Free This Savage Song by Victoria Schwab Page B

bathroom. Most kept their distance, went quiet when she passed, but a few took a different tactic.
    â€œI love your hair.”
    â€œYou have great skin.”
    â€œYour nails are amazing. Is that iron ?”
    Kate had even less patience for the would-be minions than the Charlottes. She had seen people grovel at her father’s feet, try to plead and con and worm their way into his graces. He told her once that it was whyhe preferred monsters to men. Monsters were base, disgusting things, but they had little interest and less talent when it came to gaining favor or telling lies. They were hungry, but that hunger had nothing to do with ambition.
    â€œI never have to wonder what they want ,” he’d said. “I already know.”
    Kate had always hated monsters, but as half the school steered clear and the other half tried to make advances, she began to see the appeal. It was exhausting, and she was relieved when the last bell finally rang.
    â€œLook,” she said to Marcus when she reached the black sedan. “Not expelled.”
    â€œIt’s a miracle,” deadpanned the driver, holding open her door.
    Shielded by the tinted windows, she finally let the cold smile slide from her face as the car pulled away from Colton and headed home.
    Home , that was a word that took some getting used to.
    The Harkers lived on the top floor of what was once the Allsway Building and was now known ostentatiously as Harker Hall, since her father owned it from sidewalk to spire. Marcus stayed with the car, while two men in dark suits held open the glass doors and ushered Kate inside. Classical music wafted through the air likeperfume, fine in small doses, but quickly becoming noxious. The place itself was decadent: the lobby vaulted overhead, the floor a stretch of dark marble, the walls white stone with gold trim, and the ceilings awash with crystal chandeliers.
    Kate had read a sci-fi novel once about a shimmering future city where everything was glamorous on the outside but rotten to the core. Like a bad apple. She sometimes wondered if her dad had read it, too (if so, he’d obviously never read to the end).
    A dark suit fell in step behind her as she crossed the lobby, which was brimming with men and women in lush attire, many obviously hoping for an audience with Harker. One—a gorgeous woman in a cream-colored coat, tried to slip an envelope of cash into Kate’s hand, but she never made it past the suit. (Which was too bad. Kate might have taken the bribe. Not that it would have made it to her father.) Instead she kept her eyes ahead until she reached the golden elevator. Only then did she turn, survey the room, and offer the edge of a smile.
    â€œPeople are users. It’s a universal truth. Use them, or they’ll use you.”
    Another line from Callum Harker’s manual for staying on top.
    And Callum Harker had been on top, or at least on his way up, for a very long time. He was a man goodat making three things: friends, enemies, and money (most of it illegal). Long before the Phenomenon and the chaos, before the territory wars and the truce, he was already becoming a kind of king. Not on the surface, no, that title belonged to the Flynns, but all cities were icebergs, the real power underneath, and even in those days Harker had half of V-City in his pocket. So when the shadows started growing teeth, when the neighboring territories shut the borders, when panic drove people out of the city and then the people outside the city drove them back, when everyone was terrified, Harker was there.
    He had the vision—had always had the vision—and then suddenly he had the monsters, too. And it seemed so simple: go with Flynn and live in fear, or go with Harker and pay for safety.
    And it turned out, people were willing to pay a lot .
    The Harker penthouse was minimalist and sleek: more marble and glass, interrupted by dark wood and steel. There were no servants up here. No suits.