Chapter 15 – Ferrin
FERRIN
We pack up all of our things, and I carry both our bags while Genevieve holds ice wrapped in a towel to her face.
She stays behind me as we wind our way down the stairs and out the front door without being stopped.
I did a quick search online, and there’s a rental car place about a mile from here, which means we’re hoofing it.
Thankfully, it stopped raining, but it’s far from pleasant outside.
The streets are more crowded, and Genevieve uses her long hair like a curtain to cover her face. The police are gone, and I have no clue what happened to the man who assaulted her, but with any luck, he’s a wanted criminal and on his way to jail.
Adjusting the bags, I throw my arm around her shoulder and hold her close.
“What are you doing?” she questions.
“People tend to look at couples less often than they do single people. For one, public displays of affection make people uncomfortable. For another, they don’t typically check out someone they can’t fuck.”
“How do you know these things?”
“Observations over the decades. I spent a lot of time watching people, learning their mannerisms, studying how they react to things. It’s why I’m so good at what I do.”
She puffs out a sharp breath. “More of your social engineering?”
“Something like that. Is your mother going to call you?”
She tenses at the topic change but relaxes a bit once we get past the main drag of town. “How did you know I had a phone?”
“I saw it in your bag with your things. It’s a relic. Answer me.”
“No. She may text, but she never calls me.”
That causes a pang in my chest. A familiar ache. “How are you not a total psycho?” Like I am.
“Huh?”
“You were alone in that house six days a week with no one to talk to but yourself.”
She glances down at the sidewalk, watching her feet as we walk.
“There was a feral cat who came and went. I talked to him. I talked to myself a lot too. And besides”—she lifts her chin—“who says I’m not a psycho?
I’m here with a strange, dangerous criminal.
I made myself orgasm in front of him. I shared a bed with him.
Now I’m willingly allowing him to take me to the ‘sea.’” She puts air quotes around that.
“You could toss me in it, or it could be a euphemism for the place you intend to dump my body. If it weren’t for the necklace, you likely would have already done that or had nothing to do with this from the start. ”
“The latter,” I admit. It’s true, though. Why else would I have agreed to this? Hell, I didn’t even agree. It was coercion. “I don’t usually kill people unless they deserve it or have done something to me.”
“But you have killed people?”
I catch her eye. “Yes. I have. Three people. Two of them very violently.”
“See what I mean. Yet I’m letting your arm stay around me, and I’m not afraid of you. Clearly I’m a psycho, or something is very wrong with me.”
“I don’t think that makes you a psycho. I think that makes you desperate, and desperation might be the most dangerous of human conditions.”
She shrugs. “Perhaps. I’m simply saying I’m not as sweet and innocent as you think I am.”
I laugh lightly as we approach the car rental place. I stop us in front of the doors and hold her in front of me. “You are, though. That’s my point. You’re sweet and innocent. But you’ve also lost your fucks to give and are on the edge of something.”
She swallows thickly and flutters her eyelashes. “On the edge of what?”
“Flying or falling. There are only two options when you reach that point.”
“Have you ever been there? Is this speaking from experience or more of your psychology?”
“Experience. Wait out here but stay to the side of the building and don’t move or leave. Where’s your phone?”
Her brows twist at my sharp topic change, but she pulls it out of her bag and hands it to me.
It’s a hundred fucking years old and utterly useless for anything other than calling, texting, or taking a picture.
No internet. No maps. Her TV only showed violence that was made to look like the news or current events of the world outside her cottage.
Yeah, her mother is a sick, twisted bitch.
I program my number into her phone and text myself so I have hers.
“Keep it ready and hit that button if anyone so much as looks at you.” I hand her back her phone.
“Don’t ask about this.” I pull out some prosthetics from my bag and apply them along with fake teeth to my face, then head inside.
Today I’m Mike Williams, and I get us a car easily enough.
As it is, I’m running out of aliases. I have one left to get us by with, and I don’t like it.
It takes months to procure passable IDs and real credit cards.
But if this plan works, I might finally be able to be Ferrin Morgan again.
We get our bags settled, and she climbs into the passenger side of the car. She struggles with the seatbelt, and it dawns on me she may have never been in a car before or at least not remember it. So wild.
After I help her buckle up, we’re off, following the GPS and listening to music.
She’s quiet as she takes in the surrounding world, her hands resting gracefully on her lap, her body still but far from relaxed.
I have a million questions to ask her. So many things I not only want to know but need to know for this to work.
I’m operating under the strong assumption that her life has been what it is because she’s actually the royal princess.
It’s the only story that adds up all the pieces together and makes them fit.
But I didn’t come to that conclusion on my own.
It might have tickled some recess part of my thoughts.
But I never would have taken the leap until she looked it up.
