Bitter Ashes- The Complete Series Read online

  I almost believed her despite the nervous twitch. She hadn't aged a day, and I'd been out of the foster system for nearly ten years. Yet, the resemblance was just too much to be a coincidence.

  “Why am I here?” I repeated, beginning to panic again. “Don't lie to me, I remember you. I was in and out of your office often enough to remember.”

  I knew I was right. Sophie had been my case-worker as I was bounced around from home to home all those years ago. Now that I'd made the connection, I remembered distinctly how she'd said my name each time she told me that the next home would be different. A few weeks, or a few months later, I'd go back and call her a liar, but she'd never get angry.

  My thoughts came to a screeching halt as my memories of childhood led to where they always led, a memory I'd done my best to block out entirely. My knees went weak.

  “Wait,” I said as I felt the color drain from my face, “am I here because of what happened back then? You said it would all be okay!”

  Sophie's expression softened, showing just a small hint of sympathy. She knew exactly what I was talking about. I tried to shut my mind off to the memory, but I wasn't successful.

  “This has nothing to do with what happened,” she explained evenly. “I swear it. You will face no repercussions for that day.”

  “Um,” I began weakly, my heart thudding in my throat, “then would you mind telling me why I'm actually here, and why you're here?”

  “That is none of your concern,” she snapped, leaving me to wonder if I'd only imagined the sympathy in her eyes.

  “It is my concern,” I argued. I fought them, but tears began to stream down my face. “In fact I find it very concerning that I was ripped from my bed at night, and pulled into the ground by vines! Not to mention that I'm now faced with my old social worker who hasn't aged a day in nearly ten years.”

  “Come with me,” she said, then turned around, expecting me to follow her.

  “I'm not going anywhere until you tell me what's going on,” I replied, trying to keep my voice steady as I backed away from her.

  My legs felt numb and shaky, but I managed to move my bare feet across the floor, step after step. I was sure that I was in a mild state of shock, which was probably a good thing, because it kept me from collapsing into a screaming heap on the floor.

  She turned back to me with a frustrated sigh. “Do you still sense the emotions of others?”

  I felt my face shutting down. She was one of the few people I’d ever told about my secret. I’d been able to sense what others were feeling since I was a child. It had made foster living absolute hell.

  “Do you, Madeline?” she pressed.

  I shook my head. “Is that why you brought me here? I was just a kid, making stuff up.” Lies. All lies. Lies I’d learned to tell to survive. Psych evaluations are no fun.

  “You made nothing up,” she said matter of factly. “And that man’s death? It was your fault, just as you’ve always believed. Now come with me, and I might tell you what else I know about you.”

  I stared at her in shock, forcing painful memories away. A fresh tear dripped down my face, then another.

  “Come, Madeline,” she demanded. “I promise, we mean you no harm.”

  I wiped the tears from my eyes, and took a deep breath. For people that meant me no harm, they sure had a funny way of showing it. “Where are we going?”

  Sophie looked me up and down, a wry smile on her full lips. “You're covered in filth. We're going down the hall to the bathroom.”

  I stared at her a moment, looking for any sign that she might be lying. Not that it mattered. I glanced past her to the open door. She and I were about evenly matched physically, I could probably escape her . . .

  “Don’t,” she warned. “Try anything and I’ll have my brother carry you to the bathroom kicking and screaming.”

  I bit my lip. I could try to run now, or I could wait for a better opportunity. I didn’t want her, or her brother, touching me.

  Seeming to sense my defeat, she gestured toward the open doorway. “Run, and I will catch you.”

  Giving her a wide berth, I hurried toward the door, exiting into a long stone corridor. I glanced both ways, but saw nothing but gray stone one way, and a wooden door the other. Sophie walked past me, heading toward the door. Upon reaching it, I noticed that the hallway continued on to the right. So there was empty corridor behind me, and this new path. Two possible routes of escape.

  Sophie opened the door and gestured for me to walk in ahead of her.

