by Hannah Capin
“To Duncan!” I shout when the cheer ends.
“To Duncan!” the rest of them yell.
And I weave in with vodka in one hand and tequila in the other and pour too much and they drink it anyway.
Tonight, I decide how it ends.
“Maybe you don’t suck,” says Piper, too drunk already, when I get to her. “Maybe you’ll be me when I’m Lilia.”
I fill her glass. “I doubt it.”
She raises it. “Maybe. And we’ll make sure shit like that doesn’t happen.” She nods at the sofa across from us. Three flock-girls and two of Malcolm’s second-rank boys tangle together and laugh. Malcolm brought the boys and Porter brought the girls, stumbling in wide-eyed with his hand hovering over his knife. Duncan didn’t send them home. Instead he looked at Banks and said, Watch them, and looked at Porter and said, We’ll talk Monday.
They won’t.
“I mean, God, we still don’t know who left those notes.” Her words are liquor-loose. “Somebody fucking threatens us, and Malcolm shows up with half the school. He’s fucked if someone tries to push me off a damn roof.”
“Fuck their threats,” I say. “We’re untouchable.”
She narrows her eyes at me over her glass. She says, “You’re too fucking fearless for your own good.” Then she laughs loud and the sound scatters up to the high ceiling.
But she doesn’t feel the threat tonight. Not with every drink I’ve poured for her. Not with scared-stupid Duffy even drunker than she is, clumsy and eager with his hands roaming every inch of her. They’re not thinking about why we’re here anymore. They’re not worrying that one of us talked, one of us told—
—one of us meant it when we asked who was next.
When the clock strikes one, one cold clang ringing out from above us, they’re already fading. Lilia is upstairs. Duncan had Banks carry her up while her eyelids dragged shut and she slurred about one more drink. Malcolm and his boys are passed out in the game room with the flock-girls curled next to them and the screen blinking GAME OVER. Porter slouches twitching at the front door with his eyes on the night.
I’ve turned the lights out, one by one. An hour ago the house blazed fire-bright. Now it glows dim.
No one has noticed the darkness creeping in.
We sit at the long dining room table under a half-lit chandelier. The lights hang through a cluster of bleached-white antlers that aim sharp points to the darkest corners of the room. Duffy and Banks share a joint and the smoke hazes the air. The music stopped half an hour ago.
“Truth or dare,” says Piper. Her voice sticks to itself. Duffy’s face is lost against her neck.
Banks laughs and blows smoke. “Girls,” he says. “Damn.”
“Truth,” says Duncan from the head of the table.
Piper is bird-eyes and sharp words. Her hand digs into Duffy’s hair. She says, “Who’s next?”
Duncan’s teeth glitter in the low light. “That’s the question, isn’t it?”
“You have to answer.”
He drinks. “Whoever made those signs is who’s next. Whoever ran their mouth.”
“Is that a promise?” Piper asks. Duffy’s lips move lower, to her collarbone, and her chin tips back.
Duncan sets down his glass. “You only get one question. My turn now.”
“Truth,” says Piper.
“Who did you tell?”
“Fuck you.”
Duncan doesn’t move. “Who did you tell?”
“Nobody.”
“Jesus,” says Banks. He takes another hit. “If you’re that fucked about it, go wake everybody up and walk them out on the roof and make them talk. God, you know how to kill a buzz.”
“Seconded,” I say, and I raise my glass.
“It’s not even your business,” says Piper. “You didn’t get a note. You weren’t at Dunc’s last week.”
“Piper.” Duncan’s eyes cut to me and back. “Don’t.”
“Like she doesn’t already know.” Piper pushes Duffy away. He blinks bleary-eyed and wipes his hand across his mouth.
Duncan’s face smooths over. “She’s drunk,” he tells Duffy. “Take her to bed.”
The room is already silent, but it goes quieter somehow. Piper laughs into the void. “I’m not one of your damn victims,” she spits.
Banks shifts forward in his seat. The wood creaks and the muscles in his arms shiver. Duncan glances at him, quick: Not yet.
