Beastly Lights

FREYA

Monday morning arrived in a whirlwind, and despite all my better instincts, I found myself walking to Liam Henderson’s apartment building on the Upper East Side.

Near The Met, I weaved through the foot traffic of pedestrians going to their real jobs…ones that they hadn’t gotten during a drunken poker night.

I finally reached the address Liam had given.

As I put my hand on the cold, ornate knob to enter the building, I was bombarded by the overwhelming sense to run.

I didn’t want to be here.

And I was sure that the text he’d sent Mason was just part of some prolonged joke. He couldn’t actually be expecting me to show up.

“Miss?” someone said beside me, interrupting my thoughts and causing me to nearly jump out of my skin.

“Oh,” I gasped and turned to find the building’s doorman. “You scared me.”

“Sorry, miss.” He bowed. “Are you here to see someone?”

“Um…”

My brain screamed NO! loudly.

But unfortunately, my mouth wasn’t listening.

“I’m here to see Mr. Henderson, um…Liam? Liam Henderson,” I stuttered, not really sure how I should refer to him.

“I’m supposed to start working for him today.”

“You’re the new maid?” he asked, looking me up and down.

I could sense a hint of judgment. Or surprise.

“Yes,” I sighed.

“Mr. Henderson is on the top floor,” he continued. “He’s waiting for you.”

He is?

I clutched tighter to my tattered bag as I waited for the dreaded elevator.

I took in the space around me and realized that I was very out of place in my paint-splattered jeans and old band tee.

The opulent lobby was furnished with plush red chairs and chandeliers that must have cost a small fortune.

Or a large one.

Not to mention, my apartment building barely had a front door, let alone someone to man it.

Ding!

The elevator opened in front of me and I shuffled inside.

I stared at the glowing numbers as I was catapulted toward some unknown future.

Then, suddenly, I was there.

Level P.

For Penthouse.

Or maybe Prison.

The doors opened slowly, almost ominously, and I reluctantly took a step out into the small entryway.

There was a single green door in front of me.

“Now what?” I muttered.

Grudgingly, I knocked softly, secretly hoping that he wouldn’t hear me.

However, my hopes were dashed moments later when the door swung open.

I stepped back, startled, as my eyes tried to take him all in.

His thick blond hair was pushed back away from his forehead and he was dressed casually, in black sweatpants and a matching T-shirt.

Still, the clench in his chiseled jaw looked anything but relaxed.

His eyes bore into me with as much intensity as they did on the night we first met.

“You’re late,” he grunted before disappearing back inside the apartment.

I felt a smug grin spread across my face. “I know,” I replied with no hint of remorse in my tone.

I didn’t follow him inside. Instead, I remained firmly nailed to the carpet outside his apartment.

“Frey,” he shouted from somewhere inside.

“It’s Freya,” I yelled into his space, while still occupying neutral territory.

“I don’t care if it’s Mother Teresa. Get in here!” he growled.

I took a deep breath and reluctantly crossed the threshold.

Slowly, I made my way down a long, empty corridor, which finally opened out into a large living area.

Holy shit.

I stopped in my tracks.

His TV alone would have taken up my entire apartment.

There were low black leather couches starkly contrasting against the white walls.

But the view was the real showstopper.

On the other side of the glass was a perfect view of Central Park, which Liam’s apartment overlooked.

It was like nothing I had ever seen before. My feet moved me toward it involuntarily.

“Have you seen this?” I asked in awe as Liam appeared next to me.

“Yes. A bunch of concrete buildings covered in a thick layer of smog,” he deadpanned. “How magical.”

“Wanna steal Christmas too, Mr. Grinch?”

He ignored my comment and turned his back on me. “Can I show you the rest of the apartment now?”

“Sure.” I shrugged, giving the view one last look before following his steps down another hallway.

“Where’s the art?” I asked, frowning at all the barren space.

“Don’t need it,” he answered flatly.

“What about photos?” I suggested.

“Of who?” was all he said before falling silent.

The rest of the apartment tour was given in gestures.

The kitchen was a mixture of stainless steel and spotless white.

We walked down the hall past the office, which looked unused.

“There’s the guest room.” He motioned to a bedroom. “My room.” He gestured to the end of the hall.