  I obeyed. Against the far wall of the over-sized space was an ornate, claw-foot bathtub made of white porcelain, standing on tarnished brass feet. To my left were the sink and toilet.

  “Bathe,” Sophie ordered.

  “I don't-” I began, but she cut me off with a stern look that said I know you're unhappy, but you have to listen to me regardless. It was the same look she used to give me when I called her a liar.

  She finally offered me a hint of a smile. “I will keep my brother at bay, if that is your concern. I know you are considering the best time for you to run, but I assure you, it would not be a wise choice. You will not escape this place easily.”

  I crossed my arms, glanced at the tub, then back to her. I was not going to get in that tub. “I never knew you had a brother.”

  It wasn't actually strange for me to not know. Most caseworkers kept their lives private from the children they worked with. It just seemed weird to me that I'd never seen him, or heard any mention of him at all.

  “Well I do,” she replied. “Now please, stop stalling and bathe, and I'll be back to fetch you soon.”

  With that, she turned and left the bathroom, shutting the door gently behind her with a soft click. As soon as I recovered from the surprise of being left alone, I ran to the door and quickly twisted the lock. I did a frantic scan of the bathroom, but didn't find anything that could aid my escape.

  There was no shower, just the bathtub, a toilet, and a sink surrounded by a pale pink marble countertop. Another fire burned in a fireplace set in the wall behind the bathtub. The room, ceiling, and floor were all made of stone, with no modern ventilation that I could see. There was also no visible lighting, yet the room was somehow well-lit. I scanned the walls and ceiling, but couldn't tell where the light was coming from. Eventually, my panic took over. I collapsed to my knees and closed my eyes, willing the whole situation to be a dream. It had to be a dream. Vines didn't move on their own, people aged and didn't have fangs, and rooms couldn't be lit without light bulbs or candles.

  I sat like that for several minutes, but when I finally opened my eyes, I was still in the strange stone bathroom. I rose shakily to my feet and looked at the bathtub again. I briefly considered just doing what Sophie told me, but couldn't bring myself to do it. Not seeing any other options, I turned toward the door.

  I wasn't about to trust Sophie just because she'd been my social worker. In fact, it made me trust her even less. I had to get out of here, now.

  Knowing Sophie was likely waiting right outside the door, I grabbed a small basket of wrapped soaps from the counter beside the sink. It wasn’t much as far as weapons went, but if it could distract her long enough for me to run, I’d take it.

  Not giving myself time to consider the consequences of my actions, I balanced the basket in one hand, flipped the lock with the other, flung open the door, and chucked the soap basket at Sophie where she waited outside.

  I barely registered her shocked expression as I took a sharp left and fled. My bare feet pounded harshly against the hard stone, sending little jolts of pain up through my shins and into my knees. I didn’t look back to see if she was chasing me. The narrow, high-ceilinged hallway seemed to stretch on forever, with no discernible landmarks to tell me where I was or how far I'd gone. I ran past several closed doors and turned another corner.

  I had only taken a few more steps when I ran straight into someone who'd been walking down the hall in my direction. We'd both hit the corn
er at the same time, and had no time to react. I bounced off his chest and fell to the ground with a thud. The man wasn't even shaken by the impact. He looked down at me and let out a good-natured chuckle. He wore a hunter green tee-shirt and jeans that seemed out of place in our castle-like surroundings.

  The man leaned down to offer me a hand, causing his chin-length, golden brown hair to fall forward.

  I scuttled away from him, stumbling to my feet to run the other direction. I managed one step before he grabbed my arm and jerked me back to face him.

  He lifted a golden brow, his fingers digging painfully into my arm. “Are you lost?” He had a slight southern accent, but it was faint enough that I couldn't really tell which state it came from. He looked me up and down, lingering on the fact that my bottom half was only covered by underwear.

  My heart pounded in my ears. “Just looking for the front door,” I growled, swinging my free arm toward his face.

  He caught my fist effortlessly.

