“You can’t see my face right now,” she drawled, “but it’s not impressed by your excuses. And never mind how I know. Do I need to remind you that you helped break up his last relationship? Not even helped. You were the reason they broke up. Once his girlfriend saw that photo, she went b-a-n-a-n-a-s.”
My skin prickled. “How do you know that? I thought you said we don’t get to meet any of the other teams.”
“I don’t have to know them to hear how their assignments go. I don’t usually care enough to follow up, but this was your first job and I wanted to see it through.”
I huffed, disappointed by the completely reasonable response.
“Anyways, that’s not why I called. We’ve got a job. I’ll be in the theater room. Meet me after school.”
CHAPTER 7
AFTER CLASSES ENDED, I changed into my running clothes and made my way back to the performing arts department. I wasn’t sure how long this meeting would last, but it had been days since I was on the track and my legs were aching for a good workout. Despite the cold wind, I knew track would be the calmest part of my day. No matter what storm was raging around me, there was peace in running.
“Hey.” I jogged into the theater room and dropped my stuff. The theater room had a damp basement smell that was becoming familiar.
“Hey yourself.” I’d known her for only a day, but Haley had the kind of barbed exterior that made you wonder if she was shielding herself from getting hurt or warning others to stay away from damaged goods.
She had a fancy tablet balanced on her knees and was fully engrossed in whatever was on the screen.
“What kind of action are we getting?” I asked impatiently after a few moments of silence. In addition to my run, I had hours of homework and some debate team work to do. Gigi, the ambitious freshman from debate, had asked me to review notes from our last meet to help her improve. I did not have time to wait here while Miss High-and-Mighty ignored me.
She gestured toward the stack of playing cards next to her on the sofa, a royal flush. I’d brushed up on winning poker hands the night before.
“It’s an election rigging for Homecoming.” She finally tore her gaze away from the tablet and looked at me. “My favorite.” Her eyes were legitimately sparkling like the Grinch’s after he stole Christmas.
“Do you do a lot of elections?”
“The last two Homecomings, one prom, and one student council election.” There was a fierce note of pride in her voice.
“Impressive.”
“Come look.”
Haley moved to the floor and set her tablet down. She also took out a couple of notebooks and spread them out.
Sitting next to her, I examined the screen on the tablet. “What’s all this?”
“This is what we use to start every assignment. Once I’m dealt a hand, I know to log in to this special email account for the job brief. It contains everything we need to know to get a job done.”
“Why even get the playing cards?” It had been irking me ever since I received my Red Court–issued phone. The cards in the locker seemed like an oddly analog move in an otherwise digital game.
“It’s tradition. Plus, there’s something exciting about opening my locker and seeing a hand all laid out.”
That was true enough. I’d felt the thrill of seeing a playing card in my locker twice. “Does the Red Court usually get more than one request for Homecoming? How would we decide?”
Haley shrugged. “From what I understand, no. We get far fewer requests than you might think for something this big. Most students who are popular enough to win don’t need our help. It’s only the really desperate ones that come knocking. If we do receive more than one request, the Queen of Hearts decides which way we go, but we never let anyone know that their favor hasn’t been accepted ahead of time. They’ll figure it out eventually, but by then it’s too late.”
I mulled this over. Getting yourself elected to Homecoming Court probably required more resources than other jobs, like breaking up a couple. The open look Chase had worn when we talked in the hallway flashed in my mind, but there wasn’t time to consider why it bothered me so much. Haley and I had work to do.
She continued, “Anyway. This is what we get for every new job. It explains the goal of our assignment. In this case, it’s getting Maura Wright elected Homecoming Queen. I also have a list of assets available to us.”
“Like supplies?”
“More like people. When you said that favors don’t cost money, you were right, and I told you that we collect on our debts in other ways. We couldn’t do everything ourselves. We ask those who owe us to perform small parts in other assignments. That’s how the Red Court has been able to continue for as long as it has, by parlaying one favor to the next. We have a lot of influence on our own as members, but it’s multiplied by ten when you consider how many people we have control over.”
The thought both sickened and intrigued me. “Can I see it?”
“Eventually. When it’s your turn to start running your own jobs, you’ll be granted access to the ledger. But you still have some work to do to prove yourself.”
A thought occurred to me. Did this ledger have record of April’s takedown? Could I find the person who’d requested a hit on her? I’d always been more focused on the game and not the players, but finding a name would be gravy on top of the Red Court’s destruction.
“Is it everyone since the beginning of the Red Court? It would have to be thousands of names long.”
Haley shook her head. “This list is only of current students. It’s the primary pool we work from. We keep more detailed records, but only the Queen of Hearts has access to them.”
My shoulders sank, but mindful of Haley’s calculating gaze, I moved the conversation in another direction.
“Aren’t you nervous that one of these people might turn on you?”
“No. If they did, we’d turn on them. If anyone came forward, it would be mutually assured destruction. And no high school student is willing to risk social ruin.”
