Sacrifice Me: The Complete Season One (23 page)

She smiled and squeezed my wrist. “Honey,
everyone who works here was hired for the same reason.”

“What reason is that?”

She twisted her mouth into a frown and shrugged.
“We had nowhere else to turn and he was the only one who could
save us.”

She turned and walked through the black curtain,
leaving me to wonder what kind of trouble always led people to him.
And why Rend—a vampire—felt it was his job to save them.

To save us.

Back in my apartment, he’d said he was
dangerous. But why would someone so dangerous go to such great
lengths to save so many?

“You made it,” Azure said from behind
me. “I wasn’t expecting you in again tonight.”

Her disappointment was obvious.

“Well, I’m here,” I said.

“Lovely.”

I wanted to ask her what her problem was with me,
but I already knew. It was obvious she had a thing for Rend. I had no
idea if she had ever acted on those feelings or not, but she
definitely had feelings for him.

After she’d seen me coming out of his
doorway yesterday morning wearing his shirt, she had every right to
assume something had happened between us. That was enough to make me
the enemy. I couldn’t really blame her, because truth be told,
if I walked in here tomorrow and saw her wearing his shirt, I’d
want to claw her eyes out. Azure was acting with extreme restraint,
considering the circumstances.

I wanted to tell her she had nothing to worry
about. Rend wasn’t interested in me the way I thought after
all, but there was no use explaining it to her or anyone. They would
see for themselves soon enough.

I followed Lyla through the black curtain and into
the dressing rooms.

“You okay?” Shay asked as she came in
the room and nearly ran straight into me.

“She’s fine,” Lyla called out
with a laugh. “Just give her some space. I think she’s a
little overwhelmed. I found her outside just now, staring at the
entrance like she wasn’t sure she wanted to come inside.”

“Hey, you girls remember how tough the first
few nights were for us, right?” Cherish said. She walked over
and put her arms around me with a tight squeeze. “And we had
all known about magic and demons and witches for most of our lives. I
can’t imagine what it must be like for you to find out this
world exists and then get thrown into it all at once.”

“You’re doing great, hon,” Shay
said.

“If you need anything, you just let us
know,” Peri said.

I sat down at the makeup station I’d used
yesterday and tugged at the scarf I’d wrapped around my neck
before I left the apartment.

“There is one thing you can do,” I
said.

“Anything,” Lyla said.

I swiveled around in my chair and took a deep
breath. “Teach me how to do a glamour.”

The five dancers rushed over and gathered around
me.

“I have been dying for you to ask us about
this,” Shay said. She ran her hand down my straight black hair.
“What do you want to look like? Have you given it some
thought?”

I squirmed in my chair. I didn’t expect them
to all come running over like we were at some girly sleepover or
something.

“Oh, gosh, I don’t know,” I
said. I studied myself in the mirror. There was really only one thing
I wanted to get rid of—two bite marks on my neck. But I knew
I’d better come up with something more creative. “I was
thinking about making my eyes green instead of blue for a change.
Maybe wearing something to match?”

“Yes,” Lyla said. She actually giggled
with excitement. “I know the perfect outfit.”

She went over to the rack of clothes and pulled
out a little green...I honestly don’t even know what to call
it. It was like a silky one-piece leotard with a slit running all the
way up the front.

I swallowed, my palms growing sweaty.

“I might need an entirely new body to pull
that off.”

Lyla rolled her eyes. “Pshh. You’re
perfect,” she said. “Besides, you wear it with this.”

She held up a small black sequined bandeau top
that didn’t make me feel one bit better.

“Your eyes will be so pretty that color of
green,” Misty said. She had chosen a bright pink halter top and
the world’s shortest skirt for herself tonight.

“All you have to do is find a way to connect
to the power deep inside yourself,” Shay said. She sat down in
the chair next to mine and crossed both palms over her heart. She
closed her eyes and took several deep breaths. On the third breath,
her hair changed from a deep red color to a black as dark as mine.
When she opened her eyes, they were exactly the same color of green
as the outfit Lyla was holding.