“Truth or dare,” says Mack, finally not-mute. I can feel the nerves strung tight under the words, but his face doesn’t give anything away.
“Fuck,” says Banks. “Thank you. Dare.”
“Finish the bottle.” Mack pushes the tequila across the table.
“Fuck,” says Banks again. “Gladly. Here’s to forgetting this bitch of a game ever happened.” He knocks back the last inch of liquor. When he’s done he whoops and slams the bottle down and the crack splits the dark like lightning. “Who’s next?”
Duncan measures out a long look. “Careful,” he says. He catches me watching.
I don’t look away.
He tilts his chin again, the way he did when he had me cornered in the chapel and I still pushed back.
Banks laughs. “Mack’s the one who better be careful. Right, Dunc?”
Duncan’s eyes drop colder. He’s drunk enough that his polish is starting to chip away just enough to show who he is under it—
the boy he was one week ago when the door swung shut—
—the boy who gave the orders in the first place.
“Dare,” he says to Banks.
Banks knows what he really means. He laughs again anyway: almost bold enough to dazzle. “Drink up, captain,” he says, and he slides the vodka to Duncan.
Duncan grabs the bottle with one hand. Five long seconds tick out so loud I can hear them hanging over us. “Is that all you’ve got?”
“For now,” says Banks. He wants to fight, but he won’t. Not tonight.
“I thought you had more in you.” Duncan’s words sing against each other, metal on metal. He looks at me again. I sink back against Mack’s chest and run my hand down his arm until our fingers fold together.
Duncan drinks. When the bottle is empty, he holds it in front of him and spins it. The glass twinkles like charm and candlelight. He flips the bottle and catches the neck in one hand. For a second he’s a portrait of his good-king self, lit soft and raising his scepter.
He cracks the bottle down against the edge of the table. The glass explodes—
—ice and knives and dying-bright light.
“Fuck!” Banks shouts. He leaps up and swats the shards away. Two rooms over Porter yelps like a dog with his tail caught underfoot. Piper starts to whine and Duffy squeezes his hand against her arm so tight her whine turns into a pain-sharp cry.
Mack doesn’t move. Neither do I.
Duncan raises his scepter again. The broken edges gleam like teeth. “Who’s next?”
He said, Shut the bitch up. He said, We’d be power. He said, I’m sure.
But the clock ticking over his head is running down to zero. He’s dead already.
“Dare,” I say to Duncan.
His polish flakes away again. He’s too drunk to do anything about it. He’s the wolf from the white-sheets room and the rooftop.
He says, “Kiss me.”
“Fuck you, Dunc,” says Mack, sudden and angry. Banks laughs and flicks a sliver of glass across the table.
“Jade?” says Duncan. He’s a strange sideways version of his St Andrew’s self. Still all assurance and expectation, but bleeding thick truth from the cracks the liquor made.
“She won’t,” says Mack.
“She will,” says Duncan.
They watch, Mack and his king and the rest of them, hanging tight to every breath.
You’d like it, said Duncan, You like it—
I stand up. The room spins fast. Deadlocked antlers and broken glass. Liquor and weed and lust and hate. Mack says Jade, don�
�t, and Piper’s nervous starling laugh shatters like the bottle. Mack says it again—
Jade, don’t—
—but tonight I decide.
I take Duncan’s hand in mine. Coil my fingers around the cold glass and his kill-tight grip. He stands up. Taller than me and stronger and balancing on the knife-thin edge of control. Glinting greed and power.
“Look at you,” he murmurs. His mint-and-aftershave smell rolls over me, and vodka drips off his breath, and the blood rises in my throat. He’ll taste it when he kisses me. “You wanted this, didn’t you?”
He presses hard against me and I swallow down the blood. His smile etches deeper. His hand slips off the broken bottle and onto my back—under the waistband of my skirt—onto my skin—
—but the knife-sharp glass is in my hand now.
