“Maybe we should ask around, see if anyone else has heard of this Avalon group,” Jilly suggested.
“Something tells me that people who have to ask about Avalon, are clearly not with Avalon, which will put a target on our backs,” I said, biting on a ragged cuticle. “It’s not like we run in the same circles, you know? And I don’t know any billionaires personally. Except that fucker Henri.”
“Do you think that’s his real name?” Dylan asked.
I nodded. “I’m positive that was his real name because he was a condescending prick when I didn’t know who he was.”
“Who is he?” Dylan asked.
“Fuck if I know but if he’s as well known as he likes to think he is, it shouldn’t be too hard to find out, right?”
“All you need is a name,” Dylan said, grinning.
“And I got that,” I said, returning the smile. That French fucker thought he was insulated against his crimes but that might not be the case. “So we know two bits of information that they didn’t mean for us to have: a buyer’s name and the name of the group in charge of this shit show.”
“When you say it like that, we definitely sound like dangerous loose ends,” Jilly murmured with a shudder. “If I were them, I wouldn’t want us running our mouths either.”
“No, definitely not,” I agreed, watching as the cars whizzed past us on the freeway. “We’re going to need to spend some of that cash on cheap burner phones. That bitch Olivia has all our stuff.”
Which meant they also had access to anyone and everyone in our contact list. At some point, I needed to find a way to warn Lora but I didn’t dare go home. Not yet. The situation was too volatile.
“Do you think Olivia was in the house when it caught fire?” Jilly asked.
“I hope so,” I replied without a hint of remorse.
Dylan agreed, adding with approval. “You’re a fucking savage.”
Maybe. The thing was, you never truly knew what you were capable of doing until you were forced to do it to survive. Olivia was a cog in the wheel but an important one. “She’s just as guilty as Madame Moirai. For fuck’s sake, for all we know, she is Madame Moirai — and if that’s the case…I hope she burned and I hope it hurt like hell before she died.”
We were all thinking of Tana. I didn’t need to hear confirmations from Jilly and Dylan, I could feel it.
“Do you think she died at the mansion, right below our feet?” Jilly asked, her voice choked.
“I don’t know,” I answered, returning my gaze to my torn up cuticle bed. I’d chewed it raw, a bad habit since I was a little kid. Lora used to slap my fingers away from my mouth when she saw me doing it. Lora was such a mother hen and I loved her fussy ways. “I hope it was quick,” was all I could manage. “She suffered enough.”
Silence filled the car like an oxygen-eating foam, filling the cracks and crevices, smothering us with the heavy burden of our shared grief. We might not have really known Tana but we were tied to her death in a way we would never be free.
The stark truth followed us like a tall shadow in the gathering dusk.
We were tattooed by trauma and bound by circumstance.
A trio of reluctant partners in crime.
As far as I was concerned, every single person associated with the auction could burn in a fiery pit of hell but there was a special place reserved for Madame Moirai. She financed her life on the hopes and dreams of kids who saw no other way out of their own personal hell than to take the devil’s deal no matter how much it actually cost them.
I wanted to make them all pay.
And the only way to make them pay was to ruin every single one of the bastards tied to the Avalon.
They were going to regret ever roping me into their nasty little enterprise.
That was a promise.
And a vow.
***
Here’s a sneak peak into the next book in the trilogy, NO ONE TO CARE.
“Where are we going?” I asked, following Dylan down a darkened stairwell that pulled us deeper underground, the sound of the city above us slowly becoming muffled and distant. Urban graffiti covered the cement walls displaying colorful commentary on anything from corruption, gang wars, to incredible artwork splashed in defiant paint across the platform.
My skin puckered with goosebumps beneath my hoodie as the subterranean chill tap-danced on my bones.
Dylan, our foul-mouthed and brusque guide, didn’t answer, just motioned for us to follow and to be quiet.
Secrets lurked in the shadows from past and present, whispering of an era when the subway was new and created with the promise of cutting edge technology. Time and neglect had eaten away at the former grandeur of the abandoned station, turning a once-grand dame into a wizened old lady covered in battle scars.
But this place teemed with renegade life from young to ancient. People huddled around burning barrels for heat, wrapped in ragged blankets and covered from head to toe with mismatched articles of clothing, trying to stay warm.
I’d lived in New York most of my life. I knew the stories of the abandoned subway stations but I never realized how an entire segment of society made their way down here to carve out a space of their own amongst the refuse. I was out of my element but Dylan looked right at home.
What kind of rabbit hole had we slid down?
Jilly crowded me, unnerved by the dank oppressive air in the cement tome. “It’s like a graveyard for subway trains,” she murmured with a mixture of awe and fear. “Who lives here?”
“Aside from sewer rats and killer clowns? No clue,” I whispered out of the side of my mouth.
Dylan answered, “His name is Badger and he runs The Runaway Club. You gotta have Badger’s permission to be down here or else you’re gonna disappear and ain’t no one gonna find your corpse.”
“Sounds like a great guy,” I muttered. “And you know him how?”
“Let’s just say we have a history.”
Jilly trailed behind Dylan, asking with worry, “Is it a good history?”
“Depends on how he remembers it,” Dylan said. “I guess we’ll see.”
“Hold up,” I tugged on Dylan’s sleeve, causing Dylan to turn with annoyance. “I thought you said we’d be safe here?”
“We will be…if he allows us to stay…and if he doesn’t hold a grudge.”
Fuuuuuck. “Damn it, Dylan—“
She jerked her arm out of my grasp, her voice a harsh hush, “Look, we’re screwed topside anyway so what difference does it make? We take our chances either way. I happen to think we have slightly better odds with Badger than Madame Moirai so shut up and keep walking. Not everyone down here is friendly and you’re drawing too much attention.”
That was some cockeyed logic but what could I say? Dylan was right. Our lives rested on the edge of a knife’s blade and no matter which way we fell, it was going to cut. I could only hope this Badger was the lesser of two evils.
Good-fucking-God, why couldn’t anything be easy for once? I didn’t want to die in the bowels of a forgotten subway tunnel nor did I want to be chased down like a dog by Madame Moirai and her Avalon squad. I didn’t have a choice but to follow Dylan and hope for a fucking miracle.
As my gran would say, “In for a penny, in for a pound.”
Dylan rounded the corner and pushed open a heavy steel door that lead to a large space illuminated by an orange-tinted light, giving everything an antique look. A forgotten railway car sat among the broken and haphazard remnants of a former life, resting where it’d died, its faded bones still clinging to its identity. Bright light blazed in the car along with the distinct sound of…classical music and I was officially bewildered.