Chapter Eleven
3 Years, 51 Weeks, 6 Days
In my imaginary but still very real Book of Things That Aren’t Okay with Me, I’ve bumped drugs up to the number five slot, right between applesauce and jorts. In all my years of being an idiot, which is nearly two decades—as we all know, two decades is practically decrepit—I’ve never done anything worse to hurt myself than that molly. Except, you know, develop a mild case of an eating disorder for a few months.
All right, fine, so in my imaginary but still very real Book of Things That Aren’t Okay with Me, developing an eating disorder is number one, and doing drugs is number two. Number three is seeing Jack Hunter’s gorgeous yet infuriating face looking hurt, like I’ve wounded him, when it’s clearly the opposite.
After straightening all this out for a whopping two days in which I sleep and skip class and visit the infirmary and Jemma, one of the main nurses, for bandages and antibiotics, I decide to reenter polite society.
Taking one step into English class, however, makes me want to take three steps out.
I arrived early, so it’s not weird to see an empty auditorium, but it’s super weird to see an empty auditorium and the testing room door closed. It’s a tiny room only for people who’ve gotta do makeups, and it’s never closed unless it’s being used.
So, like the proper, not-nosy lady I am, I peek into the slit of a window on the door. And I immediately regret it.
There, on the other side, is Professor Summers. He sits on the desk, his floppy hair and sweater vest slightly rumpled. He’s talking to someone, and when I tilt my head I can see them—his hand is around a girl’s waist, and he’s pulling her into his lap. Or trying to. She’s fighting it, and the pleasant smile on his face makes my stomach turn. The girl in question clearly isn’t happy; her expression is all screwed up. I know that look—it’s utter disgust and helplessness.
I fling open the door and Professor Summers quickly stands up. The girl takes advantage of his moment of slack grip and ducks around me, dashing out of the classroom. That’s all the confirmation I need that she wasn’t into it. Also, she’s his student! He’s like, nearly forty and she’s a freshman! I quash the urge to yell you’re nasty!!! and stutter instead.
“Oh crap—I’m sorry, Professor. I didn’t know anyone was in here, I just—”
He smooths his vest and coughs. “It’s fine, Ms. Blake. Anabel and I were—looking for her missing pen. Very expensive. Her father gave it to her.”
“Oh.” I let him hang, the nervous gleam in his eyes somehow satisfying. I have to play dumb. I smile again. “Okay. Did you guys find it?”
“No.” He sweeps past me and returns to his desk. “But I’m sure it’ll turn up eventually.”
Yeah, in your pocket. Which you’ll ask her to reach into, you sicko.
But I don’t say any of that. I make an excuse for the bathroom and look around wildly for the girl. I spot her in a courtyard, hiding behind a pillar and texting madly on her phone. Her eyes are a little red, but they widen when she sees me.
“I wasn’t doing anything—” She chokes. “It was nothing, okay?”
“Hey, it’s okay.” I use my softest voice. “I’m not blaming you. That guy’s a creep.”
She gnaws her lip. “I should’ve listened. My friend told me all these rumors about him, and I just ignored it. I thought I could talk to him about my grades, try to get some advice for writing the essays he assigns, since I suck so bad at them, but then he—”
She shudders, shoving her phone in her pocket and looking at me. “You saved me.”
“Naw. I was just in the right place at the right time.”
She hugs herself. “He wanted me to—to blow him. So he’d give me a better grade. And I hated myself because for a second, a split second, I considered doing it. I need that grade. My mom worked so hard to send me here, and I can’t let her down, and now he’s going to flunk me—”
I put my hand on her shoulder. “He’s not. If he does, I’ll go to the office and tell them what I saw. He can’t do that. It isn’t fair.”
“Haven’t you heard?” She wipes at her eyes. “All the rumors say people have told on him before, but no one’s done anything! This school doesn’t give a shit, or he must be connected somehow, or—or they just don’t believe what we say.”
“It’s probably all of those,” I say. “Look, you don’t have to go to him. Here, let me give you the tutoring center’s number. They’ve got great people there. My roommate is one of them, and she’s super smart in English.”
