Chapter Three

There was something uncomfortable about spending time with Ignis. I mean, there was the disconcerting feeling that came with hanging out with a person whose job comprised analyzing the thoughts of people for a living.

Maybe that would have bothered me more if I'd worried about my sanity, but the truth was I knew exactly how shitty my choices were. It didn't take someone with a PhD to recognize that.

Despite that, however, I still adored my time with her. She managed to make me feel as though someone could tolerate me even with all my nonsense.

"Another!" I called out loudly after gulping down the shot, barely giving myself time for a grimace before demanding more.

"Don't you think you should slow down?" Ignis asked.

I pursed my lips and blew a raspberry, sputtering both saliva and liquor as I did so. "Slowing down is the last thing I want! We came out to have fun."

"Actually, we ‘came out' because you claimed you were in crisis," Ignis said, though her tone held no actual upset.

"I am in crisis."

"Being bored isn't crisis."

Before I could respond, the bartender brought over another four shots and placed them on the table. He sure attended to us quickly, but the flashy credit card I'd given to him earlier opened a hell of a lot of doors, I'd found. It was thicker than most others and made of metal. It was black, and had Kelvin's name along the bottom.

Was it petty to run up his card?

Maybe.

Did I plan to stop?

Well, ask that to my new, fancy outfit and the embarrassingly large bar tab we'd run up so far tonight.

The moment I flashed that card, however, people started acting a hell of a lot nicer. Money really did open doors, and I planned to walk my ass through them at Kelvin's expense.

"So what's with the drinking?" Ignis asked. Her words weren't as crisp as they were when sober, but she also hadn't held up her end of the drinking games. I'd probably gone two or three for every one of her drinks.

Not that that was all that uncommon. For as much as I adored Ignis, she wasn't much of a drinker.

I wasn't either, a lot of the time, but today? Today the idea of getting black-out drunk sounded fan-fucking-tastic. Hell, maybe liquor then a quickie with a handsome and stupid man who took directions well to top off the evening.

"Grey?" Ignis' voice reminded me of her question.

"Rough couple days," I admitted.

She nodded. "I heard from Harrison about what happened."

I flinched at first, thinking about the attack, about that horrible feeling of someone slithering into my mind to unlock everything inside.

"Grey?" Warmth on my arm made me jerk my head up to realize Ignis had been talking to me.

I blinked quickly, trying to clear the intrusive thoughts and memories that I'd hoped I'd drowned in alcohol already. I smiled. "When was that?"

"The other day," she said, the words causing a rush of relief to pour through me. The other day meant he must have just told her about the council nonsense.

And what sort of life did I lead where all of that mess was nonsense?

"Something else happened," she said, her gaze sharp. For a moment, she looked like her brother.

"I told you before—it's rude to pry into other people's minds."

"And I told you, I can't sense your emotions. I'm just good at reading your face. What else happened?"

I waved her off, then picked up another glass and downed the contents in one big, burning gulp. After slamming the glass on the bar, I offered her a wide grin. "Nothing that needs repeating. Now, come on, I didn't come here to mope."

Ignis gave me one hell of a look, one I knew all too well. It was her, ‘I disapprove of your poor coping methods' look. However, she was here as my friend, not my therapist, so I shrugged and grabbed another shot glass.

Drinking this much might fix nothing, but it would let me forget about it all for a while.

That was the only thing I had to look forward to anymore.

* * * *

A few hours later and I was delightfully drunk. The music in the bar thundered through my ears and I swayed my body to the music.

Ignis had gone home an hour earlier, after trying to load me into a cab that I had promptly escaped from. I didn't blame her—she'd tried her best to keep me under control. Then again, if men like Kelvin, Galen and Ruben hadn't brought me to heel, Ignis had little chance of it.

The bar wasn't the type made for dancing, but when had such trivialities ever stopped me from having myself a good time? So I stood alone, by the neon-lit jukebox, dancing my black little heart out to the same song I'd put on at least twenty times.

"Knock that off!" a man from the bar yelled, annoyance all over his features.

