Mind of the Phoenix (2 page)

Unfortunately, there are only other prisoners to hear me.

O
blivion is divine
, and my lingering consciousness is hell. My mind persists in torturing me with memories of scents that conjure up a collection of scenes, words, and forgotten feelings. The cloying scent of spicy cigars elicits the sound of deep laughter rolling above me in mocking mirth; the suffocating perfume of lavender and jasmine brings an array of scornful gazes from feminine eyes and the sight of naked flesh mingled in a mixture of pleasure and pain; the metallic scent of blood and the acrid body odour of excessive perspiration turns my stomach inside out as I recall the pain and anger.

Yes, darkness is sweet.

But a part of me is reluctant to give in. She wants to fight; she wants to
live.
She’s selfish, cynical, merciless, and damn strong. I’ve been given a way out of my prison, and she wants to take it. Unlike me, she isn’t resigned to die. To her, oblivion is hell and a weak person’s escape, whereas consciousness is divine. To feel, to see, to hear, to smell, to taste is the ultimate source of pleasure, and she’s determined to bask in that glory once again. Her resilience bleeds into me until we become one, and her desire and hate becomes my own. I want to live, and if solving a stream of murders will buy my freedom, then I’ll take it.

The flicker of candlelight illuminates the space before my cell, and I hear the shuffle of feet descending a flight of stairs. I blink and try to decipher whether or not I’m hallucinating again, but then a sonorous voice echoes through the darkness.

“So, have you
thought
about the proposition?”

“Yes,” I say, but my voice barely makes a sound.

“What was that, girl?” asks the Chief of Police impatiently.

“I’ll take it,” I say, louder.

“Smart decision,” he says in a satisfied huff.

L
ukewarm water envelops
me and I can hear the muffled sounds of female voices in my underwater solitude. I break the surface with a satisfied gasp of air, splashing water over the iron tub onto the floor, to the servants’ collective dismay. Two baths. It took soaking in a tub twice to remove the grime of weeks spent in a dark, grubby cell, but it’ll take more than water to fix the rat’s nest of hair on my head. After weeks of only having a scant amount of water to drink, the pool surrounding me is a glorious circumstance of accepting the Elite’s proposition. Not only will I have enough water to drink, but I now have the luxury of bathing and basking in the calming element. When I had water every day, I had taken it for granted and forgot the beauty it had to offer.

As I caress the clear surface and create a multitude of tiny waves, I make a silent vow to never take the luxury of water for granted ever again.

“Out, now,” says an old stern maid.

She has been very careful to avoid making eye contact with me the entire time, but it’s not a response to the naked state of my appearance. I am a Del Mar, property of the pleasure house owner; I am not a person. She is also careful not to touch me, because if she did I would be capable of reading her thoughts and memories. Because, not only am I a Del Mar, but I’m also an empath—a person gifted with sensing other people’s emotions, thoughts, memories, and, depending on how powerful, even able to tamper with someone’s mind with the use of persuasion. With her distance, I can only decipher her immediate emotions. If I were to prod any further, she would sense me in her mind. She’s simultaneously curious and annoyed by my presence in the Chief of Police’s private estate, which means that she is unaware of my involvement in the murder case.

I stand and wrap a towel around my body. The maid directs me to a vanity and I reluctantly sit on the small wooden stool. She starts to attempt to comb my long, matted hair and I growl in pain and grit my teeth. The bristles of the brush keep getting caught in an unyielding mass of knots, but she continues to forcefully tug on the strands, nearly pulling out my hair in the process.

“Stop!” I cry out as I reach for the brush. “I’ll do it.”

The old woman huffs and mutters under her breath, but thankfully leaves the bathroom. After several failed attempts to comb the knots out of my hair, I smack the brush angrily on the vanity and swear. I rummage through the drawers and finally find what I’ve been searching for. Gathering clumps of dark strands, I bring the scissors to the surface and cut. Once finished, I brush out the remaining length of hair on my head and then examine my work. The ends that reach two inches below my chin are far from straight and the back appears to be shorter, but I don’t care. It’s scandalous, but less of a burden for me. All my life, my dark hair has always reached my waist, and I find I rather enjoy the weightless freedom of short hair.

Satisfied, I stand and let the towel drop to the floor. I once was considered one of the most beautiful of Madame Del Mar’s coterie, but now my bruised and shrunken body could probably only bring in one-tenth of my previous revenue. My ribs stick out harshly beneath what once was a decent set of breasts, and my hip bones jut out from my pelvis. Granted, there are some men who will have sex with anything in front of them, even if it’s a desiccated corpse, but only the truly depraved would pay to play with the dead. For every other man, I’d have to pull some strong persuasion to make them believe that their hands are caressing supple skin rather than taut skin over bones.