We stopped outside one final door, just opposite the spare room.

“And this is your room,” he said, throwing the door open unceremoniously.

“My room?” I frowned, looking around the space. “Why would ~I~ need a room here?”

“Because you’re going to live here.”

“WHAT!?” I shouted as I turned from the room to look into his steady eyes.

LIAM

“I can’t live here! I have an apartment! ~A lease!~” Freya exclaimed.

“Your stuff should be here shortly,” I replied.

“My stuff!?”

“Your. Possessions. Are. On. Their. Way,” I explained, losing my patience.

I didn’t expect the girl to scream in delight at her new room, but I thought she’d be less pissed off.

“You can’t just move my stuff! I have furniture!”

“Really?” I challenged. “Because I only saw a mattress on the floor and a pile of clothes in the corner. Not even any food in the fridge.”

For having a brother with a job as financially stable as a lawyer, I couldn’t believe Freya had been living that way.

What kind of brother lets that happen?

Freya’s mouth dropped open. “You went into my apartment!? How did you even know where I live?”

“I got the address from Mason after poker game,” I explained. “I stopped by the next morning. You weren’t home so your landlord let me in.”

The place had been a dump. More a sad, dingy room covered in paint splatters than an apartment.

“That is such an invasion of privacy!” Freya yelled as I started walking back down the bare hallway toward the kitchen.

“If you’re going to be my maid, I need you to be here,” I lied.

The truth was that I’d never had a live-in maid before. The others had come in during the day and left before I was back from the studio.

But I just couldn’t let Freya stay in that shithole.

I grabbed a thick laminated notebook out of a kitchen drawer. “Here,” I said, tossing it onto the kitchen counter.

“What’s this?” She inspected the book, flipping the pages.

“A manual for how to clean and organize the apartment,” I said as I headed for the door and threw my coat on. “My last maid put it together.”

“Where are you going?” Freya demanded.

“Out,” I replied curtly.

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Just do your job, Freya,” I replied, exasperated. “It’s all laid out in the handbook.”

She glanced down at the book with a disgusted look before I turned and headed out the door.

I wasn’t due at the studio for another couple of hours, but with my new…guest? employee?…standing there glaring at me, I needed to clear my head.

FREYA

Liam disappeared through the green door.

What the hell just happened?

But I didn’t have much time to gather my thoughts, because a few moments later, two burly men came marching into the living room carrying armloads of my unimpressive belongings.

“We’re here to deliver some things for Mr. Henderson,” one of them explained. I walked over to him, afraid of how he was handling my easel.

“You have got to be shitting me,” I said.

They shared a confused look with one another before ignoring me entirely and placing things around the room.

“Wait, stop,” I protested. “I’m not staying here.”

I followed them around, picking up everything immediately after they placed it down.

“Miss, we were given our instructions, and we’ve already been paid,” the other man told me impatiently.

“Well, I’m sorry you wasted your time,” I said.

“If you have a problem, you’re going to need to take it up with Mr. Henderson.”

“I promise you, I will,” I growled, and they exited the apartment as quickly as they had entered it.

Once I was alone again, I looked at the sparse collection of belongings that made up my life, trying to figure out how I would get it back to my apartment.

But then a horrifying thought dawned on me…

I rustled through my bag, looking for my cell phone, and dialed my landlord—because suddenly I wasn’t so sure that I even had a landlord anymore.

When he answered the phone, my worst suspicions were confirmed.

“You already found a new tenant?” I asked in disbelief.

“Turnover is quick in this city. I rented it to the first person on the waiting list,” Mr. Peabody informed me with his usual croaky voice.

“Well, un-rent it. I’m not moving out.”

“Freya, you’ve been behind on your rent for months,” he said, “and Mr. Henderson offered to buy out the rest of your lease. You should consider yourself lucky. I was going to have to evict you.”

I can’t believe he did that without my permission…

“If you can pay rent in full for the next month,” Mr. Peabody began, “maybe we’d have a deal. But we both know that’s not going to happen.”

I hung up the phone and threw it into my lap.

I left my apartment no more than three hours ago, and I was suddenly homeless.

What exactly did I do to make Liam Henderson want to ruin my life?