He was the sort of man who'd been in good shape when he was younger, but time had eventually caught up with him. He was tall and had put weight on so instead of being lean and fit, he was just large.

Not that it mattered—just outweighing me by a hundred pounds put him in a good position no matter how fit he was.

Also, size differences didn't really matter to me.

So I smiled at him, and the idiot misunderstood that as some sort of flirting. I fixed that misconception by lifting my hands, middle fingers extended, all the while never missing the beat as I danced.

He narrowed his eyes, then got up and headed my way. He swayed, but his was because of alcohol rather than the music.

"You've been playing that song for an hour already," the man said, his voice low. "How long are you gonna play it, for fuck's sake?"

I shrugged. "You know when the world is supposed to end? I'm gonna play this for about an hour after that point."

"This ain't your personal bar, little girl."

"Little girl?" I laughed at his insult. "You're the one arguing about music with a little girl, aren't you?"

He pressed his lips together and took another step closer. The crow inside me fluttered, already on cloud nine. Making bad choices, drinking too much, insulting men twice my size, those were all things that it adored.

Anything to put me in a place to get into trouble pleased it.

"That's enough," called out the bartender. "Sit down, Tony."

"But she—"

The bartender offered one hell of a glare, cutting the man off with that look. "She's been paying well and tipping even better all night. If she wants to dance, let her dance."

The man curled his lip into a snarl before turning around, the words " rich cunt" leaving his lips under his breath.

I waved at his back while he retreated just as my stomach growled.

Huh. When I thought about it, I had no idea when I'd eaten anything beyond liquor. It had to have been the toast that morning with Galen.

After the time I'd spent here, seeing what I had, there was no chance I'd eat here. Food poisoning was the sort of trouble even I didn't want to screw with.

So I slid the black card once more through the jukebox and selected the same song to play on repeat. If that guy hated me now, I had a feeling when the song played for the next—I tried to read the screen despite the way everything spun—four days or so, he'd like me even less.

And that sure put a hop in my step as I exited the bar.

I tried to glance at the time on my phone, but everything seemed far too blurry to make sense. I blamed that on my phone rather than the alcohol, figuring from the empty streets that it must have been around one in the morning.

I reached for the wall as I stumbled down the sidewalk, using my fingertips to maintain my balance as I went. The sound of cars and the cool air against my drunken, flushed skin felt amazing, and they all felt a bit like a music of their own.

The wonderful numbness in my head, the cloudy thoughts, they all helped erase…well…everything.

It made my uncertain future fade away, made the memories of the attack cloudy and helped me ignore the footsteps that followed me.

Wait, that last one might be important…

I tripped, stumbling against the trunk of a tree planted in the sidewalk, the sort of thing supposed to make it look less like a concrete jungle. I had to force my brain to focus on that last thing.

Footsteps.

Right, there were ones, that had been following me since I'd left the bar. Was it the man I'd flipped off? The idea made me laugh. It shouldn't have, but something about it just seemed so fucking funny.

Though that was probably due to the liquor more than anything else.

The streets weren't empty, but neither were they exactly bustling. On the weekends, it would have been busy, but at this time of night during the week, few people remained outside.

Not that I was the type to go to others for help. It reminded me of what Ignis had said earlier, the same thing Galen said, the same thing everyone said. I wasn't trying to be difficult, though. I just knew better than to reach out.

Drowning alone was far preferable to knowing someone I trusted and reached out for didn't try to save me.

So, nope. The idea of running to anyone else didn't even occur to me.

My phone vibrated in my hand, so I hit the green icon on the screen after three failed attempts. "Hello?"

"You ran away from Ignis."

I smiled at Harrison's voice that somehow managed to sound both annoyed and yet flat at the same time. "She isn't a big drinker. Did you know that?"

"Alcohol makes it harder to filter our powers," he said. "Few Minds drink because of that."

"Boooooring." I drew out the word to drive home my point. "Why don't you take her place? I bet you'd make a fun drinking buddy."

