JENNIE
Some sort of feeling comes over you when you've completely lost a hold over everything that made you the person you thought you were—only I couldn't think of the right word for it.
Loss? Grief? Relief?
I felt drowned by the emotion, whatever it was, as I trudged up the staircase of Kim Manor after being dropped off at the doorstep like unwanted luggage. Once inside my bedroom, I undressed, leaving my skirt on a chair for a maid to retrieve, but Lisa's shirt I hung on a hanger and tucked at the very back of my closet.
I couldn't explain why.
Naked, I drew a bath as hot as I could stand it and climbed inside, sinking up to my neck. I sat there, unmoving, as water poured down and attempted to dissect a wave of unbearable emotions.
This isn't right, I thought, gazing mournfully up at the ceiling.
I should have felt …worse. So, so much worse—especially considering that my wounds stung beneath the water and I couldn't stop twirling that cheap, plastic ring around and around my finger.
I should have been about ready to duck my head underneath the water while spouting some morose poem about life and woe, prepared to follow in the footsteps of my parents.
I shouldn't have felt … Well, in all honesty, I didn't really know how to classify just what I was feeling. Shame wasn't it. Neither was regret, truth be told, which confused me to the point that I frowned into the cloud of steam.
No matter how hard I tried to ignore it, there was one little word that kept appearing in my mind, something so cliché that I rolled my eyes at the mere thought of considering it. But, just as the water began to encroach on my chin, I found myself whispering it—just once—out loud.
"Free …"
It didn't sound quite as pathetic in the open air as it had in my head, which unnerved me even more. I didn't even receive a frantic admonition from my dead mother along the lines of, Freedom is an illusion, Jennie. Money is freedom!
Sighing, I curled my toes against the rim of the tub, trying not to relive every second with Lisa, though the memories played through my mind regardless.
She said that I had been "pretending" that night at the masquerade. If being polite and conservative was what she mistook for pretense, then I shivered at the thought of this …
Uninhibited Jennie.
I waited for a fitting interjection from my ghostly maternal unit, but all I received was silence once again.
Confused, I lingered within the water until it turned ice cold and the skin around the cuts on my shoulder was a bright, violent red. On pruned toes, I climbed out and slipped into a robe, tying the sash around my waist.
The house was silent around me—like a tomb, enclosing someone who had no idea that she was already dead. With that melancholic thought in my head, I dragged a brush through my hair while pondering my own reflection in the mirror.
My new ring sparkled on my finger—probably the only shiny part of me. I looked ghoulish from behind a cloud of steam. Impulsively I reached out to swipe through the condensation with the pad of my finger, leaving a streak across the mirror.
My eyes gleamed against the glass, along with an angry slash of red along my collarbone. A good, decent woman would have felt shame, I supposed. Perhaps she would have torn through her wardrobe in search of a scarf to obscure the sign of her impurity?
All I did was tilt my head further to the side and observe how the cuts had already begun to scab over. I wondered if I happened to touch one …would the skin around it feel cold, impregnated with an icy chill? My fingers trembled with the thought and I had to brace both hands against the mirror's surface just to keep from testing out that theory.
Instead, I traced meaningless patterns against the glass and eventually found myself forming a single sentence in clumsy, blocky letters. Jennie Kim is …
What? I wondered.
Stupid?
Foolish?
A whore?
My index finger hovered inches from the glass hesitating for only a moment before I sighed and reluctantly added those three little words my Devil was so fond of tossing about as her mantra: Bound for Hell.
The words taunted me. Was the fiery pit what truly awaited this new Jennie?
Should I have been terrified?
Lisa certainly seemed to think that was her ultimate destination: the Devil, who would eventually dwell in Hell. It was a fitting comparison.
Lisa Manoban is bound for hell …and seems determined to drag poor, naïve Jennie Kim right on down with her.
Moving to an untouched sheet of steam, I carefully sketched the letters: LISA MANOBAN.
Even the sight of the name was intimidating—or maybe it was just thoughts of the person herself.
I didn't know. I didn't want to know.
I banished the words with a swipe of my hand and took a step back from the mirror. I was shivering when I finally turned away and settled my damp curls over my shoulders. The specter of Lisa haunted me as I padded into the bedroom, intending to slip beneath my bed covers and disappear into a world of nightmares, most likely starring one infamous vampire …
Only, in an instant, the prospect was shattered.
There was a man standing in my room, rummaging through my nightstand.
With his back turned to me, he rifled through the drawers and tossed knick knacks and loose bits of paper to the floor. Obviously, he was looking for something. Jewels? Money?
His filthy, mud-stained leather jacket made me highly suspect that he wasn't a servant or in my employ.
