“You know Duncan killed Connor,” I say. Not watching her; not watching the guards or the dwindling leftover flock-girls. Watching the boys instead. Watching their teeth. I want Malcolm back so I can tempt him until he stops chewing at his lip, stops pressing his mouth tight, stops hiding the smile that will give him away if he’s the reason Banks never dazzled through the static. “You know Porter killed Duncan.”
“Yeah, and I know nobody was killing anybody until you came in with your smirk and your first-date fucking and started playing your games—”
“Piper,” says Mack, and he’s more the king than Duncan ever was. “Don’t say another word about her.”
She smiles through her fear, grim and gritting. And she leans close and says, “I think maybe you’re the guiltiest of all of us, new girl.”
The bell tolls from the chapel.
I whisper to her, soothing, “I didn’t do anything I shouldn’t have done.”
Piper hisses back, “Neither did I.”
She pushes past us and stalks into the commons. The guards and the starlings watch her go.
She’s all alone and she knows it. All alone with fate closing in.
Mack says, “Is Duffy really with Malcolm?”
I spin my crucifix. “I don’t know, but Piper does.”
“We need to find out,” he says, all edge. “We need to finish this.”
“We will,” I say, and I love him for it, and I love my coven for turning him into the hardened king he is. I step back until I feel the statue behind me. Her arms cradle me close. I pull Mack to me under her dead white eyes. “I’ll talk to her tonight. I’ll make her tell.”
“If she won’t,” he says, low, “maybe she’ll have to be next. To bring Duffy out.”
Behind me, the Virgin Mary’s head bows lower. Praying for lost Mack and the soul he’s shaded darker every day since he met me. I say, “We can’t be rash. They’re all watching.”
He says, “We’re running out of time.”
“Only if we’re careless,” I say. “I’ll talk to her tonight. Then we’ll know how to bring both of them down.”
He sighs. He says, “Soon.”
And I breathe it back to him: “Soon.”
Guilt
Patience wears us thin but doesn’t break us. I let the minutes slip through my fingers like sand. Let the rumors slide over my wings. Stare back when boys stare.
Let them talk.
I want them to know. But not until we’ve done everything we swore we’d do.
I wait until the day is almost over. Until the light we saw break outside the old theatre has died again and I’m safe in the dark. Until I’ve left Mack at the marina wrapped in promises.
Until I’ve made my plan for Piper.
I get ready at home, alone, in my room. My parents are out and the house looms dark and silent. I take the folded paper out of my pillowcase and smooth it flat on the vanity. Four ragged holes cut through the page.
I’m as ready as Mack is. Tonight, Piper will break. She’ll tell me where Duffy is hiding. She’ll tell me enough that by midnight I’ll be back home and planning his last breath and hers.
She’ll tell me the truth: Banks, or Malcolm. So at last I can rip the memory free—
—and then rip it apart with my bare hands.
Tonight I dress in white.
Mads had my fencing things ready for me when I drove up this evening, back from Mack’s. She met me at the gate and it slid open between us, striping black between our eyes. She held out the heavy white suit and the mesh mask and the sabre. I took them.
She said, “You’re ready?”
I said, “Yes.”
The gate slid closed and I drove home to dress for battle.
My armor waits on the bed while I comb my hair and fix my makeup. A ritual, the same as getting ready for a party. The same as getting ready for a murder. Watching myself, not looking away, until I know exactly who I am.
I take off my robe. My skin is smooth. The bruises are only shadows now.
The boys are nothing.
I fold the paper and put it away again.
I walk into my closet, to the very back of the very last row, and dig behind my long red homecoming gown. It’s exactly where I left it—the dress I wore to the party at Duncan’s house. Short and white and shining. A bad girl pretending to be good. A bitch and a siren and a party-crasher.
Sweet sixteen.
It’s washed clean, but the hem is torn and three rows of sequins hang dangling by a thread. They gleam bright anyway.
I put on the dress. It slides cold and heavy over my skin.
The girl in the mirror is defiant. She is merciless.
She is revenge.
My coven texts me from the secret number: Come to the combat room, dressed to fight. Or you’re next.
I fold the skirt close around my waist and put on my armor. The dress scratches when I tuck it underneath the heavy cloth, but I don’t care. When I’m ready I hold my mask in one hand and my sabre in the other. My face is carved from stone.
I drive to school under the high streetlights with the windows down and my sabre and mask on the seat next to me. I don’t think anything at all. Not about the boys. Not about that night. Not about their blood.
Tonight I’m only the queen.
I park in the darkest corner of the lot, far away from everything. The school shines bright. The spotlights pierce through the flowers and cast the stone rough and dangerous. Piper’s car is already here.
I walk the very edge of the lot, hidden in the shadows. Mask in one hand and sword in the other. My footsteps are cold and even. The fields and the court are shrouded tight in darkness, but I don’t need light. As soon as I pass the bleachers I can see a dim yellow glow at the window of the combat room.
She’s here.
I don’t pause outside the door. I push it open and walk in.
Piper stands ready in the middle of her favorite piste—the one farthest from the door. Her mask is already on.
I feel the thrill rising up in me again. I won’t kill tonight, but I’ll break her apart anyway. Turn her and her stupid second-rate boy against each other so when it’s time to kill again, they’ll both know they brought it on themselves.
They’re weak. Even Piper, standing strong on the strip with her weapon in her hand.
“Jade,” she says. I can hear the sneer in her voice. “I should’ve known.”
“Did they call you here, too?” I ask.
“‘They,’” she mocks. She takes a wired-tight step forward. “If there’s a ‘they’ at all.”
I’m on the piste now, walking straight toward her. Under my jacket, the sequins scratch at my skin like new feathers pricking free. “What do you mean?” I ask her, so innocent I know she’ll hate me for it.
And she says, “It’s you.”
I stare through her silver mask and into her eyes.
“I don’t know what you did at your old school, but you didn’t just fuck a teacher,” she says. “If you were even in school, and not some juvy psych-ward prison.”
I say, “Interesting story.”
Her hand shifts on the hilt of her weapon. She’s ready to fight. She wants to fight. “You’re a twisted bitch, and not just the way Banks talked about you when he wanted to fuck you for it.”