Chapter 12 – Ava Jade
AVA JADE
M y skin itched. I had to wonder if just being near my aunt had caused some sort of allergic reaction. She reeked of mothballs and that awful old lady perfume she always wore to try to cover it up. My eyes felt puffy from it. Definitely allergic to her.
“Why do you put up with her?” Grey asked, following behind me to grab a tray and fill it up with what remained of the breakfast buffet and the start of lunch items being brought out in the cafeteria.
Ahead of me in line, Brianna picked at a bowl of grapes, sneaking glances at me from the cover of her lashes. I wanted to stuff her face into the potato soup, but that would only render it inedible, and it was my favorite.
“AJ?” Grey hedged when I didn’t reply right away, drawing my attention back to him.
“Because her aunt is paying for her tuition here,” Corvus replied for me, and I rolled my eyes at him.
Not even a little bit surprised that he would know that.
He’d done his homework. I’d done mine too.
At least as much of it as I could. His history had been the most unattainable of the three.
With almost no information whatsoever anywhere in the state or the neighboring ones.
“Is that it?” Grey asked, confused. “You’re a Saint now, AJ. If you want to go to school here, we’ll cover it.”
I didn’t know how to explain it to them: the deal I had with my aunt. Maybe the whole thing was a moot point now.
My aunt promised me tuition to a good college or university plus my own apartment in the city and a monthly stipend. I could have all of it if I graduated Briar Hall with good grades and got accepted into college. It was her guilt-wrapped gift to me for not being around when my dad was still alive.
But what did any of that matter now?
I’m a Saint .
No matter how many times I repeated that to myself, it didn’t ever sound any more true. But it was a fact. And I couldn’t see Diesel St. Crow being chill with me going away to college and renting an apartment in the city. What good was my aunt’s money now?
I couldn’t explain it to them because it didn’t make sense why I was still dealing with her bullshit other than the one thing she said that struck a nerve; we’re the only family we have now.
It was true.
Mom was gone, and I hoped she never came back. Dad was gone now, too. Mom’s family was never around and Dad’s sister, Viola Humphrey, was the only living relative he had left.
The only one I had left now that he was gone.
They didn’t get along, but he mentioned her sometimes. How he worried about his older sister alone in her big house after her wealthy husband passed away.
How he wished he could’ve seen eye to eye with her so that I could have grown up with a rich aunt to spoil me.
It felt like spitting in his face to say to her what I really wanted to: to fuck off and never contact me again.
She’s right, Dad would tell me. I was a shitty dad. A liar. Always gambling our money away.
My dad was a lot of things, but he knew exactly who he was and what he was doing to us. He was just powerless to stop himself. Like my darkness, something greedy and morally gray writhed within him that he couldn’t purge.
I knew I wouldn’t be able to purge mine, so how could I be angry that he couldn’t do the same?
“You going to ladle that?” Grey asked, and I blinked, realizing I was standing with the soup ladle poised over my bowl. Empty.
I shook my head.
“Sorry,” Grey muttered as I went back to filling a bowl of soup. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me. Family’s…a tough subject. I get it.”
Something told me he really did get it, and I was glad at least one of us did.
We went to join Rook and Corvus at the table, one of only three still occupied by students this late in the morning.
I knew Brianna transferred out of homeroom sometime last week, the fucking coward, so I wasn’t totally surprised to see she’d opted for an open period instead of enrolling in a new class this late in the term.
But the others, her little posse, seemed to have joined her, and I knew for a fact they were still in homeroom with us.
The other table was just two guys studying. More students with an open first period.
Fuck, if I had an open first period, I’d be spending it sleeping.
I slid into a seat at the table beside Rook, and Grey slid in next to me. Corvus drank a smoothie, scowling at his phone. Rook drank a glass of orange juice that suspiciously didn’t look or smell to be spiked. Surprising.
Grey started with his glass of water as I munched on a stick of celery and set about getting my new phone operational.
I added all the necessary apps, checking for any Corvus may have added before giving it to me, and signed into my email and all socials.
I needed to keep that shit open in case Becca needed me.
I checked the phone’s system settings to get the number and pushed through an email to Becca containing it. Telling her to only text from a burner, and change burners every few days. Better safe than sorry.
Corv set his phone down with a clatter on the table.
“Max again?” Grey asked him.
“Yeah.”
“She still pissed you canceled those shows?”
“She’s threatening to fire me as a client.”
Grey laughed. “Yeah, right.”
