Page 90 of Mama Si's Paradise

Now knowing where I was or where to go, I found the darkest corner around me and sat in it, wrapped my arms around my head and willed myself to disappear. To justnot beanymore.

It didn’t work.

Twenty-Three

Eventually,the tears stopped coming, though I hadn’t really been in control of them to begin with. Funny, I’dtriedto cry almost every single night lately, but the tears didn’t come, not untiltheywanted to.

I guess they didn’t feel my life was fucked up enough until now. I guess I hadn’t been broken enough until I learned I was going to be possibly raped by one of those men who’d looked at me like I was food—and funnier still, I was! To them, I really was food if anything I knew about vampires was true. They fed on blood. That’s why they had those fangs—to make it real nice and easy for them to suck the blood out of a body.

My own thoughts were going to drive me insane.

I stood up, holding onto the wall behind me, and I looked both ways to see if someone else was there with me. Empty. The hallway was empty, but I was no longer delusional. I already knew I was being watched.

What I also knew was that I wasnevergetting out of here. No way could I outrun someone like Valentine, or outflythat dragon and his rider, or the other ones that belonged to thebrothers. All those dragons that had come out of the Whispering Woods to bite us, the human offerings…

I was most definitely screwed.

Still, I tried.

I forced myself to keep moving, keep walking, going through doors and turning corners without a single clue where I was headed. Eventually, those doors were going to lead me somewhere. Eventually, there would be more light than the dim lamps of these windowless hallways.

Eventually, there was.

I’d gone through at least five doors already, had turned corners without running into anyone, so I didn’t expect this time to be different. I pushed the double doors open and the sound hit me all at once—chatter.

People were in there, talking.Womenwere in there, chatting and drinking coffee and eating grapes.

They were eating fucking grapes.

I don’t know why the hell I stared at that big bowl full of purple grapes for so damn long, but I did until the absolute silence that followed my barging into that room unannounced ended.

“Oh,” someone breathed. “It’s the new girl.”

The blur remained in front of my eyes, and I had to try really hard to focus on the faces. To focus on the women who were sitting together on a set of velvet black couches. Ten women of various ages, all of them perfectly normal-looking.

“Is that so?” said another.

“Well, come on in! Let us look at you!”

“Oh, don’t invite her! It’s her first day. She’s not supposed to be wandering the castle so soon.”

“She’s Valentine’s—what did you expect?”

“Well, he doesn’t exactly like rules, so…”

“He’s achild. How could he even dream of siring an Evernight?”

“Forget that—how doesshethink she can bear an Evernight with those tiny hips?!”

Laughter.

They were laughing their hearts out. My focus became sharper, so I was able to see their faces with a bit more clarity, their dresses, most black, and some of them were wearing black shawls over their heads, too. The youngest of them couldn’t have been much older than me, maybe a few years, but they were all so at ease analyzing me as they sipped from their cups and ate their grapes and strawberries and oranges. So at ease, like this place was their home.

“Leave her alone,” one of the women said, her voice stronger, echoing in the high ceiling of the lounge area. It was a round room with large windows, overlooking…darkness. Just trees and raw darkness.

“Come in, child. Come. What is your name?” Another woman, the eldest of them who couldn’t be more than forty, put her cup down on the table and stood up. The satin shawl covering half her hair fell to her shoulders, revealing gorgeous golden hair streaked with a little grey.

“Maybe she doesn’t speak English,” said another.

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