by Hannah Capin
Mads screams out of the parking lot so hard her tires burn the pavement away to nothing.
They shriek my name, Jade Jade Jade, and I love them. I love them more than anything.
Mads squeals across an intersection with the light flashing to red. She says, “Where are we going?”
And Summer shouts, “Anywhere!”
And Jenny shouts, “Away!”
And a third voice says, not quite shouting: “We’re free.”
I turn and she’s there, pale and with a cigarette between her fingers but the circles almost gone from under her eyes.
Lilia.
I say, “How did you—”
“She fucking texted us,” says Jenny, and she throws her arm around Summer’s shoulders to pull Lilia’s hair.
And Lilia sasses back: “You texted me first.”
“Summer did,” says Mads. “We didn’t.”
Summer beams at her and me and all of us. “I did. Lilia and Malcolm and Duffy and Mack.”
“Piper,” Lilia says. “Dead with Duffy’s name spelled out. And then you on a stretcher, and there was so much blood, but I knew—”
“You didn’t know,” says Jenny, and we turn a corner, and the sunset pours out into our eyes. “You flipped your shit when Summer said who’s next—”
“She knew,” says Mads. “She told Summer she wanted in.”
I look at Lilia who faded every time Duncan grabbed her arm.
Lilia who took her blue war-paint and carved GUILTY onto a dead boy’s banner.
“So where are we going?” she asks, alive the way she was when I cut three marks into her skin. “I ditched rehab for this.”
We scream with laughter, all four of us. Laughter that hurts deep under my ribs but raises a proud fist against everyone who isn’t us.
I say, when we stop, “Duncan’s house.”
They gasp delight and Summer says, “You’re back, you’re back, oh god. You’re back. I was so fucking scared, Jade.”
Jenny says, “I told you she’d be fine.”
And Summer says, “Don’t act like you weren’t freaking out as much as I was last night.”
“Useless bitches. Both of you,” says Mads.
“Thank fuck I’m here,” says Lilia.
They are perfect.
I say, “Do you have my phone?”
Jenny hands it to me.
She made me say, last night, when I was bleeding myself to death and the ambulance was shrieking up the street, I know.
I said to Mack, You gave her the drink.
I said, I hope someone kills you the way you killed Duncan.
The dagger in my ribs digs deeper.
I look at my coven and not at his desperate unwound replies and I say, “So everyone knows Piper’s dead?”
“Everyone knows.” Lilia scrolls and blows smoke. “And everyone thinks it was Duffy.” She shows me a picture: the gray stone of St Andrew’s, hemmed in with police cars. A news van parked half on the sidewalk. Boys with thousand-yard stares.
Jenny opens her window and shouts out into the bleeding sky, “He thinks she’s on his side. Malcolm does, too. They think she’s fucking harmless.”
“Jenny, God!” Summer grabs her and pulls her back. Jenny falls half into her arms and stays that way. “We’re harboring fugitives.”
The wind rushes loud and I say, just to Mads: “And Mack?”
“He’s sorry.” The car surges faster.
“Sorry I’m dead, or sorry I’ll kill him?”
She shakes her head.
Jenny shuts the window and Lilia lights another Parliament. Summer sighs into Jenny’s bleach-pink hair. I look out at the night flooding in over the lights and the cars and the city.
When I think of Mack the space between my ribs aches hollow like the gasping wound in Duncan’s chest. I didn’t love him—not the way he thought he loved me.
But I loved who we were together. Power, said Duncan. Twisted, said Banks.
And for one high wild instant, it was true.
I say to my coven, “Mack will die tonight.”
It sinks in and clings to our skin and our hair. Filling up the silence as we hum for the hills. Until Lilia’s cigarette is a burnt-short stub and she throws it out onto the road.
Then her cold hand finds mine and she says, “Are you really all right?”
I say, “Yes.”
Mads says, low, “Don’t lie.”
