The Aviary Read online

  Tonight, I am on Luc’s arm.

  Some Birds watch me in obvious envy, and I finally understand what Dove was talking about. All eyes turn on me, murderous like battlefields waiting to taste blood when Luc seats me next to him, cups my bare shoulders, and proceeds with his announcement.

  “We have a new addition to our Aviary today. After all these years, the Swan has come to us. I trust you will treat her with the same respect that you treat me.”

  Every eye is a crazed whirlwind while they murmur amongst themselves.

  I hear a few whispers rush through the crowd, the most prominent being…

  What will Nightingale do?

  Nightingale.

  Dove warned me about this Bird. My most lethal enemy, she’d said. Can I really see a fellow girl as more of an enemy than Luc? He’s the one who plucked me from the Glass District. He’s the one who ordered the Immortal Treatment. He’s the one who trapped me in this glass prison.

  I remind myself of all these things, but every time I glance at Luc, he never fails to notice my gaze. His eyes always converge on mine at the exact same moment. Every time, he renders me paralyzed. His very eyes can leach the warmth from my blood. Fill my veins with frost.

  I can barely focus on the meal when it arrives. Instead, I watch the Birds, their feet bare like mine, many with skin dyed in unusual colors to suit their titles. No skin dyes ever conceal their tattoos.

  “Where is Nightingale?” Luc asks from my right side, his question directed to Ostrich, who stands with her back braced against the south wall. Or I assume it’s Ostrich since she has the bird tattooed on her neck. Caretakers all seem to have birds tattooed on their necks. The rest of us have feather tattoos on our shoulders. Dove remains at the east wall behind me.

  “Fashionably late,” chirps a voice like champagne bubbles.

  My skin shrivels. Everything about this girl is my opposite. She doesn’t wear dress. Instead, her pale patina of skin is arrayed in black feathers as if they are sewn onto her. Two black birds cover her chest, wings drawn into their bodies and heads curling inward, beaks camouflaged inside the plumage of their breasts. At first, I think they’re props, but when I see the telltale inhale and exhale—the movement and the flutter of feathers—I realize the birds are real. Either well trained on a whole different level, or very convincing synthetic ones. Nightingale’s hair is black, shadowing her back with a vestige of mystery and magic. She seems foreign. Inhuman.

  I don’t dare lower my head. Not even when her black eyes imprint mine.

  Luc takes her hand in his own, fingers rubbing knuckles, mouth bare against the back of her palm. “Nightingale.”

  “I see someone has finally filled the last chair.” Her words are pointed as she sits at the table.

  “The Swan.” Luc’s quick smile accents the two words, but Nightingale is unimpressed.

  “And tell me, Swan…” she sticks her fork into the suckling pork on her plate, “what is your gift?”

  If she wants to play this game, I will rise to the occasion. “I’m a dragon in disguise.” If this place is a matter of survival, I’m not afraid of showing my true colors. For me, my words are my weapons. My mouth will do what my body cannot.

  Beyond the rim of his wineglass, Luc observes the conversation. Everyone waits for one of us to capitulate.

  After putting down her fork, Nightingale picks up her wineglass, leans back in her seat, and eyes me from across the crimson liquid. “I suppose clients will find that most…appealing. A body of scales,” she speculates.

  “Not scales,” Luc interrupts. “Fire.”

  The room is quiet. I am grateful for my captor in this moment, a feeling I’m not quite sure what to do with.

  “Nightingale,” Luc says, breaking the silence. “Will you indulge us in a song?”

  Nightingale narrows her eyes at me before dabbing the corners of her mouth with her napkin and announcing, “I would be honored.”

  Why I assumed she was randomly named the Nightingale, I can’t fathom. When she stands and opens her mouth, her voice is high as the ever-rising clouds, as mournful as a lost angel with a broken wing. One who wanders around the table, eyes occasionally pinning mine. If a vacuum sucked away every speck of her physical beauty, she would still remain exquisite because of her voice.

