“Because if you didn’t work for Al Valenti, I’d have to,” I say flatly. I know it’s the truth, even if no one else has thecajonesto come right out and say it. King could have gotten out of working for our great-uncle. Yeah, our parents promised him their first son, but Al’s a reasonable guy. He’d have taken me, the best man for the job, if everyone had told him King wasn’t the right fit. It wasn’t our parents or Al Valenti who insisted on keeping the contract. It was King.
He sighs and runs his hand through his hair. “You have a choice, Royal. That’s all I’m saying.”
“And I made my choice,” I say. “You think you’re the only one who can make sacrifices for our family? The twins don’t graduate for another year.”
I’m not leaving them with Dad. I know what he’ll use them for. If it’s the only thing I ever protect them from, at least it’s more than nothing.
“Our brothers told me about Harper,” King says quietly. “Did you tell Dad?”
So, there it is. I knew they couldn’t keep their fucking mouths shut. But better to get it all out in New York than to let it slip in this gossipy little town.
“No, I didn’t fucking tell Dad,” I snap. “She wasn’t his mark.”
“She’s a Darling,” he says. “He’d want to know.”
“What, you think he’s doing business with some trailer park junkie? She’s not one of the Darlings he’s concerned with.”
“And the ones he is concerned with?” he asks. “You’re telling him about them?”
“There’s nothing to tell,” I say, gritting my teeth in irritation at the shit I’ve had to put up with for the past year. Now that I’m working with Dad, I’m starting to understand why it’s necessary. But Preston doesn’t make it easy to leave him alone when he’s constantly fucking with us, poking us, trying to get a reaction. It pisses me the fuck off that there are Darlings walking around this town with impunity.
“Maybe that’s a good thing,” King says.
He thinks the Darlings paid for Crystal’s death already, and maybe he’s right. But he’s not her twin, and she’s not the only one the Darlings killed that winter.
“Until we get the casino running, the Delacroixs are untouchable,” I say. “After that… All bets are off.”
Once the twins graduate and I get rid of the Darlings, I’ll be on the first flight out of Faulkner. The place makes my skin crawl. There are too many ghosts here, too many reasons to look over my shoulder.
The girls who die in this town don’t get funerals, don’t leave bodies. They simply vanish, as if the town itself swallows them alive.
The boys don’t get funerals, either, but they don’t disappear. The boys leave bodies—with nothing left inside them.
Our ghosts haunt Faulkner, too.
ten
Harper Apple
Every week is the same. I go through the motions, but I’m frozen inside, as if it’s not really me there at all. There’s a Harper-sized doll in my place, someone I used to be but am no longer. The world has forgotten my existence. Only the Phantom remembers. I wait for him, for the clean smell of his house, the polished hardwood, the curl of his hard body around mine, the detachment I feel when he’s inside me that’s the closest thing to freedom I can imagine.
When I’m not there, I’m a ghost walking the street at night, waiting for him to come back.
He always does. Two days a week, he takes me home, feeds me, fucks me, sometimes videos me. He fills half his closet with new clothes for me, shoes, jewelry, an expensive purse to carry my phone and keys and wallet. Everything comes to his house in boxes or bags delivered to the door, so he doesn’t have to leave the house except to get me and take me home.
He checks the ring he put through my bellybutton to make sure it’s healed, puts dark-colored contact lenses in my eyes, touching my eyeballs like they are his own. I think, maybe he’ll pluck out my eye and replace his blind one. But I don’t move, don’t try to stop him when he reaches between my lids and sets the thin lens over mine.
“Good girl,” he says, stroking my cheek. “Beautiful.”
He opens the closet door and sets me before the mirror. He tells me I’m perfect now, that I’m ready. I stare at the stranger in the mirror with dark eyes and dark lips and brown-black hair, and I think she looks ready, so he must be right. I don’t ask him what I’m ready for. It doesn’t matter.
That’s the first night he wants a blowjob.
When the water gets shut off at home, I don’t pay the bill. I ask the Phantom if I can start coming over on Sunday to shower. I got used to the daily showers at his house. He says no to extra time with him, but the next day, the water is back on. Mom says someone paid the rent through the rest of the year, too. I don’t say anything. She shakes her head and says wherever I’ve been sneaking off to, keep on sneaking. Then she laughs and lights a cigarette.
“The rich ones always want a young piece of ass,” she says, blowing smoke out the corner of her mouth. “If they’re willing to pay for it, all the better.”
I wonder again whose whore I’ve become.