a shower.
I flicked my head to the door. Ade grimaced, still dazed. I crawled out of my hiding spot, carefully, and stepped towards the door while the shower prattled in the background.
“Oh yeah, I almost forgot,” said Anton lazily, and every word that came out of his mouth made me want to scrub myself clean with a bleach-soaked wire brush. “Dad's got some shampoo in there I've been meaning to grab.”
I rolled my eyes. Just
ew
.
No matter. This was our way out. Glaring at Ade I flicked my head towards the door. She didn't need telling twice. She was on her feet in moments. We waited for the bathroom door to shut. Quietly, I pushed the closet door open a crack and peeked outside. No one. Just clothes discarded on the floor. Stepson and stepmother were in the bathroom, perhaps doing things that would give me nightmares for the rest of my life.
Which meant now was our chance. Quietly, we sneaked out of the closet, closed the door behind us and tip-toed out of the master bedroom.
Careful
, I told myself as we descended the first flight of stairs.
Careful. Don't make a sound
.
And yet, slowly but surely my feet were carrying me faster and faster. Ade wasn't far behind. We'd gotten to the third floor before we broke into a straight out run. We fled to the nearest intersection before coming to our senses and calling a cab.
A TALE
Â
It is the children who find them, buried beneath the rice stalks. It is the children who bring them, her robe of white feathers.
It is the children who cling to her as she ascends into the sky.
What was once of heaven can never be of earth. What was taken from the skies must return there henceforth. She tells them with tears in her eyes.
The children weep beneath the shower of her feathers. They weep and weep, but know that they are blessed.
22
SURPRISE
Â
The sun had gone down several minutes ago. Ade gave my shoulder a squeeze and went upstairs. I was expecting him any minute.
A soft knock on the door. Sucking in a breath, I opened it. Hyde stood on my doorstep, shock, relief, fear, everything painted in gold and red on his canvas of a face.
“Come in,” I said. I suppose I didn't need to. He would have come in anyway.
There was something so wrong about this, something so wrong about the way he quietly, dutifully shut the door behind him. When he looked at me, his eyes glistened with desire and longing. But what part of that was love and what part magic? Or was it both? Could it be both?
“How?” It was all he could say. It made sense. He was here after all. He'd been summoned.
He reached out to touch my arm, but I stepped back before his fingers could brush the skin. It wouldn't have been right.
“Well, if anyone asks, Ade and I spent our afternoon quietly obeying the city's penal code.” I gave him a little smile, but he just gaped at me, incredulous. “She didn't catch us, if that's what you're wondering.”
“Why?”
I lowered my head for a few moments. Then, stepping aside, I gestured towards the couch. His feather robe lay draped over it, some feathers flitting out of place with each puff of our sometimes-broken air conditioner. “You deserve nothing less.”