  I balked, not understanding how he’d moved so fast. I opened my mouth to beg him to let me go, but my words caught in my throat as I finally looked directly into his icy blue eyes, so pale they were almost white. The rest of his face was handsome enough: a strong nose, a jaw just wide enough to be masculine . . . yet those eyes. I'd seen eyes like that before, and they hadn't belonged to the living. A flash of memory shot through me like lightning, raising the tiny hairs on my entire body. I shook away the horrifying image of a young man's eyes just as his life had left him. It had been a long time ago, and there were more pressing matters to worry about.

  “Are you going to behave now?” he asked, his grips on my fist and arm unyielding.

  I nodded, unable to look away from his eerie eyes.

  Slowly, he released me. “Now let’s get you back to Sophie—”

  The moment my arms were out of his reach I dropped to the ground, narrowly avoiding him as he made another grab for me. Once I was down, I did the first thing I could think of and kicked him in the kneecap. The move would have worked better if I wasn't barefoot. As it was, all I got for my effort was a grunt of annoyance. Recovering, I tried to push away, but he grabbed me again. This time he lifted me like I weighed nothing and threw me over his shoulder.

  I was so shocked by how fast he’d moved I went limp for a moment, blinking at the back of his shirt and wondering how I’d gotten there, then I started screaming, pounding my fists on his back and kicking with my bare feet.

  Not seeming to mind, he carried me down the hall. “You’re lucky that I like it rough,” he laughed.

  I pulled up the back of his shirt and raked my nails across his back. The pain I caused echoed through me. Another little secret I’d kept as a child. If I caused others damage, I’d feel that too. He dropped me to the ground on my butt, knocking the wind from my lungs. He pulled me back up, this time pressing my back against his chest, forcing me to stumble forward. Still relearning how to breathe, I dragged my feet in vain, bruising them on the hard stone floor as we went back the way I'd come.

  We rounded a corner, and Sophie came into view. She stood near the bathroom looking regal in her red dress, tapping her foot impatiently. The basket of soaps was neatly arranged under her arm. She hadn’t even tried to chase me.

  She approached, then grabbed my arm with her free hand, taking me from the man without a word. Moving her hand to my back, she shoved me into the bathroom. This time when she shut the door, she stayed inside with me.

  “I told you not to attempt escape.” She braced herself against the door and let out a shaky breath, betraying her show of confidence.

  I leaned against the wall, my battered body screaming at me. “You can't really blame me for trying to escape,” I wheezed back at her.

  Seeming to regain her composure, she locked the door and walked over to the bathtub to start the water. I glanced at the locked door, then at Sophie's turned back, surprised that she was leaving me the opportunity to escape again.

  As if reading my thoughts, she glanced back at me. “Trust me when I tell you that you are much safer in here with me, than out there with James.”

  James. A third kidnapping accomplice. Scariest one so far. “Safe?” I questioned. I was feeling a lot of things, but safe wasn’t one of them.

  Sophie shrugged. “Relatively so. I will not hurt you unless you make me. James would very much like to hurt you.” She shivered and I wondered if James had very much liked hurting her too.

  I stood up straight and pushed my back firmly against the wall as she left the tub to walk toward me.

  “Please tell me why I'm here,” I pleaded one last time.

  She pinched the bridge of her nose like I was giving her a headache. “Please take a bath,” she countered. “It is not my place to answer your questions. You will simply have to wait on that.” She breezed past me, returning to her post by the door without another word.

  I looked over at the slowly filling bath. It had an old-fashioned, slender faucet that didn't let out a great deal of water at once, and the basin was filling painfully slow. Feeling awkward, but definitely not wanting to go back out in the hall with James, I undressed, wishing I'd just listened to Sophie the first time. At least that way I wouldn't have had her watching me while I bathed. I couldn't even remember the last time I'd been naked in front of anyone, and I really didn't like being that vulnerable in front of someone I was afraid of.

