Tarnished (8 page)

The noise was a constant jumble of voices and shuffling heels, of clanking plates and hangers screeching against their rods. No one paid us much mind. They looked to be worried about other things.

Missy led me back to a small, dark kitchen, grabbing us each a plate full of food out of the dirty fridge before we found a quiet place to hunker down.

“It’s different than most of the other markets,” she said, following the way my gaze darted around the chaos.

“It seems so much busier. How can there be this many girls for sale?”

“This is the hub,” she said. “Mr. Bernard buys them from all over.”

“He buys them?”

“It’s not like it’s easy to sell one of us, you know? You can’t just put an ad in the paper. The kennels bred us to be lifelong companions, so people aren’t thrilled to admit that they’ve turned out to be terrible owners. Besides, I’m not sure if it’s even legal to sell us. I’m sure they’re happy to just pass us all on to people like Mr. Bernard so that he can deal with it.”

“Did he buy you?”

Missy bristled. “The first time, yes. My owners lived in California, but they shipped me out here pretty quickly when I got sick and not too long after that, I got sent to another market in New Jersey.”

“Is that what he meant when he said he shouldn’t have let you go?”

“No.” She frowned a little. “I doubt he even knows that I came through here the first time. I wouldn’t have made him very much money. I was so sick that they were pretty eager to just pass me on to someone else. Cut their losses. Well,” she said softly, “there was one person who was kind to me.”

“Seth?”

She picked absentmindedly at her fingernails and her eyes flicked up to my face and then back down to her hands. “Yes. But I don’t know why. It’s not like I looked like myself. I wasn’t beautiful. I was a mess. Frail. Sallow. I was so sick that I could only lie there on my back, staring up at the ceiling and wishing that I’d just die. I couldn’t wash myself. Couldn’t brush my hair. It got so matted and tangled that the people in New Jersey had to cut it all off.”

“But they took care of you there?”

She snorted. “I don’t know if I’d say that they took care of me. But I did finally get better.”

“So you came back here again…after you ran away.”

She nodded.

“And Seth… Did he remember you?”

She paused. “He did.”

The answer seemed like a beautiful thing. He remembered her. Wasn’t this a good thing? I wanted to ask her, but the way her voice had grown flat, her eyes dull, I wondered if maybe I misunderstood. To be remembered was the only thing that kept me going right now.

Chapter Eight

M
issy stayed true to her word. She must have slipped off to see Mr. Bernard while I slept because the next day when a short man with thinning hair and a baggy suit came in with the day’s schedule, my name was absent from any assignments.

Missy, on the other hand, was given an all-day job with three other girls.

I sat against the wall on a small stool while she finished pinning up her hair.

“I feel useless,” I said.

She glared at me and drew a dark line above her eyelashes with a small brush.

“You want to do something?” she asked. “Stay out of the way.”

She pushed past me and pulled on a tight blue dress. The other two girls were already wearing theirs. Apparently the client had requested girls with the same coloring. If they stood side by side, you’d think they were identical.

“You know, I’m not as naive as you think I am.”

Missy laughed. “I have to go.”

“Fine.”

She leaned in close to my ear. “Be sure not to say or do anything stupid while I’m gone.”

“I thought you said you had to go.”

She glanced at herself one last time in the mirror, rubbing away a bit of lipstick that had smudged the corner of her mouth. “It’s only stupid if you talk about yourself,” she said. “These girls hear stuff. I didn’t say you couldn’t ask them questions. Who knows, maybe you’ll learn something.”

M
issy’s group was the first to leave for the day. I sat off in the corner as the others slowly completed their metamorphoses and followed suit until there were less than a dozen of us left in the room. A few of the girls sat in clumps talking, but mostly they were absorbed in their own small tasks, their own private thoughts. No one even noticed as I inched my way to the back of the room and slipped down the hallway near the bathrooms.

On the ceiling, a fluorescent light flickered, casting the cement walls of the long corridor in cold blue light. I glanced behind me, hoping no one had followed me, but I was all alone.

Maybe it would have been better to stay and talk to the girls, but I couldn’t stand the thought of sitting still while Missy went away to another one of her jobs. If she wouldn’t let me work, I had another way to be useful.

Maybe a part of me craved this new pastime. Already, my heart thudded that new familiar rhythm. I was addicted to the heady thrill, the power of my own small body to finally take instead of give.

In a place this large, this thriving, there would be plenty of things for me to take.

At the end of the hallway, a narrow staircase led back up to the main floor. I crouched at the top. The doors to a couple of offices across the hall from me were open. The lights were on in one of the rooms, revealing the edge of a glossy wood desk and a tall filing cabinet, but I couldn’t see far enough in to know whether or not it was occupied.

Just as I poked my head out of the stairwell, two men rounded the corner. I slunk back down a few steps, retreating into the dark.