I blew out, releasing the air from my lungs in a
moment of pure awe. “Wow, that completely changes the way you
look,” I said. “But I have no idea how to connect to my
power. What does that feel like?”

“It feels like finding your true self,”
Peri said, coming around to lean against the counter beside me. “Like
dipping your fingers into some secret well of magical energy that
lives inside you.”

I raised an eyebrow. That sounded wonderfully
vague. A secret well inside me? How the hell was I supposed to
recognize that? Or connect to it?

“I still can’t believe your mama
didn’t teach you all this growing up,” Shay said, shaking
her head.

“My mom wasn’t exactly the nurturing
type.” I left it at that and hoped they wouldn’t bring
her up again. I didn’t want to get started on just how
not-nurturing my mother really was. “Okay, so I close my eyes
and breathe in. Then I put my hands on my heart.”

“It doesn’t have to be your heart,”
Lyla said. “I usually just place my hands on my legs, palm-up.
Just do whatever feels natural and relaxing for you.”

I closed my eyes and placed my hands over my
heart, but it was hard to concentrate knowing five other girls were
staring at me, expecting something magical to happen. I tried to take
a few deep breaths, but started laughing instead.

“I can’t,” I said. “Not
with you goons watching me like that.”

Shay laughed and grabbed my hand. “Here,”
she said. “Come sit here in the middle of the room. Peri, turn
off the lights. Misty, can you give us some mood lighting?”

Shay grabbed a big blanket from a couch in the
back of the dressing room and spread it out across the floor. She
pointed for me to sit down, so I did, cross-legged with my back
straight. Lyla sat across from me and took my hands in hers. She
placed them palm-up against my knee, then took a deep breath.

“Breathe with me,” she said. “Just
like this.”

I felt stupid at first, but was touched at how
hard they were all trying to help me understand this type of magic.
Peri switched the lights off, throwing the room into complete
darkness. A moment later, Misty conjured a very light pink orb of
light that she sent up into the air above our heads like a solitary
star.

“Close your eyes,” Shay whispered.
“Try to search for a spark of something deep inside, like a
warmth in the distance. An energy. Trust me, you’ll recognize
it when you feel it.”

I sighed, wondering if I’d ever get the hang
of this. Lyla nudged me with her knee, and I closed my eyes,
determined to give it one more try.

I inhaled, concentrating on the flow of air as it
passed into my body and made its way deep down into my lungs and
beyond. I focused only on the breath at first, as I had learned to do
as a young girl. Back then, my mother had taught me this technique as
a way to control my power and to hold it at bay, not as a way to
connect with it and use it.

But as I breathed, I did start to feel a warm
energy pulsing in my core. It was like a separate heartbeat alive
inside me. I imagined dipping my fingers into that power, tapping
into it.

I gasped as the energy blossomed, expanding from
that single point until chill bumps formed on my skin and my eyelids
fluttered. Around me, the other girls stirred, but someone shushed
them.

“Now, picture the color of green you want,”
Shay said. “Imagine your own eyes are that exact color.
Concentrate on it as hard as you can, filling your eyes with that
color until they’re saturated with it.”

I did exactly as she said, imagining it clearly in
my mind’s eye. A pulse of energy warmed my eyelids and I opened
my eyes in surprise. “I think I messed it up,” I said in
a whisper. “Shit.”

Lyla bit her lip and smiled. “No, you
didn’t,” she said, clapping. “Go look.”

I stood and walked over to the mirror. I pressed
my face close and opened my eyes wide, hardly able to believe what I
was seeing.

My eyes were the perfect shade of green.

Before I removed the scarf around my neck, I
performed a second, more secret, glamour.

I imagined the skin on my neck to be smooth and
perfect, hiding all evidence of a vampire’s bite. When I
unraveled the scarf a few moments later, I sucked in a grateful
breath. I had done it.

“How long do these glamours last?” I
asked Lyla as I changed into the green outfit she’d laid out
for me.

“It depends on your skill and level of magic
ability,” she said. “One of my glamours typically lasts
about twelve hours if I want it to, but for someone new like you, I’d
guess about four hours tops unless you redo it.”

