“No one. Just you.” Standing up, she moved to the sink, cupping water and rinsing out her mouth. “We should go back to the party.”
“I think you’re done partying. Come on. I’ll take you to Grimm’s room.”
Fishing out some wrapped starbursts from inside my jacket pocket, I handed her the candy to help tone down any stench of tossing up our contaminated punch before heading down another mysterious hallway.
I felt like one of those guards walking the prisoner to their execution. That’s what she is… a prisoner. One that had earned a death sentence—pregnant or not.
Even with us holding the power, to stop the entity known as the Clave would take all four of us being on the same page. None of us were on the same page and hadn’t been since high school. Fuck, we weren’t even in the same damn bookstore. We all did our jobs and led our own lives, and Grimm was the most disconnected from the Clave lifestyle.
Pushing the door open into Grimm’s world gave me goosebumps. He barely left a fingerprint on this room, but all doors were hiding pieces of ourselves behind them.
Black walls and too clean for a room that probably hadn’t seen any signs of life since he was 14, I ushered Abigail inside. I watched her take in the room with blinders on, swallowing his darkness whole and smiling to herself like it tasted sweet.
Abigail was certainly more than met the eye, if she could accept our Grimm for every ounce without flinching. I wasn’t loving how much she was making me believe she could be the catalyst to something big: maybe hope for the four of us stuck in thinking we were the apocalypse in our own lives.
Once Abigail sat down on his bed, I threw her a, “I’ll let Grimm know you’re resting. Come out when you’re ready.” Closing the door behind me, I headed back down to the party, back to my own distraction, properly named Bunny.
I took a few glances around the room for Grimm, but I quickly gave up when I saw some guy chatting up Bunny that I had already claimed a stake in.
Heading right to her, I swung my arm around her, pulling her close and pretending the blonde guy with his hair in an actually fucking ponytail wasn’t there.
“Sorry, I had to handle some drama. You look fucking gorgeous, babe.” Pretending to only just notice him, I added, “Is this guy bothering you?”
She didn’t even skip a beat when her hand squeezed my forearm and her British accent crept from her full lips covered in slick lip gloss.
“I’m Kate,” she offered.
Her accent was trying to be Received Pronunciation, but it was rolling off her tongue as Estuary, not nearly as refined.
She wasn’t the only one pretending to be something she wasn’t, and that made me even more curious.
“Down the rabbit hole, aren’t you?”
VIC
Running late wasn’t something I did often. When I did, it was only at the hands of particular problems that couldn’t be ignored.
Being conquest, war, and strategy, I had certain triggers put on our employees. Every time someone posted on social media, every time someone swiped their card, every time someone made a call, I could see it.
I was the all-seeing eye, constantly ready for battle.
Abigail’s card was swiped at a drugstore purchasing pregnancy tests when I got the email.
Oscar was Clave by proxy, and Abigail was Clave’s employee. This mess created conflicts I wasn’t willing to overlook.
Some digging turned into a deep dark hole that I fell into that made me late for the Surreal Ball. I practically tossed my keys at the guy with the clipboard, who was trying to seem important when he paled in comparison to anyone on the guest list.
“Trouble,” I barked out the passcode as I pushed past him.
The puzzle wasn’t hard to figure out.
Pushing my arms into my jacket and securing my mask, chains all linked together, in place, I entered the oddly quiet house. Everyone had already started to fan out and explore.
Rounding the corner, I saw Grimm’s mom in her infamous doe mask dripping in diamonds, like it got tangled in a chandelier and this was the punishment. Fucking superiority.
Still walking towards her in the illusion I would greet her, I saw Oscar pushed into a corner, and her grip on his arm was tight. Nothing about that seemed normal.
We all humored Oscar by letting him show up to things, but we didn’t give him our direct attention. No one wanted to give him the idea he fit in here.
Grimm’s mom leaned into Oscar, speaking in a low tone, hoping no one would hear her: “You want the respect of the council? Ruin that girl so Jason doesn’t want her anymore.”
And just like that I put two and two together.
Abigail’s pregnancy test and Grimm.
Well, fuck me. That’s a slow moving target in the middle of the battlefield waiting to be blown to pieces.
I felt my limbs go up in flames. Every part of me was angry, and I wondered who else knew. We were all connected, regardless if we wanted to be or not. We were only as strong as our weakest link and only as useful as a packaged deal.
Heading upstairs, I managed to avoid Oscar altogether. I had bigger shit to deal with if Grimm was staking claim to his fucking secretary when he knew the rules.
His fucking family created them. Each of our families created one rule:
No distractions (Rothschild).
All Clave meetings and events are mandatory (DuPonte).
All marriages are to be arranged (Astor).
Death before dishonor (Rockefeller).
When someone disrespected the rules, I felt the disloyalty shake my bones alive, like I was only half breathing and lived to catch people fucking up.
Grimm was the only opponent I’ve had that challenged me. Both of us were smart, calculating, determined, and secretive, making our attacks even that more surprising.
We used to be friends.
Used to be.
Now he was just someone getting in my way and allocating too many resources for my liking. Whatever his mom had planned out as punishment was probably well deserved for going against the Clave so obviously.
Strategy was key, and this wasn’t the time to make my warfare known. There was a war brewing, and Grimm was going to drag us three into it.
Four horsemen. Can you hear the chains that bind us? It’s deafening.
ABIGAIL
I didn’t remember passing out, but when I came to, I was covered in a light sticky kind of sweat, and the taste of a strawberry Starburst in my mouth was overpowering the yolk colored throw up that came up earlier.
I was dragging my feet and praying for a period. Confirmation felt a lot like a nail in the coffin on any chance of Grimm and I working out. Catholicism still ran through my veins, making it absolutely impossible to end a life, all because I liked the wrong person, at the wrong time.
When the cobwebs of how drained and dizzy I felt earlier finally shook off, I felt all my senses come back to life, and I realized I wasn’t alone. Expecting Grimm, I sat up, and a figure walked out of the shadows. His California cool accent rang through me like electroshock therapy.
“Sleep well? I didn’t think your name would be on the guest list. Guess Grimm doesn’t just beat up your exes, huh?”
I hadn’t been in the same place as him since fleeing Malibu with the images of nude girls drugged and snatched into Polaroids filling the folds of my mind.