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Boyd was fourteen when he started work at the Hale House. It had just been rebuilt because of a fire and Boyd had lied on his application, saying he was eighteen and had two years of experience in the service industry.
Derek had looked at him and it was clear to both of them that Boyd wasn’t a very good liar. It was also clear that Boyd would be one of the few applicants and the only one with a clean record, mainly because of his youth. So Derek had hired him as a junior groundskeeper, and since Boyd was paid in cash until he actually turned sixteen, he suspected it was off the books.
It isn’t until later that Boyd realized what sort of company the Hales kept. In the beginning though, he could only bask in the safety his job brought him. He could pay the water bill and buy some new clothes for Alicia. Their mom worked during the day at a minimum wage job and never came home at night.
The truth was that the Hale name was synonymous with death. People looked at the tragedy that happened to their family and many people who disappeared after and knew that making a deal with the Hales was to get in bed with death. But for many years, Derek and Peter provided for Boyd and his sister giving them a life outside of the poverty they knew. In many ways, that is why Boyd felt so loyal to the Hales.
Loyalty made it easier for Boyd to deny certain truths.
_
The first time Boyd noticed Stiles, he was gawking in the doorway, a sure sign he’d never been to Hale House before. Scott had stood next to him, peering around impressed but in more control of his features. Boyd had seen Scott murmur something to Stiles, face stern, but Stiles had laughed and sent him on his way to his meeting with Derek.
Boyd had realized that they were the new investors: young nerds from a start-up gaming company that had had some recent monetary success. Derek had sent Isaac to do recon on the two, so Boyd knew the one meeting with him was business relations manager, Scott, and the one still lingering by the door like the new kid at his first day of school was Stiles, the back-end developer whose real name was too complicated to be uttered. Boyd was under instructions to keep Stiles entertained. He was under the impression that Stiles had annoyed Derek, which really wasn’t that hard, and had as result gotten uninvited to the meeting. Though Derek was suave enough to pretend it was really so Stiles could get a sense of what Hale’s clubhouse had to offer.
Stiles finally spotted the bar and slouched over, obviously overwhelmed by the good-looking clientele who frequent the House. Boyd continued serving up requests, slowly making his way towards the kid to get his order if necessary. There was nothing better than underage drinking to encourage more investments.
As he served up bottom-shelf tequila to a couple of entitled kids who didn’t know the good stuff, he spotted Erica tossing a grin at Stiles, who returned an awkward wave in response. Boyd leaned against the bar.
“That’s Erica,” he told the kid, choosing not to mention that he and Erica were practically living together. If Stiles got some kicks hanging around Erica hoping for a date that just worked better for the establishment.
Stiles jumped and turned to look up at Boyd.
“Ughh,” he uttered instead of the introduction Boyd expected, “Is no one in this club even remotely average looking?”
Boyd was a little flattered but he still took advantage of the opening Stiles left him and gave Stiles a pointed look.
“I’m hurt,” Stiles responded with a roll of his eyes. “I mean I can actually see the remnants of my self-esteem crawl away.” He turned and waved at his imaginary confidence fleeing.
Boyd wondered if he was one of those people who thought they were hilarious.
“I’m Stiles,” Stiles offered, clearly awkward under Boyd’s stare.
“Boyd,” Boyd responded, not offering anything else to prolonged the conversation. Stiles hadn’t even ordered a drink and was unlikely to have someone else order for him. A tip was definitely not coming Boyd’s way.
Stiles looked around the room, clearly taking in all the young money and when his gazed stopped on one person, Boyd almost groaned aloud. Stiles was an open book and his appreciative gaze clued Boyd into his exactly how things were going to be in the future. And a look at Peter told him he knew it too.
Boyd tried to distance himself before Stiles asked him the inevitable, but he was still within distance to hear Stiles ask distractedly, “Who’s the guy in the corner?”
“Peter Hale,” Boyd answered reluctantly. When Stiles didn’t ask any more questions he added bluntly, “You going to order a drink?”
“No,” Stiles said wistfully, completely under Peter’s lure, “Scott doesn’t let me drink.”
“Scott?” Boyd asked. What did Scott have to do with anything.
“I hope Scott’s not a boyfriend,” Peter slid onto the bar seat next to Stiles. Stiles looked at him as if Peter were the one to have caught the bait.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” he said, in a way that Boyd thought was meant to be seductive.
