Charcoal Tears Read Online Free PDF Page B

I like it.”
    He opened his mouth as if to say something, and then seemed to think better of it, turning his eyes to the bar. Well that was a first. I blinked at him, and then held up one of the little cups.
    “Want one?”
    His eyes found mine again, a brow arching. Yeah, right . He wasn’t a shot person… possibly a cocaine person, but not a shot person. I sighed, put the shot back on the tray and stood, ready to palm off the rest of them.
    He reached up and tugged my elbow, pulling me back into the seat next to him, much closer than I had been sitting before. He tucked a note into my hand and then stood and grabbed the tray. I watched as he found a bin close to the door, leading into the smoking area, tossing the lot of them in. I looked down at the note curled into my fist. It was a hundred dollars.
    What the hell?
    He returned, sat, and placed the tray on the table. “Better?”
    I gulped. “I have eleven more trays.”
    He reached for his wallet and my eyes went wide. I panicked and reached out to grab his hand. “No!”
    His eyes flashed, smouldering with the same fire that lit in Quillan’s eyes whenever he was angry with someone, or proud of one of my paintings. I lost my breath, and the fire touched every part of my face with the same itching feeling that had been accosting me all day. I slowly pulled my hand back, my arm shaking. He shifted forward, his voice low. “Finish your trays, Seraph.”
    I jumped up so quickly that my tray clattered to the ground. I picked it up and ran back to the kitchen, wondering how he had found out my name. I had probably told him at some point… hadn’t I told him everything else? My thoughts were so tangled that the rest of the night passed in a whirl of faces and sticky coins. My feet were aching and a headache was brewing by the time we closed up, and I left as soon as Sally slapped some bills into my hand. It was too late to do any shopping, so I stopped into a fast food place on my way back and snuck into Tariq’s room when I returned home, waking him up to eat. He grumbled until he smelled food, and then he quietened and began stuffing his burger into his mouth.
    I put myself through a shower and stumbled into my bedroom, flicking on the lights. There was an envelope on my bed, my name written across the front. Confused, I opened it, letting the contents spill onto the bed. Several printed photographs fanned out beneath my fingers, one of me being cornered in the cafeteria by Cabe and Noah. The photo was taken from behind me—presumably through the window at my back—so I couldn’t see my own face. The next was of me walking in-between the two boys. It was taken from behind again, the boys hovering over me as I cowered in the middle. My teeth started to chatter as I sorted through the images. The last was the most disturbing, because I didn’t clearly remember it. It was Cabe pulling me up from the ground, Noah behind him. My face was torn with sorrow, like I had been waiting for the car to hit me, and Cabe had ruined everything. I dropped the last picture onto the bed, feeling a cold blanket of fear settle over my shoulders, shivering up the back of my neck. I fell to my knees, picking up the typed note that had been included with the pictures.
    Ladybug, ladybug fly away home.
    Your house is on fire,
    Your children will burn…
    I stood there as the clock ticked by on the wall, the belligerent sound battering against my frazzled nerves as loud as a drum. The rhyme was familiar, and after I recovered from my shock, I rushed to the four cardboard boxes stacked in the corner of the room, trying to pass for a bookshelf. One of the books had been pushed to the very back, beneath a pile of second-hand paperbacks that Tariq had bought me last year for my birthday. I pulled out the book of nursery rhymes and opened it to the first page, running my fingers over the inscription.
    My darling Seraph,
    Never let the bad guys win.
    Love,
    Mum.
    My intake of breath was