Feather Bound (10 page)

My hands shook against my lap. I had to make sure. “The phone you're using – does it have a pink leather strap hanging from it?”

“Yeah. She's got your number on speed dial, so I called it.”

My heart pounded against my ribcage. Ade, what the hell? This wasn't like her. Ade took pleasure in skirting the law when it came to alcohol, and she usually got away with it. But she was never careless. Passed out in a bar? No. That wasn't Ade.

“Look, if you're her friend or something, you definitely need to come pick her up. She looks sick. I'd call her a cab, but I don't know where she lives and, to be honest, she's so wasted right now I doubt she can remember her own name, let alone an address.”

My fingers tightened around my phone. I could feel the metal digging into the joints. “Aren't you supposed to keep that from happening? What the hell kind of bartender are you?”

“I–”

“Forget it. I'm coming. Just don't let anyone near her.”

I couldn't tell Dad about Ade, though a part of me wanted to. He was blissfully ignorant of Ade's nightlife, a feat that she worked diligently to achieve. He wasn't the best father, but if he knew Ade was passing out at clubs, he'd find a way to keep us padlocked indoors for good. I had to keep this to myself. I owed that to her. He was out anyway, at his friend's for another poker night.

I checked my watch. Eleven, almost on the dot. Dad usually came home drunk at midnight. That didn't leave me much time. Hopefully, I'd be back with Ade before he stumbled in.

On the way, I thought of a million different scenarios that might have explained how she ended up drunk in some random bar at night alone, when she was supposed to be (less) drunk in another random bar at night surrounded by her horde of friends. What the hell had happened? Regardless, I wasn't about to let Ade get manhandled by some assholes.

A subway trip and a short taxi drive took me close to Chrystie Street on the Lower East Side. Ade was definitely going to have to pay me back for the fare. I walked the rest of the way to Stylo. It definitely looked shoddy from the outside – certainly not as fancy as the pretentious French name would suggest. There were no windows in the red brick, just the building's number, 297, in big letters shaded under a shabby red awning. The door was old and decaying, the paint rusting off its surface in sheets of moldy brown. I couldn't see anything through its tiny window; just the crinkled, gaudy curtain draped over the glass from the inside, off-white and dirty as if it'd been used to clean a rusted bathtub decades ago.

Sucking in a breath, I went inside. There wasn't even anyone checking IDs. I'd never actually been inside a bar before. Unlike Ade, I actually feared the long arm of the law when it came to the legal drinking age. I could barely tolerate the taste of beer anyway, which, of course, made me the designated loser in my already lower-rung social circle at school.

I looked around. The place had a kind of musty smell with a sharp coat of alcohol layering the mix, a shot to the senses. It was almost as dark inside as it was outside, but the dim lights were certainly bright enough to light up the burlesque dancers writhing on stage.

Wait, what?

“Ade, what the hell?” I whispered, gaping. Ade in a burlesque house? Was this some new fetish of hers? Except, I'd never seen her express an iota of interest in the corseted arts. But more importantly, I couldn't find her anywhere.

“Excuse me?” I said once I'd walked up to the bar.

The bartender barely spared me half a glance as he dried off glasses. “ID.”

“What?”

“ID.”

Crap. I clutched the cinched tote bag Ericka had gotten me for my last birthday. “Uh… I'm actually… under-age. Kinda.” Long arm of the law.

“Oh,” he said. “Get out.”

“Wait, you're the guy who called me a little while ago, right? About my sister? I've only come to pick her up, that's it! Once I get her, I'm gone, I swear.”

That got his attention. He stared at me, the cloth in his hand motionless against the wineglass he'd been wiping. Then, with a quick cough to clear his throat, he set it down and picked up another one.

“Oh?” He slid right back into the whole “talking to me without looking at me” thing, and though it wasn't any less annoying than before, this time was different. The way his eyes seemed less focused, his hands more jittery... Something was off here.

“Hey, where is she?” I tried to force his gaze to me. “She didn't leave with anyone, did she? What the hell! Didn't I tell you not to let anyone near her?”

