She'd made a mess of everything.
No words. Ridley hated words. Mostly, they were lies. Her two-week incarceration in Lena's room had been enough to make her hate poetry for a lifetime.
Mybeatingheartbleedingneedsyou —
Whatever.
Ridley shuddered. There was no accounting for taste in the family gene pool. She pushed herself away from the door and walked over to the wardrobe. With the slightest touch, she opened the white wooden doors, revealing a lifetime's careful collection of clothing, the hallmark of a Siren.
Which, she reminded herself, she wasn't.
She dragged a pink footstool to the shelves and climbed up on it, her pink platform shoes slipping back and forth over her pink striped knee socks. It had been a Harajuku kind of a day, not often seen around Gatlin. The looks she got at the Dar-ee Keen were priceless. At least it had passed the afternoon.
One afternoon. Out of how many?
She felt along the top of the shelf until she found it, a shoe box from Paris. She smiled and pulled it down. Purple velvet four-inch peep-toes, if she remembered. Of course she remembered. She'd had some damn fine times in those shoes.
She dumped the contents of the box onto her black and white bedspread. There it was, half-shrouded in silk, still covered with crumbling dirt.
Ridley slumped down on the floor next to her bed, resting her arms on the edge. She wasn't stupid. She just wanted to look, as she had every night for the past two weeks. She wanted to feel the power of something magical, a power she would never have again.
Ridley wasn't a bad girl. Not really. Besides, even if she was, what did it matter? She was powerless to do anything about it. She'd been tossed aside like last year's mascara.
Her cell phone rang, and she picked it up from her nightstand. A picture of Link popped up on the screen. She clicked it off and tossed it into the endless pink shag.
Not now, Hot Rod.
She had another Incubus on her mind.
John Breed.
Ridley settled back into place, tilting her head to the side as she watched the sphere begin to glow a subtle shade of pink.
“What am I going to do with you?” She smiled because, for once, it was her decision to make, and because she had yet to make it.
three
The light grew brighter and brighter until the room was bathed in a wash of rose-colored light, which made almost everything else disappear like thin pencil lines that had been only partly rubbed out.
two
Ridley closed her eyes — a little girl blowing out a birthday candle, to make a wish —
one
She opened her eyes.
It was decided.