He says, “That’s not true.”
I say, “Then we’re both liars.”
The bed sinks lower with his weight. He is here with me, where they were.
He says, “Banks told me what he put in her drink—”
And I laugh so mirthless and merciless my crown slips. I reach up and straighten it. I still won’t look at him.
“No,” he says. “Not that night. He told me the morning Piper told you. When you found me in the hall—when we swore we’d kill them—”
It’s a lie. It’s a slithering stupid lie and I’ll never believe it. I won’t let him live. I won’t let him take his neck out of the noose or his name off my list.
He keeps his guilt.
He says, wrenching with pain I don’t understand at all anymore—
that I never understood—
—he says, “Jade. I promise you I’m not like them. They made me guilty.”
“You knew who they were,” I say. “You knew what they did.”
“I wanted to stop them. I always did, Jade—I told you how much I hated them—”
“You knew,” I say again, and it burns in my throat like liquor and poison. “And you went to their party and took their drink and went up to the girl they told you to talk to, and then you left her there alone—”
“No.” His hand finds mine. I pull hard away. “It wasn’t like that,” he says. “I was with her on my own. And then somebody ran into us and spilled her drink, and I went to go get something else and Banks was on his way by, and he said—he said, take this. And he gave me his drink.”
Every word he says makes the walls warp uneven the way they did that night. Every word sits in my stomach, heavy and hollow. “They planned it,” I tell him.
“I know,” he says. “I should’ve known. If I could go back to that night—”
“You can’t,” I say, and the walls settle smooth. “What’s done is done.”
He takes my hand again.
I pull away again.
He says, “I’m guilty. I know I am, and it’s killing me—”
“You.” The sound curls on my lips.
“I’m guilty,” he says again. Slower this time; deliberate. “I was going to turn myself in tonight. Tell the police what they did and what I did. Not for me. For—”
His voice catches and bleeds raw.
He says, “For her.”
Something flutters low in my lungs.
He means it. The guilt is real and rooted in, and he killed for me and for her. He hates those boys and he’s glad they’re dead.
He said, I wanted to stop them.
But he didn’t.
I lift my chin and turn to him.
He looks into my eyes—
—jade-green instead of brown. The eyes he looked into that night when he said, I’ve never seen you before. I’ve never seen anyone like you. When he stood with me, a dazzle-smiled boy with a dazzling girl, hiding away from the boys who saw us and knew only their golden boy could do the cruel thing they wanted.
He knows.
He says it, stricken: “You—”
And his hands take mine and I don’t pull away. His warmth and his weakness burn through the silk—
—and I am still ice. I am still savage and wicked. I am the little girl who pushed the boy off the playground castle. I am all the things I was before he knew me. I am the girl who lost and the girl who won.
He says, “You’re her.”
I say, “Yes.”
He says, “Jade—”
He says, “Elle—”
And the furious feathered wings fill up my lungs and they beat fast and faster—
He says, Elle—
—and I am her again, here in this room where they thought they ruined me.
Here in this room without them.
And he says Elle and I love you and I’m sorry but I say get out and leave and go until he isn’t there at all.
Until it’s only the girl in the shining white dress, so close I can smell the bleach in her hair. So close I can feel the hands pressing down on her mouth.
She was alone here in this room but now—
—now I’m here with her.
Now I’ve killed for her.
Tonight she will walk out and never come back.
And I cry for her.
I cry.
I am the girl I saved.
Red
The sirens find me.
I hear them when they’re still far away, climbing the hill to dead Duncan’s house. They come close and closer.
I stand up steady in the white-sheets room. The girl with the jade-green eyes.
And I leave.
I turn on every light as I walk out. The light in the hall that shivered and dripped when Connor pulled me away from the crowd. The light in the kitchen, over the bar, shining down on the poison and the ghosts of the boys who mix drinks for girls they think they can ruin. The light in the looming broad room where I spun and shone. The lights far up in the dizzy-high entryway where we shrieked laughter sharp as daggers and cast our curse on the night. The lights on the porch, setting it bright and empty against the shadows in the yard.
I don’t have to hide anymore.
Let the light blaze down.
I find Mack at the door. We hold hands with blood dripping through our fingers. Listening to the sirens howling louder. Watching St Andrew’s blue spin across the wide winding street and the trees and the grass.
It was fate. They had to come for us.
Mack takes me in his arms and says, “I’m sorry. I love you.”
I don’t say it back, but I kiss him. Kiss his bloody bruised lips and taste the faintest clinging trace of bitter almonds.
The first police car pulls into the driveway. Men shout. The sirens wail so loud I know dead Duffy and dead Malcolm can hear them from hell.
Mack says, “Jade—Elle—”
And he squares his shoulders so strong no one would ever know he’s broken. He says, “I killed Duncan. I left Banks. I brought Duffy and Malcolm here. Let me pay my debt.”
I kiss him again. I whisper into his ear, a serpent hiss that blossoms soft—
“It was me. All of it. Connor. Duncan. Porter. Banks. Piper. Duffy. Malcolm.”
I say it cruel and proud.
I say, “I killed them. That debt is mine.”
He says, like he said the night Duncan died—the night he was mine and I was his—
“Are you sure?”
I decide.
I say, “Yes.”
I kiss him.
And then I say it—
a whisper into his ear—
You knew enough.
He pulls back. “Jade—” he says, and his eyes wash out with doubt and guilt and fear. “If I could go back—I’d do anything in the world if I could change it for you—”
And I say, “For her.”
“I love you,” he says.
“Not for the girl you love,” I say. “For the girl you left.”
Outside footsteps pound up the steps and a man shouts, LAPD—
I kiss the boy who killed for me. Kiss him good-bye, one hand in his hair and the other clinging to his with the neck of the amaretto wound between our fingers.
The cop slams hard on the door.