  Everyone applauds when she finishes. Luc’s eyes skim all along her body as she strays back to her seat. However, I recognize that he seems to regard her with the eyes of an artist admiring his work, not the hungering gaze he adopts when he looks at me. That notion fills me with wonder—not disgust—and I can’t fathom why.

  “I am eager to determine what your talent is,” Nightingale says to me. Her voice is incomparable; I could never possess such beauty.

  “I’m sure you are.” I reach for my glass, idly inspect the contents.

  Luc clears his throat. “Remember, my fledglings, you’ve had a fair respite this past week. But vacation time is over. As many of you know, this Saturday is the beginning of a busy month. Over the next few weekends, important clients will be visiting. Your performance will be judged at the end of every weekend. The grand opening of the Swan exhibit will commence soon. Some of you will undoubtedly attend as escorts; the rest may come of your own accord.”

  Nightingale merely raises her glass, taking a sip, her deep-set eyes like two black thorns ready to pierce anything and anyone. Not intimidated, I match her gaze while focusing on Luc’s words.

  “The arrival of the Swan has prompted me to bring in extra security.” Luc inclines his head to the double-door entryway where a number of black-uniformed guards appear. All masked in the same black, except one whose eyes are hidden by red.

  “As all of you know, my head of security met with an accident. Meet his replacement.” Luc motions a hand to the red-masked man who approaches the head of the table.

  This newcomer is tall. He’s a couple of inches taller than Luc, putting him well over a foot above me. His arms are impressive with eddies of muscles there. Some girls murmur and giggle while ogling him.

  “You will address him as Vulture. In addition to acting as my head of security, he will serve as Swan’s personal guard.” Protecting his investment, it appears.

  Despite Vulture’s mask, he could never hide his identity from me. Those warm, roan eyes are too familiar. Nutmeg locks pulled back into a familiar ponytail, his indelible muscles could never be unrecognizable. I am one side of a coin, and he is the other. If we were melted down, we would still be one. If one side is broken, so would be the other.

  I must bite hard on my lip to keep my grin from spreading. So hard I draw blood.

  Sky has arrived.

  7

  A t t a c K e d

  He’s here to bring me home. The thought nearly melts me like snow in a campfire. But even as I strip all the feathers from my skin after dinner, my certainty wavers. His eyes never once skimmed mine tonight.

  Still, I will wait. For the moment, I will hope.

  “Are you thinking about the Isolation Room?” Dove wonders as she holds up a light cotton nightgown.

  Until now, I hadn’t realized I’ve been frowning. I press my lips into a straight line, attempting to rearrange my face into neutrality before staring in the mirror. Dove wipes the Swan away, scoops out the pins one by one, and scrubs away the paint until I am Serenity again. After, she helps me into the nightgown.

  “How many times were you sent?” I want to know.

  “Plenty.” Dove buttons up my collar and the edges of my long-sleeves. “The Isolation Room gets to know you better over time.”

  One thing I do understand—I never want to return. I can’t handle another visit to the Penthouse. All my life, I’ve avoided any press releases or articles about Director Force because I never want to know what he looks like. Thanks to the Isolation Room, I’ve felt his whip. I’ll be damned if it ever shows me his face. If that means cooperating on the surface, then I will accept that. But I still have to get to Sky, get him al
one somehow.

  Dove turns down the sheets, but I’m not ready to sink into them yet. Instead, I drag a brush through my hair, turning my curls into frizzy waves. “Luc says my display will be finished tomorrow, whatever that means.”

  Dove clasps her hands in front of herself. “It will be better if you address him as Owl or director,” she advises with a sigh. “And just like every girl gets a glass cage in the District, all the girls here get a display. Owl designs each one himself; it’s the stage he sets for each Bird’s exhibit.”

  “Like a set for a TV show,” I say, and Dove nods. I tug on a tendril of hair, coil it around a finger, anxious. “I’ve heard of temporary…paralysis?”

  Dove sighs. “It is a museum, Swan. The girls here are art. That is why the displays are called exhibits.”

