For over a week, Parker studied everything he could find on the occult. He learned about the worst things—human sacrifice and ritual torture, and the way evil was always drawn to innocence—and some of the sillier things, like love spells and charms that made you irresistible. He couldn’t rule anything out, not until he knew what was real and what wasn’t. He’d already learned that half the charms Brianna wore were linked to black magic, and if she knew how to harness their power, she could be involved in some serious crap. But even worse than Brianna was Shane. Shane pretended to be normal. He pretended the girls of Fallen Oaks flocked to him because he somehow deserved it, even though he hadn’t done anything for the people of this town. He hadn’t done anything to earn Ruby’s affections. Parker supposed it was possible that Brianna was the one with true power, and Shane was benefitting from her abilities. But he suspected the opposite was true: Shane was the truly wicked one, and Brianna had gotten tangled up in something she didn’t understand.
He was going to help her break free.
Late on a Wednesday night, Parker drove over to the Fallen Oaks Trailer Park, hoping to spy on Shane through his bedroom window. He could tell something was wrong the minute he climbed out of his car. Something smelled off about the place, not because it was terrible, but because it was sweet. There had been times, in the past, when he’d joked that the scent of Ruby drifted through the air the way the scent of food drifted along in cartoons. He could follow her by her smell. But why was it here? Parker refused to believe the truth of it as he crept between the trailers, seeking the dwelling with the blue curtains and shiny silver door. He’d heard Shane describing his home to people before, always making it sound fancier than it was. The dude was poor, but he spoke about himself like he was some kind of prince. And it wasn’t like Parker had anything against poor people, but Shane pretended to be something else.
Rich in love and family.
Everything that guy said was so cheesy, Parker thought, as he arrived at Shane’s home. He exhaled in relief when he saw that Ruby’s Cadillac was nowhere to be seen. That car was a relic, a hand-me-down passed along from her grandfather to her dad. It had always struck Parker as odd that Ruby’s dad had split town without taking his car, but then, maybe the cops could’ve tracked him that way. Either way, Ruby’s father had disappeared, that car had remained, and Parker had swept in to pick up the pieces of her broken heart.
He’d earned Ruby’s devotion.
Quietly he slipped around the back of the trailer, stopping in front of the first window. He knew it was Shane’s, even before he saw the boy sitting inside it. Even before he saw the girl. He recognized the clothes strewn about the space, the wrinkled shirts and ratty jeans that Parker had studied ever since all the females at Fallen Oaks High had lost their heads over this guy. Yeah, the more Parker thought about it, the more he realized Shane had to be controlling them.
His eyes shifted left, to the bed. He could see Shane’s legs, could see one pale knee poking out from a hole in his jeans. At least he was clothed. Yes, this thought would become very important, as Parker’s gaze trailed farther left and took in the sight of long, freckled legs. Legs he recognized. He’d spent countless hours gliding his fingers over those legs, trying to get Ruby to give in to him. He’d memorized her freckles like constellations. He’d trailed kisses up to her thighs, until she was giggling and breathless.
Now, behind the thin pane of glass, Parker could tell she wasn’t laughing. She was staring at Shane like he was the goddamned moon. And Shane, that slippery sucker, was leaning in, tucking her hair behind her ear. Parker wanted to bang on the windowpane. He wanted to break through the glass and pummel Shane’s face until it resembled the actual moon.
But he couldn’t. If he burst into that bedroom, guns blazing, Ruby might think Shane was the victim. He needed to get her away from that asshole without ever letting her know he was responsible.
That meant calling in reinforcements.
Parker returned to his car. But instead of pulling onto the road, he pulled his phone out of his pocket. Dialed information. Asked to be connected to the Valentine residence.
Then he played the waiting game.
It took a couple of rings, but soon a groggy woman answered the phone. Mrs. Valentine. Ever since her husband disappeared, Ruby’s mother had become terrified that her daughters would be snatched up in the middle of the night. Now Parker would use that fear to his advantage. He’d get his girl away from Shane Ferrick and back into her own bed.
“Hello?” Ruby’s mother whispered. “Who’s there? James?”
