by Sara Wolf
Jack stops walking and stares at me. I stare back. There’s a profound quiet. Bikini Girl chooses that moment to run into the stairwell and give Jack a very drunk kiss on the cheek, accompanied by an extremely subtle drop of a pink condom wrapper as she runs back out. I pick it up and hand it to him.
“Wrap your willy before you get silly,” I remind. Jack facepalms spectacularly, and I count it as a victory, because at least he is not sad-looking anymore. He is something-else-looking and it’s not much, but it’s better than sad. He comes up with the barest smile on his lips, but he quashes it quickly.
“Look, you can stay. But when Nameless gets here, you should leave.”
“Yes, thank you for giving me permission to continue what I’ve been doing for the last three years.”
Jack stops, hand against the stairwell door. “I apologize.”
“Don’t. It makes you seem nice.”
“He’s wanted by some very powerful people for helping some bad people do bad things.”
“Good. Before you arrest him with your spy-goggles or whatever, let me punch him.”
“Isis—”
“Just one punch. In the eyeball. With a spoon.”
Jack considers it, then smirks. “Fine. On one condition.”
“Name it, dork.”
“I get the other eye.”
I mull it over and nod. “I’m a generous god.”
I’m more grateful than he knows. Or maybe he does know, because his eyes are soft and warm with the knife of his quiet blazing anger. I’d seen it pointed at me enough times to know that this time, it’s not me it’s pointed at.
It’s Nameless.
I’m not the only one who knows. Jack might not know details, but he knows enough. He guessed enough. And he didn’t pry. His eyes show no pity or guilt. They are clear and they see me, and my secret isn’t a secret anymore. The weight is shared and divided, and I try to say thank you, but all that comes out is a wry smile.
I am half as dark as I used to be.
Jack turns and opens the door. We walk out of the stairwell, and my jaw pops like my old Beetle’s shitty trunk. The apartment building is all white stone and marble, massive patio-style walkways intertwining between mounds of purple hydrangeas and autumn roses. People mill about, walking their dogs or sitting in fancy patio chairs near the covered glass fire pit, wood crackling and embers dancing. A hot tub and an enormous lit pool are surrounded by umbrella-covered tables and grills, drunk college students flinging burgers and nasty jokes like they’re going out of style. Charlie is talking to the black-bikini girl, looking grumpy and munching on chips. People shove each other in the pool and shriek with laughter in the hot tub. Jack touches my forearm lightly and leans in to whisper.
“I’m going to socialize. I need information. Stay where I can see you.”
“I don’t need you to babysit me,” I say. “Do your job. I’ll just be over here, you know, having fun. You should try it sometime.”
I grab a hot dog and sit on a lawn chair, near the hot tub. A blond guy with svelte abs and a friendly smile glances at me.
“Hey.”
“Hi.” I spew meat delicately onto the patio tile.
“No swimsuit?” he asks.
“Left mine back home. On Mars.”
“Is that why you stand out like a sore thumb? Because you’re an alien?”
“Or, or—and this is a crazy theory—I’m just hotter than everyone else here,” I offer.
The guy laughs. “It’s true. Your hair’s awesome.”
“So is yours. In that beachy, I’m-definitely-from-California-and-spend-five-days-a-week-in-the-gym kind of way.”
He laughs again, louder, and gets out of the hot tub to sit by me, dripping wet.
“Three days, thank you very much. I’m not that much of a swole broski.”
“Coulda fooled me.” I nod at his stomach. He pats it like Santa after eating too many cookies.
“It’s my one pride and joy. I’ve got no brains and no future, but I’ve got these babies.”
“That’s all you need,” I say. “Take a picture and send it to Kim Kardashian. Marry her.”
“I’d have to fight Kanye,” he laments.
“Eh.” I wave my hand. “Just tell him his sunglasses suck. He’ll keel over and die.”
The guy laughs. “I’m Kyle Morris. Nice to meet you.”
“Isis,” I say automatically. “Destroyer of hearts and dreams. And any cakes in a two-mile vicinity.”