  Whether I’m conflicted about Luc, I will rip out his beating heart before he can inject anything inside of me to freeze my limbs. Hopefully, Sky will get me out of here before I have to find out.

  “Owl has searched many long years for his Swan. Even before he was director,” Dove says, looking me in the eye. “Innocence is rare in this world. I never imagined he would find it until now.” She gathers my hair in her hands, then lets it fall again. “You may be naïve, but you are fierce all the same. You’ll need that ferocity.” Nodding, I consider Nightingale, the blood and poison in her eyes.

  Tonight is not a night for sleeping.

  Once Dove is gone, I turn on the interface that controls the room and discover voxel-screens will play on the windows as well as the walls. However, the settings are not manual, and all the projected images are Birds past and present. Hundreds of different exhibits flash before my eyes. The only other available images are swans. Awe overcomes me as a swan flutters right above my head. I reach up, my hand interacting with the cooled laser image, which looks so real. The swan is motion sensitive and responds to my touch, bowing her head, beak curving toward my lips to impart a kiss.

  Turning the displays off, I try the ambience instead and groan, ready to rip my hair from my scalp. Nothing but bird calls and twitters. Instead, I stray toward the fish tank in the other room. The opposite of birds. The water reminds me of the fountains that grace the courtyards of the hotels Sky and I grew up in. I spread my hand against the glass, where a fish kisses one of my fingers before promptly darting away.

  A moment later, I feel other fingers winnowing through my hair. I don’t turn around. I know who they belong to. He leans closer, breathing in my strands. “Your performance tonight was exemplary.”

  I place my other hand against the glass, arch my spine so my stomach flattens against it and away from him. Still, his hand eddies along the back of my neck, and he twines his fingers around the necklace he gave me.

  There is only a handheld mirror sitting on an end table nearby. If I could reach it, smash it, I could… but that would only land me back in the Isolation Room.

  Breathe. Control yourself.

  I watch the fish, gypsies trapped in a crystal ball. No choice but to swim in endless, fathomless circles because they can’t understand the world beyond the glass. Like my mother before she met my father.

  The Aviary director strays to my side. “The Swan embodies what every museum has sought for so many years. Ever since the days of innocence were lost.”

  He scoots closer, preparing to cup my shoulders, but I scramble away from him. “And what good is innocence in a place like this?” Where men devour it in one night? I almost say.

  Luc leans against the fish tank, crosses his arms. “After you’ve spent some time here, I believe you will think better of me.”

  I pause before answering, which is not in my nature. “I highly doubt that.”

  Luc does not respond, only picks up the tray from the table. It holds a glass of some algae-green substance. “It’s a sleeping supplement,” he says. “I give one to all my Birds at bedtime.”

  Tentative, I accept the glass, sniff its contents, and take one sip. It tastes like chalk. For one moment, I consider dumping it on his head, but I remember the Isolation Room and think better of it. Then, I realize there could be anything in the concoction I’ve just sipped—perhaps a paralyzing agent, all the better to make me into a statue, inanimate as some doll. I let the glass drop to the tiled floor, pleased by the way it shatters and admiring the dark green puddle I’ve just created.

  Luc shakes his head, but smiles. “I’ll let that one go.” He places an order for maid service. Guilt rises when I consider the poor sap who must clean up my mess. Only to realize the room is equipped with electronic claws that charge from a nearby wall and take care of the glass and puddle.

  The fish are lucky; their forgetful lives are a blessing compared to mine.

  I walk away from Luc and approach the bedroom, knowing he will follow. After stepping down from the solid floor of the adjacent sitting room, the luxurious rug in the bedroom cushions my feet. I brush my fingers across the length of white sheets, of pillows filled with feathers.

  “I want you to know I will never paralyze you.” Every word of Luc’s is like a vessel of oxygen breathing life back into me. “Why would I? When you are so much more real like this? Can you not understand how long I’ve searched for someone like you?”

  “So, you’d never let me go?” I challenge. “Not even for a beautiful price? I’ve heard about the Centre searching for girls like me, for breeding.”