Their hope and their sorrow and their rage swirl tight around me. My beautiful deadly girls with their loyalty so strong nothing could break it. And Lilia, one of us now, hardening from glass to diamond.
I say, “I’ll be fine. When this is over.”
It’s the truth.
Summer sighs stars and wistfulness. Jenny elbows her. Mads says, “We’re yours.”
They are, even Lilia. Like Mack never was. And I wonder, spun up in their vow, if he told me all along—
when he said, maybe I’m worse than all of them—
—if the darkness I saw gleaming out from under his dull gold was something he tried to hide from me, not something I had to dig free.
I wonder what I really saw when I looked at his picture on the page Summer printed. If I saw his light or his darkness.
Or the dazzle-smiled boy.
The sky glows red. Bloody and bold and resolute.
Mads says, “Tonight. It ends tonight.”
Our Night
Thirteen days past sweet sixteen my claws are sharper than they ever were before.
We’re all flash tonight. Jenny and Summer and Mads and me. We’re vengeance and poison we spilled in a theatre so dark the truth hid like a spider where no one could see it. Red lips, each our own color. Jenny’s pink and Summer’s rose and Mads’s scarlet and my blood-red. Deadly smiles and whitest-white teeth.
My hair is black again. Revenge-black and sharp and short, shorter than it should be, but I don’t care because it’s still mine and nothing else matters. And my eyes are hidden behind sunglasses so dark no one will ever see through them until it’s too late, and Summer swears I’ll trip and fall and never walk again, but I don’t care about that, either.
Tonight I’m fate.
Tonight Jenny and Summer and Mads and me, we’re four sirens, like the ones in those stories. The ones who sing and make men die.
Tonight Lilia is ours, unfurling her wings, and we’re five instead of four.
Tonight we have knives where they think our hearts should be.
Tonight we’re walking up the driveway to our best party ever. Not the parties like we always go to, with the dull-duller-dullest Hancock Park girls we’ve always known and the dull-duller-dullest wine coolers we always drink and the same bad choice in boys.
Tonight we’re going to a St Andrew’s Prep party.
Hosting it, technically.
And nobody turns down girls like us.
We break down the door. We let us in. Our teeth flash. Our claws glimmer. Mads laughs so shrill-bright it’s almost a scream. The dead kings wake. We all grab hands and laugh together and then everyone, every St Andrew’s ghost we’ve killed is back and every boy we’ll kill tonight knows, far away where they are, and I know they see it—
for just a second—
—our fangs and our claws.
The Set
Duncan’s house is haunted but ghosts can’t hurt me anymore.
It’s blackout-dark when we drive in. The house shirks back into the hills like the family that ran when their perfect son—Duncan the captain, Duncan the king, Duncan the Dartmouth-bound—died exactly the way he deserved.
The neighbors won’t look, but we stay hidden anyway. Mads parks far past the dead-dark driveway and we flit shapeless and shadowed through the trees. They wouldn’t see us even if they looked.
We kick through the giant windows along the back of the house. The ones we broke with crosses on Friday night but they fixed on Saturday before anyone could wonder why two girls burned with enough rage to rip
their whole house down.
The alarm beeps and the phone rings deep in the dark. Lilia answers it and recites the code dead Duncan gave her. She says, lilting and hundred-proof, “You know how boys are. Never careful enough.”
They set the stage, my four siren sisters. They know how to summon the boys we need:
Duffy.
Malcolm.
Mack.
Two weeks ago they were weighted down weightless with solid gold armor. They were a wolf-pack stalking the hills, invincible. They knew consequences were for other people.
Tonight they’ve seen death creep close. They’ve seen blood soak into the dirt under Inverness and birds line the peaks of St Andrew’s.
When their dead king’s widow whispers to them they listen. When she says Come to Duncan’s they obey.
Lilia tells Duffy and Malcolm, Mack’s coming. He killed them. He’ll kill you, too, if you don’t stop him.
She tells Mack, They’re coming. Do what Jade wanted.
