by Hannah Capin
I’m almost running now—clattering over the wood and under the stone, running for the humanities hall, no plan and no control and I need it back but first—
I need Mack.
I wing around the corner and there he is, with a classroom door swinging shut behind him. Empty-handed and so full of pain and fury it stops me dead in my tracks because—
until he finds out who you really are, said Duncan—
But he grabs my arms and I grab his and we spin into the wall and stumble into a cobwebbed prayer niche with two tapers flickering and a cracked Bible gathering dust.
We fall onto a red velvet kneeling bench, clinging to each other.
Mack says, “Jade.”
I breathe in.
His face flickers with something darker than I’ve ever seen in him. “I knew. I knew enough—”
I breathe out. The flames shiver.
He says, “Friday night—”
The walls crawl in close.
“Banks told me,” says Mack, and I see him there at Duncan’s house: Banks with the drink. Banks closing in. Banks washing out to a blank face and a dazzling smile and teeth I’ll break like glass. “Because Connor’s dead and I’m one of them now. I’m one of them—” And he shudders hard and deep. “He told me what they did. All of it.”
His eyes search mine.
“You know,” he says.
The scream in my throat finally dissolves. The velvet bristles under my skin and the cobwebs float weightless. My voice slides out smooth. “I know.”
“I thought it was over—” His hands grip tighter. “Because Connor posted that picture. Because too many people know, and even Lilia’s ready to tell. And because Connor’s dead. Dunc killed him for it and I let him, I let him, because I thought then they’d have to stop. But Banks—my best damn friend, since we were five, and it’s not like I didn’t know the way he is when he’s with Dunc and the boys—but when I told him, he laughed in my face. It’s not over, it’s never over, and now I’m one of them. I killed for them—”
My heartbeat is even. I won’t lose myself again.
Mack still has his eyes on me, wild and betrayed. “You—” he says, like he’s just now realizing how spinning-unwound I was when he found me and I found him. “What happened?”
I’m steel and control. I’m winged and ready.
I say, “Duncan—”
We’d be good together. You’d like it—
I weld his threat into what I need. Let it show just enough and just the right way.
I say, “He knows I know. Piper told me and he found out—”
Lies. But lies that tell the truth.
I say, “He was talking about Connor. He said—” And I take good-king Duncan’s words back and hold them up to his neck, blade-first. “‘Betrayal doesn’t get you anywhere.’”
Mack’s hands tighten to fists.
“He said he doesn’t trust me,” I whisper.
Our nook swallows the words up whole. The narrow flames stand broken-clock still.
“I know,” I tell Mack. “And nobody who knows is safe.”
He pulls me into his arms. He kisses me. Soft and plain, but with something running under it that shocks through me like lightning. His weakness is cracking away. What’s left is loyal and ruthless.
He says, “I won’t let him hurt you.”
I say, “He’ll get away with it.”
Truth.
His eyes stay on mine. The flames glow bright.
He says, “He won’t if we stop him.”
Lair
Mads—Madalena dos Santos, my best friend and my blood-sister and the hard heart of our coven—is on her front steps between the crowding palmetto branches when I pull in.
The house sprawls California classic, stucco and terra cotta, behind a gate vicious enough for a country where warlords set the rules. Her father makes deals with men in Lagos and Malibu; in São Paulo and Shanghai. Men who show up at this gate, wrecked and raging, when the land they sold for nothing sells again for everything.
The gate keeps them out but lets me in.
“Jade,” says Mads when I get to the steps. The security cameras blink. She’s in visor-heavy sunglasses and a dress the color of fire.
“It’s done,” I say, and we go inside. The housekeeper takes my blazer without a word and disappears down a corridor. “He’ll kill them.”
“You’re sure?” Mads asks.
“Yes,” I say.
She wraps me into a hug and we spin around and through the hall. “When?”
“This weekend.”
“Does he know?”
Of course she asks, because she knows me better than anyone. Of course I answer, because she’s her. “Almost,” I say. “Soon. He’ll do it and he’ll think he chose it all on his own.” We come back outside, along the courtyard and in the shade. “His parents are out of town this weekend. Duncan already told him to have a party on Friday.”
I could have told her eight hours ago when Mack went from follower to king just for me. Instead I texted the coven one word, Closer. I’m not leaving a trail anyone can trace. Not when Duncan is watching me almost as close as I’m watching him.
“How’s he going to get away with it?” Mads asks.
I open the door to the training room. “I’m going to make his watchdog take the fall.”
“Duffy?”
“Porter,” I say. The boy who stood at the door and asked Connor, are you sure? “He carries a knife. He’s not smart enough to see anything coming and he’s not smart enough for Duncan to think he’s a threat.”
She nods. We sit down along the wall. The training room echoes empty: her father’s weights, her brothers’ boxing ring, her fencing piste. Window-lined and sparkling clean.
We’re safer here than anywhere else in the world. Here behind the humming fence in the house where almost everyone carries a gun and everyone knows how to use one.
No one is weak at Mads’s house.
