Page 33 of Mimic

“What do you do?”

“I help women and children escape abusive homes. I’m a Nyght Nymph. Scared women and children don’t like to talk much, so we’ve all learned how to talk to them to get the information we need to help them. And I forget how easy it is to slip into that role.”

When she mentioned the Nyght Nymphs, I nearly dropped my glass. Magyk was a Nyght Nymph. She told us all about her and her sisters when she rescued us. Foolishly, I thought she’d meant real sisters.

Magyk had given us all new names, new identities. It wasn’t the one I went by now, though. After Alice and I had left thefoster home, we ditched those names. We didn’t want anyone to find us and take us back.

I wish I knew where Alice was. She could be a bitch, but I considered her a friend. Sure, our relationship was based on shared trauma, but hey, all friends had to have something in common, right?

Alice was the only person out there I knew who could relate to what I was going through. Yes, there were others, but other than Jenny, I had no idea where any of them went. Magyk told us we would be spread throughout the country.

Every few days we would travel to a new state and drop off a few girls. Sometimes two or three, sometimes only one. Magyk explained it needed to be random if we had any hope of not being found.

That was one of the things I liked most about her. She was honest. She didn’t sugarcoat shit when she talked to us. We might have only been between the ages of thirteen and fifteen, but we deserved the truth. After everything we had lived through, the truth wasn’t scary. It was comforting. It gave a false sense of control, and at the time, even a false sense of control was something to hold on to.

“Hey, where’d you go?”

“Huh?” I looked up from the glass I hadn’t really been staring into. “I guess I was just thinking about what you said. You’re a badass, Kytten.”

She threw her head back and laughed. “Oh, girl, if you only knew how wrong you are. You saw my legs. We all have our own monsters that torment us.” She peeked over her shoulder at the people milling around, and I expected her to lower her voice. But she looked back at me with pride. “This place saved me. It gave me my brother. It gave me Cash.” Her cheeks turned pink when she said his name, and I smiled. “And it gave me back myself.Without the people here standing behind me, holding me up, I wouldn’t be who I am. We can help you too. If you let us.”

“I don’t need help.” I took a sip of my soda to wash down the lie.

“That’s what I said. But men don’t break into your apartment in the middle of the night for no reason.”

“I don’t know who they are or what they wanted with me.” I took another sip. It wasn’t that I wanted to lie. I had learned early that no one could help me. Apollo tried, but Daniel found me. Daniel had even found me here in this little nothing town that was barely even a dot on the map.

There was nowhere I could hide from my past, and I didn’t want these people to see who I really was. Mimic had seen a glimpse of it and reacted exactly as I knew he would.

That was how they all would.

“Maybe not. But we can help you find out why they targeted you. Give us a chance, Indie.” She leaned over and whispered, “Give my brother a chance.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Kytten raised an eyebrow at me. “I think you do. Everyone deserves happiness if they’re willing to reach out for it.”

“I am ha—”

“Indie.”

Gunner’s commanding voice interrupted the next lie I was about to tell Kytten. I turned around on the stool and focused on him.

“Come in here, please.”

“Why?”

He crossed his arms over his chest and looked at me the way a father would look at his daughter when he was disappointed in her. I didn’t understand why the look on his face hurt me so much. But it got me moving off my stool and following him into church.

Chapter Thirteen

Mimic

My blood boiled seeing Indie on the back of Gunner’s bike. She was fucking mine, dammit. She should be on my bike. When I looked at King, he shook his head.

My hands clenched into fists, and I stomped off to my bike. Archie and Jonah had arrived to fix Indie’s door. If it weren’t for her personal things inside, I would have told them to leave it. She wasn’t going back there. She wasn’t leaving the clubhouse again. If I had to lock her in a cell downstairs, I would.

I had my own fucking key now, and there was one thing I had learned from GeorgemotherfuckingStone. If you wanted something, you fucking took it.