"As I just said, Minds don't drink. That includes me."

" Fine, you could be the designated driver. Take me place to place! With a face as pretty as yours, I bet we'd get into every club." I tripped over an uneven paver on the sidewalk, but this time there was no tree to stop my downward path. I groaned at a pain in my knee, not entirely sure what happened, but fairly sure I'd scraped it.

"What happened?" Harrison asked.

"Stupid sidewalk moved."

"I doubt that happened. It seems more likely that you simply have no idea about your own limits. Where are you?"

I rolled over so I sat, the idea of getting back to my feet about as daunting as climbing Everest. A glance around me at the few still lit signs told me I'd only made it down about a block from the bar. "I'm on the strip, just past that old piercing place. Oh, come down here! We'll get matching piercings!"

"I don't want a piercing."

"But we could match. Or we'll go opposites. I'll get the left nipple done, you get the right. No! Wait, I'll get the right done. My left is more sensitive."

A low rumble came through the line, the sound something between annoyance and incredulous, like he couldn't quite believe the sound had come from him. "Just stay there."

"You're going to come save me?"

"If I don't, and something happens to you, my sister will never give me a moment of peace again."

"Ignis can be mean." I folded my legs, ignoring the few people who did pass as they made sure to not lock eyes with me. Then again, I was a drunken blue-haired girl sitting in the middle of the sidewalk at one in the morning. I guess I wasn't what others considered good friend material.

"Why do you do this?" he asked after I thought he might have hung up.

"Do what?"

"Drink yourself to this point. Ignis said she tried to get you to go home a few times, but you slipped her grasp. You clearly did it on purpose. Why?" He paused, then asked, his voice softer, "Was it because of what happened?"

"I'm not smart enough for trauma," I said, not feeling the laugh I hung on the words like a costume. "I just felt like a girl's night was in order."

He made a soft sound, one that implied he didn't believe me. That was fine—who did?

Pain in my head made me wince, and for a moment, I wondered if it was the alcohol. Was this some aneurysm caused by my horrible habits? Maybe my body was giving up the good fight, like the victim in an abusive relationship who had had enough.

Except, as quickly as I'd thought that, I recognized that shooting pain through my temples.

It was like that night.

I gasped, dropping the phone to grab my head for all the good it had done me before.

"Grey?" Harrison's voice came from the speaker, but it seemed miles away.

Instead, the rushing of that pain was all I heard, at least until that other voice echoed in my skull. " I told you I'd see you again."

I whined softly, trying not to respond even as that voice whispered to me, "To think you'd go out alone so quickly. How stupid can you be? Or do you have some sort of reckless death wish? Maybe you wanted to meet me again and came out here for that reason?"

I shook my head, unable to utter any words. I wasn't sure if the alcohol numbed the pain or the pain pushed back the alcohol, but I felt less drunk than I had earlier.

" What should we explore this time? I saw fear from you before, but you have so many layers, so much hidden. Let's see what else I can find." After he said that, like a soda can opening, panic bled through me.

This time I saw myself at fifteen, in the back of a car with a handsy boy I'd thought liked me, who I'd gone with thinking it was the start of some beautiful romance. Instead of that, however, I'd found myself parked in the middle of nowhere with Handsy-McGee yanking my skirt off.

Now I could laugh about it, about my own stupidity, about the whole fucking thing, but in the moment? I recalled the fear—no, not just recalled, I felt it beating at me. That helplessness, the way he'd held me down, the disgust he'd looked at me with like I were trash, just a toy for him.

"Even crows can bite." The voice of the man who had made me slithered to me, beneath the panic, through the shadow's voice, all of it.

It gave me the moment I needed, and my crow stretched her wings inside me. It wasn't much, but it was just enough to slam shut that memory, to lock it away.

A cry echoed in my head, one that said the shadow hadn't guessed me capable of that. To be fair, I wasn't sure how I did it, either.

I blinked, waking from that horror, to someone crouched before me.

And I couldn't stop myself from letting out a scream when I found myself face to face with Harrison.