And he catches me watching.
His jaw gets tighter. “What’s your fucking deal?”
I glance at Mack next to me. Point back at me and my crucifix. “Me?”
“Yeah, you. Crazy bitch.”
I laugh.
Banks laughs.
Everybody laughs.
And Connor looks hard at me and says, “Fuck you,” and then he pushes a too-close flock-girl off of him and sneers at Banks. “You’re not so innocent, either.”
He cuts past him to the bags by the door. Everyone watches him now, but they’re laughing, because Banks is laughing and Duncan isn’t stopping them.
They have a boy to blame.
Connor digs through his bag and straightens back up. “Going to smoke on the roof,” he says. “You coming, Duff?”
Duffy looks sidelong at good-king Duncan. Duncan grins square teeth and vodka at Banks.
“Later,” says Duffy.
I don’t even realize I’m grabbing for Mack’s hand until I feel our fingers braid together. I hold tighter than I should, because it’s realer every second—
because Connor is alone now, peeled off from the pack—
because even if I can’t take down all of them at once, I can take down one lone wolf at a time—
—because Connor will be the first kill, and that’s exactly how it should be.
Connor’s eyes cut back toward me, but he looks at Mack instead. “Never trust a bitch,” he says. Then he’s gone.
A door slams upstairs, and Banks says, “So anyway, welcome to St Andrew’s, bitch.” He crosses back over to the rest of us, another bottle in his hand. Sits down heavy and takes a drink. Smiles wide and holds the bottle out to me—
and his smile is too bright—
and his charm is too true—
—and his voice claws and claws behind my eyes, pretty name instead of bitch.
I take the bottle. I raise it high and unshaking. “Crazy bitch,” I say. I drink too much too fast. My veins heat up.
Banks laughs, but I watch Duncan. He lets me wait just long enough that maybe, without the liquor, without Connor trapped up on the roof, I’d be nervous.
I’m not.
“To the crazy bitch,” says Duncan. He tips his drink toward me.
“To the crazy bitch!” they all chorus.
Duncan drinks.
We drink—all of us.
I’m one of them now.
When everyone settles back into everything, Banks slides over to where Connor was and leans in. “You saw those girls, Mack,” he says.
He nods.
“You know what I’m thinking,” says Banks, “I’m thinking Connor sent them.”
“Great theory, dumbass,” says Duffy. “Why would he bother?”
Banks laughs with all of them, but then he says, “Because Mack’s getting all the glory lately. Connor’s fucking with us, all of us, about—”
“Careful,” says Duncan, his fingers digging a little harder into Lilia’s shoulder.
Banks blinks. “Chill, Dartmouth.” But he grins when he says it, and Duncan lets him get away with it. “Connor’s messing with us, and he’s messing with Mack, because he knows Mack’s got his spot if he fucks up any more. Especially after—you know.” He lets the words hang, loaded down.
“Careful,” Duncan says again, colder.
But Banks nods anyway and says, not turning, “What do you think, Mack?”
Next to me, Mack hesitates. “Connor wouldn’t go that far.”
Banks drinks again and reaches over to scruff Mack’s hair. His arm is six inches from my face. Marked guilty with three long red scratches.
“God, golden boy,” says Banks. “You’re too fucking pure.”
“Seconded,” Piper chirps from Duffy’s lap. “Good thing he’s got the crazy bitch to corrupt him.”
I know Mack is turning red again without even looking. And then I look, and he is, and he looks back at me for long enough that Banks catches it and hoots at him.
So I blush, too. On purpose, just like Banks’s flock-girl, because I’m supposed to be a flock-girl too. Stupid and unseeing and ready to fall for him, for them, for anything.
“What did they say?” I ask Mack. So innocent I almost bleed white.
His eyes stay locked on mine. “They said Connor would fall,” he says to me. Only me.
Lilia says, a whole world away, “If Connor sent them, why would—”
“It wasn’t him,” Duncan cuts in.
I’m still looking at Mack. “Is that all they said?”
“We need to shut Connor up,” Banks says.
“Banks—” Duncan warns—
“Kidding.” Banks laughs. He’s the life and death of the party. Once Duncan is dead, he’ll be the one in control. Duffy will be nobody when he doesn’t have Duncan to lend him a little taste of power. A taste he’s allowed to have, because he could never pull off a mutiny.
But Banks—
Banks could turn them all against Duncan if he wanted. Friday night, that muddy half-second before his face changed and he took the last step in and slammed the door in Porter’s face and said fuck, Dunc, you know how to pick them—
if instead he said fuck, Dunc, let her go—
—everything would have been different.
And Mack—
—he could turn them all, too. Duncan sees it, I think, and so does Duffy: this too-pure boy, the one who won’t quite obey, is only on the outside because he’s the biggest threat of all to their fucked-up nailed-down order.
“You know what, I’m going to go talk to him,” says Mack.
“You kiss all the wrong asses,” Duffy says through Piper’s hair.
“Yeah, and you know all about ass-kissing, right, Duff?” Banks says. They howl at him, the whole pack.
But Mack gets up. He still has my hand. Flock-girl Jade isn’t supposed to let go, so I don’t. I follow him up the silver-steel stairs. The door at the top is all glass. All light, like staring heaven in the face.
Heaven or death.
Mack stops at the door and turns to me. “Connor texted me,” he says all at once. “Right before those girls disappeared. He said … he said, ‘She won’t.’”
I laugh, but I turn it light as air. “Does that mean something?”
He trusts me. He shouldn’t. “That’s what those girls said, too. ‘She won’t.’” He leans closer. “She won’t remember.’”
My hand tightens on his. “Who?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “Connor’s … you can’t trust him.”
I shouldn’t push it too far. I should let it play out. Be patient.
Should.
I say, “What does he have on Banks?” When I say his name another shred of static sloughs away and I see Banks there at Duncan’s house, cutting through the dance-floor crowd, closing in with a drink in his hand to where I stood all alone—
Mack checks over his shoulder, out to the roof. “Not just Banks. Dunc and Duff, too.”
“What is it?”
His lips get tight.
I laugh again. A disarming glittery laugh. “I won’t tell.”
Finally he says, “Dunc had a party Friday. Something happened.”