And they bring out the poison and I dress for my final act.
I wear my homecoming gown. It’s the same fatal red as my lipstick. My makeup is so very, very perfect it will make them afraid just to look at me. My hair shines sleek. My nails are gold. Mads’s sunglasses hide my eyes.
When I’m ready I unwrap the gauze from around my wrists. The stitches crawl up my arms and my skin is bruised and dark, but there’s no blood on my hands.
I put on the long black gloves I wore to Summer’s party on New Year’s Eve. The silk slides over the stitches and hides them away. I step into high black heels with shining red soles. I straighten my crucifix.
I set the golden crown on my head—the crown Mads wore when she told Mack you knew enough. It fits me perfectly.
My coven kisses me good-bye. They leap back through the window we broke and their wings poke dark out of their backs. They turn to birds in front of my eyes and fly away, all of them. They won’t be here when Duffy and Malcolm and Mack go cold. They won’t be here when the police come and I tell them, crying and wide-eyed and innocent, innocent, innocent, what Mack did.
How he killed all the boys in his pack because they knew his secret.
How he tried to kill me.
I am alone tonight. The way it needs to be.
I am here where it began and where it will end.
I’m ready.
The King
Malcolm and Duffy drive in first, together. They pull in with their lights blazing and the bass thumping loud enough to rattle the broken glass, but not loud enough to cover their fear.
They walk up the driveway side by side. Uneasy allies. Playing bold, but I can smell their sweat and feel their skin prick with goosebumps.
They walk around to the back, the way Lilia told them. Weaving through the trees in the dark. Stumbling and saying shit and what was that.
I’m hidden where they won’t look, but where I can see.
They step out onto the wide stretch of concrete and suddenly they’re in the day again. They shade their eyes against the light shining down in a square around the pool. The broken window gleams. The house yawns dark beyond it.
“Shit,” says Malcolm. “Where is she?”
And Duffy yells, “Lilia!”
The dark swallows up his voice.
“I don’t like this.” Duffy digs for his phone. “This doesn’t feel right.”
They wait too long. The darkness presses closer.
“Fuck,” says Malcolm with his dead brother’s eyes set into his little-boy face. “It’s Mack, not Lilia. It has to be.”
Duffy turns away and clutches one hand to his mouth.
“Fucking golden boy.” Malcolm laughs on his gallows. “Killing his friends over some bitch at a party.”
Duffy’s face shines with sweat and sickness. “Let’s get out of here. We can go to the cops—I don’t know—”
Their shadows spin. An engine hums and quits on the other side of the house.
“Fuck,” says Duffy, and his shoulders wilt.
Mack strides in all boast and courage. His feet are sure, even in the shadows. When he steps into the light the lines carve deep into his face. He has nothing left to lose.
“Look at you,” he says.
I’ve never seen anyone like you—
His voice thrums through the stitches on my wrists. His neck wants my knife.
“Look at you,” he says again—
There’s no guilt on your face—
“You’re paler than Porter was when we caught him with the knife,” says Mack. “You’re scared.”
Duffy shies away, but Malcolm bristles with Duncan’s old ghost and says, “What, and you’re not?”
Mack laughs haunted. “Not anymore.”
Malcolm says, “You killed my brother.”
Mack looks him in the eye and doesn’t lie. “He deserved it.”
“Bullshit,” Duffy bursts out. “No, he didn’t—”
“So did Connor and Banks,” says Mack. “So do you.”
The two wolf-boys share a taut glance. Malcolm says, finally, “It’s both of us against you.”
Mack shakes himself loose. He’s unstrung. I almost don’t recognize him anymore. “Kill me,” he says. “I don’t care.”
Duffy’s and Malcolm’s eyes meet again and they shiver, both of them.
“You’re afraid,” Mack says again. I hear my own words in it—
you’re a fucking coward—
—and he is. A coward who hid behind their guilt. A coward who wants them to carry the shame of what he did.
