“New girl,” says Duncan with a flash of teeth. “Jade Khanjara.” He pronounces it exactly right and oiled-smooth, like it’s natural on his lips.
“James Duncan,” I answer.
He laughs. His eyes flicker fast across my face. We’re at the doors, under the stone arch, and he stands just right so he can pretend he isn’t locking me into the corner on purpose.
“What’s your story?” he asks.
“Everyone already knows it,” I say. He’s dialing up his good-king charm, the same sheen he wore at his party, so crafted-perfect he looked like one of his plaster statues breathed to life. When Summer saw him she said, Damn, I can see why he’s their king, but Mads said, Don’t try it. Not even you. And then Jenny was pulling us hand-in-hand-in-hand-in-hand through the crowd, but I dragged back and kept my eyes on him because Summer was right: there was something in the way he was watching the whole party that said he ruled it all.
For a second his eyes met mine. For a second his teeth flashed white. Then his chin tipped down and he said something to the boy in his shadow, and the shadow-boy’s smile flashed bright, too.
“Piper doesn’t trust you,” he says now. Easy smile, easy stance, easy laugh. But it’s not easy at all. Up close, I can see all the whirring first-place effort underneath.
“I’ve noticed,” I say.
“She says I shouldn’t, either.”
I lean into the cage he’s built around me so the bars bend and strain. “I didn’t realize you took orders from Duffy’s girlfriend.”
He scoffs and then he gives me a little nod, the same way the boy Piper was fighting yesterday nodded when she got her final touch. He knows I’ve won the point. “Piper’s insecurities don’t matter to me,” says Duncan.
“Likewise.”
He leans one hand against the door: a third wall closing me in. “Mack’s losing his mind over you.”
I say, coy, “We’re a good match, don’t you think?”
“You and Mack?” He shrugs. When his shoulders settle back down, he’s the slightest bit closer than he was before. “Not bad. You and me? Better.”
I laugh. Flock-girl flattery. “You’re with Lilia.”
“There’s an expiration date on that,” he says, and I laugh again because he’s right for exactly the wrong reason.
“If Lilia’s your type, I’m not,” I tell him.
“Lilia’s everyone’s type.” His eyebrows edge up just enough to finish the sentence for him. “But you’re different. You’re not a St Andrew’s girl.”
“Not yet.”
“Not ever.” He shifts closer. “You’ll be good for Mack.”
“I know.”
He shows his marble-hard smile again. “You know a lot.”
I nod.
“You know what happened to Connor.”
He’s close enough now that I have to tip my chin back to look into his eyes. “I do.”
He waits for me to say more, but I don’t. Outside the stained glass, shadows flutter and breathe.
“I trusted him,” Duncan says, finally. Lying.
“That was a mistake.” I say it sweeter than sweet.
He grins. “Never a St Andrew’s girl.” Then, “He confessed, you know.”
I see them on the roof, circling closer to the edge in the blood-red sunset.
“He admitted everything. Maybe he thought I’d let him get away with it.”
He’s still lying.
“Of course it didn’t change what he did. Betrayal doesn’t get you anywhere around here.”
It’s a warning.
“Still—” And this time he makes it obvious when he leans closer. The play he’s been plotting since we walked out on his pack. “He died well, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” I hiss before I can stop myself.
“There it is,” he hisses back, so close I breathe in cold mint and aftershave. The dusky stained-glass light blows out to white—
God damn, she’s feisty—
I jerk away and my head hits the stone wall. I’m back in the chapel, back in the almost-dark, but Duncan still pushes too close. He leers victory all across his face.
“We’d be good together,” he says, his lips so close to mine it’s almost a kiss. “We’d be power. You’d like it.”
I flatten my hands against the stone. Cold and unfeeling and jagged. He hasn’t won. He won’t. “So would you,” I say, and I leave my murder-red lips parted and I don’t flinch. Not again.
His breath catches.
I pounce. One hand off the wall and onto his arm, silver skimming over the dark blue of his blazer. I say, clear and bright, “I’m with Mack.”
He grabs my arm. It takes everything in me not to scream. Not to fight. Not to kill him right here with his gold god watching.
“For now,” he says. “Until he finds out who you really are.”
I won’t ask him what he means. I won’t.
“I’m watching you, new girl,” he says. He smiles his practiced smile.
I smile mine back. His hand on my arm burns like a brand.
“You and me,” he says. “Soon.”
He walks out.
Revelations
I have to find Mack.
The bells in the tower over the chapel are ringing already, with Duncan barely gone, with me alone in the dusk breathing his scent and digging at the air instead of his skin. Eight long mournful tolls. I should be sitting down at my lab table in biology and crisscrossing my ankles and smiling jailbait-pretty at Dr. Farris in his horn-rimmed glasses.
I have to find Mack.
You and me, said Duncan. We’d be power, said Duncan. You’d like it.
Shut the bitch up, said Duncan. God damn, she’s feisty, said Duncan. You like it—
I yank the doors open and rush out. I see white and dead kings. I see my good long knife turning red.
I need him dead.
I need to find Mack.
I’m almost running now—clattering over the wood and under the stone, running for the humanities hall, no plan and no control and I need it back but first—
I need Mack.
I wing around the corner and there he is, with a classroom door swinging shut behind him. Empty-handed and so full of pain and fury it stops me dead in my tracks because—
until he finds out who you really are, said Duncan—
But he grabs my arms and I grab his and we spin into the wall and stumble into a cobwebbed prayer niche with two tapers flickering and a cracked Bible gathering dust.
We fall onto a red velvet kneeling bench, clinging to each other.
Mack says, “Jade.”
I breathe in.
His face flickers with something darker than I’ve ever seen in him. “I knew. I knew enough—”
I breathe out. The flames shiver.
He says, “Friday night—”
The walls crawl in close.
“Banks told me,” says Mack, and I see him there at Duncan’s house: Banks with the drink. Banks closing in. Banks washing out to a blank face and a dazzling smile and teeth I’ll break like glass. “Because Connor’s dead and I’m one of them now. I’m one of them—” And he shudders hard and deep. “He told me what they did. All of it.”