Four hours. That should be enough to get me
through enough of my shift. I could take a break if I needed to and
freshen the glamour later.

“You did great, by the way,” she said,
giving me a little hug. “I know you don’t really like to
talk about your mom, but it’s going to be okay. Not all witches
grow up with moms who will teach them how to use their magic. Trust
me, one of the most powerful witches of our time, this girl named
Harper down in Georgia, grew up an orphan who didn't know anything
about her powers until she was nearly sixteen years old. You can
still learn how to control it now. I can help, if you want.”

I smiled and squeezed her hand. “Thanks, I’d
really appreciate that.”

I wasn’t even sure what other kinds of magic
were available to me, but I knew that if I hoped to have a chance at
surviving whatever the Devil had planned for me, I’d be better
off learning how to fight instead of how to change my eye color. I’d
have to figure out a way to ask her what she knew about fighting
later. Now didn’t seem like the right time.

“You want another shot of Dragon’s
Breath?” she asked, holding out a tube of liquid.

“No thanks,” I said. “I need all
my wits about me tonight.”

She studied me. “What really happened last
night?” she asked. “One minute we were outside and you
seemed fine, and the next you were gone and Rend said you had gone
home sick. Was it the shot that made you sick?”

I knew from the way she asked the question that
she already knew the answer. “No,” I said. She may have
figured out I wasn’t really sick, but that didn’t mean I
wanted her to know the truth, either. Lyla had been super nice to me
so far, but I didn’t know who I could really trust with the
whole story. How much had Rend told them, anyway? How much did he
want them to know?

Luckily, I didn’t have to worry about it,
because Shay interrupted us and told us the staff meeting was about
to start.

“We can talk about it later,” Lyla
said, looping her arm in mine as we made our way out to the main room
of the club. “If you want.”

I gave her a half smile and concentrated on
walking in the ridiculously high heels she’d given me to wear.
I mean, I usually loved high heels but these things were
sky-scraper-high. How the heck was I going to dance in them all
night?

I nearly tripped my way into the bar area where
Rend was already addressing the small staff of the club. When I
stumbled, he looked up from his clipboard for a moment and his eyes
froze on mine. The smile was ripped from my face as his expression
smoldered with anger.

“Franki, I wasn’t expecting you to
come in tonight.” His words were tense and harsh.

Everyone in the room turned to look at me. I
cleared my throat and did my best to act completely unaffected by his
obvious rage. “I was feeling better,” I said, challenging
him with a single raised eyebrow.

Only, challenging him turned out to be exactly the
wrong thing to do in that moment.

Rend slammed his clipboard down on the top of the
bar. “Excuse us a moment,” he said. “Azure, can you
take over for me, please?”

Lyla slipped her arm from mine and took a few
steps in the other direction as Rend came straight at me. He locked
his hand around my arm and pulled me into the room behind the black
curtain. I stumbled in the high shoes, but he didn’t pause to
let me take them off. He just kept pulling me along.

And he didn’t stop there. He continued past
the velvet couch and into a smaller room behind another private door.
This room held a small table with two chairs. Rend shut the door and
pushed me back against it.

“Let me go,” I said through clenched
teeth. “You’re hurting me.”

His eyes flashed silver and he released me, then
cursed. He didn’t back away, though, and his body was still
pressed close to mine. “What the hell are you doing here?”

I flinched. Yes, the possibility that he might not
be happy to see me had crossed my mind, but hearing the anger in his
voice startled me.

“This is my job, isn’t it?”

He ran a hand through his hair. “I thought
you understood,” he said. “You can’t just—”

“I can do whatever I damn well please,”
I said. “Unless you’re firing me, in which case I’ll
take my pay for last night and get out of here.”

My heart was beating so fast against my chest, I
was sure he could feel it through the jacket of his black suit. Why
did he have to stand so close to me? Couldn’t he see that he
was driving me insane? No matter how hard I had tried to rebuild the
walls between us, I knew in that moment that it was no use. He would
just keep tearing them down every time he got close to me.