Page 2 of The Lies We Conjure
But before I can put that into words enough to pull Wren aside to discuss it, Marsyas lays out twenty one-hundred-dollar bills on the counter.
“I’ll give you each a thousand up front and another thousandafter dinner.” Her gaze sweeps between the pair of us, that spark returning. “I’m sure you will find that reasonable.”
My jaw drops.
That is more money than we’ve earned—combined—in our six-weekend run at the Ren Fest.
More than I alone earn in a month at my part-time job as a bookseller at Agatha’s Apothecary & Paperback Emporium.
More than enough to pad my college fund so that it isn’t completely laughable.
It’s enough that it’s too good to be true.
So, of course, Wren immediately accepts the offer for both of us.
“Why, that’s more than reasonable, Miss Marsyas. When’s the party?”
In answer, the old woman says, “Call me Nona,” and lays a handwritten card atop the cash advance.
Saturday night. Formal. Wear solid black. I’ll be in touch.
“Wait, what—” I glance up, a new line of questions forming and then immediately dying on my lips.
Marsyas Blackgate isn’t there.
I lean on the counter, craning to see farther left, then right, ready to chase her down for more information, a contact number, more specifics about the deal.
But she’s vanished.
Wren eagerly gathers the bills and stuffs them into the inside pocket of her wench’s apron. She’s neglected the card, and I snatch it up and flip it over, hoping for at least one answer to the flood of questions in my churning mind.
Instead, I find one final order. Or maybe a threat.
Tell no one.
CHAPTER2
RUBY
The lie isn’t ours.
But we wear it as overtly as our new party dresses and shoes. As our drugstore lipstick and mother’s pearls. As the accents that sit, awkward, upon our tongues, waiting and ready for polite conversation over the course of one gilded evening.
“Fuck, it’s haunted.”
That’s the first thing Wren whispers to me after slamming the chauffeured SUV’s door shut with a decisive echo. She doesn’t use her accent.
Before us, the western sun is hanging over the Continental Divide like a blowtorch, a line of fire trailing along every nook and crick of the Rocky Mountain peaks. It’s beautiful—magical, even—the perfect backdrop for literally any story the night wants to tell. It also lies in stunning juxtaposition to the gothic mansion staring back at us.
Painted a flat black across a solid three-story construction, its windows are stacked like the eyes of a spider, while turrets akin to spindle wheels reach up, eager to prick the sky and send it to a deep sleep.
Hegemony Manor.
We’ve never been so close to it. It’s been perched on the edge of Mom’s tiny mountain hometown for a century and counting, vast enough to house every resident within its walls, its grounds larger than the city limits, all roped off by barbed wire strung for acres until they become miles.
For a few years after the divorce, we lived in Wood Rose with Mom, and drove past the manor on our way to visit Dad and our stepmom, Karen, in Grand Lake. Mom almost always pulled onto the shoulder for a moment’s appreciation of the moody lines of themanor, wishing the Hegemonys would open it to visitors or turn it into a bed-and-breakfast operation. Anything for a peek inside. Then three years ago a drunk driver took Mom away from us. We moved in with Dad and Karen, and the drives past Hegemony Manor became a relic of the past.
In this moment, I can’t believe we’re just feet from the front door.