I figured I should have screamed or reacted like any normal, sensible woman would, but Lisa had obliterated all my sense of normality and all I could do was linger over the threshold, dripping water onto the floor.
"Can … Can I help you?"
He turned. Matted brown hair tumbled down his shoulders, matching an equally unkempt beard that hung from his chin. He looked like the dangerous, wild sort who might break into young ladies' bedrooms, intent on robbing and murdering, but before I could truly feel afraid, I saw his eyes—they were the same piercing green as mine.
I blinked as recognition hit me like a punch.
"Uncle Orwell?"
His was a face I hadn't seen in nearly ten years—not since my father last had him sent away under the pretense of him being unwell, which, of course, was just Kim code for 'flipping nuts.' I warily braced one hand against my temple, wondering if the day's blood loss was truly making me hallucinate this time.
He certainly didn't look as though those years in an asylum had done him any good. His eyes were wild, slightly crazed, though they narrowed when they landed on me.
"Jennie. So you're still alive."
I flinched at the gruffness in his tone. Alive?
"Am … Am I not supposed to be?" I wondered if he had heard of my failing health.
He shrugged. "Bet you know that better than I do."
I blinked, stumbling closer before my mind chose to register the fact that—despite the blood connection—I knew nothing about this man. Nor, I might add, why the hell he had broken into my room.
"Why would I be dead?" I asked, conveniently overlooking the facts that I knew proved the fallacy of that question: Because I had sold my proverbial soul to a vampire; because I had a fatal blood condition; because I was a fool, or more importantly, because of Lisa.
Rather than mutter some confused nonsense about bunnies—or whatever it was crazy people raved about these days—Orwell reached into his jacket and tossed something flat and square at my feet. It was a newspaper, I saw as I bent down; one of those trashy tabloids that Rosé tended to star in whenever she returned to the city.
Only now, another Kim's picture rested beneath a blazing headline: Reclusive Heiress Steps Out With Someone. The so called 'someone' needed no introduction; I'd have recognized that gleaming blond hair anywhere, but it took a few more moments of blinking before I realized that the pale woman standing beside her was …
Me.
Someone had caught the moment a few days ago when she had dragged me to the Café Claret. I recognized Jisoo's crisp outfit. Lisa's hand was on my arm, and to any ignorant observer the assumption might have been that we were lovers.
The Irony was so bitter that I found myself laughing out loud.
Good heavens! I wondered if Lisa would be upset at having been publicly linked to me. Absolutely gleeful at the prospect, I stooped for the paper. It was only when I had it tucked under my arm and stood that I realized Orwell most likely hadn't presented it out of concern for my nonexistent love life.
He looked uneasy, for one, and disgusted. He eyed that silly magazine as though it was my head on a platter—only I was just too stupid to realize it.
"They got to you," he said in a tone that made my skin crawl. "Where is your sister? Where is Roseann?"
He pushed his way past me for the bedroom door and peered into the hallway as if expecting Rosé to come strolling down it. "Roseann?"
"She's not here," I said, puzzled as he whirled on me with a grim frown. "She won't be back until Thursday. Would you like me to give her a message?"
I politely refrained from voicing my doubts that the posh and sophisticated Rosé—who couldn't even take the private jet home to see her dying sister—would want to chat with our estranged uncle, freshly released from the mental hospital.
"She probably already knows," Orwell said with a crazed light shining in those green eyes. "I reckon they did this—" He jabbed a grimy finger at the tabloid still tucked underneath my arm. "Just for her."
I doubted that Rosé would care that I had been photographed with a somene—other than the obvious shock that I had left the manor at all—but something in Orwell's voice …
It made the little hairs at the nape of my neck stand on end.
"Know what?" I found myself asking, though I was pretty sure that it wasn't exactly a good idea to feed into a madman's delusions. "Who's …'gotten' to me?"
He didn't answer. Instead, his eyes darted to my shoulder and narrowed, as if sensing the blood that I could feel seeping, once again, from the cuts there.
"They have," he growled, stressing 'they' as if it were obvious who he meant.
I felt my heart sink to the pit of my stomach, despite the logical part of me trying to rationalize that he couldn't possibly mean who I thought …
"I'll call someone," I stammered, blindly stumbling for my nightstand. I didn't know who; Harper? The police? The mental institution?
I had barely gone halfway before a harsh grip on my shoulder yanked me back.
"No!"
Unprepared for the assault, I went flying, landing hard against a surface that I assumed was the wall—at least until I heard it splinter beneath my weight.
In a daze, I could only stare at the shards of glass littering the floor and the slightly off balance frame of my full-length mirror. Shock ran through me like a lance, even before I felt the pain.