“Thanks,” she says once I’ve entered the number on her phone. “You’re really nice. I’m Anabel, by the way.”
“Isis.” I smile. “I put my number in there, too. You ever need anything, or if he’s creeping on you again, just throw me a text. I’ve got ways to deal with tools like him.”
She waves and starts toward her dorm, and I inch back to Summers’s classroom, listening to his lecture while stabbing a pencil into my notebook.
It’s not fair.
It’s not fair that people with power get away with abusing it. Someone has to stop them. If the school won’t listen, then someone will just have to scream too loudly to ignore and not stop ever.
My mind begins ticking away like it used to, plots and plans forming like angry frozen ghosts in my head. My old plans used to be playful, not-serious. But now I’m angry.
Now, I’m older.
Yvette is not impressed with my new diet.
“Are you eating…Doritos with ice cream?” she asks.
“My mind is strong, but my flesh is weak,” I mutter through a spoonful.
“Well, at least you’re eating something.” She throws her hands up. “What happened to the Isis who could put away a pizza on her own?”
“She got bored,” I say. Yvette looks appropriately scandalized. “Of eating! Not of pizza. God no. The only people who get bored of pizza are evil at their very core.”
“How’s the war wound holding up?” Yvette collapses on her bed. I pull my sleeve up and inspect the bandage on my forearm with a shrug.
“The nurse gave me antibiotics that taste like butt, and I have to change the bandage every two days, but so far it’s like a walk in the park. If said park was covered in infectious zombies and land mines. Kieran got the worst end of the deal—broken noses hurt like a bitch.”
I told Diana and Yvette my wounds were from a bar fight that broke out in the club. The last thing I want is for cool-ass people to think I take party drugs on the reg.
“Yeah, but they’re quicker to fix,” Yvette says. “Only hurts for a second.”
“Oh yeah? How do you know that?”
“I got in a fistfight,” she says proudly. “At a concert.”
“What concert?”
“Does it really matter? I think you are missing the point here, the point being that I have also broken my nose.” I stare at her until she mumbles, “Taylor Swift.”
“You went to a Taylor Swift concert?” I screech.
“I was taking my little sister!” she shrills defensively.
“Why does it sound like a cage of birds in here?” Diana winces as she walks in.
“Di, she’s making fun of me,” Yvette whines. I courteously flip her off.
“If you met me at the pizza place, like I asked,” Diana sniffs, “you wouldn’t be here, getting made fun of.”
Yvette groans and rolls off the bed, riffling through her closet for a jacket to wear. Diana sits on the bed beside me, all smiles.
“Hey you.”
“Don’t look at me, I’m hideous,” I whisper, shoveling more soggy Doritos into my mouth. She laughs and smooths her low-cut shirt that makes her impressive rack all the more bouncy.
“And what are you doing on this lovely Friday night?”
“Eating. Sleeping. Sacrificing a goat to Mantorok, the god of corpses.”
She looks over at the stack of fake blood packets on my desk and raises an eyebrow. “Riiiight.”
“Those are for a sociology experiment!” I defend. “Called ‘see how many people run away from me when I squirt fake blood at them.’ Prediction: many.”
“Okay but…just don’t get punched out, all right? Getting a new injury every weekend is sort of a new thing with you, and I’d like for it to kindly stop forever.”
“You and me both.”
Yvette flaunts her army surplus jacket; Diana and I applaud. They’re gone before I can blink, Yvette crowing about pepperoni and jalapeños. My stomach makes a disagreeing noise, and I put the ice cream bowl aside and bring out my laptop. I get on Skype, looking for Kayla’s photo, but she’s offline, the little gray “inactive” dot taunting me.
It’s nice Diana’s worried. It’s only been two months, but she and Yvette treat me like they’ve known me for years. Sometimes it makes me feel better, but right now it only makes everything feel worse. It makes me miss Kayla more. I hadn’t gotten to tell her about what happened that night at Eternity, but part of me doesn’t want to. Part of me hesitates to blab everything like I usually do. What would she think of the fact that I took molly? She’s already seen me get in a fight. I didn’t tell Diana or Yvette the truth. I haven’t told anybody.