“Ravenclaw.” He offers his hand to shake. I grab it with my greasy one.
“Hufflepuff,” I say. He quirks a brow.
“Really? You don’t seem all that nice.”
“Oh.” I point what’s left of my hot dog bun at him. “Just wait until you see my friends. I practically run a charity show.”
“The guy you came in with?” He nods to Jack, who’s currently being exceedingly merciful and letting black-bikini girl cling to his arm and jabber at him, and she has a pierced belly button and probably a pierced vagina and her name is Hemorrhoid, by the way. The girls in the hot tub Kyle came from are slowly starting to notice just how good-looking Jack is, and they get out in a group, strutting past Jack and diving into the nearby pool with aching sexiness. The boys follow like hungry hounds.
“Yeah, the goober being goobed on,” I say. “He’s my friend.”
“Just a friend?”
“Is that like, some subtle cue-slash-question I’m supposed to confirm so you know whether or not you’ve got a chance to sleep with me? Because if so, it’s very not-subtle and lacking finesse, really, so next time maybe try a neon sign taped to your forehead that says Loser Looking to Get Laid. With the numeral two replacing ‘to,’ obviously, to save time, because that seems to be all guys really care about—getting laid as fast as possible.”
Kyle takes it in stride, looking mock-wounded. “Hey, at least I’m being honest.”
I roll my eyes and wander over to the pool, trying my darnedest and failing my darnedest to not glance at the way black-bikini girl is grinding her hip into Jack’s as she leans on him. Charlie’s off in the deep end of the pool with a bunch of girls, even his grin somehow grumpy as they splash him. Last time I checked, spying involved a lot more grappling guns and poison dart pens and a lot less giggling. I stand at the edge of the pool and watch the moon reflecting on the water in a wiggly silver medallion.
Kyle stands beside me. “So, what’s your major?”
“I’m a freshman. Undecided. Nuclear thermophysics. Culinary arts. Depends on how I feel when I wake up that day.” I hold two hands out and balance them like scales. “Destroy the world, or make a cake to celebrate destroying the world. The choice is so gosh darn difficult.”
Kyle laughs. “God, you’re cool.”
“It’s been said,” I agree. “Screamed, really. By my enemies. Just before I decapitate them.”
Suddenly there’s a sharp pressure on my ass, a squeeze. I jump, my squeal entirely ugly and entirely necessary as I look to Kyle, horrified. My first grope ever. He smirks and shrugs. I ball my fist, but I never get the chance to punch him. Kyle goes flying, splashing into the pool with an embarrassing flailing motion. Jack stands at the place Kyle used to be, his expression cool.
“Oops,” he drones. Hemorrhoid laughs, and the other girls start laughing, and so when Kyle comes up sputtering he has no choice but to laugh nervously with the rest of them.
“Ha-ha, nice one, bro!”
Jack quirks a disdainful brow at him. Charlie comes wading over and gets out, pulling Jack aside. Charlie’s words are rapid and low and hissy, and Jack’s are monotone.
Hemorrhoid stands with me, sighing. “He’s so dreamy, isn’t he?”
“Yeah,” I agree. “If we are in opposite world, and dreams are actually nightmares.”
She ignores me and latches back onto Jack the second he separates from Charlie, steering him toward the pool. Jack goes along with it, grimace obvious. Why is he doing it if he doesn
’t like it?
“You,” a voice growls in my ear. I turn to see Charlie, anger etching his mouth.
“Me,” I say. “Now that the introductions are over, we can finally move on to tea.”
“You’re distracting him,” Charlie says. “You’re a goddamn distraction he doesn’t need right now.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me,” Charlie insists. “You see that redhead in the bikini? That’s an important source of info we need on our side. Jack’s gonna wind her around his pinkie, and he would’ve already, but you’re here, and for some fucking reason he likes your dumb ass and is putting it off.”
“You’re mistaken. We hate each other. Platonically.”
“You’re cock-blocking him,” Charlie snarls. “Now get the fuck out of here, before I throw you out myself.”
