Ashes & Roses

Chapter 14

Carsin Saint Clair

‘Sin'

I woke up angry. Not the useful kind. Not the kind that put a man through a wall and then let him sleep. This sat lower. In the teeth. In the split in my lip that had glued itself to the pillow, and in the heat swollen tight around my left eye. I didn't need a mirror. I could feel the bruise from the inside.

Five hundred thousand dollars.

Seven days.

Zaelen smiling with blood on his mouth like he had all the time in the world.

Cinnamon dropped off the dresser and started in at the bedroom door, one short, offended sound. I got up before I gave him an answer I would regret, pulled on shorts, and went down to the gym while the shop was still dark. If I stayed in the apartment I was going to start breaking things I actually needed.

The third floor still smelled like rubber, iron, and last week's sweat. I wrapped my hands without looking at them. The knuckles were already split from punching Zaelen, skin tight, heat sitting under the tape. I didn't ice them. I hit the bag until the chain sang and my shoulders burned and the anger had somewhere to go that was not a frat house at eight in the morning.

I did not hear her come in but I felt it. The air changed the way it always did when Veronica decided a room belonged to her.

"Hey, stud."

I stopped with my fist still buried in the leather. She stood in the doorway hip-first, one shoulder on the frame, like she had all morning and knew I didn't. Veronica was rather short. That had always been the first thing people missed about her, because she filled a doorway anyway with heels six inches high. Vivid red hair twisted up off her neck, a few pieces stuck to her temple. Black liner winged sharp enough to cut. A small hoop through her left nostril. Heavy in the chest, narrow through the waist, the kind of figure that made cheap clothes look expensive and expensive clothes look like a dare. The black top was thin and cut low on purpose. Silver rings stacked on two fingers, ink peeking beneath them small tattoos she had told me once, late and unguarded, that she regretted. A leather jacket hooked over one arm, too warm for the gym, but worn because it was hers. She looked like she had not been to bed. Or like she had, and it had not been in her own. I shook my head once and turned back to the bag. Her heels crossed the concrete anyway. Slow. She never walked like she was sorry about the noise.

"Luca said you were up here trying to murder inanimate objects." Her mouth curved, not quite a smile. The piercing at her nose caught the gym light. "I told him that sounded about right."

I pulled the gloves off not engaging with her. Sweat had darkened the wraps across my knuckles. I dropped the gloves on the bench and reached for the water. Warm. I drank anyway, eyes on the lot through the windows instead of on her. She stopped close enough that I caught last night on her skin. Smoke. Someone else's cologne. The sharp sweetness of the bar she worked when she was not pretending she didn't keep tabs on me, or that she wasn't scraping through another semester she barely showed up for. Her gaze climbed from my hands to my mouth to the bruise under my eye. The easy look she wore for other people slipped. What replaced it was narrower. Older.

"Jesus, Sin." Her eyes softened.

"It's nothing."

"That's not an answer." She tipped her head, studying the swelling like it had insulted her personally. A crease cut between her brows.

"Who did that?"

"Drop it."

She reached up anyway. I saw the hand coming. Red nails. Silver ring. I still almost let it happen. That was the problem with Veronica. She cared too much and had no talent for hiding it, even when it wasn't reciprocated. I turned my head. Her fingers missed my cheek by an inch. Her hand hung in the air between us, open, then closed. She didn't step back. When she tried again it was slower, almost careful, the way you reached for a dog that had already bitten someone else. I caught her wrist. Hard enough that she felt the decision in it.

"Don't."

Her pulse jumped under my thumb. She looked at my hand first, then at my mouth, then up to my eyes. The heat that had been in her face cooled into something tighter. Pride. She had never liked being stopped in the middle of a gesture. I let go and brushed past her, back to the bag. The chain rattled when I hit it. I didn't look to see if she flinched. Behind me she rubbed her wrist once, more habit than injury, and let out a short breath that wanted to be a laugh and didn't make it.

"You know, most men at least pretend they're glad to see me."

"I'm not most men."

