Chapter 98: Brother

A knock at my door roused me from my sleep. "Come in," I said in a deep groggy voice.
Cherry's bouncy curls popped through the door. "Are you decent?"
I looked down at my T-shirt that read "Cutie Pie" on it. "Yes?"
She pushed the door open. She carried a dozen bags on each arm. Two brothers followed her through carrying more.
I rubbed the sleep from my eyes. "What's going on?"
Cherry gave me a cheery smile as she set the bags down on my bed. She turned to the men behind her. "Just set them on the floor, boys. Thanks."
They obeyed and she shooed them out with a hand. "Girl time now, off you go."
"Girl time?" I asked.
She nodded solemnly. "You are in desperate need of it. Here." She chucked a phone at me. It was a fancy smartphone with a touch screen and everything. "It's got a new number, so creepo can't call you anymore."
"Umm... thanks, but this is too much. There is no way I can afford this." I held up the phone and then waved around me. "Let alone any of this."
She rolled her eyes. "Think of it as a gift from the brotherhood."
I frowned.
"Fine. What you do for them is like a job. You have worked more than enough in the last week to deserve this."
"This phone is like a thousand dollars," I said.
She shrugged. "A little more, but what I'm trying to say is that your services are expensive. What you do for them is important. If you really want, I'll crunch the numbers for you, but in the end, they will still owe you more."
"I don't think that's right."
"Do you know how much cocaine costs?"
I shook my head.
"About sixty dollars a gram. That's sixty dollars for a twenty-minute high that gives you a nasty hangover and kills you over time. It's highly addictive and makes you make bad decisions. What you offer is clean and good for your health." She eyed me to make sure I was listening before she continued. "So let's say we value you at the same as a hit of cocaine. That's sixty dollars a person. How many did you touch last night?"
I tried to count in my head. "I don't know, maybe twenty people?"
"Try forty-two, and that was only the people I counted that came up to the tent last night. Not the ones you did at the bar while you were eating. So, that forty-two times sixty in just one night. That's more than twenty-five hundred dollars. In one night!"
"You've been here a week. I've seen you touch each brother at least once. There are one hundred and four members. So you've made at least six thousand dollars already. That's not to mention all the walk-ins we get. Seem fair yet?"
I looked at the bags on the floor. "And how much did you spend on all this?"
"Only three thousand." She nodded to the phone. "Four thousand."
"I just don't think I'm comfortable with selling myself as a drug."
Cherry shook her head in exasperation. "It's a service. Just shut up and take the stuff. I'll track it for you and put it in the books. You'll see. You deserve this. You just need to get over yourself. The bar is going to fail if you don't step up."
"Oh, you mean like tonight?"
She nodded.
"We charge two hundred dollars a hit."
"You mean a touch."
"That's right. And you need to scream sex. If you don't do this, the bar is going under. You saw our numbers."
I wrinkled my nose at her.
She narrowed her eyes at me, then opened up a bag and pulled a black dress. "Now, put this on."
My brow furrowed. "Isn't that a little formal?"
"You are a woman in power. You need to look the part. Trapesing around in your converse and holey jeans is not going to instill faith in the people. You are leading an entire faction. You need to dress like it."
"You don't happen to have anything in leather, do you?"
She grinned. "As a matter of fact..." She pulled a bag on the floor closer to her then threw a pair of leather pants at me.
I could feel the Lanie inside of me get excited. Kira was cringing thinking about how uncomfortable they would be. I pushed that aside. I had to stop thinking like two different people. I was one person. Just one. One nameless piece of shit.
I lifted my eyes from the pants with a big smile on my face. "What else did you get?"
Cherry's smile matched mine.
We spent the next two hours going through her haul. Cherry had impeccable taste. She seemed to have a good sense of me, too, because everything she picked out was something I would have stopped in the store and drooled over. I would never have bought it because it was impractical, but I would have certainly looked at it.
She dressed me up in preparation for that Saturday night. She said they were always big nights and it was important I put on a good show.
She stood behind me in the bathroom, curling my hair into long ringlets. There was a good chance it was going to just go flat. My hair never held a curl, but she just winked at me. Maybe I was just never good with hair. She did my make-up and left so she could get ready.