Whether it was general curiosity about the curse or the family or whether she suspects it herself, I’m not sure yet.
She’s been good at holding her cards close to her chest.
“Does your face hurt?” I ask.
“Not too bad.”
“Do you want to stop to get more ice or some pain medicine?”
She shakes her head, and that’s it. She’s silent for another few kilometers before she says, “I’m going to have to tell her something when I return home.”
I release a breath and turn down the volume on the music. “Are you sure that’s still what you want to do?”
“Why wouldn’t I? This real world isn’t all that great so far.”
“It’s called living, darlin’. Some days are better than others. Has to be better than being locked away all the time. Why does she leave you?” I question as I maneuver us around another car and back into the left lane.
She plays with the ends of her hair, twirling it around her fingers.
“I don’t know. I have no idea where she goes.
Where she lives. What she does to earn money.
She never tells me. I’ve asked, and she dodged my questions and told me it’s not important or that when she comes to see me, she doesn’t want to talk or think about the outside world. ”
My hand runs along the steering wheel. “So she keeps you there alone, won’t let you leave, tells you everyone is evil and the world is dangerous, doesn’t explain herself to you at all as she lives in the world and does what she wants, and you want to go back to her?”
She folds her arms defensively. “She’s keeping me safe.”
I catch the side of her pinched lips and furrowed brow. “Princess, you don’t actually still believe that bullshit, do you?”
“I was kidnapped.”
“Yeah. By her.”
Her fists dig into the seat on either side of her. “Shut up!”
“She’s holding you hostage. I know you see it.”
“I don’t have anything else!” she screams, her arms flying. “I have no one else. What am I supposed to do?”
“Go to the police.”
She laughs sardonically. “You mean the people you’ve been trying to avoid and had me avoid this morning?”
“What if you had more than you knew?” I say, testing where she is with that. “What if there’s more to your story—”
“When I get home, I’ll talk to her. I’ll tell her what I did and maybe—”
“She’ll never let you leave again. You know that.”
“Why do you care?” she throws back at me, her voice high and cracking on the end with emotion.
“This doesn’t impact you at all. You’re not the one who has to live this.
I’m the one who has to figure it out, and I don’t know what that means.
This is all I’ve known for seventeen years.
I’m sitting in a car, staring out the window at shops and restaurants and giant buildings, and it’s as if I’ve stepped out of a cave, but there is comfort in that cave.
Out here, there is no comfort. What does it matter what else I am or could be when I’m still me? ”
She has a point with that. I can’t begin to comprehend what this is like for her. All of it. What she knows or what she suspects versus what she’s been told. What she wants versus what she’s afraid of.
“Then why were you so desperate to leave?”
“So I could see for myself.”
“You were going to kill yourself. If I hadn’t said yes, you would have been thinking about it. Rather seriously too.”
She makes an incredulous noise. “You can’t know that.”
“I do, though. Tell me I’m wrong.”
She twists to the window and angles her body away from me.
“Going back because you have no other option is the same as killing yourself. Physically, emotionally, maybe both. I think you know that.”
“That’s still my problem. Not yours.”
Before I can say more, a text appears on the car's screen since my phone is linked to it.
Lars. Fuck.
“Who’s Lars?”
I grunt. “A fellow thief.”
“A bad guy?”
I roll my eyes. “Princess, the world isn’t black and white. Most people are varying shades, and some are simply gray. Like your eyes.” I smirk at her. “But no one is pure white. If they tell you they are, they’re not only lying, they’re hiding something.”
I get a challenging brow. “Would you describe yourself as black or gray?”
“Perhaps somewhere in between. A charcoal gray.”
She taps on the dash beside the screen. “It could be important. You’re not going to see what he wants?”
“No.”
“How come?”
I sigh and run a hand across my jaw to the back of my neck. “Because I can do that later.”
“When I can’t see it, you mean? Does he know you’re with me?”
“No.”
“So you don’t trust him.”
I chuckle. “No. I don’t trust him, but before you get all bent out of shape on his part, he doesn’t trust me either. We’re hardly besties or confidants.”
She twists back to me and angles closer as if she’s about to dig into me. “Do you have any of those?”
“No.”
“So how do you feel your life is different from mine? You’re as alone as I am. Maybe more so since I do have my mother, and you have no one. Living in the world doesn’t mean you’re actually living.”
I hold in my smile. “Are you psychoanalyzing me now?”
She gives me a cheeky grin and playfully bats her eyelashes at me. “Absolutely.”
Another text from Lars comes in, and I have to deal with this. I’m too fucking curious about what they’ve found on Marie, if anything. I pull over into a petrol station and park the car in front of the store.
“What are we doing?” she asks, her head swiveling about, taking in our new surroundings.
“Stay here.”
Without waiting for her next question, which I know was coming, I unplug my phone and head inside.