Devils Roses 01 - Cursed

familiar.
    Panic filled her. She knew him.
    He squinted, no doubt from the confusion of her still-glowing eyes and the possibility he recognized her too.
    She smiled raising her hands. “Run his prints and you’ll thank me.” He wasn’t an innocent. The Roses did have rules about that sort of thing.
    He walked toward her cautiously, as he assessed the alley and the danger. “Get down on the ground.”
    She shook her head. “Really, would you lie on this street? This alley is filthy with germs and God only knows what else.”
    A gust of wind blew past him, bringing with it a scent of laundry soap and deodorant with a subtle mix of windblown sea air. She would know that smell anywhere. She looked around for an exit, beyond her usual one. She couldn't just vanish in front of him.
    His smell was the soundtrack to her youth and innocence. His was the only true love, she had ever known.
    His face started to light up, as his feet brought him closer. She felt the air suck from her body, as he stood under the lone streetlight in the alley, which clearly the city's budget had forgotten.
    She gulped, pushing down her feelings. She felt frozen in panic, but also desperate to see him. Just one glance of him would fill her for the next hundred years.
    He looked at her and frowned in disbelief, as he drew close enough to fully recognize her. “You—you’re the one? That's not possible.”
    She could see the raw emotion on his face. His lower lip trembled, no doubt followed by his entire body.
    She took a step back, putting her hands out. “Just pretend you never saw me. The medics will say heart attack.”
    He shook his head. “No, not you.” His face twisted in pain. “Anyone, but you. Why?”
    She blinked as she remembered every second of their time together. She crammed it into a memory slot.
    Every touch.
    Every smile.
    They had become her playlist when the burn in her chest grew unbearable. Only those little moments could sooth her.
    She couldn’t avoid the sharp breath that left her mouth. She winced as she turned her heart off, and let the flat words leave her lips. “I have to eat—they make sense.”
    He looked sickened. “You’re eating them? How? They have no marks. None of the others had marks.”
    She let the moment of shame fill her. She deserved to suffer.
    She wanted to explain. She wanted to be that girl—his girl. She wanted to be sitting on the back steps of his house, listening to his dreams. Instead she turned, jumping onto the handrail of the stairs next to her, and climbed the fire escape.
    She ran up the stairs, before he could register she had left. She could still smell his fear, but it had switched. It was a different kind of fear. The kind that broke her already-tattered and abused heart. His fear of losing her again, filled the air with his screams. She felt the tears rolling as she listened to him shout her name, but she never stopped. She ran to the top of the building desperate to get away.
    His screams filled the night. "AIMEE!"

Chapter One
    Love and drugs change everything.
    Port Mackenzie 2010

    “ Aimee?”
    I looked up from my pages of scribbles, confused. Sometimes that happened. It was new.
    I needed a moment to recognize, not only where I was, but also who spoke to me.
    I had let my daydream take me again.
    “ Aimee?”
    I looked at the front of the class to find a nasty glare coming off Miss Simms, my English teacher. She was giving me the look she gave all the bad kids. I looked at the board behind her, trying to remember what we were doing.
    Twelfth Night.
    She tapped her toes and crossed her arms. “Aimee, what is the theme Shakespeare is trying to hide beneath the themes we easily see?” She asked it, as if she was trying to trick me. Like she forgot who I was.
    I cleared my throat. “Beyond the obvious themes of the folly in ambition and the uncertainty of gender, Shakespeare, as he always did, liked to use the theme of love as a means to suffering—as if it were a weapon. Twelfth Night, is only one of many of his plays, where this theme is present.”
    And there it was. The difference between the other spaced-out morons and me, I actually knew more than the teacher.
    I might have scribbled. I might have gazed out the window. I might have gotten lost in a few moments of lonely daydreams, but no matter what, I actually did my work. Even if I didn’t have the answer, it would be easy for me to make up one.
    Miss Simms smirked. “Nice answer, pay