"No." I could feel her eyes on me without turning. Bare chest. Tape. Bruise. She didn't apologize for looking. "You're not."

When I finally glanced over, the hurt was in the flat line of her mouth. She was too proud to hide it completely and too aware to make a scene out of it. She looked toward the windows instead, toward the closed bay doors and the pale lot below.

"I hadn't heard from you," she said, quieter.

"After the party. People talk. Zaelen's boys talk louder. I wanted to see if you were still breathing."

"I am. I just don't care to have a conversation at the moment."

"Yeah." She swallowed. Then she tipped her chin up like that could put the armor back on. "I got that."

She started for the stairs, jacket slung over her shoulder, and stopped with her hand on the rail.

"If you decide you want someone who isn't Luca standing in your gym at dawn, you know where I am." Her voice stayed even. Her eyes didn't. "I'm not going to keep walking up these stairs to get my hand taken off."

I didn't answer. Her heels went down, sharp on every landing. The shop door on the second floor shut harder than it needed to. Luca appeared a minute later with coffee and the look already on his face. He glanced at the empty doorway, then at me, eyebrows up.

"You want to tell me why Veronica just left like she was deciding whether to key your car?"

"No."

He took that the way he took most of my answers. Drank. Let his gaze sit on the bruise a second too long.

"That's getting uglier."

"I don't care."

I picked up the gloves. Pink had started to seep through the tape.

"It's handled."

"You keep saying that." He jerked his chin toward the stairs. "Anyway. The bags still on your desk. In case you were planning to pretend last night was a bad dream." I gave the bag one last round of punches that didn't fix anything, and I followed him.

The office still looked like my father might walk in and ask why the invoices weren't filed. Same interior window over the bays. Same desk with the corner chewed down to raw wood. Same stacks of paper that had outlived him. The only thing that didn't belong was the duffle sitting dead-center on the blotter, university red, crest facing up like it had nothing to hide. I had opened it last night with Zaelen's blood still metallic on my tongue. I opened it again because hope was a stupid habit and I had never been good at killing it all the way.

No cash. I already knew that. My hands checked the inside pockets anyway, then the side zipper, then the little mesh sleeve meant for a phone. Dance clothes packed small and neat. A thin pink wrap skirt that still smelled like a studio rosin, clean sweat, some cheap floral detergent. Hairpins in a dented tin. A pink water bottle with teeth marks in the plastic, the kind you left when you drank without looking because you were late.

Not oil. Not smoke. Not us.

Then the shoes.

I lifted one. The satin had gone dark at the platform, worn through in a way that only happened if you stood on it until it stopped being pretty. Ribbons wrapped tight and tucked with the kind of care I reserved for locks and ledgers. I turned it toward the shop light and found the stitching on the side, so fine I almost missed it.

W.R.M.

Luca had been hovering in the doorway long enough for his coffee to stop steaming. He saw my face change and pushed off the frame.

"Please tell me that stands for something useful," he said. "Where's My Money has a nice ring."

"They're ballet shoes."

"Yeah. I got that part." He nodded at the satin like it might bite. The joke was already dying in his mouth. "So what, we ditch them? Start a collection? I don't know the etiquette on stolen tutus."

I ran my thumb along the letters. Whoever had sewn them had taken their time. That meant the shoes mattered to somebody. People who marked their things like that usually came back for them.

"I'm not ditching them," I said. "Not until I know who she is."

Luca's eyebrows went up. He waited. He was good at that when he wanted to be, which was almost never. I put the shoe back under the skirt and zipped the bag.

"Performing arts center," I said, looking through the window at the empty garage instead of at him. "That's where dancers live and breathe. If she's on this campus, she'll walk through that building whether she wants to or not."

He lowered the cup. "You're going back to the university."

"I need a dancer with three initials. That's all I've got."

"That's not all you've got. You've got a week and a psychopath with a frat house." He almost smiled. "But sure. Let's hunt ballerinas."

I didn't smile with him.