Would Kayla be disappointed? Would she hate me? I’m still disappointed in myself that I took it. And she wouldn’t be happy to hear about Jack and how we’re still strangers. And I know for a fact she’d hate my stories of drinking at frat parties. She wouldn’t understand it. I’d just disappoint her. My life isn’t exciting and romantic like hers, all neat and organized. My life is just a series of fuckups and sadness.
There it is again. Jealousy. I swallow it whole and try to convert it into exactly what it is—poop.
I get up and stretch, tracing the bandage on my arm lightly. Jack touched me there, and it’s stupid to think about, but sometimes in the quiet moments I touch the same place and wish things were different. But tonight is not the night for self-pity. I pull on jeans and a loose T-shirt and stuff a side bag full of the fake blood packets, some gum, forceps, and a credit card.
Tonight is the night for revenge.
Granted, as I walk through the sunset-washed campus with happy couples clinging to each other and excited, dolled-up girls on their way to parties, I have the minor revelation that I probably shouldn’t be doing this. I brush off the nonsense—of course I should be doing this. Doing possibly illegal things that would get me kicked out, such as breaking into Professor Summers’s office and sending him a message, is going to be hells more fun than sitting around another frat party waiting to die. People stare. But then again, people have always stared. I smile and wave.
I’ve done my own independent study on Professor Summers—asking around parties didn’t exactly make it hard to find the girls he’d previously harassed. He’d do it quietly—dropping reflective pens, coming up behind them after class and pinning them to whiteboards, asking them to come in on Saturdays and offering A’s for a hand job. He’s 100 percent scum. And the worst part? He doesn’t look like scum. He’s almost cute—mousy hair, a thin beard, blue eyes. But the worst people rarely look like the worst people. I learned that from Avery.
Professor Summers’s office is in the Denney building, which is about as ironically fitting as we can get for a Friday night in a Midwestern college town. Denney closes at seven, but I manage to sneak in at six fifty and hide in a bathroom. The janitor comes around checking the stalls, and when she asks me to leave I groan and empty a blood packet into the toilet. It makes a satisfying plop noise, and she sighs and tells me to get out when I can.
I hiss in victory as she shuffles with her cleaning cart down the hall. I pack everything up and flush the evidence before tiptoeing out of the bathroom. I pass Ferguson’s office, and then Vacroix’s, and as I turn the corner—
My ringing phone scares my intestines out of my anus.
“You scared my intestines out of my anus!” I say when I pick up.
“Where are you?” Kieran asks on the other end, the distinct muffled boom of bass in the background. “You said you were coming to Rho Alpha Alpha tonight, but I can’t find you.”
“I am currently engaged elsewhere. Minus a ring. And a bachelorette party.”
Kieran’s quiet, then his voice lowers. “Isis, you aren’t doing what I think you’re doing.”
“I’m not, don’t worry!” I chirp.
He groans. “You are. You totally are. You’re gonna get busted and thrown out. Just forget about Summers and come to the party!”
I check my phone. “Oh my, is it that time already? Shut up o’clock? I must go, farewell, sweet prince.”
“Isis—!”
I hang up and slither down the corridor with the grace of an oiled sidewinder. Summers’s office is the last on the right, and I crouch and immediately begin assessing my foe. It takes me three minutes of strenuous lock-jiggling to find out these locks are much, much sturdier than anything I picked during high school. There’s no way I’m getting in.
This is where most people would paste a giant Game Over in their heads.
Thankfully, Isis Blake is not most people.
I pull as many blood packets as I can out of my pack and start decorating. I’m halfway through when the janitor calls into the same bathroom for me. My heart jackrabbits around in my throat and I squeeze out the last few words as quick as I can. I hear her footsteps about to turn the corner just as I jam everything into my pack and skid around the opposite one.
She squints, her eyesight obviously bad, but she can’t see the wall I defaced—parallel to the windows—from that angle. She sighs and trudges back the way she came, and I jam on the gas full blast and beat her to the front door, taking the steps two at a time as cool twilight air washes over my victorious face.