She said high school student like she wasn’t one. Like I wasn’t one. The other kids in our school had morphed into a “them.”
“What’s mutually assured destruction?”
Haley smirked. “If you get Clark for US History, you’ll hear all about it. It’s this thing from the Cold War. Basically, it means that if anyone on this list sells us out, we take them down, too. We have so much dirt on everyone. It would be wholesale slaughter of the entire school’s reputation. Even the administration is too scared to acknowledge we exist. I mean, how would it look if we laid everything out?”
“It seems like a dangerous line to walk.”
“We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t at least get a small thrill from the danger of it all.” An uncomfortable sensation of being seen tickled the back of my neck. This, at least, I knew I shared with Haley.
She clapped her hands together. “Let’s start planning.” Haley continued to outline the process for me as we went along.
At the top of the list were ten highlighted spaces. “What are these blank spaces for?”
“These are for the other members of the Red Court. Most teams will use two or three girls. Bigger jobs might need as many as six. We mark these spaces with what we need and the Queen of Hearts does the rest.”
Ten other Red Court members. If you counted the Queen of Hearts, Haley, and me, there were thirteen of us total. I added this fact to my mental inventory to share with April tonight. Every piece of information could be valuable later.
“How many will we use?”
Haley grinned. “I don’t need help. It’s easier for me to do things myself than explain how to do them correctly to someone else.”
“I know how that feels.” I returned her smug smile and was surprised that it was genuine. I was beginning to like Haley, for all the problems
it might cause me later.
We fell into companionable silence as we examined the rest of the brief. It read like a giant list of people the Red Court had influence over, including teachers, coaches, and members of the school’s administration, all potential angles we could play to get our girl elected.
I knew Maura a bit; we had an elective business class together, and her family lived in my neighborhood. She was pretty and popular, but she also struck me as nice. The kind of person that would never sell herself to the Red Court.
“Did Maura request this?”
“Hmm? Oh, no. She didn’t.” Haley scrolled to the top of the dossier. “We got the request from Reece Jordan.”
“That’s Maura’s boyfriend.” I’d seen him waiting for her after class almost every day. Which came across as sweet, and a tad nauseating.
“Since Maura didn’t ask for this, will we be collecting from her?”
“Nope, she’s really just a bystander in the whole arrangement. For elections, it’s rarely the targeted winner that asks. It’s almost always a boyfriend or girlfriend or someone hoping to become a boyfriend or girlfriend asking on their behalf.”
“He must really love her if he’s willing to get in bed with us to make this happen.” There was nothing that could make me ask the Red Court for anything.
“Or he’s really stupid.” Haley’s sneer should win some kind of award. “Half the time they break up and then try to back out of the bargain when we come to collect. They just don’t get that there isn’t an expiration date. You make a deal, you pay up. Period.”
Despite Haley’s protestations, I really did think Reece loved Maura. All you had to do was see them together to know that. He was doing this because he loved her and wanted her to win. Love could make even the most sensible person do ridiculous things, which was why I would not be falling in it anytime soon.
Haley roughly pieced together a plan and I marveled at her strategy. She’d broken the job up into three parts: getting Maura nominated for Homecoming Court, methodically dismantling the competition, and securing the votes.
Haley’s gift for election rigging was beyond evident. She had talent and she used it well. We had the added advantage of Maura’s preexisting popularity. Haley mentioned that it wasn’t always so easy, but with Maura already having some notoriety, no one would question her nomination and subsequent win.
“Do you ever fail at a job?” She shot me a dark look, and I cracked a smile. To a stranger, that look would appear capable of peeling paint off the wall. I was slowly learning that Haley just had a dark sense of humor; I would bet my life that she meant that glare as a joke. My reaction was awarded with a quick smirk.
“I’ve never failed at a job. It’s been known to happen, but the Queen of Hearts won’t accept something we have no chance of succeeding at. Our assignments are typically challenging, but never impossible, which is why there is no opt-out clause for jobs. If you’re in, you’re in all the way.”
I nodded. “That makes sense. What should I do now?”
Haley reviewed the pieces we’d need to put in place for the first part. She cautioned me to never tap the shoulders of anyone we needed to collect from until the last second to minimize risk or acts of conscience.
My first task was to secure copies of the nomination forms, which we would be using to stuff the ballot box in Maura’s favor. Based on Haley’s experience, a hundred should be enough to name her a finalist.
“We’ve got Max Stanley on student council. Write up a note telling him to leave a hundred copies of the nomination form in his locker by the end of the week.” She handed me the locker skeleton key and sent a text with his locker number.
When we’d been at it an hour, and my legs wouldn’t stop bouncing from anxiety, Haley told me to get out of her sight.
“Should I text you after I place the note in Max’s locker?” I asked on my way out. She nodded without further acknowledging me. “Ok, bye.”
“Ember.” She shut off her tablet. “Don’t do that.”
“What? Say goodbye?” I thought for sure this was another joke of the ill-humored, but she leveled me with a stern look.
