“Neo, didn’t I tell you to stand up?” Storymaker drawled, his stare locking onto the boy beside me. The boy who’d named himself after his favorite character of all time. He wanted to be Neo from The Matrix. A man who’d been normal until he suddenly wasn’t.
Neo bowed his head, his black hair swinging to obscure his face. His almond eyes, courtesy of a Vietnamese mother who’d been raped by an Englishman, gleamed with hate. He braced his shoulders, sticking his scrawny chest out.
Storymaker huffed. “Are you forgetting your manners, my children? What are you supposed to say when I summon you to a family meeting?”
I swallowed bile that washed up my throat, reciting along with my fellow prisoners. “Thank you so much, Master, for giving us a night of fun. We can’t wait to play with our friends.” Our voices all droned together, sounding like a hive of dying honeybees. “We promise to be good. We promise to go to bed when they tell us and to play whatever game they want. We promise to make you proud.”
Quell, standing next to Neo, wretched, her blond hair jerking as she pursed her lips and swallowed down whatever her stomach had tried to evict. Nyx with her fire-colored hair and milky skin grabbed her hand. Nyx seemed even whiter tonight. A ghost with flames upon her head, her light green eyes locked on the window as if she could escape.
“Ah, ah, ah, what have I told you? No touching unless a guest commands it.” Storymaker leaned forward, his temper cutting through the suave refinement he did his best to maintain.
Nyx and Quell let go of each other, denied every small comfort we had.
“And if I catch you all holding hands at night in that dormitory of yours again, I might just have to take those hands away, okay?” Storymaker grinned, looking at each one of us.
Jareth hissed under his breath. His bi-colored eyes (one blue, one brown) were so fierce and full of loathing, I honestly wondered if tonight was the night he snapped.
He’d tried to attack Storymaker before.
He’d gotten as far as grabbing the bone-handled letter opener on Storymaker’s desk, ready to stab the bastard, before the two guards who were always close by disarmed him and dragged him out of the room.
We didn’t see him for two weeks.
And when we did, he wasn’t the boy we used to know.
He was...soulless.
Storymaker kept his eyes locked on Jareth, waiting, same as us, to see if he’d try to kill him again. A few seconds passed before Jareth unfurled his fists and forced himself to take a breath.
With that breath, Storymaker relaxed back into his chair and smiled like any doting father would. “Right, now that you’re all bathed and fed, it’s time to play. You’re in for a treat tonight, my children. Every single member of our wonderful society is here. It’s our birthday, after all. That means you all get to stay up well past your bedtime. If you get sleepy, feel free to ask for some wakey medicine. We can’t have you falling asleep when you’re meant to be playing games now, can we?”
No one replied, our collective hate thick around us.
“Answer me,” Storymaker commanded. “Tell me you won’t fall asleep and disappoint me.”
We all shook our heads, vowing silently not to fall asleep.
We all hated wakey medicine.
It made our heart race and sweat coat our skin. We wouldn’t sleep for days. We’d hallucinate. It was doubly hard to protect each other when we were all high as fucking kites.
And I couldn’t be incapacitated tonight.
No fucking way.
I’d already killed Wes’s guard. If I didn’t finish this, there would be no second chance.
I’d been hoping for a night like this. Praying to a God I no longer believed in.
Last year, on Fables previous anniversary, only a few guests showed up. Men and women, who had a Fables’ membership, often had high-powered jobs and important positions in society—according to Storymaker and his decree to respect and obey every single one as if they were kings and queens.
It’d been a club they’d all formed, pooling funds to build a house in a place no one would stumble upon. The rules were simple: once a member, always a member. You couldn’t transfer or cancel. Their combined funds kept us operating, each one paying more if a member died and could no longer contribute.
In my eight years of serving, only two members had died.
That left eighteen.
Eighteen guests who’d arrived throughout the day and were getting ready for a night of abuse and gluttony, taking Viagra or doing their hair, preparing themselves in their respective bedrooms.
Soon, we would be taken to those bedrooms.
Shared around.
Enjoyed.
And Storymaker would pat himself on the back for an enterprise well run. Human property well-trained. Slaves well versed in fucking. He would relax in his library. His guards would station beside him.