She says talked, not talks. She knows he’s dead as well as I do. But everyone knows, even if they wouldn’t say it out loud like she would.
“You’re twisted for real,” she says. “Like, god-complex twisted. Sadistic-twisted. You came in here and you saw what they did to Connor and you thought, here are some people I can play some good fucking mind games with.”
She’s all intensity. She wants her moment.
I slash it apart with a laugh straight out of a country-club dinner party. All silver and gold and breathy handmade cheer. I say, “Amazing. You’re twice as unhinged as your boyfriend.”
She shifts her weight back onto her heels. “Whatever,” she says. “Maybe I’m not right, but I’m close. You’re doing this. You’re playing us all against each other and it’s working so well you’re almost the only one left. You and your precious Mack.”
I step across the line so we’re toe to toe. “It’s not my fault you chained yourself to the weakest boy at St Andrew’s.”
She spins away. “Fuck you.”
And I say, “Likewise.”
She says, “There were never any girls in masks. You got Mack and Banks to make it up.”
“If you say so.”
“It’s been you this whole time. Texting us and laughing in our faces.”
“If you say so.”
She turns back to me. “You’re going down for this. Connor and Duncan and Banks, too. Their blood is on your hands even if you never picked up a knife.”
We’re so close my nose almost touches her mask. I whisper straight into the screen, “Is it on my hands, or theirs?”
We stay frozen. Deadlocked and deadly.
Then our phones buzz, mine in my hand and hers along the back wall below the heavy military swords. She springs away and darts for hers and I check mine, careless.
It’s the coven: En garde.
“Or maybe it wasn’t me,” I murmur.
But she steps back onto the strip and says, “They want us to fight.”
Now it’s my turn to mock her: “‘They’?”
“Whatever,” she says. “Maybe it’s Mack. Maybe it’s your bitch from the psych ward.”
Our phones buzz again: Prête.
I slide my mask into place. She turns silver and shining behind the woven metal.
“I’ll win,” she says.
I step back to my line and bring my weapon up.
Our phones buzz one last time. Piper reads the message out loud: “Allez.”
Her eyes spark bright behind her mask.
We let our phones fall to the side of the piste.
I pounce first, but she’s ready. She throws a lightning-quick skyhook and her sabre scrapes my waist just before my attack lands. She yells loud the way she did the day I watched her practice. Spins away from me with her chin thrown high.
She’s a better fencer, but I’m a better fighter. Tonight, the points that count won’t be won with sabres.
We step back to the line.
“You could give up now,” says Piper. She’s confidence and flash.
“So could you.”
“I’ll win,” she says again.
“Like Duffy won?”
“God, shut up,” she snarls. She lunges before I’m ready. I parry but she presses forward and then she yells again. There are no lights or judges to keep her honest. I let her gloat.
“They’re texting Mack, too,” I say. “The girls you think don’t exist. So I care because maybe they’re you.”
She laughs. I attack. I score and she shouts and I laugh back at her and say, “My point. You know it was.”
“Fine,” she says with her little concession-nod. Then, “We’re over. Duff and me.”
“Do you think that’s smart?” I say. I keep my weapon pointed at the floor. Keep Piper caged until I’ve said my piece. “A weak ally is better than no ally at all when someone’s killing everyone in your pack.”
“It’s not someone,” she says, angry enough that it makes her lie bright and bold. “Connor fell. Porter lost his shit and killed Duncan, and then he took himself out of the game. And yeah, your bullshit made them do it, but you won’t get to the rest of us. It’s over. You’re over.”
“What about Banks?”
“What about him?”
“He’s gone,” I say.
She has her sabre back up. She’s itching to lunge again. She says, “He’s hiding out. Like Malcolm and Duffy.”
“Hiding,” I say. “Because they have something to hide.”
“God,” she half-shouts. “Who the fuck do you think you are? The patron saint of stupid sluts who drink too much?”
I bring my sabre up fast and run for her. She hits my blade away and I lunge and miss and stumble almost into the far wall.
“They’re guilty,” I say, and I turn back to her. “Duncan and Duffy and Connor and Banks. They know what they did.”
She laughs angry and bitter. “They don’t care what they did. It doesn’t fucking matter. Everybody knows what happens at Duncan’s parties and you’re the only one who gives a shit. She sure as hell wasn’t the first.”
My blade flicks back up. We’re facing the wrong way and not even on the piste, but I don’t care. “But she’ll be the last,” I say—
—and it’s too far and I know it as soon as I say it and my lungs pinch tight—
—and she knows.
She pulls off her mask. Her eyes are wide. She’s twice as shocked as Duncan was when I leaned close over him while his blood drained out into the sheets.
She says, “You’re her. You’re her.”
She grabs at my mask and yanks it off and stares hard into my eyes. “You’re her,” she says again, slower, filling up with knowing.
I don’t lie. Not when it matters.
She springs back and brings her weapon up again. Like it’s instinct. Like she’ll slash the truth away.
I take three strong steps toward her. I drop my sabre. I don’t need it. We stand face-to-face, eye-to-eye, girl-to-girl. I say, “Fate’s a cruel bitch to girls like you.”
“It wasn’t my fault,” she says. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Exactly,” I hiss.
She steps back. Her face is the same color as her jacket. Her makeup is garish against the shock-white. “It was you. All of it was you.”
My plan is shattered. I’ve veered so far away from the path I carved out that there’s no way to claw back on. My rage is bleeding up through all the careful calculating and I’ve lost my edge, I know it, and all the sleepless reckless ruthlessness is rising up against me, but I can’t think about it—not now—
And I say, “Not just me. Mack, too.”
I’ve thrown it hard to pin her down. To make her mine again and buy me enough time to cage her up until I can call him or call my coven or scare her silent—
—but she doesn’t step back. She steps forward. Hard and fast and dauntless. She shoves me and I stumble back into the wall. She says, “So what’s your plan for him? Drag him along to watch his friends fall apart, and then get some JV asshole to kill him, too?”