If she sees it, she’ll get rid of it, and it’ll have been a glorious adventure all for naught. But if she skips it over, then tomorrow—
I smother a laugh and reinstate myself as best in the world at everything. The high is so familiar, so enthralling, that all I can think about is it—just it. Just my victory, just my near-busted status, just the retribution a pervy scumsucker like Summers will get if anyone other than him sees what I did. It might not be proof, and it might not convince anyone fully, but it’ll breed doubt in their minds, and doubt’s the most insidious thing there is.
Tonight, I don’t need any parties to keep away the yawning chasm of silent pain. Tonight I’m high on my own brand of drug—pure, stupid recklessness. I wash fake blood off my hands and head to the nurse’s office for my bandage change, laughing under my breath.
I’m crazy and going crazier, and I don’t know how to stop it.
I don’t know how to stop this horrible darkness from eating me alive, and no one in the world is going to help me.
I’m alone.
Tonight I don’t need any parties, but I go to the Rho Alpha Alpha party anyway, because it’s become habit. Because it’s who I am now, who I always was. Who I used to be. Because once upon a time I was a stupid fourteen-year-old who drank and smoke and spat with the best of them in a desperate attempt to look cool, and I did anything to look cool back then, because when you’re big like I used to be, people only see how huge you are and forget you’re a person with feelings, but if you’re huge and you party, you’re a little cooler than not cool at all. Letting them make fun of how big you are (whale, fatso, piggy) makes you a little cooler than not cool at all.
I look around at the faces at the party, skinny and tan and glittery with makeup and good looks, and I know they’d be the first to call me fatso if I was the old me. They smile at me now, Heather and Livy and Tessa smile at me now, but they’d change so fast, become mean and ugly so fast, if I were the old me. They don’t like me for who I am—they aren’t Kayla or Wren—but I’m trying, trying to make them fit in the spaces left behind, and I hate myself, I hate that they left me behind—
I hate them. I hate every single person here and I don’t even know them.
Kieran comes up to me, a rum and Coke in hand. His frown is obvious, but I smile and take the drink with the practiced grace of an alcoholic marquise.
“Don’t give me that look, Kir.” I sigh. “Do you know how many professor dudes like him get away with shitty stuff? I mean, he was gonna get what was coming to him. I just sped up the process a bit.”
“You put a brick on the gas pedal,” he corrects.
“I put a brick on the gas pedal,” I cheerfully agree, then sip. “God bless America.”
Kieran waits for a lull in the music before he speaks. “My sister used to pull crazy stunts like you.”
“Used to?”
“She’s in a mental hospital now.”
“Awful place,” I say. “Really sorry. You should bust her out.”
He stares at me, and I shrug.
“Well, if you won’t, I will.”
“You don’t have to save everyone, Isis.”
His words trip me, my thoughts skidding to a halt.
“I’m not saving anyone,” I say carefully.
Kieran shakes his head. “You try to. You try to stop all these injustices and save people from them. But you never try to save yourself.”
I’m quiet. Kieran slides his hand down to mine and squeezes.
“What are you waiting for?”
I look down at our joined hands and whisper, “For someone else to do it, I guess.”
Kieran leans in and kisses me, tasting like tequila and lime and salt, and for a moment his lips aren’t his, they’re Jack’s, and we aren’t at a fraternity house, we’re at Avery’s, and there’s less glitter and heels and experience but just as much booze and swearing—seventeen isn’t so different from eighteen, and this kiss drives away the darkness, makes it scuttle back under the rocks—but then I open my eyes and see Kieran’s green ones and flinch. I have to tell him. I can’t keep using him like this, but I am, because being with him is better than being alone, and I’m a coward. Before either of us can break the awkward silence, Heather runs up and grabs my arm.
“There you are! I’ve been looking so hard for you! C’mon, one of your friends wants to talk to you.”
I follow her lead, glancing one last time back at Kieran. She leads me with impressive force up the stairs and to a room.
“Uh,” I offer eloquently. “Who wants to talk to me?”
“This guy.” She hiccups. “He was really insistent. He said he’s your friend.”
