She waits until they’re ten steps toward the gate—until Lilia looks over her shoulder and says, “Piper? You’re with me.”
And Piper levels me a hard amber stare. “You know I am.”
She wings up next to Lilia. Their elbows link. The breeze slices across the field and swirls their hair together, blond on blonder, and the sun glints off Piper’s blade. They glow, all of them, brighter than they should.
I watch them go—
—and I wait for Mack.
But first it’s my coven’s turn. Everything has to happen exactly the way I want it.
I text them, It’s time.
Then I climb the bleachers, to the highest row on the right-hand side, nothing behind me and nothing below. I don’t see Jenny or Summer or Mads, but I’m not supposed to. Not yet. And I know they’re exactly where I told them to be, waiting.
The moment bleeds out: golden light playing across the field and shadows growing on the lawn. The air clings close. The last St Andrew’s Preppers are gone and I’m alone.
I slip Connor’s phone out of my purse.
Duncan and Duffy are the first boys out of the locker room, passing almost underneath me, so close I could drop my long knife straight down and sink it into their shoulders. Connor trails behind them, and then Porter.
I find Banks’s texts on Connor’s phone, Bank$ with a dollar sign. The last message Connor sent was Saturday noon, last nite was wild, shoulda got her fukkin number, and Banks wrote back the second he got it: Keep your mouth shut or I tell Dunc. And Connor again: chill.
I text Banks—Connor texts Banks—lost the slut’s earring in the locker room.
The reply pops up with no pause: You better be joking.
I text back, nah.
Banks says, You’re so close to dead.
I say, you too if you don’t find it.
He says, Fuck you.
I say, no thx.
He says, Dunc’s gonna give you hell.
I say, worth it.
And then I scroll until I find Mack further down Connor’s messages. I tell him, show this to banks.
I send the same picture Connor sent the second-string boy: his trophied tie. One text to knot Mack together with the wolves before they all fall apart. One picture to crack Connor’s secrets open.
The screen goes black.
Banks fires back, like clockwork: FUCK you, you’ll pay.
Exactly as furious as I want him to be with boasting shameless Connor.
Malcolm and his second-rank pack walk out, and the last stragglers. Banks and Mack are the only boys left in the locker room.
A minute passes and then another. Past the front lawn, a siren shrills.
Then Mack walks out with Banks. Their heads are conspiracy-close but I catch Banks’s words, high and tight: “—when Dunc gets him alone—”
Mack cuts him off: “I’ll talk to him.”
And Banks laughs, and it echoes under the bleachers. “You don’t know shit.”
They’re almost to the corner now. I set Connor’s phone down and text the coven on mine: Now.
And then they appear, all three of them, almost out of nowhere, and stand three-in-a-row across the path to the parking lot. They wear the same St Andrew’s colors they wore when they hid in plain sight all through the game: Jenny in her blue crop top, Summer in silver, Mads in crisp white.
The same, except for the masks. White satin and jeweled and matching, left over from the party Summer threw last New Year’s Eve. Turning my coven as faceless as the dazzle-smiled boy.
They stand unmoving. In the almost-sunset light their shadows are long and wicked.
Banks stops hard.
They say it together, Jenny and Summer and Mads, their voices floating up to me—
Mack, their time is up
—and Banks takes a step back and says, “What is this shit?”
They speak again:
Mack, your time is here
—and the boys look at each other, and Banks remembers who he’s supposed to be. He bites off a laugh, hard and mocking. But he’s nervous: I can see it wavering on the air like summer heat. “Somebody’s fucking with you,” he tells Mack. “Come on, let’s—”
“Connor will fall,” says Jenny.
“You’ll take his place,” says Summer.
“And then you’ll take Duncan’s,” says Mads.
Banks starts in on another dig, but Mack takes a step forward, shoulders strong and straight. “Who sent you?”
“To the nights we won’t remember,” says Jenny: the words from that Friday-night picture.
“No,” says Summer. “They will—”
And Mads says, burning cold: “She won’t.”
Banks stops laughing.
“Who sent you?” Mack asks again. “Are you—”
“Get the hell out,” says Banks. “Or—”
Tires squeal and Duncan’s white Escalade slams to a stop at the gate and Duffy yells, “Banks, we’re leaving your ass!”
Banks’s head jerks up and he hisses out, “Watch your backs, you and whoever sent you.” And he shoves past them and jogs for the car. The back door swings open for him and he slides in and slams it hard and yells, “Fuck that shit, Mack!”
They’re gone.
I pick up Connor’s phone again and text Mack:
she won’t.
He looks over his shoulder, just the way he’s supposed to. Looking for Connor, even though he knows Connor is gone. Looking for whoever heard the coven’s coiling words.
I stand up, here at the top of the bleachers, and the sun sets me on fire.
My coven disappears as spirit-smooth as they came in, melting into the shadows while Mack stares up at me; while I take each step down the bleachers with the kind of watch-me walk he couldn’t look away from even if he wanted to. While he puts one hand up to shade his eyes even though I’m the one looking straight into the sun.
He doesn’t break the stare and neither do I until I get to the bottom of the steps and the wall at the edge of the bleachers blocks him out. And then I take one spun-out second to let the adrenaline soak in and stay. Let the blood rush hard under my skin but keep the smile airbrush-smooth on my face.
I turn the corner and there he is, closer than before, waiting for me. Golden Mack. Our eyes lock—
My breath catches in my throat.
I don’t fall for boys. Not at first sight, not dancing close, not ever. I don’t believe in love or meant-for-each-other or chemistry, whatever that means, when Summer talks about the look some oily-eyed thirty-year-old is giving her from across the club. It’s called lust, that’s literally it, Jenny told her, two days before the football player drove over the cliff, and I said, exactly, and it’s all you, because it was and she knew it. We all know it, my coven and me, and every girl who’s ever walked into a room and made every head turn: how to make boys think we want them, so then they want us, too. How to make them do anything we say.
It’s power.
And we decide it, us girls, if we know anything about anything.
I decide who wants me. And I’d never be weak enough to want them back. Never be weak enough to want them for anything more than what they can get me. The night I want. Or the answers to the test I didn’t study for because I was running wild with my coven instead. Or the key to ruining all the boys who need ruining.