  Luc’s eyebrows furrow, expression like a cannon igniting. “You are too young.” He uses a flimsy excuse. My mother was younger than me when she gave birth.

  I back against the bed frame, lean my head against the white wood. “What does the Swan mean to you personally? Why have you searched for years?”

  Luc’s hollow gaze signals I will receive no answers tonight. “Get some sleep. Your display will be ready tomorrow. I’m eager to see how you take to it.”

  When he turns his back, I yearn to throw something. Or scream. But I restrain myself. “You don’t even know me—and you never will.”

  He turns. “Oh, but I will learn.”

  I shake my head. “You have no right.”

  “Perhaps we could begin with something simple—your real name.”

  I want to say my name. I want the confirmation I am nobody’s Swan. Even if I give this to Luc, it’s my power, accepting my own beauty.

  “Serenity.”

  In a voice that skims the breath of a whisper, he repeats my name like a chant. Then, he grins. “Ironic.”

  I try not to force a smile. “You have no idea.”

  “Goodnight, Swan.” Reinforcement. He won’t use my real name, but he still holds it.

  When he leaves, he doesn’t lock the door. Is that a token of trust? I realize Vulture must be right outside my door, guarding me, and the thought kindles a fire inside my chest.

  I straighten, the urge to speak with him too strong to ignore.

  Outside, the hall is empty. I flick my head back and forth. Where is he? I wander down the corridor to the staircase. This place is a haunted mausoleum of glass and darkness, the stairs just as empty and voiceless as the halls. No security waiting in the main room underneath the domed glass ceiling. No staff disguised in the corners. Why hasn’t Sky come?

  Behind me, I feel sudden body warmth, but I don’t even get the chance to turn my head.

  Hands push hard against my body. I try to regain balance, but the glass staircase rises to meet me. At the last second, I grab onto a clump of dress, and the girl’s body tumbles down with mine. I land sharply, painfully, and each new collision with the steps brings a fresh surge of pain. If my bones are moaning and my body is screaming as we roll together, at least the girl who pushed me is experiencing the same.

  Pain poisons all other senses. Besides, it’s too dark to see anything, but I hear her groan before she gets to her knees and hobbles away. She’s taller than me. That’s all I can make out, but that hardly narrows it down. Dove was right. I have more to fear from the other girls than Luc. />
  “Don’t move.” I recognize the voice. I’ve heard it many times. Any time I tried to sneak out of the hotel, any time I bent the rules. He’s angry with me. He has every right to be. It was stupid of me to leave the room. Should’ve waited for him—then and now.

  My body pulses with pain, thrums with tenderness. “Sky!” I smile despite the pain. Tears threaten to choke my words.

  “Shh!”

  “Sky,” I whisper. My body is on fire from the pain, but my heart burns hotter because that’s what hope does. It lets people stand again.

  Pain explodes in my leg when I try to get to my feet. My vision blurs like I’m under water, and I tumble to the ground, memorizing his eyes through the red mask.

  “You always find me.”

  My consciousness shatters, unleashing black fog that pulls at my eyes and snuffs out all light.

  8

  M y O l d L i F e

  “Mmm. Breakables can’t do this.”

  “What?” Sky remained in his pool chair, averting his eyes.

  Sky stopped joining me years ago. He would only watch me swim from one of the pool chairs while I reveled. Like I did tonight. I braced my hands along the side of the pool, wondering if I’d ever get to swim with him again, wondering why he’d put so much distance between us these days.

  “This.” I motioned around the pool atmosphere. “They can’t sneak into the hotel pool after hours, strip to their undergarments, and splash around. Girls in the Glass Districts can’t swim in the moonlight or steal towels.” Or even shiver without permission.

  “Don’t let your mother catch you saying that word.”

  “Breakables?”

  “Yeah, you know how she feels about it.”

  “Everyone says it.” It was all the latest rage back when the Red-Light District was renamed the Glass District. Now, it is common. My mother never bothered to explain why she hated it so much.