“Yes,” Peter said, playing along, “I want to know.” The look on Stiles face was familiar; Boyd had seen it on many of the young beaus who frequented Hale House and were snatched up by its older clients.
“Well if you aren’t ordering do mind giving up your seat to someone else,” Boyd said, hoping to destroy the mood. Peter threw him a sharp look but Stiles kept staring at Peter unaffected. The boy was a lost cause. Boyd ignored him, appealing to Peter directly. “Peter, you know Derek doesn’t like it when you play with investors.”
Peter rolled his eyes. “ I’ll remember not to maul our new members. Although, Stiles isn’t a business man, are you Stiles?”
“Why can’t you maul me?” Stiles asked, quite pathetically and Boyd walked away in disgust. He didn’t think he could stomach much more of that encounter.
Boyd moved to the other end of the bar where Erica had been watching the proceedings with open amusement.
“Lost another one did you?” she asked him, glancing at him with wide eyes. He loved those eyes.
“I don’t know how Derek expects me to keep an eye on things when he just lets Peter roam around like a lion among a pack of deer.”
“Lions eat antelopes, not deer,” Lydia said from besides Erica, without looking up from her phone. She was probably negotiating a hook-up with a boytoy.
“Fine, like a wolf,” Boyd replied, slightly annoyed. Lydia and Erica were missing the larger picture. “I am going to have to watch in slow motion as Peter the wolf devours Stiles the deer and then leaves Derek to mop up the blood.”
“Oh baby,” Erica stood and leaned over the bar to give him a hug. Boyd liked the feel of her breast against his chest. “Don’t you know you’re the one going to be cleaning things up?”
Boyd broke out of her grip as she and Lydia dissolved into laughter. She was right and that fact made him feel sicker.
“Hmm,” Lydia said looking past him, “maybe you’ll be lucky this time. Looks like Peter’s passed on this meal.”
Boyd turned to watch, looking not at Peter leaving but Stiles’ expression, and grunted unimpressed. “Even wolves can play with their food,” he told her.
The next few times Stiles visited, Boyd observed their interaction unable to ignore it. He decided his metaphor was wrong.
Stiles and Peter danced around each other simultaneously giving each other space from across the room while suffocating each other with sly glances.
Boyd upgraded Stiles from a deer to a fox, full of playful intent. It would all be entertaining if Boyd didn’t know how it would end.
Stiles was a fox but even foxes can end up between the wolf’s jaws.
_
“I am coming home,” Alicia had told him one day. She was at Berkeley then but with their mother’s deteriorating health and Boyd’s inability to take care of both her and the bills, Alicia had understood that another semester there could mean another year of trying to burrow the family out of debt and bad credit.
When Boyd looked back, he thought that if he had been a good person he would have told her to stay. But he had been practical. Alicia would transfer to the local college, small but still an accredited four-year university. The transfer would not have been so terrible a move for her to make.
It had meant that she would spend one semester at home waiting for her transfer to be approved. Most of that time had been spent with Boyd at the Hale House.
If Boyd were to be honest, it had been a relief to have his sister back. He loved his mother but the responsibilities he had to take on in his youth strained their relationship. The only thing they could agree on was ensuring Alicia’s happiness.
Boyd had been lonely and wanted his little sister to be around. He hadn’t realize that need had been at the expense of her safety.
It started off innocuous enough; not being an actual worker at Hale House, she had had the freedom to hang out with the clientele. It’d made Boyd uneasy, knowing the things the youth of the Hale House did there.
“I don’t like you hanging out with this crowd,” he had told her whenever he walked her back to their house.
Alicia had smiled and looped her arm through his. “Well, you could get me a job there. Then I would be too busy to get high or have sex in public,” Alicia had told him.
“You can’t work there,” Boyd sighed. It had been one of the most consistent request she’d made since being in the Hale House. “Its not safe. I don’t want you seeing things.”
“I see everything everyday,” Alicia had always argued. “ What else is there not to see?”
How could Boy have explain the darkness that came with the Hales? Drugs and sex were only a part. Uglier things happen that Boyd liked to ignore but knew still existed. People had gone missing.
“Alicia, just listen to me,” He’d muttered. He’d never yelled at her.
“Alright,” she’d told him, “but maybe I’ll start talking to those businessmen, make a connection so I have somewhere to work after graduation.” That had sounded so much more reasonable.
“Of course. Make those connections and one day you can start making the big bucks so I can retire early.”