I can tell she’s trying hard to make up for getting me into that fight by doing this. A friend wants to see me. Jack? No—he’s written me out of his life. There’s only one person left. Nameless. I face the door down like it’s an angry bear. Behind it, there will be his face, the face that triggers so many of my awful memories.
He has that video.
I’ve never seen it. I’ve always wanted to, ever since Wren told me he had a camera that night when they were in middle school and Avery forced him to film “it.” Whatever “it” was. It’s solid evidence of what happened that night, that awful night that haunted Sophia until her death, and haunts Wren and Jack still today. If I can see it, then I’ll know what happened after practically two years of not knowing.
Nameless might have it. But my need to know burns hotter than my panic. I swallow hard and open the door. Nameless sits on a bed, smiling. He opens his arms to me.
“There you are, Isis. Care to watch a movie with me?”
Heather giggles, then pats me on the shoulder with a wink and flounces off downstairs.
Nameless clears his throat. “In or out, Isis. It’s your choice.”
“I’m not going to walk in there,” I manage.
“You will,” he says. “If you want to watch a certain video.”
He’s going to trap me in there. I just know it. He wants to see me squirm above all else—he toys with people like they’re inanimate objects moved for his pleasure. And me? He’s always enjoyed tormenting me. Especially now. Especially after everything.
I watch him hold up a tablet, the screen flickering in his eyes.
“It’s a very interesting video,” he says airily.
It’s right there. It’s less than ten feet from me—the answer to all my questions. I cross the threshold, leaving the door open behind me. Nameless chuckles.
“Ah, ah, close that door, if you would.”
I hesitate. For the briefest moment, he ups the volume on the tablet, and I hear Sophia’s voice crying out for Jack, and it rips my heart in two. I shut the door behind me with shaking hands, and he smiles.
“You look tense. Relax,” Nameless says. “I’m not going to do anything.”
My eyes dart wildly around, and I grab a nail file off the dresser, clutching it like a knife at him. He just laughs harder.
“I forgot how funny you are.”
I tighten my grip and back up as far as I can against the door. I briefly think of flipping the light switch to freak him out, but he’s got a lamp on by the bedside.
Nameless stares at me, thinking, and finally he claps his hands, applauding me slowly. Each clap is a bullet that pierces the building hysterical tension in my chest.
“I’m congratulating you for taking on such a dangerous person as a nemesis.”
I narrow my eyes. “Jack?”
“Jack,” he confirms.
“I know you stole that video from the Feds.”
He laughs. “Steal? Don’t be stupid. Even I can’t hack into a federal vault. They gave it to me. Well, not me, but some friends of mine. We work together, you see, on the internet, as freelance digital consultants. The Feds contacted us and gave it to us. They wanted us to enhance the video quality as much as we could, so they could identify exactly what happened.”
I swallow hard. Nameless smiles.
“And we did. But we never gave it back to them. Not yet, anyway. I wanted you to be the first one to see it, in all its enhanced glory.”
“Why?”
“So you can see exactly who you’re dealing with,” Nameless says smoothly. “Jack isn’t a nice guy. It’s a good thing you two aren’t speaking anymore, otherwise you might’ve gotten hurt.”
A sick, dark fire flares up in my lungs. He hurt me. Not Jack. Nameless smirks at my impotent silence, then throws me the tablet with the play button smack-dab in the center. My finger wavers, hesitating.
“Go on,” Nameless urges, smiling even bigger.
After months of wondering, infuriating hints, and half truths, I have the whole story beneath my index finger.
I press play.
There’s two seconds of darkness and then the sound of rustling leaves. The time in the lower corner reads 21:45:01, making it roughly ten at night, and 8/15/2011. I do the math—Jack was thirteen.
“Take the fucking cap off!” a voice that can only be Avery’s mutters. “God, for being such a huge nerd you’re kind of an idiot.”
There’s a muffled grumble I recognize instantly as Wren, a younger Wren with a higher voice but definitely Wren. The camera cap comes off, unveiling a leafy ground and tall trees that are so familiar. Avery, a young Avery with no curves yet, wears a tube top, a white skort, and jelly sandals, looking imperious and bratty as ever. She grabs the camera and huffs.