“Mack kills Duncan and Porter gets framed,” says Mads. Her sunglasses are still in place. She stares straight ahead like she can see through walls and time and lies. “What happens to Porter?”
“Let him self-destruct.”
“Too risky.”
She doesn’t know how weak Porter is. Hunching in front of the door. Panicking when Banks asked for his knife. Afraid enough to carry a weapon to a party where everyone is his friend. Where everyone has deadly secrets, and he knows every last one of them.
Afraid enough to snap. Everyone will believe it, just like everyone believed Connor couldn’t keep his mouth shut.
“He’ll defend himself,” says Mads. “Even if everybody thinks he’s lying, they’ll start looking at the rest of you.”
“Then I’ll make him self-destruct,” I say. “Make the guilt ruin him.”
Mads cracks her knuckles, one at a time. “Guilt won’t ruin boys like them.”
“It already is,” I say. “They let Duncan kill Connor. Banks is ready to kill somebody else. Duffy’s so nervous it’s embarrassing. The whole thing—” I wave one hand: the pack, the flock, the perfect untouchable crowd with their iron grip on St Andrew’s. “The cracks are showing.”
“It’s not guilt,” says Mads. “It’s fear.”
“Fucking cowards,” I hiss. For one fleeting second I’m proud of every bruise and every scratch—
the dark handprints on my arms and my neck and my ribs—
my broken claws—
the slash across my cheek—
—because every mark they left, everything they did, didn’t even get close to breaking me.
I’m ten times stronger than they’ll ever be.
A thousand times more ruthless.
“Fear,” says Mads again. “That’s what’s ruining them.”
I nod. Slow, but then certain. She’s right. It’s fear that turned the pack against Connor and made Porter drop his knife. All the brash brave boys with their crosses and their secrets—
<
br /> They’re fucking terrified.
“They don’t even know what fear is yet,” I tell Mads. She pushes her sunglasses up. Underneath, her eyes gleam cold. “By Friday they’ll be looking over their shoulders so hard they won’t even see what’s right in front of them. Porter’s going to snap. I know it.”
Mads doesn’t answer.
“What?”
“You can’t do it alone,” she says. Almost what Jenny said yesterday.
“I can do anything.” The words swish sabre-sharp.
She scoots closer until there’s no space between us. Summer would say, You don’t have to, not without us. Jenny would say, Don’t lie, even though I’m not.
Mads says, “I know.”
But then she says, “Remember when we learned to fight?”
Six years ago. Here, in this same room with the windows shadowed by palms and banana plants green through every drought. Mads and me running in together too fast for even Jenny and Summer to keep up. Matching bloody lips. The first day we knew we had wings.
The first day Mads’s father let her be her real self at school.
We got ready together, in matching girl-uniforms, like it always should have been. We wore our gold Best Friends necklaces outside our white shirts instead of hidden underneath. She painted my lips and I painted hers with a shiny perfect tube I stole off my mother’s vanity. Bright red, halfway between Mads’s color and mine.
We walked into school with our hands clutched together like the twin-C logo on our stolen lipstick. Ready. Daring them to say anything.
They didn’t. Not with all of us, Jenny and Summer and Mads and me, linked elbows and whispering—
laughing—
eyes quick and narrowing—
—so every girl in school knew we were the ones to watch and the ones to watch out for. The cool girls. The mean girls. We were middle school six months early, wearing our shiny new crowns before anyone else knew a monarchy was coming.
We were glossy red-lipped victory. The other girls didn’t even dare.
Then the last bell rang and Mrs. Maddox called me up to her desk to ask me why Kimberly Kostos was crying after lunch and blaming me for her broken phone, screen shattered against a table corner when she stared too long at Mads. It took two minutes of big eyes and smiling to trick Mrs. Maddox into thinking Kimberly made the whole story up—
—and when I got outside Jenny and Summer were scrambling and stuck at the edge of a half-circle of boys, and Mads was caught against the wall with two of them too close. Pulling at her skirt. Twisting her necklace.
She was stone-still with her head high. Fear and pride on her face.
And I was angrier than I’d been in my whole life. I shoved in but the circle crushed tighter together and I couldn’t get to her—
I shouted her name, Mads—
One of the boys laughed mean and said her deadname instead, and the other one slashed his hand across her face and smeared lipstick and blood across her skin and stained his palm guilt-red. Fake, he said, like you—
She pushed him. He fell. But there were too many of them, and she was alone, and I hated them so much I could feel it in my teeth—
And I ran hard at the circle and smashed through and fell almost into the wall so it was two of us now. Mads and me, together.
She shouted loud and I screamed, Get away get away get away. They laughed. Far away Summer and Jenny shrieked. The boy with the red hand staggered back up and said bitch and swung and hit me in the mouth, the same as Mads, and my scream got louder and my words came back new: You’ll pay you’ll pay you’ll pay.
Mads found my hand and pulled so I looked at her for just long enough to read her face, and then we were both screaming and rushing at the two of them. Hard enough that they stumbled back. Fierce enough that the circle broke for us before we could break it ourselves.
We ran—
fast and hard without stopping, without looking back—
until we weren’t running at all—
—until we flew.
