Page 44 of Evil King

“How many?” I asked.

“Eleven.”

I nearly threw up. “Eleven, including you?”

He laughed. “Nah, man. I’m one of twelve.” He slapped my chest. “Get ready for some chaos.”

We climbed out of the car, and my heart started to beat nervously. I’d lived in prison for four years with many more people than twelve, but they generally kept to themselves or their chosen groups of people. The adult system was only adults, and guards were always around to keep things mostly in line. I was an only child coming up, and apart from my year with Nathan, I’d never lived with siblings. This was going to be an interesting night.

“Hey!” Sicily greeted the woman as we walked up the stairs leading up to the front door.

One of the girls in the swinging bench stood up and smiled. She was actually a touch taller than Sicily, but she had his same curly brown hair and welcoming, round eyes. Her hair, however, fell clear down her back well past her waist and stopped just below her hips. “Hey. Who’s this?”

Sicily held out an arm toward me. “This is my friend Deon. Dee.” He pointed at the woman addressing us. “That’s my sister, Annika. The one I was telling you about.”

Her eyes were already dancing up and down my form with a slight blush rising to her cheeks. She walked up and held out a hand. “Nice to meet you, Deon.”

I shook her hand with a smile. “Nice to meet you.” She was very beautiful, an odd sentiment considering she looked an alarming amount like Sicily, but I tried to put that out of my brain.

Sicily pointed past Annika to the other girl, who had bright red hair and more makeup on than any one person needed on her face. “Hey, Ang!”

The woman lifted her hand into the air. “Hi!”

“That’s Angela, Annika’s best friend,” Sicily said, before pointing back at me. “This is Deon.”

Angela waved. “Hello, Deon.”

I waved back. “Hi.”

“All right. Come on, man. I’ll introduce you to my folks,” Sicily said before heading inside. I nodded at Annika one last time, earning myself a seductive look before she turned around and made her way back to her friend.

We stepped through the front door into an entryway with more shoes than I had ever seen in my entire life piled up along the walls. Sicily kicked his shoes off and added them to the group, and I did the same, though I was careful to set mine together and placed them neatly off to the side of the fray.

“How old is Annika again?” I asked.

“Sixteen, but she’ll be seventeen in a couple of months.” He raised an eyebrow at me. “Why?”

“Oh, no disrespect or anything. She was making eyes, so I wanted to know how much to avoid her,” I said with an awkward chuckle.

Sicily shrugged. “Hey, Annika’s a catch, man. I’m not one of those creepy stay-away-from-my-sister types. You two could do much worse. Want me to put in a good word?”

“Uh.” My gut reaction was to say no as Cherri skated across my brain, but in the month since we came close to sleeping together, she’d made no evident attempts to leave The Royal Court behind. That ship probably sailed. “Yeah, maybe.”

“I know you’ve got the whole thing with Cherri, so don’t do it if it’s just a rebound thing.”

“No, there’s not really anything to rebound from,” I replied. “I need to start moving on, so why not with someone as beautiful as Annika?”

Sicily smiled. “There ya go!” He made a robotic noise and lifted his arm to either side of his body. “Wingman-mode activated.”

“Okay, weirdo,” I huffed back.

We walked out of the entryway and into a huge, open living room. Three identical kids, maybe about ten or eleven years old, were situated directly in front of a large, flatscreen television, all with video game controllers in their hands. They were all wearing varying hoodies and were difficult to distinguish from one another. Sicily whistled, and they looked over in unison. It was borderline creepy.

“Hey,” Sicily said. “This is my friend, Deon.”

“Hi, Deon,” they resounded.

“Shit, that’s weird,” I couldn’t stop myself from saying.

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