Page 120 of Sapphire Tears

Adrian must know that. He has to know that I will not ever give him that satisfaction. That I would rather take a lifetime of humiliation and suffering over being with him again.

She nods. “Then I hope your next owner will be kinder.”

Owner.Just like that, the nausea comes ripping back to life.

“Come, my child,” she says, offering me a hand. Her nails are grotesquely long and perfectly painted. The pink talons of a monster who thinks it can fool me into believing she is something else. Each ring finger is daubed with a skull. “You can call me Mere.”

“Mere?” I repeat.

She smiles. “It means ‘mother’ in French. I’m here to help you be born into your new life.”

When I don’t take her offered hand up, she sighs, then reaches down and plucks me up to my feet like I weigh nothing.

“Good girl,” Mere says as she walks me over to a vanity in the corner and pushes me into the seat. “It’s time to make you beautiful.”

52

JUNE

“There,” Mere says, clapping her hands together. “You are perfect.”

I don’t look at my reflection. I’ve avoided it the whole time Mere has worked on me. Maybe because I’m afraid that I will see the fear in my eyes and then I’ll start to doubt. I’ll start to think that going back to Adrian is my only choice.

“Go on, my darling,” Mere says persistently. “You should see how gorgeous you look.”

I still don’t look. I’d spend the rest of my life not looking. But then Mere’s face does that thing where it shimmers with a new emotion, subtle and shifting. This time, anger bubbles up. She grabs my cheeks in one taloned claw and forces my eyes up to the mirror in front of me.

I barely recognize the woman staring back.

ThisJune has eyes ringed with black eyeliner and smudged dark with mascara and smoky eyeshadow.

ThisJune has lips that look seductively plump and glimmer with blood-red stain.

ThisJune’s cheeks are softly pink in a permanent state of blush, hair falling in tumbled curls over her shoulders, and a dainty gold collar fastened around her neck.

ThisJune is pretty.ThisJune is beautiful.

ButthisJune’s eyes are flat and dead.

Tap, tap, tap.

I flinch violently at the knocking sound. Mere floats towards the door. She opens it only an inch and sticks her head out, so I have no idea who’s outside.

She speaks quickly and quietly, too soft for me to hear either her or the other person. Then she nods and turns towards me. “It’s time, my dear.”

My legs feel like they’ve turned to concrete. Mere has to physically pull me up before I can walk towards the door. Every step takes a lifetime, it seems.

There are two massive men waiting for me outside the room. Their expressions are identical masks of stony silence. They take up positions on either side of me, holding my upper arms just tight enough to hurt, and walk me down the hall. I glance back over my shoulder at Mere, who’s remained rooted in place outside of the room.

She’s standing at the door with her hands clasped in front of her chest again. “Good luck, my dear,” she says, giving me a sorrowful wave.

As sick as it sounds, I honestly believe she means it.

I try to pay attention to my surroundings as we walk. It’s definitely a house, that much I can tell. But only in its bones. The rest of it has been gutted, stripped down and rebuilt into something else. Something worse.

The wallpaper is a salacious red and antique lamps cast a disturbing bronze light, alternating with strange paintings of nude women, reptiles, knives, devils. The silent men don’t stop or slow. They just keep moving, and I get the feeling that it makes no difference whether I walk with them willingly or not. They’d drag me to our destination without a second thought if that’s what it took.

The men drop me in a cavernous room, then retreat back to the hallway and pull the door shut behind them. I rub my arms where they were holding me and look around.

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