But, then again, I’m no longer a sex toy.

The maid continues to shuffle about outside the door, so I hurry and dress in the chemise that has been laid out for me. I call the old woman back into the room to tie up the corset—something I hadn’t missed during my time in prison—and she inhales sharply at the sight of my hair. I give her a look that beckons her to comment, but, instead, she silently laces up the corset. The white blouse that the Chief had purchased specifically for me drapes over my torso like a blanket and the navy skirt falls loosely from the high waist. When I squeeze my feet into the narrow pointed boots, the tight fabric pinches my toes after weeks of walking barefoot. My dark hair has dried by now, and I decide to leave it down even if it means I will draw more attention. Besides, I don’t think it could be tied up successfully.

When I descend the flight of stairs, the maid bristles behind me. There’s a collection of photographs along the wall of various people who I assume are the Chief’s relatives. The men look all alike with their superior stances and mirthless expressions, and the women look just as severe. If I had ever been permitted to own property, there would be a lack of familiar faces peering from the walls. Some people are unfortunate not to know their great-great-grandparents, whereas people like me don’t even know who their parents are.

The strong scent of cigars fills the air, and I hear the distinct sound of men arguing. I can’t hear any specific words in their attempt to subdue their deep tones by whispering, and, when the maid leads me to a room, the voices drop off in a deafening silence as heads turn toward the entrance to regard me. I narrow in on the familiar face of the Chief of Police and grin in satisfaction at his look of apparent confusion. He doesn’t recognize me from the filthy wild creature he took from the prison, but then again he hadn’t seen much of me past the layer of dirt coating my skin. I suppose in retrospect that the constable who had visited me with the Chief had been correct to call me a
creature
, for I certainly had looked like one. Even bathed and properly dressed, I still look out of place.

“Moira Del Mar at your service, sir.” I lower myself in a dramatic curtsy.

“What in God’s name did you do to your hair?” asks a man seated in a plush chair.

“Why, isn’t it obvious?” I ask, feigning innocence. “I cut it.”

The man narrows his black eyes—eyes that remind me too much of someone I loathe—and he opens his mouth as if to respond, but the Chief cuts in.

“Richard, I must insist that we begin discussing the case and–”

“Yeah, yeah,” says the man, his black eyes finally leaving my face. “I’m leaving.” He stands and nods to the other gentleman in the room, seated in another chair with its back facing me. “Mr. Edwards.”

The man named Richard leaves, but not before I catch suspicion and desire cast my way as he walks past me. They are emotions I’ve become very familiar with throughout my years. He knows he can’t trust me, yet it doesn’t stop him from wanting my body beneath his. His eyes, however, are too familiar for my taste, and it would be like bedding the ghost that haunts my nightmares. I also recognize something dark within the man, and I narrow my eyes, wondering if I had seen his face at the pleasure house. The Chief hasn’t asked the other man to leave, and it is then that he decides to rise from his seat and face me.

“Moira, this is Keenan Edwards.” The Chief of Police gestures toward the lean gentleman, his mustache twitching with the movement of his speech. “He’s our detective on the case.”

The man’s light-green eyes capture my attention immediately as they openly examine me from head to toe, and it is one of those rare moments where there is nothing sexual about the gesture. He is simply an observer examining a specimen, searching for clues that will illuminate the mystery presented before him. I can’t exactly tell whether he’s appalled by my appearance because of my short hair, or because I look like a skeleton adorned in clothing to mock the appearance of life. Either way, he doesn’t like what he sees, and his lips press firmly together in disapproval. I decide to goad him further into discomfort by stepping closer and extending my right hand.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” I say in mock sweetness, cranking my neck so that I don’t break eye contact. God, he’s tall. But then again, I’m short, with only four inches passing five feet.

Instead of shaking my hand, he regards it with contempt, as I knew he would. If he were to touch me, I could then read his mind as easily as my own. The only thing stopping me from prying through his thoughts at the moment is the horizontal ‘s’ symbol with two dots—one on top and the other below—that has been burned onto my right cheekbone. Like most people, his mind has been programmed to recognize the symbol and set up temporary barriers to prohibit my inspection. Of course, I
could
go into his mind anyway, but no one is supposed to know that. His light-green eyes travel back to my face and widen fractionally in surprise. This close, he is able to see my duality—one hazel and one blue eye. Some people don’t even notice the difference, and others find it unsettling and confusing, feeling the need to focus on one or the other.

Keenan quickly recovers from his momentary shock. “Let us get something straight before we start. Though I am being forced to work with you, I don’t agree with the Elite’s decision to include someone like
you
in the investigation.”

