"Hey," someone said, breaking through my dark thoughts, "you're her, aren't you? You're Madison Kate Danvers?" It was a middle-aged woman, her hand resting on a suitcase she'd probably just pulled from the belt. She didn't look angry or accusing, just curious.
I nodded slightly. "That's me." My voice was scratchy and dry from lack of use. I had barely spoken to anyone in weeks. Not since my caregiver, Aunt Marie, had died.
The woman nodded back, pursing her lips thoughtfully. "You got a rough break, kid. Your daddy should be ashamed of how he handled things after Riot Night."
I sucked in a breath, counting to five silently as I controlled the anger that always resided inside me. "Yep, he really should."
It wasn't for me to defend my father's actions. He had handled things badly. Making an example of his daughter to support his own public relations and business aspirations was the least of his sins. He just hadn’t wanted the spotlight on him—again.
The night I'd been arrested—the night of the fight inside the Laughing Clown—the entire town of Shadow Grove had suffered. East and West. In the days following, the media had dubbed it Riot Night, thanks to multiple riots which resulted in millions of dollars of property damage and several deaths. I’d missed most of it, sitting handcuffed in the back of a squad car for the first part of the evening, then locked up in a holding cell for the rest.
That hadn’t prevented them labeling me as the “mastermind” behind Shadow Grove’s most violent event. It didn’t matter how preposterous the charges were, they had intended to make a scapegoat of me.
Apparently the fights between the Reapers and Wraiths at the Laughing Clown had just been the straw that broke the camel's back. They'd been on the brink of war for a long time, and that night, Riot Night, was the detonation point.
"Well, welcome home, girl," the woman said, giving me a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. "You'll barely recognize the shiny new Shadow Grove."
I gave her a tight smile and shifted my attention back to the luggage-claim belt as she walked away. I knew what she meant, of course. In the wake of Riot Night, my father—ever the opportunist—had seen potential to boost his own star even higher by developing the damaged real estate and uniting both sides of the city. Supposedly bridging the class divide that defined Shadow Grove for so long. The new university built on what used to be the border between East and West Shadow Grove was his latest PR stunt. But it was my only option if I wanted a higher education, now.
Finally my faded suitcase came into view, and I let out a small sigh of relief. It held everything I owned. Everything. All the clothes, shoes, cars here in Shadow Grove were his. My father’s. Everything from before Riot Night had burned when our home was set on fire in the various arson attacks of that evening.
Dragging my suitcase behind me, I headed out of the small airport and stopped short when I saw the empty taxi rank. Of course. My luggage had taken so long to arrive, there were no taxis left.
"Is that it?" A deep, melodic voice behind me made me startle, and I swallowed a small scream as I spun around.
"You!" I snarled, eyeing the beautiful guy before me. His head was shaved shorter than it’d been eleven months ago, and the caramel-brown color of his brunet hair glittered lighter in the sunlight than in my shadowed memories. But those fucking eyes were the same—pretty, framed by dark-lashed, steel-gray eyes.
His grin was wide, pleased, and a flash of metal betrayed a tongue stud.
I wanted to punch him right in the fucking nose.
"Oh good, Kody owes me fifty bucks. He thought you wouldn't remember me." He winked one of those steel-gray eyes like we shared some kind of secret. "Clearly he underestimates the impression I leave on a chick. No matter how briefly we interacted."
I blinked at him, dumbfounded. The last time I’d seen this prick, he was riding away into the night with his two buddies just moments before I was arrested for their crimes.
"You've got a lot of fucking nerve," I started to say, but caught myself when that hot, wild anger rose back up in my throat. I'd spent so much time, done so much work to master my own emotions, and here I was about to lose my shit. Not even one hour back in Shadow Grove and the eight months in Cambodia may as well never have happened.
But I hadn't prepared for this. I hadn't prepared to face one of the three who'd set me up so soon. I hadn't expected the raw, primal hate coursing through my veins.
The guy arched his pierced brow, waiting for me to continue. My memories had dulled his appearance—understandably, seeing as I'd only seen him for a few moments after escaping Zane—but he really was stunning. He wore a short sleeve shirt, and his left forearm showed some seriously detailed ink.
A small shiver of dread ran through me. If he was here... did that mean I was going to run into the other two? Blue-eyes and Green-eyes, the two gorgeous boys who'd saved me from Zane D'Ath and probable, painful death on Riot Night, then hand-delivered me to the police for their crimes.
Despite how many dirty pockets must have been greased to maintain the bullshit charges of me orchestrating Riot Night, the charges had eventually been dismissed due to lack of evidence. And rightly so. But by the time they were, the damage had already been done. My school had expelled me, my Ivy League college had withdrawn their early acceptance, and my father had exiled me to Cambodia. I’d completed my senior year by correspondence, but it’d only afforded me very limited prospects.
It's for your own safety, Madison Kate.
Not that he’d cared about my safety while I was in lock up for three months.
Still, he'd stuck to that one excuse over and over and over until I was packed up and shipped off to the other side of the world without a second glance. The girl who'd died inside the Laughing Clown, the blonde one whose body Bree and I had tripped over, had been using my ID. She'd stolen my wallet from Bree's car earlier in the night, and when paramedics arrived at the scene they'd assumed she was me.
Why shouldn't they? After her lifeless form had been trampled by hundreds of panicked, drunk spectators it would have been impossible to make a clear facial identification. She still hadn’t been identified and had been buried a Jane Doe.
Of course, this had led my father to think I was the target. Someone had deliberately tried to murder his daughter... so I'd been sent away. For my own safety.
"What do you want?" I snapped, folding my arms under my breasts. I was dressed in loose linen pants, a baby blue tank top, and a sloppy, hand-knitted cardigan. I looked nothing like the Madison Kate of a year earlier... except for my hair. When Aunt Marie had died and my father had summoned me home, I'd been furious. Determined to remind him of the last time he'd laid eyes on me, I'd dyed my hair back to the dusky rose color it'd been when I left Shadow Grove. After the hot pink dye had faded a bit from shitty, holding-cell shampoos, it’d actually turned a really pretty shade.
More fool me, my father hadn't even bothered to pick me up.
The pretty, tattooed and pierced boy with steel-gray eyes just grinned again. What was his fucking problem, anyway? No one smiled that much.
"I'm your lift home," he told me, jerking his head toward the sleek, silver muscle car parked in the zone clearly marked "taxis only". "Your father... uh... couldn't make it."