“Get here when you can. We aren’t going there without you. Ignore the grumpy fucker. I think Emily’s on her period or something. He’s in a foul mood.”
I laughed at Brandon’s remark. He always had this uncanny knack of pulling me out of my slump.
“Fuck you,” Ryan said in the background just as the phone cut off.
I sighed and stuffed my phone into my back pocket. Being a part of so many different worlds was getting exhausting, but my fate was already sealed. I’d played their game, and as it stated in the title, there were consequences. Mine being that I would forever be plagued by Brinton Manor and the devils that inhabited it until the day I took my final challenge. Whatever and whenever that would be.
Thirty minutes later, I was in the back of Ryan’s car with Zak. Brandon sat in the front, and despite the chatter about football and cars, there was still a sense of tension in the atmosphere.
Or maybe that was just me?
I was finding it hard to separate all the factors of my life. Juggling so many balls and spinning plates was becoming difficult to maintain. I’d spent my whole life compartmentalising everything and putting on a show for the appropriate audience, so they wouldn’t see the cracks beneath the surface. But those cracks were widening, and I had no control over it. The only constant and positive thing I had right now was Effy and my friends. I didn’t want to fuck any of that up.
“It’s looking good for the auction coming up,” Ryan announced.
“What auction?” Brandon shot back.
“The one to buy Sandland Asylum. It’s being held in a few weeks’ time, dumbass.” I saw Ryan giving Brandon the side eye. “Emily has a lot of collateral to put forward, and her Gran has offered up some of the money too. I think she feels guilty for being a useless piece of shit after all the crap that went down with Em’s parents.”
“I’m happy for you.” I don’t think Brandon could’ve sounded more unenthusiastic even if he tried, and the way he stared blankly out of the window only highlighted the fact that he had absolutely no interest whatsoever. “We’ll all come and visit once you start up your new business.”
“Our business,” Ryan bit back. “I don’t care who invests what; money, time, it’s all the same to me. We work together or we don’t work at all. I’m doing this for us.”
Brandon turned to look at him, furrowing his brow in confusion. “You want us all to be equal partners, even if we don’t contribute the same amount of cash?”
“Yes. Partners being the operative word. Me and Emily, you and Harper, Finn and Effy, and Zak and whatever flavour of the month he wants to bring to the table.”
Zak folded his arms over his chest and laughed. Brandon nodded his head in affirmation and went back to staring out the window. And I took a long, deep breath. The fact that he’d acknowledged that there was an Effy and me made me tingle with pride. It felt good to be part of our team.
“You’re a good man, Hardy. Shit taste in music though,” Brandon joked, flicking the radio from Taylor Swift to fill the car with a bit of Shinedown and bobbing his head in time to the beat.
I held the arm of the car door as Ryan took a corner a little too fast and we entered the main street into Brinton Manor. My recent graffiti with the five skulls stood out like a beacon as we drove down that road, and I saw Ryan slap the side of Brandon’s leg and nod over to it. Neither one of them said a word, but Brandon turned in his seat to look at me. He knew that was my work, and judging by the way he narrowed his eyes, he knew there was more to this party and the location of it than I’d let on. I swallowed nervously and braced myself to answer his questions, but he didn?
?t speak, just turned back around and folded his arms. He’d got the disappointed father act down to a tee already and I hung my head, suddenly feeling ashamed.
We raced through the empty streets, all looking out the windows at the derelict buildings and dirty pavements of a broken town.
“Do you think people are actually gonna come here, to this party? This place is a right crap hole.” Zak screwed his nose up in disgust and sat back in his seat.
“They’ll show up anywhere if we tell them to. It’s gonna be fucking awesome,” Brandon replied, keeping his eyes on the road ahead of us.
The car started to bump us around as Ryan pulled off the road and into the uneven car park of the plastics factory. He parked up right by the entrance and shut the engine off, peering up and out of the front windscreen at the building ahead.
“It’s certainly big enough,” he said, then turned to face me. “Are we gonna have trouble filling this thing?”
“No. It looks big, but once you get inside, you’ll see how perfect it is. There’s a main entrance where we can set up all the security checks. That leads onto a larger hall where Zak can do his stuff. The rest of the rooms can be opened or cordoned off depending on how much of it we want to use. It’s pretty safe in there too. No dodgy flooring or anything like that.”
I had done my homework. This was the best that Brinton had to offer. There’d be a lot less work setting up this place than we’d done in previous venues.
“Let’s take a look then,” Brandon announced, opening his door and stepping out.
We all followed him, slamming our car doors shut and picking our way across the rubble. The front gate leading into the factory was held closed by a chain and a broken padlock. It’d been like that when I’d first come here myself, and I guessed that the iffy security was the work of the soldiers. They probably used it as a base for whatever the fuck it was they did when they weren’t screwing with me or torturing my uncle. It had crossed my mind that they might have been keeping him here, but I searched all over and they weren’t. This place was clean. Well, as clean as a forgotten rundown factory could be in this area.
Ryan entered the building first, and when he pushed the doors open, the birds that’d taken up residence inside started to flap around wildly. It wasn’t as damp in here as the waterworks we’d used previously, but there was still a musty, earthy smell about the place that made us cover our noses until we grew accustomed to it. The walls were sturdy enough and the opportunity to create my art here was one of the positives. I’d found another blank canvas, a new gallery to showcase my work. Every cloud and all that.
The lads nodded their approval and we wandered around checking windows were boarded up securely and that any fixtures weren’t a hazard. Then, when we entered the main hall, I heard them gasp and whistle.
“This is fucking amazing, Finn. You did good.” Ryan glanced up at the high glass ceiling that was surprisingly still intact and he spun in a circle, clearly in awe of the place.