  Wrapping my arms around my chest, but having nothing to cover the rest of me with, I dipped a toe into the bath. I quickly withdrew the toe, then added more cold to the water flow so that I wouldn't end up scalding my skin off. Once the temperature was bearable, I took a step in, then slowly sat, hissing through my teeth as I adjusted to the heat.

  I watched the black soil swirl off my skin into the steamy water for a moment, then glanced at Sophie. Despite the circumstances, she still seemed like the same old Sophie. At one point, I’d even considered her a friend. “What did James do to you?” I asked.

  She didn't answer immediately, and I was left with several moments of silence to ponder my situation. I was pretty sure I was, in fact, in shock, because all I could think about was how strange it felt to be around Sophie again, in a tub of now-dirty water no less. I'd spent so much time talking to her in my youth that it almost felt natural, even though we were now meeting under far different circumstances.

  Eventually she snorted, the gesture somehow elegant, as she came out of her own private thoughts. I'd previously thought that snorting elegantly wasn't a thing, but that was exactly what Sophie did. She moved away from the door to perch on the closed toilet seat, folding her long legs underneath her in a position that didn't look at all comfortable.

  “James would never dare offer me violence,” she explained, “but I've seen what he likes to do to people.” She turned the full power of her dark stare onto me. “The things I've seen would make a nice girl like you want to cut out her own eyes, though it wouldn't stop the nightmares.”

  I leaned forward to shut off the faucet, then huddled in the hot water, wincing at the bruise forming on my tailbone. I had to admit the warmth felt good, even if taking a bath was the last thing I wanted to be doing. “I've seen plenty of things to give me nightmares.”

  She startled as if she'd fallen deep into thought. “I know,” she answered finally. “I know much more than you'd think. The world has not been kind to you.”

  I swallowed past a renewed sense of panic. She knew what had happened with my last foster family, but she couldn't know about Matthew. I'd met Matthew years later, and that event was for my nightmares alone. I flashed on his dead eyes again, eyes that had looked so much like James'. I'd done it to him. I wasn't sure how, but Matthew's death was my fault. Sophie had no way of knowing anything about that.

  She smiled at me like she knew exactly what I was thinking. I looked away quickly, suddenly more frightened than I'd been before, if that was even possible.

  I watched her out of the corner of my eye as she reach
ed toward the basket she’d replaced beside the sink, retrieving a new bar of yellow soap, still in the wrapper. She took off the plastic and handed the soap to me. It looked handmade, and smelled like vanilla.

  “Wash,” she demanded. “Once you’re dressed, I’ll take you to learn why we brought you here.”

  I began to wash myself, wishing I could wash away more that just dirt. Matthew’s dead eyes were still at the forefront of my mind.

  The world would be a lovely place if we could wash away fear and bad memories, but it wasn't a lovely place. I'd seen the ugliness of the world long before I'd learned to live in fear of making it worse.

  Chapter Two

  At one point during my bath, someone delivered some clothes for me. Sophie had only opened the door a crack, so I hadn't seen who it was. I’d ended up standing in the middle of the bathroom, dressed in a slim-fitting black dress that encased my legs down to the tops of my knees. Black boots covered my calves and left just a sliver of flesh to be seen below my kneecaps.

  The boots had much higher heels than I was used to. Okay, they were only three inches, but I never wore heels. I got my height early, and therefore have the tall-girl syndrome of not wanting to tower over everyone. In the boots I was 6'.

  I stole a glance at myself in the bathroom mirror as Sophie leaned against the door. In addition to the uncomfortable added height, the black made my normally deep olive coloring a little washed out. Back in the real world, I never wore black without a little bit of makeup. At that moment though, my coloring was on the bottom of my list of concerns. The woman standing by the door was somewhere near the top.

  “Are you done primping yet?” Sophie asked impatiently. Her earlier show of camaraderie must have been a fluke, as she had already reverted back to the steely bitch persona.

  I looked in the mirror again. My hair was only partially dry, and felt heavy and snarled. It was thick enough that it would be hours before it dried completely, and Sophie hadn't offered me a blow dryer.