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The first day got me nothing. The Performing Arts Center was all glass and pale wood and the particular cleanliness of a place that expected talent to behave. Piano leaked under studio doors. Girls and a handful of boys moved through the hall with bags slung the same way, hair scraped off their faces, phones in one hand and coffee in the other. Nobody looked twice at a man standing still unless he gave them a reason. I didn't. I learned fast that dancers talked like the rest of the world didn't exist. Combinations. Corrections. Who was sleeping with who in the music department. A missing pair of tights that had apparently ruined someone's life. Names drifted past and evaporated. Plenty of W's. A few M last names that belonged to boys with instrument cases. Nothing that locked onto a pair of shoes in my office. Every time a conversation lifted a W, my head turned before I could stop it. Wrong laugh. No bag. Wrong girl. By late afternoon the light through the lobby had gone flat and I had accomplished exactly what standing around a building full of college students like a problem should have accomplished. Nothing.

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I came back the next day anyway. Black hoodie. Hood up. Hands in the pockets so I wouldn't look like I was waiting for someone. I took the far end of the corridor where the recessed lights broke the wall into shadow and let traffic move around me. Classes swallowed the hallway one door at a time until it was empty, just the muffled count of a piano and the squeak of shoes on marley. I was about to leave when I saw him. University staff. Mid-forties, give or take. Pressed shirt, dark slacks, a face that belonged on a donor pamphlet and a lanyard that said he was allowed to be here. He had stopped a girl outside a studio with her back half-turned to me. Dance clothes. Curls twisted up off her neck. She was listening to him the way you listened when you didn't want to, weight on her back foot, fidgeting with her fingers. I couldn't hear them. I almost didn't care. I was there for a thief, or an accident that looked like one, not faculty politics.

Then his hand found her waist. Not a clap on the shoulder. Not a playful nudge. His palm settled in the dip above her hip and stayed there, easy, like he had done it before and expected her to let him. There was nobody close enough to make him take it off.

She went still. Not a flinch big enough to call. Just the shutdown. Shoulders in. Mouth closed. She shifted half a step and put air back between them, and he let his hand fall as if he had only been making a point. I moved closer without deciding to. Slow. Along the wall. He leaned in again, mouth near her hair, something too low for the corridor. She shook her head. Small. Fast. The kind of no that already knew it might not be enough.

The studio door opened.

"Adrian Whitmore." The woman's voice had the clean edge of someone used to being obeyed. "Is there any reason you're taking more than the five minutes you requested?"

She stood in the doorway with a folder against her chest, dark hair pulled off her face, spine so straight it made the hallway look sloppy. Bennett. The name was on the schedule taped beside the frame. Whitmore stepped back like he had been waiting for the cue. Hands into his pockets. Smile easy and empty.

"Sorry, Professor Bennett. She's all yours."

He walked off toward the stairwell with the unhurried pace of a man late to nothing. I watched him turn the corner and decided I did not like the way he used a building. Too comfortable. Too sure the walls were on his side.

The girl didn't follow Bennett in. She stayed in the hallway with her face wiped clean, eyes on a spot that wasn't there, as if someone had pulled a plug and forgotten to put it back. Bennett's voice dropped.

"Ms. Monroe?"

The girl blinked. Ugly, how fast she came back into herself. She nodded too quickly.

"Yeah." Barely a sound.

She turned toward the door, and that was when I saw her face.

I knew her.

The pool first. Bare feet in that ridiculous blue water, silk gone dark where the cannonball had hit her, a plastic cup loose against her knee while the yard screamed around a girl who had not asked to be looked at. Then the second party. Same mouth. Drink leaving her hand and finding Zaelen's shirt. Same body cutting through a crowd like the house had caught fire.

I stayed in the shadow until the studio swallowed her. Through the narrow window I watched her take her place at the barre as if the hallway had never happened. The piano picked up. Her arm lifted on the count, precise, obedient, a little late, like her body had arrived before the rest of her did.

Monroe.

The name sat down in the back of my head and did not get up. I looked at the stairwell Whitmore had used. Then at the door she had gone through.

W.R.M.

I still didn't know what the other two letters stood for, but I knew her face now she was the only lead I had, and I knew where she had to come back tomorrow.