“Relax.” He scratched the modestly-sized silver bead embedded in his left brow. “She's upstairs in the back. She kept falling off the stool so I let her sleep in one of the empty VIP rooms on the second floor. No one else is in there.”

VIP rooms. I could see them from down here, behind the railings. The bartender tossed a silver key onto the table. “Here, take it. It's the first room on the right hand side, just around the corner.”

After one more judgmental glare, I silently took the key and headed upstairs. To be so wasted she needed her own private room to detox? It just wasn't like Ade.

My fingers twitched – so violently, I nearly dropped the key. I stopped half way up the stairs, peering at the rooms, not sure why I suddenly felt flushed. Something was wrong.

Almost instinctively, I whipped around, but there was no one behind me. So then why was my heart pounding? What was this? The hairs on my arms rose off the gooseflesh and I half-expected someone to jump out at me. But I was on a staircase – where would they possibly come from? The ceiling?

Stop being stupid. Go find Ade
.

Shaking it off, I rushed over to the VIP room, first room on the right-hand side, just around the corner, and opened the door.

The girl lying half-conscious on the velvet couch next to the giant metal cage in the wall was not Adrianna. It wasn't the blonde hair that gave her away. It was the feathers.

“What–?”

An arm wrapped around my waist at the same time the cloth smothered my nose and mouth. I was out in seconds.

10

CAGED

 

Sounds of laughter. Men were laughing. I struggled to pry apart my eyelids. Soft fiber brushed my fingers, smothered my face. I slid my legs across it, slow and sluggish, and though it burned my skin, I still couldn't figure out what it was or where I was. My muscles ached.

“What? You're not having fun?”

Were they talking to me?

Somewhere there was a frail whimper. Female. Young. Scared.

Open your eyes, I commanded myself, to no avail. My lashes were practically glued shut.

“What about her, guys?”

I felt a hand running up my legs, tugging at the hem of my shorts. If I could have died just then to escape the slick of that sweaty, grimy hand, I would have. I wanted to run instead, but it wasn't an option. My muscles weren't responding fast enough.

“No, not yet.” Youthful voices: college-going, polo-playing, upstanding-young-man-chatting-with-you-at-a-bus-stop voices. The kind you didn't think twice about.

Somehow, I managed to slowly drag myself across the floor far enough to free myself from his grip, though he probably just let go on his own accord. That was all I could manage. I lay flat against the ground with my heart pounding in my ears.

What happened? What happened? Think, think, think Deanna! Each breath nicked my chest from the inside.

That cloth… the fabric against my lips, the sweet scent, a lung full of it.

They'd drugged me.

What did they give me? Why were they doing this to me?

What were they
going
to do to me?

The girl screamed. That was the shot I needed to finally pry my eyes apart. I saw the red nylon first. It was a rug. It was too dark. A wooden leg of a table. A set of car keys on the floor. A single leather pump.

Rasping for air, I flopped onto my back. I could see them now, all three men. Young, like their voices. Well-built. Well-dressed too: a trio of spoiled bastards. One of them winked at me.

“All right, Joe, it's my turn. Get back.”

Two of them crowded around a girl who sat on a velvet couch as black as her underwear. Black panda eyes upturned to the ceiling, she blew strands of blonde hair off her face, wet from her saliva, with each scrape of breath she exhaled. Pale, thick fingers tangled themselves in the feathers draping her back.

“No, stop.” I'd slurred the words so badly, they came out nonsense. “Leave her alone.” Too weak, this time. They didn't hear me. Or maybe they didn't care.

The girl was crying as she boosted herself onto her knees. She had lacerations all up her arms, shallow cuts, fresh wounds. And yet she still looked healthy enough to stand up, maybe even run. Why wasn't she? Why did she simply sit there, haggard, bloody, but obedient?

The tallest of the men, a redhead, sidled up to her and lifted her chin with a finger. The look she returned was not loving, not even civil. Just hollow. Ready. My stomach heaved.