“I’m not sharing my money!” Alicia would yelled at him and that had been the end of the conversation.
Boyd had not expected the results of that request to come to true one day but eventually his sister’s search for a mentor had led her to Kali.
“She helps young girls like me get started in the industry,” Alicia had told him while he fulfilled drinks. Boyd had listened but he’d been so busy. It didn’t occur to him ask what industry.
Eventually, Kali started to take his sister on trips, little outings during the day where his sister would come back and show him an outfit Kali had bought her or a new haircut. He didn’t like his sister accepting the gifts but who was he to stop her? If Kali took Alicia under her arm, maybe Alicia could start a life away from the poverty they’d inherited.
It wasn’t long after when Alicia started coming in not as his sister but as young woman meeting with prospective mentors. She’d meet with a variety of people, all part of the older crowd. Boyd kept an eye on her, received some of her smiles with a nod, but he was increasingly aware of the time she spent out in the world and not with him.
“Okay, but what about college?” Boyd finally asked her one day, “Aren’t you starting your semester soon?”
“I’m going in part-time. Just until I can get into the swing of things. Hopefully, I will have left this internship with some contacts and I can use them after I graduate,” Alicia seemed so confident. He barely recognized the girl he’d walked home with those nights before.
“Okay,” he told her, “But be careful.” He would always give her a kiss on her forehead when he sensed she was leaving.
“I will, Vernon.” She’d smiled and joined Kali and some others as they left.
At the door, she’d paused to look at him and Boyd, thinking she’d wait for his wave, had served up a drink. But she was gone when he looked again.
That was the last time he saw her.
Hours later his mother called him on the work phone.
“Mom, I’m working-”
“Where is Alicia?” his mother had been hysterical.
“What do you mean- Mom, she’s probably just out with some friends,”
“Her clothes are gone. Where is she Vernon? You were suppose to be watching her.” Boyd had gone cold. His mother continued to scream incoherently, blaming him with obscenities but Boyd hung up.
He called Derek when the number his sister had given him for Kali didn’t work.
_
Boyd kept walking in on Stiles and Peter. Not always with each other but enough that he gets that they are together, in whatever sense that word could apply to their relationship.
The first time was when Peter had Stiles bent over the table in the conference room. Boyd had been listening to Erica’s new mix on soundcloud and headed there only to be sure that everything was set up for the next day’s early morning meeting.
He hadn’t heard their moaning and so got a full, unexpected view of Peter’s muscled ass as he thrusted into Stiles, who clung unsuccessfully to the table.
When he got to the bar after, Erica saw the look on his face. “Is it the beat or the hook?” She asked, interrupting the problem to be her track.
Boyd shook his head. “The wolf has cornered the deer,” he told her cryptically. Erica looked confused and he couldn’t help but add, “Over a table in the conference room.”
“Good for Stiles,” Lydia said turning from another conversation. Boyd was starting to understand that somehow she and Erica had bonded, probably since Lydia had been thrown out of her social group after suffering a public hallucination. (Boyd could never understood the disdain other people had when they themselves had been caught by him running naked around the House).
Erica made face of understanding.
“Poor baby,” She said, patting Boyd’s hand gently. Boyd rolled his eyes.
“I really wish they wouldn’t,” he told her disgusted.
“I mean it must suck to walk in on them but I’m sure if you mention to Peter… or maybe Derek, they’ll find a couch or a corner like everyone else.”
“I wish they wouldn’t at all,” Boyd clarified. Erica frowned at him but it was Lydia who voiced her concern.
“Why do you care at all anyway?”
Boyd looked at her then turned away trying to dismiss her inquiry. “I don’t,” he said, careful to keep his voice expressionless. Lydia scoffed unbelievingly but left at Erica’s glance.
Erica doesn’t saying anything in her absence, choosing only to look at him. After all these years, Boyd liked to believe it was because she knows him.
_
Boyd had gotten a text from Derek the night Alicia had left telling him to come to the Beacon Reserve.
He remembered being surprised and a little fearful. The Reserve was where the Hales did their off the books business.
Boyd knew the clearing that Derek and Peter would be in and found them there standing next to a tree. Somebody was attached to it, hidden in the shadows.
“Your sister was doing business with Kali,” Derek had said.
Boyd looked between them but the only thing he could see was how tired Derek looked. Almost to the point of sadness. Peter looked unconcerned, a look he adopted when there was blood to be spilled.