I looked at myself in the mirror. I wore a tight black dress with a new bra that made my small bosom pop. The neckline plunged down the center of it. It hugged my body, showing off curves I didn't even know I had. Kira had always been a bean pole, and Lanie was muscle on muscle, but when combined, I felt like I was just a normal girl. Well, I guess a woman now. This dress made me look all grown up. I was tall enough and adequately built. Not really too much of anything. A perfect plain jane.
The dress fell to my knees and flowed lower in the back. I wore a pair of black high heels that buckled around my ankles. Long sparkling earring hung at my ears behind the large waves of hair. My make-up was dark and sharp, but not overdone. Instead of hiding my eye like most night club make-up did, it accentuated it, making my blue eyes pop in a grayish color.
I held my forearms out. The Aurora and Night sword were tattooed on my inner forearms.
"Move," I commanded.
The tattoos zipped up my arms and down to my outer thighs. I thought about putting them on my ribs so they would be entirely out of view, but I wanted the option to protect myself if needed.
I walked down the stairs very carefully. I wasn't used to heels, but I used a bit of magic to help me balance. All I needed right now was a vertigo attack, and I would be down for the count. Anton sat watching TV. I stopped behind the couch. The sunset lit up the sky through the windows casting a pink and purple glow on the clouds.
"How can you watch that idiot box when there is such a lovely view outside?" I asked.
He nearly wet himself he jumped so bad. "Holy hell. Where'd you come from?" Anton caught his chest as he leaned over and back to look at me.
"You know I live here, right?"
"You look nice."
"Thanks. Seriously though, figure out something with your life, or I will kick you out on the street."
"You wouldn't do that to me. Not to you dearly departed best friend's brother." He feigned crying. He gave me big pouty lips and puppy dog eyes.
"Dude, I'm your sister. Matei was my father, too."
I think the shock made him catatonic. He didn't even blink. He just stared.
I waited a full minute. "Anton?"
"Sister? That is so... awesome!"
"No. Stop. Why is that awesome to you?"
"Well, now you can't kick me out. See, I thought I was inheriting all this and then I found out you are some leader or something, but now you're family. You can't kick me out. You wouldn't do that to your own family. You're just too nice."
I glowered at him. "I left my family, remember? I didn't talk to them for years. I will kick you out if you don't do something with your life. I will have the brothers throw you out on your ass. Go to school. Get a job. Find something to do that isn't drugs and girls. Get a damn life." I reached down and hit the power button on the remote. "I'm serious, Anton. You are wasting away on this couch. Figure yourself out or I will force you to."
He crossed his arms. "Why couldn't you have been the sister that died?"
I squeezed my eyes shut. I couldn't punch him. Well, I shouldn't punch him. That would not help the situation. It would make me feel better.
I slapped him in the back of the head. "Do you hear me?"
Anton grabbed his head. "Alright, alright. I hear you. Damn it. Bitch." He rubbed his head.
"Good." I walked over to the kitchen. My heels tapped the floor with each step.
He stared at me. "You're really my sister?"
"Yes."
He gave me a funny look.
"What?"
"You're too hot to be my sister."
"Yeah, well, you're too skinny to be my brother. Stay off the drugs. They're no good."
"You always have a response, don't you?"
I stared at him.
"See? Even that. Everything about you is just so damn... irritating."
"Good. Get a job."
He stuck his tongue out at me and then disappeared up the stairs. I watched him the whole way to his bedroom from the open hallway. He didn't look back. He slammed the door.
"Damn teenager," I muttered. I raised my voice and shouted at him. "You're older than me. You know that, right? Start acting like it!"
I rifled through the cupboards and fridge, looking for something to eat. It was fully stocked. Nothing was passed its expiration date. It felt like I was living in the Twilight Zone. I went with something simple: a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I didn't want to get into a fully cooked meal and there weren't any frozen meals so that I could get down there. I didn't really want to eat any more fried food. It made me feel slow.
I devoured the sandwich as I watched the last of the sunlight disappear from the clouds. It was eight o'clock, time to meet my new Saturday night.