Oh God. Tears trickled down the side of my face and down my ears, sinking between the carpet fibers. Ade… Dad… Ericka…

He draped her feather robe across his shoulder. She didn't complain when he started kissing her, but I could see it on her face: a suffocating hollowness. It was etched into her body, her movements. The way she put a hand almost dutifully on his arm, the way her back arched almost as if it knew it should. It was a perfect mimicry of a girl kissing her lover, except the details were all wrong. Everything was wrong. She didn't have a choice.

I wouldn't have a choice either.

I turned away when his hands started to move down her stomach, but I needn't have. One of the boys blocked them from my view. He knelt next to me.

“Don't worry, baby.” His dark, slicked-back hair was almost as greasy as the smile he gave me as he knelt. “She isn't doing anything we haven't paid her to do.” If only the sound of my heart thudding against my brain was loud enough to shut out the moaning. Slick Hair turned to the others. “I don't get it though. Why her? She looks harmless enough.” He paused. “Payback?”

“Dude, who cares? When a piece of ass falls into your lap, you don't whine about it, bro,” said one I couldn't see. He was behind me. “Just do what
you
were paid to do.”

Oh God
. I raised my right arm, but it wasn't mine anymore, not really. The drug was starting to wear off, but not fast enough. A sloppy, random swing drove my hand into the side of the table. Slick Hair grabbed it, crushing it as if it weren't already searing in pain. He yanked me onto my stomach.

“No, no…” My tongue tasted the nylon carpet as I coughed out the words. I clenched everything, pressing my forehead against the floor, hoping the pain would dull everything. But I still felt my shirt sliding up my back, still screamed when the blade slid across it. It was a sharp, shallow cut, and apparently, for me, that was all it took. Feathers shifted just beneath the skin, unfolding and unraveling, before breaking through, slipping down from my shoulder blades, cascading down my back. They grew like weeds; thin, prickly. I didn't smell blood this time, but it was no less excruciating. My feathers were out. The young man stroked them. I shuddered. I wriggled and writhed to get his fingers off me and failed.

It was going to happen to me. That awful thing they only talked about in hushed voices. It was going to happen to me. His hand pressed against the small of my back and I prayed he'd simply kill me instead.

Somebody…

The door opened. Silence.

“Hey,” said Slick Hair, but he was cut off.

“Get out.”

It was Anton.
Anton
?

“I said, get out. This is my room now.” There was a cool chill in Anton's voice as he strode inside clad in the three-button charcoal suit and black tie he'd probably worn to the cover party. “You're done,” he said. “Leave the keys on the table.”

The three muttering boys packed out of the room, one of them tossing a pair of keys onto the table next to me before slamming the door behind him. It clattered against the glass surface.

Anton stepped around my feet over to the couch and gave the blonde girl her feathers. It was incredible. The second she touched her feather robe again, the second she held it against her chest it fell apart. Feathers burst into a pile on the ground, a stream of down. And then the light returned to her eyes. She was herself again.

“Anton?” I coughed.

“She's fine,” Anton said. “Once you get your feathers back, you're your own boss again. They won't go back in. But swans'll always grow more.” He turned to the girl. “You can go now.”

She grabbed her lost shoe and left. She was her own boss, but she obeyed him anyway. It didn't make sense. She was here because she'd been paid. But this was a burlesque club.

Unless it wasn't.

“Swan… parlor?” I whispered, tucking my hands under me, hoping I had enough energy to boost myself up.

“Yeah, that's right,” replied Anton, as the swan closed the door behind her. “Stylo's one of a few in New York.”

He was too calm. How did he know I was here? Where was Ade? As soon as I started my struggle to sit up, Anton knelt beside me and helped me the rest of the way.

“What's going on?” I gazed at him sideways, but that was mostly because my head was still throbbing. “Those guys–”

“Drugged you,” answered Anton, simply.

My blood ran cold.

“Go on,” he whispered, his breath hot against my ear. “Ask me why.”