“You hold it like this.” She points it at Wren. He’s so skinny and short, his glasses practically swallowing up his entire terrified, innocent face. His cheeks are still round with baby fat. He wears cargo shorts and a striped shirt his mom obviously picked out for him, and a massive watch twice the size of his tiny wrist.
“I don’t know if this is such a good idea,” he whispers. Avery zooms in on his face.
“If you chicken out, I’m going to tell everyone at school about your mom cheating on your dad. So you’re gonna stay here, and you’re gonna be the cameraman, if you know what’s good for you.”
Wren goes an even paler shade of white. The camera focuses on Wren’s face, then goes dark. It starts back up again, reading a new timestamp: 22:07:15, or ten at night. It’s much darker, and Avery swears.
“Shit. What’s taking them so long?”
“Does this thing have a…a light?” Wren asks timidly. Avery rolls her eyes but you can barely see it.
“Yeah, because we’re going to film secretly with a giant camera light.”
“Then how—”
There’s a jostling of the camera, and suddenly everything is night vision—green and shades of black and gray. Avery’s pupils are white, glowing eerily as she hands the camera back.
“Just stay focused on her, okay?”
The camera shakes, like Wren’s hand is unstable. “Avery, I don’t want to. I don’t want to do this anymore—”
“Shh!” Avery hisses, lying flat on the ground and pulling him down with her. “There she is. Just film.”
My breath catches. Wren zooms in on a pale figure cutting through the forest trees.
Sophia.
Thirteen-year-old Sophia.
Her hair is short, but the same color of winter moonlight. She carries a flashlight. She’s skinny, but much plumper than when I knew her—her cheeks are robust and filled out and her blossoming curves are noticeable. A flush dons her face, and she skips. Skips! I never once saw Sophia go any faster than a floaty, leisurely walk. She’s wearing a sundress, floral and wavy around her calves. She looks around, calling out.
“Jack? Jack, where are you? C’mon, you’re freaking me out.”
“J-Jack’s not really here, is he?” Wren whispers.
“Of course not, idiot,” Avery scoffs. “I just forged a note from him and stuck it in her purse. They’re soooo in love, she’ll believe anything.”
The camera focuses on Sophia, now looking very scared. It’s eerie and heartbreaking all at once to see her alive on camera, and so happy. So different.
Her flashlight beam bounces around, landing in the bushes Avery and Wren are hiding in. They duck lower, and the beam passes as Sophia does a slow turn. She freezes and then starts backing up.
“W-Who are you?”
The beam illuminates a bearded middle-aged man with a cruel smirk. He wears overalls, and an oily rag sticks out of his pocket.
“They’re just gonna scare her, right?” Wren whispers frantically to Avery. Avery doesn’t say anything, her attention rapt on Sophia. “Right, Av?” Wren presses. He swings the camera back to Sophia, his hand shaking harder and the camera shaking with it. Another man walks out of the trees, and another. Five of them. One of them has a baseball bat; another has what looks like a crowbar. The one in overalls talks in a low voice to Sophia as she backs up, into the trees, her face twisted with horror. Only Sophia’s high, panicked voice can be heard.
“Leave me alone! My friends are in the house! If I scream, they’ll call the cops!”
This earns a laugh from the man, and it spreads to the other men, until it resembles a ring of hoarse hyenas. She is so defenseless, I tremble with the urge to reach in and pull her out, pull her to safety.
“Av!” Wren hisses. “Call them off!”
Avery’s smile just gets wider. “Not yet. They haven’t really scared her yet.”
“They’re going to—they’re not going to touch her, are they?”
Avery glowers. “No. I ordered them to just…just scare the shit out of her. But they can’t touch her. I told them they can’t.”
Wren swings back to the men, now so close they’ve formed a ring around Sophia. She tries to run, but one of them catches her and throws her to the ground in the center. There’s more laughter.
“Leave her alone!”