I raise an eyebrow in response and try to ignore the fact that I rather enjoy the sound of this man’s voice. “Someone like
me
?” I echo, well acquainted with people’s prejudice against my kind.

They find empaths intimidating because they think we all want to brainwash them and, granted, I have no doubt that there are many who do. But I hardly think it’s fair to generalize, especially since the Elite and every other citizen of Braxton have no difficulty in using empaths as slaves. I think it’s safe to say that both of our kinds have our saints and—more so—our demons. My gaze flickers the length of Mr. Edwards’s body and I ponder on which one he is. Saint or demon, detective?

“I read your file, Del Mar,” he says, giving me a look as if he knows all my secrets. “I know everything there is to know about you. I know that you worked at the pleasure house until you were bought at the age of nineteen. Eight months later you murdered your new master and escaped his estate–”

“Moira,” I interrupt, lifting my head high. “My name is Moira. Del Mar
was
my master.”

He ignores me and continues, “You were then on the run for six months, but by the end you were caught in Draxoll and then taken prisoner. Was it clumsiness or your inflated ego that caused you to get caught? Or perhaps it was both. Maybe you wanted to get caught after all.”

I glare at him, and decide that he is a demon. “You don’t know anything about me.”

“That’s where you are wrong,
Del Mar
,” he says, unfazed. “I know enough to know that you belong back in that cell.”

So, his disapproval has not much to do with who I
am
, but more to do with what I’ve
done
.

“Well, we really should be discussing the case,” interrupts the Chief, gesturing for us to sit.

I give Keenan a cold smile and brush past him to sit in one of the chairs, carefully avoiding the one that Richard had been sitting in. The detective sits across from me. I notice then that, despite the groomed brown hair and the fashionable suit he wears, with its neatly pleated trousers, his eyes and cheeks appear a bit sunken, as if to suggest poor sleeping and eating habits. The growth along his jaw is either indicative of his desire to suddenly grow a beard—that, I doubt—or supports my growing suspicion that Mr. Edwards has seen his share of sleepless nights. Those light-green eyes are unabashedly inspecting me again, and I wonder if it is rudeness or if he just does not think I deserve the courtesies that other people do.

“Will there be food? Tea?” I ask, as my stomach rumbles at the idea.

Though I was fed immediately after exiting my cell, I’m still hungry after weeks of only eating bread. The Chief of Police regards me incredulously, which surprises me considering his round tummy. He’s in no position to deny me—a skeleton—food, and his face quickly falls into acquiescence. Maybe he’s not as bad as I had first thought in the prison cell.

He rises from his seat. “I’ll inform the maids to bring in some sandwiches and tea. Meanwhile, Keenan will update you on the case.”

The Chief exits the room, and I look expectantly at the man sitting across from me. There is a faint dusting of grey at the sides of his brown hair, which either means that he’s older than his face suggests, or he’s one of those men who grey early. I’m tempted to ask his age and how long he’s been a detective, but I suspect from the guarded look he’s giving me that he wouldn’t answer. He knows too much about me for my liking, and I hate not knowing anything about the people around me. It makes me feel vulnerable. I give him a saccharine grin that says, “I’ll find your secrets, detective.”

“Well?”

Instead of answering me, he reaches into his breast pocket and pulls out a silver case. He carefully plucks out a cigarette, his eyes never leaving mine, and, with one end pressed between his lips, he lights the other end. A grey cloud of smoke dances before his face and the intoxicating scent finds its way toward me. I’m not particularly fond of the smell, but I don’t dare move as the smoky tendrils caress my hair and chest. Unlike most people, this man is not afraid to look someone in the eye, which probably makes him a successful detective. His eyes seem to search beyond the physical and demand to know your secrets.

“On January seventh, the Dream House Instigator Charles Darwitt arrived home at eight o’clock from an evening out, and committed suicide in his office while one of his maids was present,” he finally says.

“I guess he realized how pathetic his existence was and wished to relieve us of his taint,” I suggest pleasantly.

Keenan ignores me. “On February seventh, Collin Evans, a constable, leaves work at nine o’clock and heads toward the pleasure house. An hour later, he is found dead in one of the rooms, with multiple stab wounds. The empath was found crying in the corner with scissors in her hand and blood all over her naked body.”

“Perhaps, he wasn’t a good lover. Probably sloppy, or maybe he couldn’t get it–”

“Precisely a month later on March seventh,” the detective continues, unperturbed by my interruptions, “Madame Del Mar, the Pleasure House Instigator, commits suicide in her private estate. No witnesses; only the servants heard the gun shot.”