Parker used his best horror-movie voice. He might as well have fun with it, since his night had gone to hell. “Your daughter is in danger,” he warned in a low, throaty voice. “By this time tomorrow, she’ll be dead.”
Then, a hitch in Mrs. Valentine’s throat. A low, strangled sob. Parker started to feel bad. But he couldn’t tell her he was kidding without blowing his cover, so he ended the call and put the car in drive.
Back on the road, Parker’s heartbeat started to calm. He already knew how things were going to play out. First Ruby’s mother would burst into her daughter’s room and find the bed empty. Then she’d call her daughter once, twice, twenty-five times. Ruby would answer, eventually, no matter what Shane was convincing her to do, and then she’d go home to find her mother sobbing on the front steps.
Sneaking out would no longer be an option.
16.
POISONED APPLE
Ruby Valentine was coming unhinged. Juniper could see it, even with one eye trained on Gavin. He lay on the black velvet sofa like a four-year-old after a birthday party: arms and legs splayed out haphazardly, dark hair sweeping across his face, chest moving rhythmically up and down.
He looked peaceful.
Ruby, on the other hand, looked terrified. Stumbling over to the window, she tossed the curtains aside, as if ready to make an escape. Unfortunately, she couldn’t. Steel bars lined the window, blocking them in. “He’s got us trapped.”
“Who, Parker?” Juniper asked, heart thudding at the sight of those bars.
Ruby shook her head. She was staring at the window, as if waiting for an apparition to slip through the bars. An apparition with dark hair and startling blue eyes. Long, pale fingers. A deceptive grin.
“Shane Ferrick isn’t here,” Juniper told her. “He can’t be.”
When Ruby spun around, her hair rippled over her shoulders like rivulets in a crimson sea. She’d dyed it months earlier, but Juniper was still getting used to it. The girls had grown up together, and she’d grown accustomed to Ruby’s ginger tresses. Once, she’d woven Ruby’s hair into a hundred tiny braids, and after they’d been undone, Ruby had looked like a mermaid.
Now she looked like a specter, and that hair looked like blood on a fingertip. Like a stain on an ivory dress. “Like spun rubies,” Ruby had insisted, three months ago in the girls’ bathroom at Fallen Oaks High. Juniper had been coming out of a stall when she found Ruby standing in front of the mirror.
Then, silence. Always silence with Ruby, ever since things fell apart and the two couldn’t look each other in the eye. That day, though, something was different. Ruby was bouncing from foot to foot, grinning at her reflection. “The color suits me, don’t you think? It looks like spun rubies.”
Juniper just stared. The last thing she wanted was to start a fight, but she hated how pale Ruby looked with that bloody red hair. How wicked. Still, she couldn’t stay silent, so she said the nicest thing she could muster: “It makes you look less innocent.”
Ruby laughed. For most of her life, she’d had rosy cheeks and a smattering of freckles on the bridge of her nose. She was wholesome as apple pie, or so the boys would whisper, and then they’d imitate tasting her. Their tongues would slide between their fingers as Ruby walked by in the halls.
But after Shane’s funeral, Ruby had spent so much time indoors, her freckles had faded. She’d lost what color she had. With that crimson hair,
she looked less wholesome and more poisoned.
Now Juniper wondered if that was the point. Wholesome-as-apple-pie Ruby had always been the boys’ favorite flavor, and something had always, always gone wrong. But if that apple pie looked a little poisoned, they wouldn’t beg for a taste anymore. They’d leave her alone and nobody would get hurt.
Nobody would die.
“We went to his funeral,” Juniper said, tearing her gaze from the bars on the window. “We watched them lower him into the ground, and we threw rose petals—”
“Closed casket,” Ruby murmured, slumping onto the sofa opposite Gavin. She seemed to be having trouble holding herself up, the way a newborn can’t quite lift its own head. And Juniper thought, with a fresh wave of self-hatred, that she would hold Ruby’s head up if it came to that.