He cages me against him. One hand on my ass and the other on my neck, three fingers pressing up under my skull.
He kisses me.
Everything goes wreckingly white and the scream that lives in my lungs cracks every rib and poisons all of me. And there’s nothing except dead white and his mouth suffocating mine and his hands burning into the bruises he left last week—
—but I kiss him back, exactly like he wants. Exactly like he would have felt anyway no matter what I did. Fangs grazing his lips. Claws finding his skin. Broken bottle sliding up his throat.
He lets me go.
Three tiny cuts under his jaw bloom red. I can still taste his tongue. He slips his hand back out of my skirt and I bring the bottle down. Slow and deliberate, so I don’t lose myself and bury it in his neck in front of all of them.
“Damn,” says Duncan, drunker than before.
I am deadly. I’m a poisoned blade. I’m all the power he thinks he has and more.
I say, smoke and dusk, “Truth or dare.”
He says, starving, “Truth.”
I say, “Do you believe in fate?”
He says, “No.”
I say, “You should.”
Before he can ask me what I mean Porter yelps again from the door. Around the table everyone comes back to life. Banks picks up the last scrap of the joint. Mack sweeps his hands across the shining wood and gathers the shards of glass together. He doesn’t look at Duncan or at me. Duffy whispers into Piper’s ear and she pulls away.
“Mack,” Porter calls. His voice wavers and echoes. “Mack. Come here.”
Mack sweeps up another handful of glass.
I walk out on them.
Porter cowers in the front hall. He has his knife out and his face pressed to the window. Outside, the lights on the gate beam bright and the spotlights buried along the edge of the house leave us blind.
“Out there,” says Porter. He reaches behind him with the hand that isn’t on the knife. His hand finds his glass on the side table and he drinks deep. He’s so scared I can smell it on his skin. He taps the glass with his knife and the blade shivers.
Beside the gate, in the oleander tree, the huge dark bird is still waiting. Watching. Its belly and its eyes gleam in the steady light.
“What is it?” Porter asks, all wonder and fear.
I think of Mads in her car in the dark. Jenny and Summer far down below, where the road makes a breathless tight turn into traffic that speeds too fast. The good long knife from my sister’s wedding silver. My own black wings wrapping Inverness in a darkness so heavy not even the stars shine through.
I say, “There’s nothing there.”
Oath
When I get back to the dining room Mack is gone. Banks stares out the window at the lights in the valley. Duncan is back in his seat, elbows balanced on the armrests, fingers tented together. Duffy leans against the wall next to Piper’s chair and pulls at her arm. The broken glass is a glittering pyramid in the center of the table.
“Where’s Mack?” I ask.
“Upstairs,” says Banks without moving.
I turn to leave again.
“Stay with us,” says Duncan.
Piper stands up and pushes Duffy away. “You’re drunk,” she says. “And you’re drunk, and you’re drunk. You’re all drunk. Good night.” She brushes past me and stalks into the shadows. Duffy trails after her, stumbling.
“I need to talk to Mack,” says Duncan.
Banks pulls a clip out of his pocket and lights another joint. “He’s not going to give her up,” he says.
“Leave us alone, Banks,” says Duncan. Outside, past the faraway lights, a tiny white flashbulb burst burns itself out.
“I’ll find him,” I tell Duncan before the flickering white can come closer.
The stairway is wide and waiting. It shifts under my feet, but only a little. It’s with me—the hidden turns and the dark corners and the huge black bird outside. Loyal. Lined up to make the night unfold exactly the way I want it to.
I find one more switch at the top of the stairs and plunge the landing from dim to pitch. I don’t need light to find my way down the hall to Mack’s room. I hear him—his footsteps pacing, his voice rising and falling, his heartbeat matched with mine.
“Mack?” I call, quiet. I open the door.
The night breeze rushes up to meet me. Mack is on the balcony, turning back toward the house. His room is dark.
“Jade,” he says. And then the words tumble out: “What we have to do—we have to do it now. So it’s done. So we’re done.” He takes a quick step toward me. The guilt glows on his face. “If this ends it. Just Duncan. No one else.”
