Chapter One

CHAPTER ONE

She was beautiful, this woman who wandered the graveyard. All hair and eyes. In a light cotton dress covering her rounded belly, she walked barefoot across the overgrown lawns. She smiled and laughed as she touched the flowers garnishing the dead.

She saw a particularly beautiful headstone, a grave marker.

“Montessa,” she read, and something about it, the strength of it, the delicacy, stopped her in her tracks. She stood and waited. Moreover, she felt.

“That will be your name, darling,” she told the child in her womb. The newly named Montessa skipped and spun and twirled. Or perhaps she sucked her thumb in silence. Her mama couldn’t really tell these days now that she was so ill. But she carried a little girl, she was sure of it, and she loved this child fiercely.

“Your life will be charmed,” she said, navigating through the headstones and weeping angels as well as she could. “I believe wonderful things happen to little girls named Montessa. You’re special.”

Sweet thoughts. Sweet desires. But horribly, horribly unfounded. Misery and despair follows little girls named Montessa, especially little girls who are forced to go through their lives with dead mommies. Even more so when that mommy was the only one who loved them.

But she was right about one thing; Montessa was indeed special.

***

Montessa’s shift ended at 3:00 am.

She took a shower, soaping the oils and glitter and makeup off her body. Then, she wrapped herself in a towel and used another to dry her hair. Dry enough, she pulled out her phone.

“Renan?”

“What?”

He sounded dangerous tonight. Forcibly light-hearted, so he was out with the boys, but drunk enough that he’d be mean when he came home.

“I’m off.”

“What’s that gotta do with me?”

“Just wondered if you were gonna pick me up, that’s all.”

“Not tonight. I’m doing something.”

Montessa heard giggling in the background, and waited for her heart to sink and break, but nothing happened. Perhaps it had been ground to dust long ago. This was a relief.

“All right. I’ll see you at home.”

“Don’t wait up.”

“Do I ever? Goodnight.”

“Hey, baby,” he said. He was smiling into the phone, and she could visualize the beauty of it. Now her heart sank. Now it broke. “Who loves you?”

“You do.”

“That’s my girl. Be careful looks like there’s a storm coming in.”

“I’m always careful. Have fun, Renan.”

Without the makeup, she wasn’t Ruby anymore. She was just plain ole Montessa Travor. She seemed years younger when she washed away the faux confidence and sensuality, unlike some of the other girls.

Montessa put her six-inch stilettos in her purse along with her dancing costume. It didn’t take much room.

Jeans and a T-shirt. Sneakers. She left out the back door, the doorman giving her a brotherly grin and a pat on the shoulder. She smiled back, her first genuine one of the day, and stepped onto the shoulder of the highway. It was four miles home, fairly straight through the Northern Nevada desert.

Montessa put her earbuds into her ears and turned on her music. Not because she particularly wanted to listen to anything, but because she didn’t want to hear Renan’s voice assuring her this is what it feels like to be loved.

It always hurt.

***

Lu watched her go.

He always watched her go.

Sitting in the trees, his back pressed against a trunk, he watched her walk home on sore feet from hours of dancing.

The boyfriend seldom came anymore. Lu didn’t mind. The guy seemed mean, hulking, treating the brunette like property, like meat, while his own eyes roved over the hips and breasts of the other dancers.

And he let the girl walk home alone for the last three nights. Stupid. You never knew what could happen to a pretty little girl.

Lu knew. It had happened several times. Several times several.

He settled back against the trees, took a cigarette, and slipped it into his mouth. He then slid his hands back into his pockets. The unlit cigarette started glowing, burning. Lu’s eyes did the same as he watched the woman round the corner, disappearing from sight. He waited for a few more minutes and then walked over to his semi, parked behind the strip club. He climbed inside, laid his head back against the seat and made a decision.

He pulled out, turning onto the road. It only took a few minutes to pass the frail girl with the dancer’s body. A few minutes more and he parked his semi on the soft shoulder of a curve, waiting.

***

Montessa tended to think too much.

At home, she constantly thought about Renan’s moods, where his blows would strike if he landed them. She always wondered if he was in the mood to joke, or to ask for money, or if he would go and get high in the back room. At work, she thought about escape, about leaping off the platform and running for the door. She’d go out the back way before the bouncer could catch her, kicking off her stilettos and pelting barefoot down the street. Into the trees somewhere, living like a beast. A wild animal of wonder. She’d walk through the forest until she came out the other side, into a land of marvels.

When she walked home at night, she purposely tried not to think. She listened to her breathing, to her heartbeat, to her tender feet hitting the pavement. She felt her arms swing, her ribs move as she breathed in and out. Her body, her muscles. That was it. That was all. It was the only escape she had.

She saw a semi up ahead, gray and sleek. Normally she would have briefly wondered where it was headed, who was inside, how it would feel to walk up and ask for a ride. It didn’t matter where the driver was going. In fact, she’d rather not know until it was time to wake up and stretch at her final destination. Wouldn’t that be lovely? Wouldn’t that be grand?

But tonight wasn’t that night.

Something was . . . off.

With her eyes pinned forward, Montessa pushed her wild hair out of her face, and tried to pay attention to the music—a new playlist one of the girls at work burned for her. It was too poppy, too light, and Montessa hated it more than she thought she could ever hate anything, but it acted as a distraction.

Only three and a half more miles to go.

She blinked the burn from her eyes, dashing at them with her wrist, and then reminded herself that she never cried.

She passed the semi, her steps faltering a little before she righted herself. A little too tired, but she could push through. After all, she was her mama’s daughter, and there was something special about her. A girl like her could never give up, but just needed to keep going.

If Montessa had been paying attention, she would have noticed a shadow sliding behind her. If she had taken her earbuds out, she would have heard the surreptitious sound of sneakers on pavement, heard the sound of shallow breaths. She might have caught sight of the glint of something sinisterly sharp in the moonlight, the smell of evil deeds being considered.

None of this. None.

Montessa focused on putting one bruised foot in front of the other, on getting home so she could collapse into her bed smelling of Renan’s sweat. She thought of getting something to eat, if there was anything in the house. On drinking two big glasses of cold water if there wasn’t.

She focused on getting home . . . No, to the place she lived because it wasn’t a home. It wasn’t a nest. It was somewhere she paid rent and left her clothes and closed her eyes and slid under the water in the bathtub. There was no such thing as home.

She thought too much, and cursed herself mentally. Montessa bit her tongue, focusing on the steady bop, bop, bop of the music she endured.

A hood slid over her head. A hand clamped over her mouth. She felt something sharp dig into her neck, heard something said over the sound of her music, but couldn’t make it out.

Montessa tried to scream, kicking and fighting, but the hand over her hooded face pressed harder, and the steely sharpness pierced her skin. The trickle of blood running down her neck shocked her. The pain of the knife was so sharp, so sweet, so sudden and cold that she sucked in a breath as well as she could, reactively stiffening. Her legs wouldn’t work anymore, but stuck out like the tiny wooden legs of dolls. The hand came off her mouth and wrapped itself around her ribcage, pinning her arms to her sides.

The voice again, right in her ear, “Move, and I’ll kill you right here.”

The blade pressed into her throat again, that same shock, the sheer surprise of being cut, of her skin being rent, of her blood, which was so precious, being wasted in such a careless way.

She was dragged backward, away from the road, away from help, away from the path that would lead her back to Renan.

Oh, thank goodness, she caught herself thinking, and it was a surprise. Then there was a great, ringing pain in her head, and she was relieved of thinking for a while.