Page 38 of Marked By Shadows
“I have no interest in anything she might say or do. We don’t run in the same circles these days.”
“And you’re so benevolent.”
“I’m more of the ‘I don’t give a fuck’ mindset,” I snapped back at her.
“Enough,” Freya said. “I understand you’re upset, Melissa. But whatever mess Byrony is in was of her own making. Take your blame elsewhere. Everyone is here to craft and relax.”
“While she’s still missing?”
“What do you expect us to do? Start racing through the woods and get lost ourselves? Get in the police’s way? Trample any evidence they may have used to find her?” Freya asked.
“You always take his side. Micah has always been your favorite. You mentored him when he was barely old enough to be anything, and the rest of us fight for crumbs.”
I gaped at her. Were we fighting over Freya? I glanced around the group trying to determine if I was the only one confused, but couldn’t tell if anyone was agreeing with her or just as lost as I was. Was that why they all never seemed to like me much? Tim told me I’d been reading too much into ulterior motives, and that only got worse after my return. Maybe it wasn’t all in my head.
“I give my time to as many as possible. And Micah showed a lot of potential at a very young age with no other support from friends or family. I’m sorry if that offends you, but I have thousands of followers, many of whom cosplay. All of you here are closer than any of them, and still you’re ungrateful?” Freya shook her head. “I spend a lot of time looking over work for all of you. Time I could be crafting more videos and pieces of my own.”
“Except interest in you has been waning for years,” Melissa snarled at her. “It’s why Byrony has been asking for you to give her acknowledgment among your followers, that her skill is at your level, that she’s worth the fame. Instead you focus on a little boy with a broken past who doesn’t even cosplay anymore. I didn’t even want to come. Byrony said she wanted to try one last time to gain your support, instead you cast her aside again. This is all your fault.”
“If anyone is to blame, Melissa,” Freya said looking more angry than I could ever recall her being, “it’s you for leaving them alone in the dark because you were too afraid of some woods. Byrony knew I would never promote her brand. Not after she spent the last five years cannibalizing everyone else’s ideas. She wants fame without the work. I couldn’t give that to her even if I wanted to.”
“She copied us a few times,” Nicole said softly with Julie nodding beside her.
“She copied me more than a dozen times,” MaryAnn added.
“She copied everyone,” Jonah said.
“It’s part of what it means to be in the group,” Melissa defended. “Collaborating…”
“Collaborating means actually sitting down and working out ideas with other people and everyone working on something together. She blatantly stole designs, from the colors to the trim and buttons without a single word of requested consent or acknowledgment,” I brought up. “In fact, she told me more than once, that because she was a girl, she could make enough changes to an outfit I created to make it legally hers. Then threatened to sue me if I claimed otherwise.”
But this was not why I’d come here. Time away from the long days of my small business had sounded like a good idea at the time. Company while I worked through ideas since Alex had been gone, and even feedback was supposed to be fun, a distraction at least. Being dropped into accusations wasn’t my idea of fun.
I got up from the chair. “I’m sorry, Freya. Maybe I shouldn’t have come. I’ll take my stuff to the cabin and work out there while I call around to find a new place to stay for the week. I really don’t want to be in the middle of all of this.”
Freya put her hand on my arm. “Stay. You are in the middle of nothing. We are here to cosplay and craft. Let’s focus on that.”
Melissa screamed and slammed her hands on the table. “You’re all so worthless.” She got up and stomped up the stairs leaving everyone gaping behind her. Alex came in just as she left.
“Everything okay?” He asked, his gaze focused more on me than anyone else in the room. His arms were full of the garment bag and the shopping things from yesterday. If they hadn’t been, I might have gone to him and buried my face in his shoulder. Instead I made my way to the craft room, needing to get out what was in my head because suddenly the internal noise had become deafening.
Chapter 13
Freya sat me down at the computer first. “Let me show you that software,” she said, opening the giant Mac screen she had set up in the craft area. She logged in and opened a program. “It’s not cheap in terms of software, but saves a lot of time.”
She showed me how to input the size of the person, regular measurements, which I already had, and then from there I could choose from some basic designs and build on top of them. I played with it for a few minutes, creating a silhouette of Alex in his Frozen gear, but making the shirt a little more translucent and adding flakes to the side of the legs. I could probably play for hours with the software, and made a note to look it up later to buy for myself as it would be a huge time saver, but I needed something to clear my head. Something else to focus on, while still leaving me with enough capacity to think.
“Thanks, Freya,” I said. “I’ll play with this later. I think I’m going to show Alex how to do some quilting.”
Alex spread out the haul of fabric we’d purchased yesterday, laying everything in a rainbow colorway. I made my way over to him and rested my forehead on his shoulder.
“Hey,” he said, putting his arms around me. His warm breath caressed my hair and I wished for a moment to go back to bed in his arms. Only my head was too busy to let me rest. “What do you need? Total distraction or thinking mode?”
A little of both really. “How about you pick something, and I show you some basic design? We can work on that for a while.” I glanced at the set of mid-arm machines Freya had. “Then maybe you can try quilting again.”
“Okay,” Alex allowed, his tension rising with the mention of using his ghost-learned ability. We both had hang-ups. Maybe it was why we worked so well together. “Show me how you turn squares into something.”
“Pick a set of squares,” I instructed.