Page 229 of Like Grim Death: Part One
What happened, in between?Whowas chasing me, and why can’t I remember them?
But the girl with blonde hair, blue eyes, she was an angel for me.
Then I had a life spent buried in dirty sheets and covered in semen that was rarely mine.
I lift my hips, shoving down my sweats and my boxer briefs, and I splay the scissors and bring the edge to my inner thigh. It’s covered in tattoos, like the rest of my leg. A castle, bats, a casket. I dig the tip in, and my body tenses, but I stare at my pale skin and imagine Moscow. The orphanage.
I don’t remember the plane, but I must have flown on one. I grew up in America, didn’t I?
Adam Medici promised me.
I keep digging in the blade of the splayed scissors, despite the pain. Despite the way I clench my teeth as I carve blood from the castle, beneath a bat’s wing.
My stomach rolls, and I feel sick. Not from the pain, but the mess.The fucking mess.Every house they sent me to, every place they promised a loving home, I was covered in amess.
It was like I didn’t exist for them. I was not a foster child. I was not a gift.I was a piece of furniture. A thing to be used.
I wasn’t reallythere.
Cave adsum. A phrase I found one day in a book.Cave adsum.
Beware, I am fuckinghere.
I don’t notice the man in the darkness until he speaks. I have been at Shadow Villa for an entire day now, flown from Moscow to the States.
I do not know why, but Monday flew with me. She is busy though, somewhere in this big house. I am waiting in a living room.
“Sevryn Otto Astor.” My name sounds like a curse from his lips.
I turn my head, and watch as turquoise eyes appear from the shadows, attached to a tall man in a suit. He cocks his head as he studies me.
I shift nervously on the red velvet couch.
“What do you know of the Unsaints?” There seems to be a mocking when he says the word, but I know of them. I know of them well, because Mora has been schooling me this week.
The chosen ones. The highest order beneath the 6, and they rank far above anyone in the organization, save for the headquarters in Moscow. Rival’s Claw. They own the orphanage, Madame Mora told me. They are important. I must do this job well. And I get something in return, she told me.
I will be paid, and not only in money.
“I’m familiar,” I say. I turn to face the man fully, scanning his body for weapons. I see nothing but I’m sure there’s something buried beneath his suit.
The man tilts his head, studying me. “Do you remember your sister?”
Sister.
It sounds true. Is this the girl I dream of?
I flick my tongue along my bottom lip, narrowing my eyes. “Yes.” Blonde hair. Blue eyes.
“I have work for you.”
“What if I don’t want to take it?”
The man laughs, and it causes goosebumps to prick along my arms, under my dress shirt. “You will,” he says, his eyes flashing. “I’m Adam Medici.”
The name vaguely registers as one Mora told me, but it doesn’t mean much to me.
“And the Unsaints need a spy.”