He says, “I’m not afraid of you.”
He says, “We’re all dead anyway.”
The Knights
I know the dark house better than I should. Duncan has only been gone for six days, but the rooms have settled heavy into themselves. The emptiness has its roots deep in the marble.
I slip away to the kitchen and find the poison my coven fixed. It’s amaretto. Gold rusting to red. A sweet sick intoxicating smell, like bitter almonds.
I pour three drinks here where Malcolm stood, mixing poison.
Where Mack took it and brought it to me.
Where the dead boys stood together with their hungry yellow wolf-eyes prowling across the crowd in the heat and the light. Where they watched the glittering girl in the too-short dress spin and spin.
I leave the bottle on the counter.
I carry the three glasses all together, holding them against each other. The poison swirls beautiful and dizzying. I stand at the window, just beyond the light. The boys are frozen, waiting to swing and fight. Waiting to die.
I hate them with a rage so bright it’s deadlier than the poison in their drinks.
“It’s over,” says Malcolm. “The cops are coming for you.”
“I don’t care,” says Mack.
“She was nobody,” says Duffy. “You killed for some drunk bitch—”
Mack swings his fist hard into Duffy’s jaw. Malcolm yells and yanks him back. And Duffy cries out scared, cowering down, clutching at his face. He falls back and Mack swings again, for Malcolm.
And little-boy Malcolm shouts at him: “Give up!”
Mack lunges again. Malcolm ducks and fights back and his knuckles crack against Mack’s cheek.
They fall back, staggering and panting and with Duffy’s blood speckled on the concrete. Mack is wild-eyed and Duffy heaves and Malcolm says, Give up.
Mack says, No. I won’t. For Jade.
My name on his lips is the last cue I need.
I shriek glass-shatter and murder and they freeze where they are. The almond smell curls all around me. Hissing. Eager.
Mack raises his head. “What was that?”
Malcolm says, “It’s just Lilia.”
“Fuck,” says Duffy. He drags one hand across his lips and leaves a streak of red from his nose to his ear. “That wasn’t Lilia. It was—”
It’s on all their faces.
“Jade,” says Mack, half hope and h
alf horror.
“No,” says Malcolm. “She’s dead.”
It’s time.
I step out of the shadows and through the jagged glass teeth that reach up around my ankles. Into the sun. The spotlights burn down onto me and I feel my crown glowing so bright the boys squint and go blind.
I am a queen in a golden crown and a dress the color of blood, holding death in my hands. I am everything the girl in the white-sheets room wanted.
Mack gasps my name, Jade, and goes so weak he falls.
Malcolm and Duffy back away with fear on their faces.
Mack says, Jade—
I laugh.
Malcolm says, “They said you were dead.”
I smile and my fangs scrape against my lips. I say, “I was.”
Duffy says, still shaking himself free of my ghost, “Did Lilia call you here?”
I say, “You’re guilty.”
Duffy scrambles and says, “We’re not. It’s Mack.”
I step closer. “So you’re innocent?”
“Yes,” he says, so flustered furious I know he believes it. So certain he could swear it—
to his lawyer, to a jury, to God—
—and never think he was lying. Because to him it was nothing.
She was nothing.
I slink closer to him. I can’t believe he ever thought Duncan wanted him for anything other than keeping a harmless servant at his right hand so he’d always be safe from a revolution. Not like he was with Mack, even with him circling just out of reach of their little pack of four.
I say, “It was Mack.”
From the ground he cries out my name.
I say, “Mack. Shut up.”
He says, “Jade.”
I say, “You know what you did. You know what it means.”
And his eyes flare with pain. “No, Jade, I never—”
“You did,” I say. I breathe in deep and smell the sweet bitter almonds coiling all around me. “And this is the end.”
I bow my head. Graceful and gracious.
I turn my back on him and my shining beautiful gown swirls around my feet. I soak it in—
the satin cool and close on my skin—