“My, are you always this polite with the ladies, or am I the exception? Or perhaps it’s the dudes you reserve your politeness for? Understandable. Dude-asses are polite-worthy as hell.”
“Get. Out.”
Over his tanned shoulder, I see Hemorrhoid lean in and graze Jack’s cheek with her lips. Jack doesn’t recoil, taking it like a frozen statue, inclining his head only slightly in response. I get the message. I always get the message, because I’m Isis Blake and I’m last choice for teams in gym, always, and whatever we had has been swallowed up by the void of Sophia, by the pain, by the ice-cold shield against it all that he calls “work.” The little ball-light of hope I held in the darkness flickers, weakening irrevocably.
“I was already leaving,” I say. Charlie watches me the whole way to the garage. My fury is the dull, aching kind, lingering even as I park and trudge up the stairs into my dorm. Yvette is, mercifully, not there. Her text from four hours ago reads: staying at a friend’s, don’t worry. Another booty call, maybe. I don’t care. It’s her life, and as long as she’s safe and happy, I’m fine with it. I’m curious, but the throbbing hurt from the night beats louder against my skull as I lie in bed and stare at the ceiling, hot tears clouding my eyes.
I can’t sleep. Not until I say something. I grab my phone and text.
Do you know how many times you’ve made me fucking cry?
His answer comes later, much later. It wakes me in two hours. I imagine him in her bed, sitting over the side of it, naked, and with her naked and sleeping opposite him. I imagine his tousled hair, his lean muscles, his blue eyes made silver by the moonlight.
Too many, his text says. Thirty minutes pass, and then: Find someone who doesn’t make you cry. Find someone better.
Do you know how many times you’ve made me fucking cry?
I stare at the text, the sickly electronic light boring into my eyes like spears. Spears of guilt. Spears of regret. I shouldn’t be here, and what’s left of my heart knows that the second I read the words. I should be there, with her. I should be a normal college student, not playing at one while trying to catch a criminal.
Not sleeping with the criminal’s ex-girlfriend so she’ll give me dirt on him.
It had been boring and routine, the steps ingrained in me from my time at the Rose Club. I’d added every trick I could to satisfy her—satiate her so fully she’d be crawling on her knees for more in the morning, and next week, and the week after that. Her mouth is the only useful part of her—spilling the secrets of her ex-boyfriend Kyle, and consequently, his partner, Will.
It was the first time I’d slept with someone since spending the night with Isis at the hotel. Isis’s smell surrounded me, vanilla and cinnamon, even when I hadn’t touched her for very long. The hurt in her brown eyes haunted me as I finished, the silent name on my lips spilling from a place of heart-torn, guilt-laced pleasure, and if I shut my eyes I could pretend, if only for the briefest second, that it was Isis beneath me.
But the illusion faded quickly.
Use everything you can to your advantage, Gregory’s voice resonates from training. And that means your damn pretty face. Women will love it. Use them.
The evidence we need is one step closer.
Redemption is one step closer. Redemption for Sophia. Redemption for Isis. Catching Will Cavanaugh, putting him away so that she never has to see him again, is the one good thing I can do for her. It got me through Gregory’s training at the ranch. It got me this far. It’s the one good thing I can do, period. The one thing that could put a dent in redeeming the hurt I’ve inflicted.
I pull on my shirt and button my jeans, leaving the posh apartment quietly so as not to wake her roommates. I pause at the door, looking back into the shadowed apartment that holds the evidence of my sordid manipulations.
I thought I was done with it, with this, with sleeping with people to get what I want—money for Sophia’s surgery, information. But I got it backward—it was never truly done with me.
“Redemption,” I murmur, and leave. The guilt sears me, gnawing at my insides. I need relief. I need distraction. I need something other than Isis’s text, my phone burning up in my pocket with her sadness and disappointment.
What does she want from me?
I can’t give her anything. I can’t give anyone anything anymore. My heart is empty and broken and useless.
The neon lights of the college district flash with Technicolor temptation—pawnshops, strip clubs, liquor stores open late. I find what I’m looking for in a seedy club packed to the brim with sweat stench and greasy bodies. I watch the crowd carefully from the bar, then pounce on the one man who slips a roofie into a brunette’s drink.