“Yeah,” Boyd had replied uneasily, “ Look I didn’t know that would be a problem--,”
“Kali was our escort service liaison,” Peter interrupted him. He threw something at Boyd then stalked off towards the figure tied to the tree. Derek stayed and frowned at the things that lay at Boyd’s feet.
Pictures. Boyd crouched to pick it up and froze as he finally took in what he was looking at. He could recognize the outline of her face but everything else was wrong. He had felt sick.
“How…,” Boyd remembered the shaking, the gorge that rose in his throat making him almost incapable of saying anything. “ Where is Alicia?” He’d finally managed to get out. She was the only thing that matter.
“Kali is known for taking her workers abroad,” Derek had answered. “She’s gone,” he’d added with enough certainty that Boyd knew it was true. Derek had lost enough family not to lie about this.
“But we got you this in recompence,” Peter had mentioned, too at ease with the situation. When Boyd had looked towards him, he had found himself moved towards him without consciously deciding to as well. Stopping mere feet from the tree, Boyd had recognized the man, one of the many business clientele who had been introducing themselves to his sister. Blood had been plastered to the side of his face, signs of a previous beating.
“This is Ennis,” Peter had said as if he were making introductions between two of his oldest friends. “He’s Kali’s number one customer. He was the one that told her he wanted your sister, paying her to get her for him.”
Peter had handed Boyd a metal bat then. Boyd thought that emotions would come slow in moments like these. But maybe he had known. Maybe he was already being eaten by his guilt. He took the bat, allowing his anger to wash through him.
“Boyd,” Derek had said behind him. Boyd didn’t turn to look, instead taking in the man who had taken his sister from him. “ Kali is persuasive but she doesn’t steal girls. Your sister had to have agreed to this.”
Boyd had been surprised at the fury that washed through him at those words. How could Derek say that to him? Alicia was innocent, she was to young to understand any of the dark things that had been offered to her. How easy it would have been for Kali to get into her head, show her that dark world that he himself had been witnessed too. The Hale House was full of the rich and beautiful and it was not immediately obvious that they were all wicked as well. How could Alicia had known this? She couldn’t.
But Boyd had known and he hadn’t protected her from it. When Boyd heard Derek move away, distancing himself from what was about to happen he wanted to go with him. But Boyd understood that if he did, he would have only his culpability to face in the days ahead.
He wasn’t ready for that.
“If you want to be merciful, aim for the head and swing hard.” Peter told him standing behind him, a wolf in the shadows. Boyd remembers how grateful he’d felt, still feels to Peter for staying with him. Peter had stood with him as he battled his demons.
When Boyd had walked away from that clearing, Derek had been waiting for him. He’d driven Boyd back to the Hale House and showed him a room with a bed in it, knowing that Boyd could never go home, look his mother in the face.
It would be days after when Boyd would remember that he let the bat fall from his cramped hands. Where had it gone? he’d wonder. Had they taken it with them? Or was it still in the Reserve, buried under dead leaves and the decomposing body of a monster?
But all of that worry would be buried under his grief. Alicia was gone, and any place he had called home had gone with her.
_
“I’m not even sure he’s legal,” Boyd finally brought it up one day. It was a testament to his relationship with Derek that he knew who Boyd was talking about without Boyd mentioning Stiles’ name directly. Boyd was also reassured that he wasn’t the only one worried.
“He’s legal,” Derek finally, told him. He opened his mouth but then closed it. What was there to say really? It was the same shit. They would watch it happen; old men enjoying youthful company. But it was different. This was Peter. They knew Peter. They could control him.
Boyd looked at Derek for a second longer. “I need a raise.”
Derek nodded and Boyd goes back to bar. They could only live with themselves if they could pretend.
Boyd received a postcard that day. It was stamped from France. It said simply, “It was my choice.”
Boyd broke a lamp in response and cut his hand pick up the shards.
The next afternoon, he encountered Stiles getting into Peter’s Lamborghini. He clenched his hands and his wound reopened, leaking on to the ground.
Peter looked at him as if he scented the blood in the air. They locked gazes for a minute and then they both had moved on as if nothing had happened.
Life went on, carnage and all.
_
Lately, when Stiles comes into the bar, Boyd just pointed him to Peter. He tried not to think about their relationship too hard. Certainly stopped himself from thinking about in context of Alicia.
But on the days when he had time to stop to consider it, Boyd decided that Peter could be a wolf.
But if he turned into a monster, Boyd would be there to take care of him.