“I don’t see why he’d care if you showed them to me,” a man said. “He’s told everyone anyway. It’s not like it’s a secret.”

The
click
of their shoes drew closer.

Just then, I saw movement in the unlit office. A young man crept ever so slightly forward out of the dark, pressing his back against the opposite wall as the other two men approached. He was obviously spying on them.

I leaned forward, studying him in the near darkness. He wasn’t a huge, hulking man in a suit, like most of the other men I’d seen, or brainy and businesslike, like Seth. But there was something…different…about him. Maybe it was the way he held himself, with quiet confidence and power, which seemed out of place on his smaller frame.

“Then why don’t you just ask him yourself?” one of the men said, coming to a stop only a few feet away. They must have been right outside the office.

I recognized that voice. It belonged to Seth. For some reason, this bit of information made me bolder. I slowly climbed back up the steps until my head rested right out of sight at the top of the landing.

“Come on, man, you know Bernard. Don’t make me ask him. I want to see what everyone’s getting so worked up about.”

“Fine,” Seth sighed, his voice diminishing a bit as they moved into the office. “I only have the ones from New York. The chief told Bernard that they’ve found some in Jersey and Connecticut, too. But I don’t know what you’re going to be able to tell from the pictures.”

“I might surprise you,” he said. “They call me eagle eyes.”

“I’m sure they do,” Seth said.

A drawer squeaked and I imagined him opening the tall filing cabinet and shuffling through the papers until he found whatever it was he was looking for.

“Holy shit! They weren’t kidding. This is bad, man! This is some CSI shit,” the man said. He talked tough, but something in his voice had changed, an undercurrent of fear that left him almost breathless. “They’re all like this?”

“Not all of them,” Seth sighed. “I mean, yes, they’re all bad. Disfigured. But each one’s a little different.”

Disfigured? My stomach flipped. They were talking about the dead girls. Right now, they must be holding pictures of them in their hands. My fingers trembled, seeking out the pendant in my pocket. I rubbed the smooth center, feeling the small indents where my name was etched into the surface.

Across the hall the young man reacted, too, but instead of cringing, what looked like a smile flickered across his features. I drew in a deep breath, bringing my hand to my mouth. His gaze drifted from the hallway to the stairwell and for a second, his eyes met mine. I pressed back further into the shadows. Had he seen me?

Slowly, he brought a finger to his lips. And then he melted back into the shadows like he’d never been there.

“Man, Mr. B’s just paying to cover this shit up and he expects us to just go on like normal?” the man said. The cocky bravado from a minute ago had all but disappeared. His voice lowered even more, mumbling something I couldn’t quite understand.

“As far as I know,” Seth said and then he must have turned because his voice became too quiet to hear.

I wanted to follow. Needed to hear what they were saying, but I could still see the satisfied smirk flicking across that man’s lips. Could still feel the way my hair rose on the back of my neck. I squinted into the darkness where he’d been, but there was only empty shadows. Had I imagined him? Or was he just waiting for me to step into the hallway so he could grab me?

Indecision warred inside of me. I had to know about the dead girls. I
had
to. My heartbeat thrummed in my ears and I scooted up a little further on the stairs, staying out of sight while trying to make out what they were saying.

“I’m sorry,” the man said, “but I can’t believe these are just pissed off owners, or whatever Bernard thinks. I mean look, they’re all cutting out the chips, right?”

“They aren’t stupid enough to leave them in,” Seth said.

“Maybe not all of them. But look, the cut is clean. You’d think it’d be more—”

“Listen, I don’t really have time for this,” Seth interrupted. He sounded upset. Was that anger? Fear?

“Oh, okay,” the other guy said. Did he hear it, too, the change in Seth’s voice?

The floor groaned as they moved around the office. “We should probably get back,” Seth said, his voice suddenly loud as they reappeared in the doorway.

I scooted back into the dark stairwell, willing my heart to calm as I waited for their footsteps to retreat down the hallway. There was still no sign of the other man. When the footsteps finally rounded the corner, I sprang from my spot. I couldn’t sit and think about what I was about to do. If I focused on it too long, I’d be paralyzed.

My arms and legs buzzed, practically moving on their own as they swept me across the hall and into the office. I didn’t pause to look around me. My eyes focused on the filing cabinet, locking on the top drawer, which still sat open, just a crack. I tugged the handle, steeling myself for what I knew I’d find, but it was impossible to prepare myself.

“It’s not something people usually go out of their way to see,” the young man from the shadows said from the doorway.

I whirled around and stiffened. “Stay away from me. I’ll scream if you get any closer.”

“Don’t worry,” he said, keeping his distance with his hands raised. “I’m not here to hurt you. I’m just part of the system like everyone else.”

I studied him in the full light. He looked too young to work for Bernard. Too small. Despite his size, with his almond shaped eyes, strong cheekbones, and thick curly hair, he was strikingly handsome. I hadn’t seen any boys working the black market, but if there had been, I imagined they’d look like this man.