She would give Ruby her blood. Her breath. For now, she knelt in front of the sofa, taking Ruby’s gloved hands. “Shane isn’t doing this. Think about it, Ruby. If he didn’t die, why lock us in a house and torture us?”
“We aren’t locked in.”
“You’re right. The back door is open.” She tried to catch Ruby’s gaze, but those eyes were as nervous as butterflies, refusing to settle on anything. “We shouldn’t be sitting in this room, waiting for someone to come for us. We should be out the door and on the road.”
“We can’t. A car is the last place we should—”
“Nobody made Shane get into that car! Nobody can blame us for what happened to him. He chose to drive—”
“Did you see him leave the party? Did you see him take the keys from Parker’s pocket?” Finally Ruby was looking into her eyes, but that stare was unsettling. It held an intensity that Juniper had never seen before. Ruby was desperate to understand what had happened the night of the party.
But Juniper didn’t have the answers she was looking for. “I left before Shane did,” she admitted, glancing at the words written on Gavin’s skin. “I didn’t see Gavin do anything, and I only heard about what Brett did after the fact.”
“What about you?” Ruby asked. She said it so gently, Juniper almost thought she could tell the truth. Confess. Wipe the slate clean. But she was still clinging to the delusion that they might rekindle their friendship, and this little bit of honesty would stamp that fire out.
Permanently.
And so, she told a half-truth. The thing she’d been telling herself over and over again since the party. “I never tried to hurt him,” she said, still holding Ruby’s gaze. Still holding Ruby’s hands, amazingly enough. “He came and sat with me, and we had a beer together.”
“Shane sat with you?” Ruby asked. She said it softly, like she was caressing his name with her mouth. Juniper didn’t understand. According to everything she knew, Shane had done something horrible to Ruby, but if that were true, she wouldn’t be speaking his name like that.
She’d be spitting on his grave.
“Okay, be honest with me,” Juniper said, glancing at the roaring fire. “You’re not staying here . . . You’re not hiding in this room because you want to see him. Right?”
Ruby lowered her eyes. “If I could apologize—”
“Are you serious?” Heat flooded Juniper’s chest. “After what he did to you?”
“What do you think he did?”
“I’m not sure, honestly. All I know is what I saw at school. One minute, you’re feeding him in the courtyard, and the next, that video is popping up in my inbox, of you . . . Well, I don’t need to remind you of what was in it.”
“No. You don’t,” Ruby said, and now her voice was cold. Juniper could envision icicles dangling from her heart. Maybe that was what you had to do when everyone you loved turned against you, or left you, or worse. Maybe you had to take all the warm, bleeding parts of yourself and cover them in a frost.
To survive.
Ruby was a survivor. That much had always been true. In a way, it was what had drawn Juniper to her in the first place. When Ruby fell down on the playground, she didn’t cry. When her father yelled at her, she didn’t even flinch. And when Shane Ferrick humiliated her in front of the entire school, she didn’t seek vengeance.
Of course, she didn’t have to. People did it for her. Parker, along with his loyal henchman, Brett. Gavin, apparently. Juniper, too. Now they were here. Five little players in a dangerous game, trying to escape with their lives. And Ruby wanted to stay so she could chat up the boy who’d humiliated her?
“You should hate him,” Juniper spat, pushing to her feet. She felt cold without Ruby’s hands in hers. “He snuck into your room. He snuck into your bed, and then—”
“He didn’t sneak in.”
Juniper’s heart took a holiday. All night, it had been pounding inside of her, and now . . . silence. Always silence, with Ruby. Always suffering and regret, because Ruby wouldn’t forgive, and she wouldn’t forget. But she could forgive Shane, and she could defend him.
Ruby stood up slowly. In the light of the flickering fire, her hair flashed brighter than poppies, then darker than blood. “He didn’t sneak into my room, and he didn’t sneak into my bed. I snuck into his.”
17.
DESERT WIND
Ruby felt possessed. Her long red hair was wrapped up in a bun on her head, tucked into a knit cap. She was wearing black yoga pants and a matching sweatshirt, which weren’t exactly her first choice in seduction attire, but then again, she could always take them off.
