Chapter 2 – Ava Jade
AVA JADE
M y mouth tasted of lead and whiskey.
That was the first thing I noticed when I opened my eyes Tuesday morning. The second was the locked door.
Really?
A locked door.
What did they think this was, amateur hour?
I rolled my eyes after trying the handle for a second time, my fingers sleep numbed and body heavy with the after effects of Rook’s whiskey and lingering dread.
I’d let Grey lead me to this spare room sometime in the early hours of the morning.
I’d been in a daze, still reeling from everything that’d happened, and everything that would happen now that I’d been forcibly enrolled in the trials.
“ Hey, ” I hollered through the wooden pane, the sound hoarse, vocal cords demanding coffee before they’d function properly. I pounded a closed fist on the wood, shouting a second time. “Grey?”
I listened carefully, closing my eyes to await the sound of footsteps, but none came.
The only sounds in the Crow’s Nest were the ominous noises houses made when nobody was home.
The whir and shhh of the air conditioning.
The scratch of branches on window panes.
The creak and groan of flexing floorboards.
Speaking of, there were no windows in this closet of a fucking room.
For all I knew it was a closet. One they’d converted to a ten by ten atrocity of a guest bedroom. With a lumpy single pushed against the wall and a wobbly nightstand and not much else. It was clean though, not a speck of dust in the air or coating any surface.
Honestly, it was more than I’d had in Lennox, but I’d gotten used to the grandeur of my shared suite with Becca back at Briar Hall. And that shower…
Mmmm, I could use one of those right about now. I could feel dirt under my fingernails. Forest debris in my hair. Stale sweat making my skin tacky.
“Either you open this door, or I’ll open it my damn self,” I tried one last time, tipping my head to the side for a stretch as I rolled my shoulders back and inhaled deeply to force my heavy limbs to wake.
“Fine,” I growled. “Have it your way.”
I had my blades on me still, but nothing small enough to try to pick the fucking thing, and it was an exterior lock.
The kind with a key. Installed with the key side in.
A new one by the look of it. I had to wonder if they’d somehow managed to install it while I was asleep.
I couldn’t remember noticing hardware that strong on the way in, and I would’ve noticed.
At least, that’s what I’m telling myself.
I was a real wreck last night. Apparently, I also hadn’t noticed the lack of alternate exits in the room.
These Crows were going to be the death of me.
At least falling asleep in my clothes also meant passing the fuck out in my shoes. The runners wouldn’t get the job done as well as if I’d worn my shit stomping boots, but they’d do.
I limbered up, stretching my quads and calves and rolling my ankles.
I just needed the right amount of pressure in the right place and…
My heel connected with the door, an inch too high, but still it rattled, the metal lock bits beginning to come apart. If this was an exterior door, I might’ve been fucked, but lucky me, it was the bustable interior wooden kind.
The second kick ricocheted up my leg and I grimaced, cursing each one of the vultures for each subsequent kick.
“Fuck.”
“You.”
“All.”
The metal lock pinged as it hit the floor and the door fell open, busted up into a mess of chewed wood around the lock and hanging on now by only one hinge.
“Bastards,” I heaved, catching my breath as I strolled out. I went to the window down the hall, clutching the sill to peer out onto the gravel drive. The Rover was nowhere in sight.
What day was it again?
Tuesday.
Right.
Still morning by the look of it. Had they really locked me in a room with no fucking bathroom and gone to class?
They told me they had to keep an eye on me. I remembered that part of the conversation. Something about Diesel making me their responsibility, and then there was the part about him not trusting me. And why should he? I wouldn’t trust me, either.
I found my way back down to the living room, scanning the low coffee table and couch until I spotted my phone. I jammed the side button, but the screen stayed dark. Dead.
Figures.
Briefly, I thought about tearing a few gashes in the expensive looking sofa before deciding they weren’t worth the trouble of honing my blades later.
But I couldn’t let them get away with locking me up, they had to know I was not some pet to be caged.
No matter what they thought. No matter their orders.
It took me about ten minutes to find a Phillips head screwdriver tucked away in a small toolkit in the hall closet upstairs. It took me another fifteen to remove the door handles from every bedroom and bathroom door in the house and stuff them in a pillowcase to sling over my shoulder.
I couldn’t help noticing the differences in their rooms, and my ability to tell whose was whose with barely a single glance.
That part surprised me, made something shimmy uncomfortably beneath my skin. I didn’t want to know them, but there it was. Like it or not, they’d embedded themselves in my life. Made a home in my mind. Roosted in the cage of my bones.
Corvus’: a neat, modern space with soft dark fabrics and espresso finished wood. Not a single item out of place. No personality, either. No posters on the walls. No books or CDs. Nothing that would tell me for certain it belonged to him other than its sterile, magazine page feel.
Grey’s dead giveaway was his desk.
The rumpled bed could’ve been Rook’s, but that desk, it was all Grey. A study lamp perched in one corner, school texts lined up neatly against the wall. Notepads galore, and...a drawing tablet. Unexpected, but also not surprising. I wondered if he were any good.
I couldn’t see much of Rook’s room. He had blackout curtains on the one window and barely a glint of natural light filtered into the space.
The overhead light was burnt out, or perhaps purposefully removed from its socket in the ceiling.
But I could smell him. Whiskey and tobacco and that musky man smell that did things to my insides.
And I didn’t need light to see what looked like empty cigarette packs, clothes, and bottles strewn over the floor and a fur blanket spilling off the side of a large bed.
Fucking fur. Since this was Rook we were talking about, I had to wonder if it was real.
Looked like it could’ve belonged to a black bear, maybe.
Or a few black bears judging by the size.
Good luck sleeping in your dark cave without a door handle, asshole.
Good luck taking a shit, too.
I bounded down the stairs with my prizes, feeling lighter even with the five pounds of useless metal added to my frame.
I strolled out the front door and spun, flipping the bird to the camera above the door before going around the Crow’s Nest to the back.
And then farther, through the sparse trees, up a small rock slope and to the edge of the cliffside to stare down to the rocky shore below.
Upending the pillowcase over the ledge, I watched with glee as the metal globes tumbled down like little bells, ringing against the rock until they finally laid to rest in the white-capped waves, burying themselves in the sand.
I sighed, looking toward the horizon as the sun peeked out from behind a hazy pink cloud, warming my cheeks. For a minute I could almost pretend my whole life didn’t just go to shit in the last twenty-four hours.
But the minute passed, and my victorious smile waned.
Fuck.
I turned and started a slow jog down past the Crow’s Nest and into the trees, making my way to Briar Hall. My legs protested nearly every step, but I made it, slipping in unnoticed through the back door and up to my room.
For a heart stopping moment, I wasn’t sure I had the key, but remembered I’d tucked it safely into that tiny, mostly-useless pocket on the inside of my pants.
“Becks?” I called, squinting to see the clock in the kitchen.
It was past eleven. Not quite lunch yet, so she was still in chem, and I was supposed to be in AP math.
I couldn’t wait for the inevitable text from Aunt Humphrey after she got yet another call from the office to report my absence. Fucking joy.
Coffee would have to wait. A shower was absolutely mandatory before anything else. My sweat was sweating, and I had a sneaking suspicion that the sour smell clogging my nostrils was my own.
I plugged in my phone on the way, promising myself I’d figure out my life just as soon as I was caffeinated and didn’t smell like a dead mule.