“She won’t. You’re her number one, Bro,” Rook agreed.
Corvus’ brows drew together. He looked so tired, I realized. The hollows beneath his eyes dark and purple hued. When was the last time he’d slept?
“Why did you cancel the shows?” I asked. “You only had two others lined up this season, and they weren’t far. All in NorCal, right?”
He shook his head. “Too much heat right now. I need to be here.”
Not for the first time, I wondered how he’d managed to juggle his gang life and a secret music career.
But the answer was staring me right in the face the entire time.
He wasn’t juggling it. Either one suffered or the other did.
Right now, his alter ego of The Bone Man needed to take a back seat so Corvus James could do what his father expected of him. What his makeshift family needed.
Was it what he wanted?
His steely gaze flicked up to meet mine, lips tight as he considered saying something else.
I lifted a brow. “What?”
“I might’ve promised Max you’d work on a new track with me, and we could unveil it at the next show after Christmas.”
“ You did what? ”
Corvus lifted his hands in a placating gesture. “Before you say no?—”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“I’ll do it. But I want fifty percent of all royalties earned on it plus a cut of the ticket sales from the Lodi show. Only fair since you recorded me without my knowledge and used said recording on stage.”
He stared at me dumbfounded.
“What? A girl’s gotta earn a living and… I didn’t sound half bad.”
“ Ha!” Grey balked. “You were incredible, AJ. There’s a reason every music blogger on the West coast is trying to figure out who you are.”
I flushed and tried to hide it by taking a bite of bacon. “I want vocal training too, though.”
“Done.” Corvus grunted. “I’ll train you myself. Best I can do. We can’t take you to a professional vocal coach. It’ll draw too much attention.”
“What do you think my name should be? I’m thinking something epic like…”
“Sparrow,” Corvus interrupted before I could finish my train of thought. “Obviously.”
“Bone Man and Sparrow ?” I groaned. “That’s lame.”
“How about Ghost ?” Rook interjected, sipping his OJ.
“The Bone Man and The Ghost.” I rolled the titles around in my mouth. “Has a better ring to it, don’t you think? More…ominous?”
“So you think Rook’s nickname is better than mine?” Corvus asked, a slight curl at the edge of his lips. He was playing.
I didn’t know if I wanted to join the game just yet, though.
“Maybe,” I acquiesced, putting an end to the conversation for now as I got ready to dig into the food that was going cold on my tray.
Grey’s tray rivaled my own in terms of how full it was, and he smirked at me as he set into eating a massive pile of scrambled eggs, eyeing my tray right back.
“There’s no way you’re going to finish all that,” he said between mouthfuls, indicating my mountain of food.
“Wanna bet?”
“Fifty.”
“Make it a hundred,” I replied cheerfully, ditching the spoon for my soul to lift the bowl to my lips instead.
“You’re on.
Rook snatched the bowl before it reached my lips and hot soup sloshed over my hands and the rest of the food on my plate.
“The fuck, Rook?” I hissed, shaking soup off my hands.
He held the bowl to his nose, smelling it.
“If you wanted some you could’ve just got your own.”
He didn’t reply, and something in his dark eyes made my frustration wane. He dipped his index finger into the soup and put it in his mouth, tasting it.
A growl ripped from his lips.
“What is it?” Corvus demanded.
“It’s been tainted,” Rook spat back. “Drugged.”
Um…what?
“Are you sure?” Grey asked.
Corvus’ hand curled around his smoothie cup until his knuckles turned white. “What’s in it?”
“I can’t tell, but it’s something. Pills. Crushed up. I know that smell. I know the taste.”
The sanatorium…
What the fuck had those people done to him there?
Without another word, Grey shoved his tray away and lifted the dripping bowl of soup from the table as he stood, walking away.
“Grey, where are you…” Corvus started, but trailed off, and I spun on the bench seat to see that he was carrying the soup to Brianna’s table.
My food-deprived brain caught up to where his had already gone, and I remembered Brianna ahead of me in line. How she kept peering back at me. The fucking cunt.
I followed Grey, the others rising from the table with me as I stood, my vision tinted with crimson.
I thought I’d made myself fucking crystal clear. I warned her.
Grey dropped the bowl in front of Brianna and what remained of it slashed over her shirt, splattering the two other girls crowded in at her sides, making them squeal.
“What the fuck did you put in this?”
Brianna went a shade of sickly white, but kept her expression impressively neutral.