Oh God. Fiery agony danced up and down my arm. In what seemed like a matter of seconds, the crisp, white sleeve of my robe was scarlet.
"I need to regroup," I heard Orwell mutter, oblivious to my injury. "I need to contact Roseann. They would only retaliate if she'd gone too far …"
I barely registered the words. I was too busy trying to stay upright. Large blotches of crimson were seeping through the thick terrycloth of my robe. Frantic, I tried to count back the days since my last dose of Lisa's mystic cure, but I came up blank.
Oh dear.
A normal person, I supposed, might have gone to the hospital—something that was out of the question for me. After all I assumed they would wonder why I was no longer dying, or question the cause of those two, nasty wounds on my shoulder.
I even considered phoning the private, family doctor that my mother had kept on a retainer all these years, but I couldn't remember his name or where Harper filed the important numbers. It was late, I saw, glancing at the clock on my wall. Even Harper needed to sleep and—hemorrhaging to death or not—I didn't want to bother him for something as silly as a few, little scrapes.
Deep, jagged, little scrapes I saw as I peeled off the terrycloth to get a better look.
I hissed at the sight of my forearm. Profuse amounts of red liquid seeped out of a lovely hodge-podge of cuts. If I looked close enough, I swore that I would find tiny bits of glass still glinting within them.
Tearing my gaze away, I focused on sucking in air.
Orwell was gone. I didn't know where, but his stench lingered on the air—a stale, bitter musk. I tried to tell myself that he wasn't dangerous, but his words kept running through my mind: you're still alive. They got to you.
I quickly tore through my options; there were none, at least none that wouldn't cause more trouble than they were worth.
Except …
I mulled it over as I hauled myself upright and staggered to my wardrobe.
With one hand, I managed to wrap myself partially in a black blouse and pull on a skirt. Blood stained both garments within seconds, but I tried to ignore the vibrant color dotting my floor as I yanked my coat from a hanger and stumbled out into the hall.
The short descent down the staircase felt like an eternity. Every step seemed to take more concentration than usual. My trembling fingers struggled to grip the banister.
You're being ridiculous! I tried to tell myself, gritting my teeth in disgust. It's just a scratch …
A 'scratch' that burned like hell as I stumbled over the bottom step and made my way to the door. It was only when I stood on the threshold, hand gripping the doorknob that I realized there would be no mysterious black vehicle awaiting me. No Harper with the Rolls Royce.
Call a cab? I wondered. But I wouldn't even know where to begin. My knowledge of any sort of public transportation came only from television—though I doubted that many taxi drivers wouldn't be curious as to why their customer was losing an alarming amount of blood.
I didn't quite know when I got the idea in my head to turn down the opposite end of the hall and drift in the direction of the servant headquarters; those offices near the back where I rarely ventured.
This time of night, nothing but shadows and silence greeted me as I pushed open the door to the lounge where I knew the staff spent their breaks—and where I knew Harper kept the keys to the family vehicles.
Plenty of admonishments ran through my mind as I ruffled through the drawers and scanned the surface of a desk. I hadn't driven in nearly ten years—not since Harper had first taught me in secret on the house grounds. According to Mother's philosophy, women like me didn't need to know how to operate a car when we paid people to do it for us.
If Mother could see me now, fishing a pair of silver keys from a hook on the wall, she'd probably drop dead again.
It took me ages to stumble to the garage. By then my arm had grown numb and every part of me tingled with an icy chill I couldn't escape. My teeth chattered, fingers shaking so badly that the keys jingled like bells.
When I finally found the Rolls Royce, parked within a shadowy corner, I could barely fit the key in the door. The black machine with its tinted windows seemed about as imposing as a snarling beast waiting to swallow me whole. How did one even start a car anyway? Was there some sort of button?
Idiot! A disembodied voice hissed—only this time, it didn't belong to my mother. It was Lisa. Fool, she snarled. A man breaks into your bedroom, mortally wounds you, and your main concern is if the gas pedal is on the left or the right?
My eyes narrowed at the thought and somehow I managed to wrench open the door and climb onto the driver's seat.
I didn't stop to consider that I had no idea how to leave the property let alone navigate the city, or that I was staining priceless leather with my blood. Driven by determination I was able to get the key into the ignition and jerkily maneuver the car to the garage's entrance.
Ten minutes later I was creeping down a side road at a pace more befitting a snail, thankful that the roads were mostly empty this time of night. My trembling hands could barely grip the steering wheel and I strained to see over it in search of a certain, imposing steeple.
Call it luck—or fate—but after a random turn, I glanced up to find the shadowy silhouette of the church of St. Jude the Apostle, and I figured that I was the only person in the world relieved to have found the gate to their own personal hell.