I tried my best to stay still but I couldn’t help the winces that pulled at my face. I didn’t blame the woman sitting behind me. I knew she was trying her best to be gentle, but she was also trying her best to make me appear perfectly presentable to our business partners. Well, Atticus and Delaney’s business partners, anyway. I felt the side of Angelica’s face nuzzle the side of my neck and a feeling of warmth penetrated my stomach.

“What are you doing?” I whispered. I was exhausted from a restless night and a far too early morning. My words held no bite.

“You smell lovely,” she whispered back in a way that seemed far too intimate. “You look lovely, too.”

“Gonna finish my hair?”

Angelica paused in her tender affection and straightened. 

“Yes. I apologize.”

Angelica made quick work of dividing my hair in a clean side part with her index fingers. Grabbing a brush and running it under the sink to drench it in water, she brushed my unruly curls back to pull into a tight, neat bun. Access water ran down my face in the form of crystal droplets to which she dabbed them away with a dry cotton towel.

She instructed me to turn to face her and I followed her guidance. I took in her appearance. She had taken a shower and washed her hair in the process. The once straight, shoulder-length locks were now in beautiful tight curls that fell well above her ears. Her skin was smooth, covered in a thin layer of foundation, and her eyes were winged in dark, thin eyeliner that contrasted the gentle pink of her lipstick. She was clothed in a v-neck tulle pink lace dress that just barely caressed the floor.

“You look like a princess,” I said distantly. “From what my brother described, anyway.”

“Thank you.” Angelica smiled, an expression full of adoration and excitement. “I never knew you had a brother.”

“It wasn’t your business,” I explained. “Never was and never will be.”

“I don’t mean to pry. Sorry.”

I simply hummed and closed my eyes as she began applying makeup to my face. I enjoyed the barely-there delicate feeling, but most of all I enjoyed the scent. The cosmetics were probably the best-smelling commodity in the entire cabin. Everything else always had this rusty, tainted scent that was difficult to put a name to.

When she was finished, she removed the towel from around my upper body that was meant to catch any fallen residue or the droplets from my dampened hair. I stood and she turned me this way and that, brushing off my back and picking at loose curls that were clinging to parts of my dress.

Unlike Angelica, I didn’t look like a princess. I probably looked more like the villain in the tale, the evil queen, with a formal gown in the colors of red and black. Peering into a hand mirror Angelica handed me, she’d painted my lips scarlet, lined my eyes in thin black strokes, and highlighted my cheeks in gold. The accents made my facial features look sharper than they truly were, but I thought the look suited me. So did Angelica judging by the look of pure awe she regarded me with as if she hadn’t picked my apparel head to toe.

“You look stunning,” she said, cupping my face gently with a single hand before pulling away abruptly as if my skin was an inferno itself. “I apologize. I don’t mean to touch you without permission. I just can’t help it sometimes.”

I wasn’t given the chance to reply, Atticus pushing the door open without a single knock and a long, distressed creak of old wood. Both Atticus and Delaney were dressed in suits but Atticus had foregone a tie. He didn’t seem to like the formal wear whereas Delaney was the type to dress to impress the air around him. They crossed the room in silence, Atticus moving to look over my appearance and Delaney doing the same for Angelica. The two men looked us over with approval, Delaney expressed his thanks to Angelica, and then they were leading us away.

“All of the girls look great, Dove,” Delaney said. Angelica and Delaney had left early in the morning before the sun had even had the opportunity to rise. It was routine. Delaney would use Angelica to calm his girls down and to get them dressed and presentable to be sold out for the pleasure of his many clientele. “We’re about ready to head out.”

Stepping out of the front door of the cabin, I breathed in the fresh autumn air and excited at the sound of leaves crushing beneath my heels. The sun brushed away the swirling chills of the wind. It was comforting in a way that almost saddened me, made me miss the brother who’d abandoned me without a word at such a young age. 

Despite the ever-simmering hatred continuously burning in the pit of my gut, I never could bring myself to hate my brother.

Delaney climbed behind the wheel of the vehicle and Atticus climbed into the passenger seat. Angelica sat beside me in the back. I peeked at the women sitting in the seats behind me. There were only three of them. Two of them seemed relatively young, perhaps close to my age, and the other appeared to be in her early twenties. 

One of the women, blond with grey eyes that might have been blue at some point, leaned against the window with a blank look. Tears slowly cascaded down each of her cheeks, but her expression never changed and a peep never left her mouth. 

Acceptance. That was what her expression said. It reminded me of the first night I’d spent in the cabin after the murder of my parents. I’d felt so empty, a feeling worse than that night my brother disappeared. My parents’ deaths didn’t hurt. They didn’t quite make me sad or angry or hurt. It was just another step in my already messed up life; another step that I had learned to accept.

We traveled to a town just on the outskirts of the “outside world” as so many of us in Manson town tended to call it. The people there were more civilized than those of us in the very interior, but that was only because they didn’t feel as trapped as the rest of us. They were so close to a happy, peaceful life. Close enough that they could tiptoe the life between the outside world and our own. That was what many of them did.

Delaney traveled there for business more often than not. It was far enough to have a significant amount of clients with plenty of money to waste and close enough that there would be no repercussions from any legal authority. Nothing was punishable in Manson. Not unless you did something about it yourself.