My hair is black again. Revenge-black and sharp and short, shorter than it should be, but I don’t care because it’s still mine and nothing else matters. And my eyes are hidden behind sunglasses so dark no one will ever see through them until it’s too late, and Summer swears I’ll trip and fall and never walk again, but I don’t care about that, either.
Tonight I’m fate.
Tonight Jenny and Summer and Mads and me, we’re four sirens, like the ones in those stories. The ones who sing and make men die.
Tonight Lilia is ours, unfurling her wings, and we’re five instead of four.
Tonight we have knives where they think our hearts should be.
Tonight we’re walking up the driveway to our best party ever. Not the parties like we always go to, with the dull-duller-dullest Hancock Park girls we’ve always known and the dull-duller-dullest wine coolers we always drink and the same bad choice in boys.
Tonight we’re going to a St Andrew’s Prep party.
Hosting it, technically.
And nobody turns down girls like us.
We break down the door. We let us in. Our teeth flash. Our claws glimmer. Mads laughs so shrill-bright it’s almost a scream. The dead kings wake. We all grab hands and laugh together and then everyone, every St Andrew’s ghost we’ve killed is back and every boy we’ll kill tonight knows, far away where they are, and I know they see it—
for just a second—
—our fangs and our claws.
The Set
Duncan’s house is haunted but ghosts can’t hurt me anymore.
It’s blackout-dark when we drive in. The house shirks back into the hills like the family that ran when their perfect son—Duncan the captain, Duncan the king, Duncan the Dartmouth-bound—died exactly the way he deserved.
The neighbors won’t look, but we stay hidden anyway. Mads parks far past the dead-dark driveway and we flit shapeless and shadowed through the trees. They wouldn’t see us even if they looked.
We kick through the giant windows along the back of the house. The ones we broke with crosses on Friday night but they fixed on Saturday before anyone could wonder why two girls burned with enough rage to rip their whole house down.
The alarm beeps and the phone rings deep in the dark. Lilia answers it and recites the code dead Duncan gave her. She says, lilting and hundred-proof, “You know how boys are. Never careful enough.”
They set the stage, my four siren sisters. They know how to summon the boys we need:
Duffy.
Malcolm.
Mack.
Two weeks ago they were weighted down weightless with solid gold armor. They were a wolf-pack stalking the hills, invincible. They knew consequences were for other people.
Tonight they’ve seen death creep close. They’ve seen blood soak into the dirt under Inverness and birds line the peaks of St Andrew’s.
When their dead king’s widow whispers to them they listen. When she says Come to Duncan’s they obey.
Lilia tells Duffy and Malcolm, Mack’s coming. He killed them. He’ll kill you, too, if you don’t stop him.
She tells Mack, They’re coming. Do what Jade wanted.
And they bring out the poison and I dress for my final act.
I wear my homecoming gown. It’s the same fatal red as my lipstick. My makeup is so very, very perfect it will make them afraid just to look at me. My hair shines sleek. My nails are gold. Mads’s sunglasses hide my eyes.
When I’m ready I unwrap the gauze from around my wrists. The stitches crawl up my arms and my skin is bruised and dark, but there’s no blood on my hands.
I put on the long black gloves I wore to Summer’s party on New Year’s Eve. The silk slides over the stitches and hides them away. I step into high black heels with shining red soles. I straighten my crucifix.
I set the golden crown on my head—the crown Mads wore when she told Mack you knew enough. It fits me perfectly.
My coven kisses me good-bye. They leap back through the window we broke and their wings poke dark out of their backs. They turn to birds in front of my eyes and fly away, all of them. They won’t be here when Duffy and Malcolm and Mack go cold. They won’t be here when the police come and I tell them, crying and wide-eyed and innocent, innocent, innocent, what Mack did.
How he killed all the boys in his pack because they knew his secret.
How he tried to kill me.
I am alone tonight. The way it needs to be.
I am here where it began and where it will end.
I’m ready.
The King
Malcolm and Duffy drive in first, together. They pull in with their lights blazing and the bass thumping loud enough to rattle the broken glass, but not loud enough to cover their fear.
They walk up the driveway side by side. Uneasy allies. Playing bold, but I can smell their sweat and feel their skin prick with goosebumps.
They walk around to the back, the way Lilia told them. Weaving through the trees in the dark. Stumbling and saying shit and what was that.
I’m hidden where they won’t look, but where I can see.
They step out onto the wide stretch of concrete and suddenly they’re in the day again. They shade their eyes against the light shining down in a square around the pool. The broken window gleams. The house yawns dark beyond it.
“Shit,” says Malcolm. “Where is she?”
And Duffy yells, “Lilia!”
The dark swallows up his voice.
“I don’t like this.” Duffy digs for his phone. “This doesn’t feel right.”
They wait too long. The darkness presses closer.
“Fuck,” says Malcolm with his dead brother’s eyes set into his little-boy face. “It’s Mack, not Lilia. It has to be.”
Duffy turns away and clutches one hand to his mouth.
“Fucking golden boy.” Malcolm laughs on his gallows. “Killing his friends over some bitch at a party.”
Duffy’s face shines with sweat and sickness. “Let’s get out of here. We can go to the cops—I don’t know—”
Their shadows spin. An engine hums and quits on the other side of the house.
“Fuck,” says Duffy, and his shoulders wilt.
Mack strides in all boast and courage. His feet are sure, even in the shadows. When he steps into the light the lines carve deep into his face. He has nothing left to lose.
“Look at you,” he says.
I’ve never seen anyone like you—
His voice thrums through the stitches on my wrists. His neck wants my knife.
“Look at you,” he says again—
There’s no guilt on your face—
“You’re paler than Porter was when we caught him with the knife,” says Mack. “You’re scared.”
Duffy shies away, but Malcolm bristles with Duncan’s old ghost and says, “What, and you’re not?”
Mack laughs haunted. “Not anymore.”
Malcolm says, “You killed my brother.”
Mack looks him in the eye and doesn’t lie. “He deserved it.”
“Bullshit,” Duffy bursts out. “No, he didn’t—”
“So did Connor and Banks,” says Mack. “So do you.”
The two wolf-boys share a taut glance. Malcolm says, finally, “It’s both of us against you.”