Back to Mads’s house, through the gate and through the doors and straight to her father. Tall and never smiling and always in suits that shone like mirrors. There were three men with him, the same kind of men who were always coming and going in black-windowed cars when Mads and I were playing in the yard.
He sent them away. They didn’t ask questions.
Then he took Mads and me outside and past the courtyard to the training room. In the farthest corner her two brothers were dancing angry graceful circles in the boxing ring. Their coach shouted. They hit harder.
Her father said, You need to learn how to fight.
Mads said, Yes, sir.
I said, We’re going to kill them.
Her father went to the case on the wall. Needle-thin swords hung under the glass. Shining. Tempting.
He took out two of the blades. He said, You have to be brilliant.
I reached for one.
He said, You have to be patient.
I didn’t reach again, but I didn’t look away from the blades.
One came up and tapped under my chin. It wasn’t sharp, but it felt like power.
He said, Make your rage fight for you. It’s your greatest gift.
We learned to fight. With our sabres and our claws. With schemes and patience.
With rage.
“They’re afraid of us,” says Mads. The same girl she was then, standing in that circle with blood on her face but her chin up. “The Hillview boys. And the girls.”
She’s right. We made them afraid—
of Summer’s daisy smile painted over her black-widow heart—
of Jenny’s candy necklaces and fire-fast rumors—
of Mads’s fists looped with gold rings and her eyes that watch close—
of my forever-long plots so good that by the end they’d be begging me to get it over with, please, just get your revenge and let me sleep again—
We never needed other friends. We never wanted other friends.
She reads my mind: “We made them afraid.”
I say, “We made them ours.”
She nods. Then she says, “Porter. Send him to me after.”
I say, “Done.”
We stand up together.
We go to the glass case and get out our weapons.
We’ll fight with rage.
Ghosts
At night I sit in my bed under the window in the almost-dark. My phone glows with texts from Mack—
Jade, it sounds crazy but I think we were meant to meet like this—
Meant to be together—
It always had to be us, to change everything—
Partners in greatness.
Every time his words flicker onto the screen they warm my hands.
We don’t talk about Duncan or Connor or what we have to do. But it glistens underneath every text anyway. We know what we aren’t saying.
We know it so well we don’t have to say it.
When my phone stops lighting up I leave it next to me and unfold the page Summer printed. Search for the dazzle-smiled boy again. Knock all the matching faces against my memory to try to bring him back. It was Banks on the dance floor, Banks with the drink, Banks with the boldest best laugh—
—but I have to see his smile on the page. See it clear, right in front of me, so I can see it again when I watch the life drain out of him. It’s missing still, no matter how hard I stare at his teeth. No matter how much I test the rest of them: gleaming Duncan and all his wolves. Little-boy Malcolm, tight-lipped, and his clambering second-rank. Duffy and Porter and even Mack.
Every boy but one.
On Monday night, after Connor fell, I took out the long silver knife and stabbed it through his picture. Ripped his smirking face out of the page.
Next to his torn-open space Duncan’s silver eyes glitter even on paper. He matters the most. The order is cracking already, but once Duncan is gone, it will crumble.
The rest of them will be ea
sy.
We just have to kill the king.
Something taps against my bedroom door but I don’t look up. I stare hard at Duncan. Let my rage turn from a storm to a sabre. Hold myself patient and brilliant even when his paper eyes wink and I smell mint and aftershave and hear his voice so clear the skin on my neck pricks tight—
You like it—
My bedroom door swings open dream-silent. Light streams in.
There it is, he hisses, right here in my room—
Duncan.
I grab the knife off my nightstand. The blood rushes in my ears.
There it is—
I’ll kill him right here. I will.
The light switches on and my knife-hand comes back and I breathe in sharp—
It’s my father.
Not Duncan.
“Elle—” he says—
The air floods back out of my lungs, singing shrill, until I’m hollow. I bring the knife down.
“He was here,” I say, and it’s the truth even though it can’t be.
“He wasn’t,” my father tells me. His voice makes my ribs ache.
I hate Summer for making me tell.
“He was,” I whisper, truth and lies and exactly why I need to kill the real Duncan. “I heard him. He was here.”
My father sits down in my desk chair. He looks exactly as perfect as he always does.
Except for his eyes.
“He will never be here,” my father says. “Never.”
I trust it even more than I trust the barbed wire and the high fence around Mads’s house.
“We’ll do anything,” he says, unwavering. “Anything for you.”
I run one finger along the sharp edge of the knife. “I’m fine,” I say, and it stabs into me worse than any blade ever could, the way this hurts him.
“You don’t have to be,” says my father. “You can cry. You can talk. You can tell, if you want.”
“No,” I say with my eyes not meeting his.
My father’s hand finds mine. Wraps around it so we both hold the knife, together.
I look at him, finally.
He says, “Anything you want is yours.”
We sit in silence until I’m sure I won’t hear Duncan again. Until I fold the paper and tuck it into my pillowcase. Text back to Mack’s good night: Dream about me. Text the coven: Tomorrow morning, Mads’s car.
