Rei
Rei fisted his hands against his pant legs.
He’d holed up behind the driver’s seat, back pressed against the windowless side of the vehicle.
Ellisandre pulled the van up to the sidewalk.
A tall man stood waiting with two shorter people.
Rei pegged the tall one for security. Of the two shorter people, one appeared to be a young woman, head almost entirely covered in a beanie.
The other short person looked male of a similar age with red highlights in his darker hair.
Both were bundled in puffy winter coats.
Ellisandre pushed the button and the side and back doors of the van opened.
The back was mostly cargo space, except for one bench seat in the front on which Rei was situated.
“That’s Alice and Ash. Alice is the girl in the green pants. Ash has the red hair,” Ellisandre said. “Don’t mind the tall guy. He’s just dropping them off.”
“Morning, Elli,” Alice said. Ash and the bodyguard helped her load several suitcases and bags into the back of the van. She clambered to the front from the back. Ash went around to the side and let himself into the front passenger seat. He gave Rei a long look and glanced at Ellisandre.
Alice claimed the other end of the bench seat by Rei. Ellisandre shut the door and raised their hand to the bodyguard who returned the wave and stood back.
“You brought company,” Alice said.
“You’ve met before,” Ellisandre said, pulling into traffic.
Rei kept his hands still and flat on his lap, fighting the need to pull his legs up against his chest. But this wasn’t a gathering of the Merchari. Perfect slave behavior wasn’t going to save him here. His composure broke by a fraction. He pulled one leg up against his chest, hugging it to himself.
“Yeah, but you never gave us a name,” Alice said.
“Not everyone is going to give you a name.” Ellisandre had their eye on traffic.
Alice waited to retort until Ellisandre had navigated a complicated snarl around a car trying to parallel park. “At least have a nickname. They’ll be weirder without a name than with—if they’re helping out today.”
“Fine. Call him Andres.”
Ash snorted and Alice frowned before shaking her head at Ellisandre. “Calling him yours isn’t a name.”
“Not calling him mine. Said to call him Andres.”
“Which is like the last part of your name with an apostrophe s at the end. Same thing.”
Ellisandre smirked at Alice in the rearview mirror. “Can’t prove it.”
“I just did.”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
In the front seat Ash put his head in his hands. He twisted around in his seat and met Rei’s eyes. “Hi. Call me Ash. Sorry about these two lunatics. I don’t know if your nickname is worse than mine, but if they call anyone monster, that would be me.”
Rei looked over the slight-looking man. Ash didn’t look scary at all, even with the red hair. He swallowed and raised his hand towards Ash in a small greeting.
“You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to,” Alice said.
“Andres is still getting used to people,” Ellisandre said. “Go easy.”
Alice gave Rei a look that told him she knew more than she was acknowledging.
She put her hand on the seat between them but didn’t try to touch him.
Instead, she opened up her coat, showing the end of a gun.
“We got you,” she said. And for just a moment, a shadow of her brother Sevastyan crossed her features.
“So, do you know what we’re doing today?”
Rei nodded. Even that much felt scary. He was acknowledging a civilian, well, a semi-civilian, and it wasn’t for being undercover.
Or perhaps it was. Sorta undercover, like when he was with Sevastyan in airports.
Except Sevastyan wasn’t there. It had been eleven years since he’d just had a conversation with someone that wasn’t in service of a master or with another slave, or someone he was servicing.
It didn’t feel like fresh air. It felt like ice in his lungs.
Alice grinned. “So, have you listened to 5N’s music?”
Rei glanced at the back of Ellisandre’s head, but they weren’t giving him any help. He nodded again.
Alice’s eyes sparkled. “I never listened to them before Damian brought Jun back from South Korea. It’s a whole thing. Kinda messy.” She shrugged. “Don’t worry about all the security. Someone kidnapped Jun, so Richard and émeric and Damian, all of us, aren’t going to let that happen again.”
“Good.” Rei’s throat tried to close up over the single word.
Alice ’s hand on the seat between them flexed, as if she wanted to touch him. “Anyway, today’s a big deal. Damian—oh, you don’t know who Damian is, do you?”
Rei shook his head.
Up front, Ash snorted. He turned around. “Sathers is scary.”
“Damian Sathers is not scary. And why are you still calling him Sathers?”
“Because he threatened to lock me in prison and throw away the key?” Ash rolled his eyes.
“He was trying to keep you out of prison!” Alice snapped. “You like him. Don’t tell me otherwise.”
Ash shot Alice a complicated, unimpressed, conflicted look. “He knows good food.”
“Anyway.” Alice turned back to Rei. “Damian is Jun’s boyfriend. Jun is the leader of 5N. And Damian lives with my brother Collin. Collin is émeric and Richard’s. So they all live together, like all five of them. Just think of them as one unit. Kinda.”
Ash turned around in his seat. “Ish, you’re going to confuse any normal sane person.”
“You have a better way of explaining it?” Alice raised both eyebrows.
Ash looked at Rei. “émeric and Richard are like old, forty something, and rich. Like bossy big rich. I work for Richard. And a long time ago they got Damian, put him through college I think, and eventually they got involved. With stuff. Like a family. But Damian’s not their kid.
And then they got Collin last year too. And Collin is with émeric and Richard. Really with them. Same bedroom, everything. And Damian is with Jun. But still a part of everything with Richard, émeric, and Collin.”
“And Collin is my brother,” Alice added at the end.
“We call them The Residency,” Ash added. “It’s easier to say.”
“And they call us The Menagerie.” Alice laughed.
Ash rolled his eyes. “And by us, they mean Ellisandre, Linda, Alice, Dana, and me. And Maribel. But Maribel is a dog.”
Rei cleared his throat. “How old are you?” That seemed like what he would have done, years ago. Except, and he flushed under his mask, he wasn’t in South Korea anymore. It was kind of taboo to ask people’s ages in the United States. He parted his lips to take the question back.
“I’m nineteen, almost twenty,” Alice said. “And Ash is in trouble, because he didn’t let anyone know when his birthday was. He’s eighteen.”
“We were busy,” Ash remonstrated.
“Not too busy to sing you happy birthday.” Alice aimed a swat in Ash’s general direction. Ash ducked, but not really. The end of the swat landed and he smirked.
Despite his terror, a tiny bit of a smile tugged on the edge of Rei’s mouth behind his mask. These two were funny. Little bit odd, and probably weird, but nice. Their banter reminded him of training with his chosen brothers when they were young.
Alice turned back to Rei. “So, do you know where we’re going to be today?”
“On set?” Rei answered.
“We’re going to an old abandoned church. It’s beautiful, like an apocalypse.”
“Who said apocalypses were beautiful?” Ash snorted.
“English doesn’t have a word for something that’s artistically beautiful but also terrible,” Alice countered.
“Beautiful disaster,” Ellisandre said, voice soft. “And some apocalypses are beautiful. They mean you’re starting over.”
The van was quiet for a moment. Rei let himself breathe inside the silence. That’s what he was to Sevastyan. A beautiful disaster.
But they hadn’t gotten to the starting over part yet.