Age of Demons

Chapter 10 - Emery

Bluewater Haven Safe House

Thunder rumbled outside. The crash of the waves were ten times louder than they usually were, the lake smashing into the sand almost echoing the sound of thunder.

Water drip drip dripped into one of the buckets. Emery glanced up at the ceiling. Beads of water formed and fell to the ground. Already, there were four buckets in the main hall.

This isn't gonna work. Now that it was warming up, storms rocked the afternoons and nights almost religiously.

One of the girls, Sophie, was mopping at the water that had already leaked in before we'd found the buckets. The rest of the girls were figuring out who was going to do what.

Emery sighed and decided to put her hair up. She took one of the thick hairbands she wore around her wrist and started combing her thick, brown curls back. It was hard finding ponytails. Most that she found on the ground were the dainty thin ones. Her hair was too thick and wild for those; they snapped in half even before she was finished putting her hair up.

Finished, the ends of her ponytail brushed the middle of her back. She headed over to the group of girls.

They were all around her age. The youngest was thirteen, and the oldest was twenty-one. Most were sixteen or seventeen, like her.

Except for the older woman in their group, this was all the girls that had made it from the former safe house, just making a dozen.

In the middle, dishing out the orders, was Francesca. She was one hundred percent Latin American, her parents having hailed from Columbia. Emery had heard her speaking fluent Spanish before and was crazy jealous. Emery and Felix's parents had come from Puerto Rico but had refused to teach their children any Spanish because they didn't want their kids to be different from the rest. Emery thought that was stupid.

Despite being a little envious of her, she was also infatuated. Frannie—as she liked to be called—had long, thick, but super-straight hair, deep caramel skin, and large, almond-shaped eyes. Emery always caught herself staring at her and had to force herself to stop.

Today was the same thing. Emery's heart squeezed and beat a little faster when she took Frannie in. She'd never talked to Frannie before, not really, just only sought after her from a distance. In her mind, Frannie was perfection. She was power. And Emery was totally in love with her.

Other than Felix, Frannie was the only other thing that kept her here with these people.

"Okay, Tayla and Chelsea, want to pick up the trash in building one?"

Chelsea, short and a little plump, eyed Frannie warily. "So you want us to go... outside?" Her voice trembled slightly.

The hotel was made up of three separate buildings. The main hall, which was what we were in, was right in the center and was where the reception and dining areas were. On either side were the two-story buildings that housed the hotel rooms. But to get into one of them, you had to run about twenty feet outside before making it safely inside.

Just enough time for a spirit to jump you.

Frannie flipped her hair over her shoulder and softened her voice. "I'm sorry, Chels, but we're going to have to get used to this. It's a super short distance though. I know you and Tayla will be just fine."

Tayla, who was tall and dark, shrugged, acting the opposite of Chelsea, who trembled where she stood.

Frannie looked down at the paper that must have listed all of our names and rattled off cleaning jobs for everyone else.