June
Lucy's Age: 17
I didn't expect to wake back up, but since I did I wasn't particularly surprised to find myself tied up face-down on the floor in what appeared to be a very seedy hotel.
"Excellent, love. I was starting to wonder just how long you were going to be out. Now that you're awake we can get started. Not much use in torturing someone who's passed out."
I managed to roll over onto my back so that I could get a good look at my captor, not that I expected it to do me any good. She'd shed the light jacket she'd been wearing, so she was just sitting on the edge of the bed in jeans and a tank top while she played with the knife that she'd pulled on me earlier.
I'd been hoping that she'd at least be bruised or something from the elbow that I'd landed, but nothing marred the side of her face. It was like the fight had never even happened for her, but the pounding inside my skull was plenty of evidence that I'd been hit just as hard as I remembered.
I tried to shift around so that my neck wasn't craned so awkwardly and nearly vomited from the vertigo that the motion triggered.
"Ah, sorry about that. You've probably got a concussion. I'd offer you something for the pain, but again, I'm planning on torturing you, so that's kind of contraindicated. I have to hand it to you though, I never expected you to fight back, let alone that you'd be so good at it. Geoffrey sure does know how to pick them, doesn't he?"
Even through the pain, I knew that the fact she knew Geoffrey was important. It meant that she wasn't just some random psychopath, this was somehow personal.
"Look, I don't know what's going on, but if you're after money I'm sure Geoffrey can come up with whatever amount you need. Let's give him a call before you do anything hasty."
She smiled and even through my fear I wished that I could kick her in the teeth. Nobody should be that gorgeous. It was like the perfect protective coloration for someone who was little more than a human tiger trap.
"I'm not after money, love. This is strictly payback. I've known that something was up with Geoffrey for months now, but it took me forever to track him back to your neighborhood. He always loses me when he goes down into the tunnels over by the park, even when he doesn't know I'm following him."
"I don't understand. I didn't have anything to do with whatever he did to you."
The blonde smiled again, but there was an absent feel to the expression. "I probably never would have found you if not for this backpack."
She held up my utilitarian black backpack, which technically wasn't even mine. I'd taken it out of Geoffrey's room back when I started leaving the apartment on a regular basis and realized just how inconvenient it would be to come back from the bookstore with my arms full of books. Geoffrey had a bunch of extra supplies cached in his room and I'd figured that he'd never miss one of the three identical backpacks in his closet.
"You see, this is a custom-made backpack that Geoffrey designed himself with a little bit of help from Vicardo Paseres. I called Vicardo after I saw you the first time and asked him if he'd sold any copies of Geoffrey's design to anyone else and he was quite emphatic about the fact that he'd only ever created a dozen or so of them for Geoffrey. You probably should have thought twice about using something that would connect you so obviously to Geoffrey to someone who knows him as well as I do."
The smile was back again, but this time it had a sick edge to it, like a kid who was about to kick a puppy just because they liked to hear it whimper. "Actually, you probably should have thought twice about getting involved with Geoffrey in the first place."
All of a sudden the fear that was foremost in my mind, and the anger that had been simmering in the background for more than a decade and a half, just boiled over. "I never had any say in whether or not I got involved with him! That's the way that families work, even dysfunctional ones. You don't get to pick them, you get stuck with whomever you get stuck with and then you just try to make the best of it until you can get away and actually pursue your own dreams for a change."
My captor, the cruel goddess who'd been prepared to use a knife on me slid off of the bed and onto the floor, only it was less like sliding and more like collapsing. The knife was still in her hands, but she seemed to have forgotten it as she moved towards me in what was almost a crawl.
"What did you say?"
"I said I didn't get to pick my father, I just got stuck with him like any other kid on the frickin' planet."
She seemed to deflate before my eyes. She was still beautiful, but now there was a timidity to her that was completely at odds with who she'd been a moment before.
"His daughter? He'll kill me and he'll be completely justified in doing so. What have I done?"