“We’re not friends, Ember. We don’t wave to each other in the halls. We don’t grab coffee on the weekend. We’re a team doing a job together.”
My traitorous face must have looked hurt, because she eased her sour expression the tiniest bit. I cleared my throat. “So, the Red Court is telling me who I can hang out with now?”
“Stop. I’m not trying to be cruel. You go everywhere with Gideon already, and you should still do that. Everything has to look like business as usual for you. But we’re not supposed to be in contact outside of Red Court work, and this makes it easier. We don’t want to slip up if we run into each other. It would be suspicious. We weren’t friends before, and it would make zero sense for us to be close now.”
I nodded, and she went back to her work. I watched her for a moment and realized that I didn’t even know her last name. This girl who knew everything about me, who could apparently have me followed without my noticing it, was still essentially a mystery. If I was going to get more information about the Red Court, it would have to come from her. She was my only link. And if I was going to do that, I needed to get close to her.
CHAPTER 8
“WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE?” Gideon whisper-hissed at me. He’d already tried striking up a normal conversation, but I’d shushed him.
We stood in front of locker 1018, Max Stanley’s, as I struggled to fit the skeleton key into the combination lock without seeming like I was breaking and entering. The sickly orange carpet in the hall where his locker was gave me hives; I couldn’t get this job over with fast enough. Keeping Haley’s comment about appearing normal in mind, I brought a reluctant Gideon along with me with the promise of an explanation. We were always together during our free period. Gideon already wasn’t a fan of my role in the Red Court, and I hadn’t thought of a way to explain what I was doing that made it seem less awful. Maybe because blackmail wasn’t supposed to be nice.
“I’m leaving a love note.” I added a glare to complement the thick undercurrent of sarcasm.
“Because squeaky clean StuCo boys are totally your type. Is this Red Court work?”
Gideon mentioning the Red Court—even in hushed tones—caused my heart to pound erratically. Who needed cardio when your best friend casually tossed out the name of the secret organization you belonged to?
“Keep. Your. Voice. Down,” I gritted out through clenched teeth. And then because I couldn’t not sass him, I said, “Not all of us are lucky enough to fall for a tortured artist who hocks lattes all day.”
“Don’t talk about Damien that way!”
I shushed him again and finally jimmied the locker open. As quick as I could, I dropped a playing card—the Jack of Spades, which was used to collect all debts—with a note written on the back on the top shelf and shut the door. According to Haley’s instructions, I gave Max Stanley three days to leave me copies of the nomination ballot in his locker.
Gideon and I turned to leave as casually as we could manage, though we probably failed. Subtlety was neither of our strong suits.
When we reached the quadrangle outside the foreign language hall where Max’s locker was, Gideon pulled up short. “Spill it, Ember. I’m not playing along with your games unless I know the rules.”
Haley hadn’t mentioned how much I could say to others about my membership in the Red Court. It must have been because sharing anything was forbidden. And beyond being forbidden, having this conversation in the hallway was a risk I didn’t need to take.
Gideon was staring at me impatiently. “Let’s go to my car,” I said.
“Don’t try to turn this into a coffee trip. I’m not going anywhere with you until you start talking.”
I rolled my eyes hard enough for it to hurt. “Fine. L
et’s at least go somewhere with a door.”
We walked down the hall until we found a janitorial closet that had been left ajar. I made a mock sweep of my arm to usher him inside.
“Do you know Maura Wright?” I asked once I closed the door.
“Sure.” His eyebrow quirked upward, which he only did when he was very interested. Like he couldn’t be bothered with the effort unless it was good enough.
“Well, I’m going to get her elected Homecoming Queen. Me and my partner. Max owes us. I’m collecting.”
“Wow. You and the Red Court are already an ‘us.’ Assimilated that quickly, huh?”
“Stop it.” I fixed Gideon with a look. “Don’t give me a hard time. It’s the last thing I need, especially from you.”
Chastened, Gideon dipped his chin. “So, what are you collecting?”
“Homecoming nomination ballots. Max has until the end of this week to leave them for me to collect out of his locker. Are you satisfied now?”
He nodded and I opened the door to the closet. “Good, because I’m getting high from the fumes of whatever is in that bucket.” I gestured to the corner where some industrial-strength cleaner sat. “There’s somewhere else I want to go.”
We walked to a nook next to the library where the student art showcase was set up. I’d been meaning to go ever since I met Haley.
I paused in front of the first painting that struck me. It was an abstract piece, a style I’d never gravitate toward ordinarily. Most abstract work was too untidy, but this one was... compelling. Red, gold, blue, and purple met in a purposeful collision, a flame caught on canvas, and I was the moth drawn to its light. It looked like I felt at my most desperate—on fire and burning to escape.
I checked the title card and saw that it was painted by Haley Bitmore-Stanton.
“That’s my partner,” I whispered to Gideon, who was touching the edge of a sculpture.
These Vengeful Hearts Page 5