And she needed to be stealthy.
She stood beneath the Ferricks’ trailer, in the far left corner of the park, and asked herself what she was doing here on a Saturday night. Parker would kill her for this. Then he’d kill Shane, and probably Brianna, just to be a dick.
Parker was that kind of guy. Ruby knew it that night, even if she’d been clueless when they’d started dating. Parker was possessive, and though he had never hurt her, exactly, he’d weaseled his way into every aspect of her life. She felt his presence even when she was alone.
She tapped on Shane’s window. She’d only spoken to him a few times since the infamous slow dance in the hallway, but there was something crackling between them, and they didn’t need words to find it. That fire had sparked when he’d looked into her eyes, the day of the storm, and Ruby had been ablaze ever since.
Shane opened the window.
Quietly she climbed onto his wrinkled sheets. “I needed to see you,” she said, pulling off her knit cap. Her hair rippled around her, and she ran a hand through it, feeling self-conscious.
Across from her, Shane smiled. God, he was pretty. A sliver of hair curved over his left eye, like a black crescent moon in a sapphire sky. Like something you couldn’t even see on this planet, but made sense somewhere. That was Shane, alien and natural at the same time.
Look at him, leaning so casually on his bed, Ruby thought. Not even nervous that I’m here. Nobody treated her this way. Not since she’d started dating Parker. Before she could stop herself, she was speaking the words, “You haven’t heard, have you?”
“What, about your boyfriend?”
Four words, so easily spoken. There was no fear in Shane’s voice. But Ruby had enough fear for the both of them, and her voice trembled as she said, “He’d hurt you if he knew I was here.”
“But you came anyway.”
“Yes.”
“Because you needed to see me.”
“Yes.”
His smile deepened. It was sly and mischievous, and Ruby felt stars awakening all over the universe. Galaxies that used to be dark now had light. “Well,” he said, scooting closer to her, “that’s good enough for me.”
“It is?”
He nodded, toying with his sheets. His bedding was cerulean and ivory. His walls, a deep twilight blue. “I’ve seen you with this boyfriend. I’ve seen the way you flinch when he touches you. The way you find excuses to slip away, into the places he can’t follow. Do you even like him, Ruby?”
Ruby lowered her eyes. She liked it better when he was calling her Strawber
ry, liked it better when they were both being coy. Playful. All she’d wanted to do was come over here and do something stupid. Take off her clothes and make him lose his mind. Let herself lose hers.
For once.
But now, staring into those sapphire eyes, she decided to do something more dangerous. She decided to tell him the truth. That she’d broken up with Parker seven times, and each time, he just kept showing up at her house, playing hide-and-seek with her sisters or making sandwiches with her mother in the kitchen. One night, after a particularly bad breakup, she’d found him in the dining room with a giant carving knife in his hand, standing over a turkey. And she couldn’t say anything because, well, there was a turkey.
That was the thing about Parker. He might’ve been a stalker, but he was smart. Everything he did, he did under the guise of protectiveness, of caring. Everything he did included an element of doubt. Like, maybe he was just a sweet, devoted guy who didn’t understand that it was over. And he was so good with her sisters. Her mother loved him. Maybe she was wrong for trying to break things off.
Now, in the quiet of Shane’s bedroom, it all sounded ridiculous. But Shane didn’t blame her for Parker’s possessiveness. “Every rebellion starts with a small act of defiance,” he said, his fingers grazing the inside of her wrist. Ruby felt thunder and lightning coalescing in her veins. “You two eat lunch together, right?”
Ruby nodded. Every day, for the past year, she’d eaten lunch with Parker, whether she’d wanted to or not. Rain or snow, sleet or storm. Weekend or weekday, Parker was there.
“So on Monday, you’ll eat lunch without him,” Shane said. “I’ll find you after third period, and a bunch of us can sit together.”
“Who?”
He shrugged. “Friends I’ve made.” Girls, he meant, but Ruby wasn’t jealous. Parker would be less inclined to throw a fit if a bunch of girls were watching. “Safety in numbers, right?”
This Lie Will Kill You Page 10
