When I don’t answer him, he interrupts. “I didn’t hire urbane tutors for you throughout all of your homeschool life for you to not speak when I ask you something. Answer the question.”
My cheeks flare, and I watch as his eyes drop to the spray of pink now exposed over my skin. That was probably the longest thing he has ever said to me. Brantley communicates through his eyes, his body language, the way he walks and moves around the room before he uses his words. At least, that’s how it has always been with me. “I told her that I’ve been here since I was a child. That’s all.”
His fist clenches around the edge of marble, while my eyes follow down his thick arms, where purple and green veins pulse beneath his pale, untouched skin. “Did you go for a run?”
His finger taps against the counter. Tap. Tap. Tap.
“Is there something that she was supposed to say to me?”
He shakes his head, bringing his shake to his mouth and taking a swig. “Hmmm,” is all he says. His eyes move up and down my body. “What are you doing today?”
“The gardens.”
“We pay people for that.” He turns to tip out the contents, rinsing, and leaving it on the side of the drying rack.
“You know that I like doing it.” At those words, Brantley’s back freezes, the muscles beneath his skin instantly hardening.
He turns, taking the steps he needs to my chair and spinning me around until I’m facing him. I stop breathing, because he’s so close. I’ve never seen him this close before, at least not since I last cleaned the dried blood off his face when he fell asleep after I snuck into his room when I was ten years old. He never liked to talk about what was happening to him, and I never pushed him to talk.
I think I spoke enough to occupy both of us.
I think he hated me for it.
He’s so close that I can feel the warmth of his breath fall over my lips, and I do everything in my power not to allow my eyes to drop down to his own, or God forbid, his arms. They drop, because I’m not very good at this. Human interaction, that is. He knows that.
So when his mouth twitches ever so slightly, it throws me off-balance.
“What?” I whisper, hypnotized by the bow in his lip. How it swells, dips, and curves in all the right places.
“Yeah,” he says, pushing off the table while keeping me pinned to the spot with his glare. “Go get changed and meet me down here in thirty minutes.”
I’m still sitting, trying to catch the words he had said when he disappears upstairs. What does he mean, be ready? There have been few times that he has taken me out of the house, and all of those times were before Lucan died.
I make my way up to my bedroom, closing the door behind me. My room is in complete contrast to Brantley’s room, and the general aesthetic of this haunted mansion. Everything is white and beige. From my sheets, to my four-post bed, to the dresser and floor-length mirror. The curtains that cover the twin doors open out onto my little patio that overlooks the back of the house and the cemetery is the softest beige I could find. Not quite white, but not quite nude. I sleep with my doors open every night, even in the winter. I like to feel the cold while being warm in my bed.
Moving through to my walk-in closet, I flick on the light and scan over my clothes.
He said to get changed.
He didn’t say into what.
I was allowed to shop online, and I loved to shop. I love fashion. I think being able to dress your feelings, to hide or expose them, is an art. Fashion is an art.
I reach for my mid-top white and gray Van sneakers, a pair of high-waisted ripped ankle-biter jeans, and a white camisole that is cropped just above my belly button. I find most of my inspiration on Pinterest, and then I shop from there. Money has never been something that I’ve thought a lot about. Brantley gave me a black card when I was thirteen, and since then, it hasn’t run out. Obviously, over time I’ve come to realize that this black card, by its limit, holds a lot of money. The name Saint Dea Vitiosis is embedded into the plastic.
After I’m dressed, I brush my hair until it falls in natural white waves before sliding lip balm over my lips. Peach. Subtle enough not to taste, yet sweet enough to smell.
Kore nudges the backs of my legs with her nose and I reach down to rub the back of her ears. “I won’t be long. You have Hades here.”
Brantley clears his throat at my door, and I look up at him from where I’m leaning. “She gets lonely when she can’t see me.”
“It’s mainly because they’re so used to you being home.” He leans backward and rolls his fingers into his mouth, whistling. Hades comes strolling into my bedroom with ease, flopping down onto the fluffy rug at the foot of my bed.
Brantley glances at my vanity mirror, where my makeup, beauty products, and jewelry are all laid out. “Wear your necklace.”
“I thought you said I didn’t have to start wearing it until I was older?”
He ambles into my room, the sheer size of him taking up the space greedily as his fingers graze over the white gold Cuban chain. Like his, only with smaller links, right down to the pendant that sits on the bottom. A simple pendant. White gold crown with diamonds shaped like ice, melting over the tips.
He hooks it off the stand and comes closer until his body is towering over mine like a giant versus a lesser human. David and Goliath. His six-foot-six against my five-foot. He’s a whole foot, and then some, taller than me. We look ridiculous beside each other in any room, and he could wrap his fingers around the circumference of my head and pick me up with one movement.
Leaning forward, his cologne wafts through my nostrils when he clasps the necklace around my neck. I close my eyes when the fabric of his simple white shirt grazes the tip of my nose. “You’re seventeen, but you need to start wearing this from now on.”
“Why?” I ask through a tight throat. “All I do is stay home. It’s too pretty to just wear.”
He steps back, and once I’m finished being distracted by the weight of the necklace around me, I tilt my head up until I’m eye-to-eye with him.
“Not anymore.”
“Okay,” I say, clutching the crown in the palm of my hand. “I won’t take it off.”
I follow him out of my room and down the staircase, toward his blacked-out sports car.
I Googled it when he drove the shiny new car down our driveway a couple of months ago. The Bugatti La Voiture Noire. Eighteen. Million. Dollars. There was a woman, I guessed was the car dealer, who shook his hand and gave him the keys before leaving. I couldn’t see much from the window in the kitchen, but I did catch her name tag as she left. Nikki. I slide into the leather seat, shutting the door behind me as he fires the car up and pulls out of the driveway.
I don’t ask him what’s going on.
I don’t ask him why we’re leaving the house.
The slightly scarier looking one of the two stood first, and when he did, I almost—almost—regretted enticing them both. They couldn’t be that bad. No one was. Well, that was a lie. One person was that bad, but he wasn’t here, and neither were his henchmen. “Twisted Transistor” was playing now, and at the back of my very intoxicated brain, I thought maybe the DJ didn’t have anything else to play but Korn.