He is bleeding—his nose broken and his arm dislocated—when I am done with him. It takes forty seconds, and he punches back with equal fervor and splits my brow with his knuckles, hot blood oozing into my eyes. For those forty seconds it’s all static—I am a blank canvas, moving like Gregory taught me, punching and dodging like he taught me. Nothing is in my mind but moves and countermoves, observations and rapid calculations of how fast my opponent’s fist is moving, where it will land, how to sidestep and trip him so he’ll eat a precise stone step of the club. I am empty. Isis is gone. Sophia is gone. There’s only the taste of blood and anger and sweat, and the soundless roar of the beast in my head. But the roar is different now. It is sharp and honed and precise. It is softer, yet more chilling.
When it asks to be fed, feed it promptly, and in small portions. It will never rebel, and you’ll never hurt anyone you don’t want to, as long as it’s fed. Gregory’s words echo. As long as it’s fed, you are the master.
The bouncers break us up, and as they lead me out I nod at the brunette, who gathered around to watch the fight with the rest of the club.
“Your drink was spiked. I suggest you take a cab home.”
She looks shocked, and her friends sniff at the drink in her hand. Her horrified face is the last thing I see before they dump me onto the road. The beast gives me strength enough to stagger back to campus and collapse in bed, the blind rage fading rapidly, cooling like lava hitting ocean water.
I will never hurt anyone who doesn’t deserve it ever again.
Chapter Eight
3 Years, 48 Weeks, 4 Days
Kayla understands everything because she understands nothing. She’s like a dry sponge that I throw buckets of water on. And sometimes piss. With copious sides of vinegar.
It’s a beautiful sight to see after a week of sporadic texts—her on Skype and me on Skype, both of us painting our toenails and talking at the same time.
“Isis, you’re killing me,” Kayla groans.
“Not literally, one would hope. Unless you want to be a zombie. I can dig being the only girl in the world to have a zombfriend.”
“I am not actually dead,” she declares. “What I am is disappointed. I can’t believe you and Jack aren’t just…like…”
I raise a brow, daring her to go on. She sniffs indignantly and then nearly tips over the green polish bottle with her sudden fist made of rage.
“He left, and you left, and now you’re together in the same place, a
nd I told you so, and why aren’t you taking this very obviously predestined opportunity to hook up like crazy rabbits?”
“Because, sweet Kayla, there is more to life than being a crazy rabbit. Bizarre, I know.”
“Look, I just mean…” She grits her teeth and carefully adds a stripe of green to her big toe. “I just mean, even if he is doing some weird Jack-like stuff, that’s never stopped you before! You were hitting on him constantly—”
“Actually hitting on him. With my fist,” I correct.
“—when he was in the Rose Club, but now suddenly he’s slept with a girl for info and you’re all angry at him?”
“I—I—” I splutter concisely. “That was before!”
“Before what?”
“Before I—”
Kayla looks expectant.
I wail. “You know what I’m going to say!”
“Say it anyway,” she demands.
“No!”
“Yes!” she shouts.
“You present a compelling argument.”
“Isis, don’t get smart with me!”
“Fine! I like him. I like him, okay?”
“So you like him.” She leans back. “You want to make him lunch and hug him platonically once a year.”
“No, because then we would be in seventeenth-century England.”
“That’s what like is,” Kayla continues. “Like is just so-so. It doesn’t really mean anything. Like…like me and you! I don’t like you. I love you.”
“Um.”
“In the way where you keep your pants on, duh. I love you and you love me and you also love Jack. In a different way.”
“Kayla—” I say warningly.
“In the hot way.”
“No.”
“In the hug me until I run out of breath way.”
“Wrong.”
“In the invade me with your penis way.”
I screech like a horrified fruit bat and slam the lid of my laptop closed. I can hear my own flustered, angry panting. I fling the lid open again and argue at the screen.
“There are no invading genitalia thoughts going on here.”