“Just Duncan.” I close the distance between us.
It’s a lie. But he’ll forget once he’s killed Duncan. Once he knows what he can do, he won’t ever be afraid again. He’ll beg me to let him kill the rest of them.
“Everything there is says I shouldn’t do it,” he says. “We’re brothers, the whole team—like soldiers are, you know? Duncan and us.”
“Connor was one of you,” I say. “Duncan will turn on you the same way he turned on him.”
“I should be the one fighting off whoever left those notes. Not the one holding the knife.”
I take his hands. “It was Dunc. He knows someone else is going to talk. You know what he’s willing to do. He’ll kill you like he killed Connor if he decides he doesn’t trust you. And he’ll—”
I look away. For him, so he’ll see what he needs to say. And because behind him the sky is fluttering white again.
I say, low, “You saw how he looked at me. You know what he wants.”
His breath catches between his teeth. “You shouldn’t have let him kiss you.”
A biting bitter laugh slips out before I can stop it. “He would’ve even if I didn’t let him. That’s what he does. Don’t you get it? He’s not all great and virtuous. He—”
“I know he’s not,” says Mack. He takes me into his arms. Not like Duncan did—not like I’m something he owns. Like I’m something he treasures. “He won’t touch you again.”
“He won’t touch anyone again.”
“This is the only way,” he says. But he’s asking me, not telling me.
“You know it is.”
“The only way to end it all.”
I nod. “You’re the one St Andrew’s needs. You’ll change everything.” I let the words sink all the way down into his bones. “You deserve it. Just like Duncan deserves to die.”
He breathes out again, slower. Steady. “St Andrew’s will be ours,” he says.
“The whole fucking world will be ours.”
He’s still afraid. I can see it on his face and feel it in his heartbeat. But bravery isn’t being fearless—
—it’s swallowing the fear and spitting it back out.
“Just—what if—”
I pull away from him. Find my good long knife. I hold it between us, so when I look at him I see the blade across his face and my eyes, mirrored back, instead of his.
“What if,” says Mack, “doing this makes me the same as them?”
“You could never be anything like them.”
“What if I can’t do it?”
I hold the knife to Mack’s throat. “You’re a coward.”
He presses closer against the blade. “I’m not.”
“You’re a fucking coward.” I won’t give him the blindfold he wants—the one he’s hiding behind every time he doesn’t say what he means. Doesn’t say kill the king. “You said you’d kill him. You do what you swear you’ll do.” I press the knife tighter. “If I promised I’d kill Duncan I’d kill him. If I promised I’d kill you—”
I come so close that if either of us slipped his throat would split open.
“—I’d kill you right here,” I hiss.
I drop the knife. It falls between our feet. The room shines white and outside, below us, a low warning rumble snakes up from the valley.
“I’m not a coward,” he says. There’s a red line against his throat where the blade marked him mine. “I’ll do it.”
“You will,” I tell him. “And it’s going to make you. Being great is being more than what you were. Tonight you’ll be more.”
Mack picks up the knife and holds it, blade up, in both hands. “And if we fail?”
I wrap my hands around his. “Take your courage and nail it down. Nail it to your heart. We won’t fail.”
The starlight sparks off the knife and paints his face darker than I’ve ever seen it.
I speak faster now. An incantation. “As soon as they’re sleeping I’ll take Porter’s knife. You’ll do what you promised. They’re drunk enough that they’ll sleep harder than dead boys sleep. There’s nothing we can’t do.”
He looks at me like the world is only this room. Only the two of us with our hands locked around the knife.
We draw together like something outside of us is guiding us to each other. Our lips meet with the knife between our hearts. We kiss. It’s an oath.
“You’re sure they’ll believe it was Porter?” he murmurs against me.
“They couldn’t think anything else.”
“Then it’s settled,” he says. Deadly and resolved.
Outside the sky flashes its brightest yet—
and it’s lightning, real now because I made it real—