Cautiously, I looked down at the photographs and my stomach turned, twisted, recoiling. I was going to be sick.

“You know about this?” I asked, choking back the urge to fall to my knees, to crawl under the desk and curl into a ball. I couldn’t lose it. Not now. I needed to be strong.

The glossy images were so much worse than I ever could have imagined. How could they be real? These had been girls. Only a few short days ago they had breathed air in through their lungs. They had sipped cold water and felt the breeze against their skin. Maybe they had even let themselves dream. But not anymore.

“A lot of people know,” he said, taking a step closer.

“Did you do it? Did you kill them?”

His smile disappeared. “No.”

I studied him again, watching for any sign of deception. “But you know who did?”

He nodded.

“Who?”

The man’s face lit up, even as he shook his head. He knew but he wouldn’t tell me? Girls were dying, and yet again, someone else had decided I wasn’t allowed to help.

I dumped the stack of photos on the desk and fanned them out across the polished wood. There were too many. Eight. Ten. Twelve. How many girls had died? My eyes darted over the photos. Pieces of girls. Remnants. I didn’t want to see, but how could I look away? If I’d done this to them…if this was my fault… I couldn’t close my eyes.

“You act like it’s okay,” I snapped.

His eyes narrowed, his face hardening into a fierce look. Was that the face of a killer? “I never said that.”

“Who are you?”

“If you don’t want to get caught, you should leave now,” he said, ignoring my question. He moved forward, stepping so close to me that I could feel the heat of his chest against my side. He reached around me, plucking a few photographs off of the table, and pressed them into my hand. “Here, take these.”

I
sat in the corner, thumbing the edge of the paper inside my pocket. For the past hour I’d let my fingers drift to the photographs, rubbing the stiff paper across my fingertips until they felt raw, but nothing could erase the numbness. Or the anger.

That man hadn’t given me all of them, even though I’d almost wished he had. It felt like I was abandoning them, like it was my job to free them, even if it was only a picture.

The images were gruesome, but I felt the need to study them, not just to acknowledge the terrible thing that had happened to these girls, but to see if I could find a common clue, some thread that tied it all together. But every time I thought about pulling them out, the man with the baggy suit came in and rounded up a few more girls.

A girl that just returned settled back down on the pillows next to me and opened a pad of paper.

“Do you mind if I sketch you?” she asked.

Her hand hovered above the paper, waiting for me to give my approval.

I shrugged, already missing my invisibility. “Sure.”

“Thanks.” She smiled, not just a tiny grin for courtesy’s sake, but a real smile. I wasn’t sure that I’d seen one like that in days. “I’m Carlie.”

I hesitated. “I’m Gigi.”

“It’s nice to have a new face,” she said, flipping through her notebook. “I’ve drawn everybody else already.”

The pages were dense with drawings. They covered every square inch of paper; faces, some sleeping, some awake. Some gazed directly off the page, but others only captured a profile. These images were so different from the ones inside my pocket.

“Where did you get that?” I asked, nodding to the sketchbook. I hadn’t seen anyone else with anything like it. It seemed nice to have a way to occupy time.

I craved the piano. There must have been one in one of those rooms upstairs. I would have been happy just to sit in front of it, to forget about all the pain and gruesomeness in the world. For a second I had to close my eyes, imagining it. Feeling the keys beneath my fingertips would be almost as exquisite as touching Penn.

Her face flushed. “They let me keep it. My master felt guilty about getting rid of me. Maybe this was kind of like an apology,” she said as she stroked the leather cover. “I’ve tried to make it last, but I only have seven more pages.”

I sat stiffly, thinking about the last time I’d seen someone drawing.

“Just relax,” she said. “Can you sit the way you were before, when I walked in? You looked like you were concentrating on something. I liked it. Most of the girls look sad in my pictures, but you looked…” She searched for the right word. “Determined, I guess. I’d like to remember that.”

Determined? Not angry? Not disgusted? Not sick?

I held still, trying to concentrate, the way I had been before. I thought of the girls. What was Seth hiding about them? And who was the man who gave me the pictures? It felt like I’d been close to understanding something, but now that Carlie was watching me, I couldn’t focus.

“I saw you leave before. Did you go out on a job?” I asked, hoping she could give me a little bit more insight into the jobs they did at this market.

Carlie stopped sketching and the happy look on her face faded. “No, I’m still looking for a new home. If they don’t find a buyer here, I think I might get sent somewhere else.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

She shook her head and started sketching again. Out of the corner of my eye I watched the image take shape. It was beautiful, not just the drawing that she was making, but the way the pencil moved. Each stroke had a purpose. Sometimes she moved slowly, taking her time with a line, pressing down with the lead so that the mark she left looked heavy, weighted. But other times they were only soft wisps, merely a suggestion.