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“What’s wrong?” he asked, alarmed.
He started pushing past me, uncaring that he had to bodily move me out of the way to get by.
Too stunned by all the things I’d learned in the last half hour, I had no other choice but to fall backward against the wall.
I let my head fall back, and I studied the ceiling.
The tiles, which had always intrigued me, were black in Keene’s apartment.
In mine they were bright red tin.
Zip’s, bright gold tin.
Val’s, purple tin.
We’d all chosen our apartments based solely on what the ceilings looked like.
My favorite color being red, the tin in my apartment made that the logical choice.
“What?” I heard Hannibal bark.
I swallowed hard, stomach nauseated and roiling, then I closed the door, unaware that I still had a watcher.
When I walked back into the kitchen, it was to hear Hades quietly recounting everything we’d just gone over in the last thirty minutes. Every little detail, minor or not, was retold.
By the end, my stomach was even more unhappy—why had I eaten two donuts before that talk?—and I was contemplating sticking my finger down my throat so I wouldn’t be tasting maple and bacon anymore.
But no.
I couldn’t go down that path.
I’d been there, done that.
Having a father—God, he just kept getting worse and worse—like the one I had, always harping on every little detail about our bodies—Jesus Christ, even that was lining up with what we’d learned—I’d started to get a complex about what I should look like since I was a very young girl.
He controlled what we wore, how we presented ourselves, how much food we ate.
It was when I was fourteen that I started developing an eating disorder because of the amount of disgust my father had in me each time I put on my performance outfits.
I remembered like it was yesterday the first time he’d said something to me.
He’d come right up to me, grabbed my baby fat, and said, “Getting a little fat there, Crimson.”
I was nine.
And by the time I was fourteen, I’d started making myself throw up.
It took me years and years to stop starving myself. Then binge eating and throwing it all up.
“You know,” I said softly into the quiet, not a single one of them was talking as they tried to process. “It’s making sense. I mean, he always used to be so strict on us and how we looked. Then there was the fact that, conveniently, none of our mothers wanted to keep us. They all just gave us to him like they were the worst mothers on the planet. At least one of our mothers should’ve protested. Either they really are all bad, or he didn’t give them a choice.”
“Simi’s mom was the only one to really refuse to leave,” Keene said quietly.
And look what happened to her.
A crazy ass sheriff who’d seen her at a show and started obsessing over her had gone and killed her in our fun house. Simi was still recovering from that years and years later.
“Our names,” Val said. “I watched a documentary once on child trafficking. They give the kids exotic names to help entice buyers.”
Well if there wasn’t another reason to hate our names…
All of us had complexes about them.
But I’d never truly wanted to change my name until now.
“I think we need to go through all of the business side of this again,” I murmured quietly. “But I think it’d be better if a person that actually knows what they’re looking for does it.”
“A professional?” Zip asked. “Where do we find one of those?”
We all looked to Hannibal.
If anyone could find us a professional who knew what to look for, it’d be him.
“I, ah, actually found someone,” Keene said. “I contacted Folsom. She started working on this last night. She came back with the name of a man who is going to meet us at the offices tomorrow at eight.”
Folsom was a woman who had joined our circus for a year or so while she was trying to get her life back together. It turned out she was a computer genius mastermind who could hack into anything, anywhere, with the most minimal amount of effort ever.
“Eight,” Simi said. “We will all be there.”
Tomorrow morning at eight.
Hell, with the way I was feeling, I’d almost rather it be now.
At least then it would feel like I was doing something.
“Then it’s time for us to disperse,” Zip said softly.
“Wait,” Hades said just as quietly.
We sat back into our chairs.
Then she destroyed our world for a second time that day.
• • •
Abused.
Abused wasn’t a vile enough word for what our father had done to her.
He’d horribly, disgustingly, life shatteringly destroyed her.
He’d sexually assaulted her. He’d treated her horridly. And she’d killed him.
Words couldn’t describe how happy I was to hear her say she’d killed him.
It honestly explained so much.