That voice is young, strong, angry. I’ve never heard it sound that way before, but I know whom it belongs to by heart. Jack, proud and tawny-haired, draws all the men’s attention. His blue eyes aren’t icy, instead burning with white-blue fire. He still has baby fat on his cheeks, but the rest of him is tall, lanky; a boy-growing-too-fast kind of lanky. And he’s just as infuriatingly handsome. But he’s not the Ice Prince I know now—his expressions boil over, his emotions clear and legible in his every tensed muscle and flexing fist. He is a lion, a little king, angry and righteous and true.
Two of the men start toward Jack, but he ducks under their grasp and bolts for Sophia. One man throws himself on Jack, slamming them both to the ground in a spray of pine needles and dirt.
“Jack!” Sophia screams. Jack swears, kicking and punching and thrashing like a wild animal, but the other two men catch up and put his arms behind him in a lock, forcing him to his knees.
A soft fog starts to roll in through the trees. The other men turn to Sophia, who screams and curls against a tree trunk like it’ll offer her some protection.
“Leave her alone!” Jack screams, a piercing scream that rips my heart into jagged pieces. “You fucking bastards, pick on someone who can fight back! No! No, Sophia! Sophia, run!”
“N-No,” Avery’s voice is clear, though Wren seems to be paralyzed, focused entirely on Sophia and Jack. “No, this isn’t how it’s supposed to— Back off. Just back off.”
Her whispered commands don’t work. The men close in, and Sophia puts her head in her hands.
“Help me, Jack,” she cries. Some of the men sway, obviously drunk, as they close the gap and start pulling at Sophia’s dress. I choke back bile but Jack reacts quicker—the man holding him cries out and collapses, and Jack jumps up, scooping the aluminum baseball bat the man dropped and swinging it into the man, over and over and over. Avery swears. Two men dive for Jack, but Jack slips through their meaty arms and swings for their skulls, a hollow, sickening thwack resounding through the trees when metal meets bone. The fourth man fumbles with something in his jacket, a gun maybe, but Jack ducks behind the first man who’s hauled himself off the ground, and the bullet cuts into the man’s shoulder, the force of it pinning him to the ground again. Jack takes the moment to lunge in, slamming the bat over the gunman’s neck. He crumples like a rag doll, the gun dropping into the leaves.
The whole time, Jack is grinning madly, his mouth and face blood-spattered.
The fifth man, the one who’d pinned Sophia to the tree, frantically backs up. Jack slams the bat into his side, and the man staggers into the leaves, reaching for the gun. But Jack swings again, and Sophia screams. Something cracks, and it isn’t the bat, and the man holds his hand up, and against the night vision it’s a cluster of broken bones and mangled meat and dangling skin. The man looks at it, stunned, and then the pain catches up to him, and he starts crying and crawling away and begging.
“Please, man, we didn’t mean— We weren’t gonna—”
The man gets up and starts running, and Jack throws back his head and laughs, and then chases after him. They disappear into the gloom, the night vision losing sight of them, but not of the sobbing Sophia, who staggers to her feet and tries to pull her dress back on. She’s shaking too badly. She tries to walk away, but trips on something, and her fall isn’t far but she rolls down the hill, hitting trees with vicious momentum until she rolls to a stop. There’s a stunned silence, minutes ticking by as Sophia squirms and there’s a squelching noise and then she goes still, her white-blond hair splaying in the pine needles.
“Holy fuck,” Avery whispers. “Holy—”
From the darkness, Jack returns, and a shiver runs through me; his grin is gone and an even more terrifying expression is in its place—one I’ve come to know very well.
The mask.
The ice mask is wearing him.
But it lasts for only a second, because when he sees Sophia he makes a choked noise and runs to her, dropping the bloodstained bat and cradling her in his arms.
“Soph,” he whispers. “Sophie, Sophie please—”
He holds his hand out, sticky and wet with blood. Sophia doesn’t move. He pats the pine needles around Sophia’s body and chokes again, the sound of a wild animal shot through. Blood. A pool of blood around her pelvis, her floral dress stained with it.
There’s a noise, like Avery shifting and her shoe breaking a twig. Jack’s head snaps up, eyes glowing an unholy white with the night vision, and he grabs the bat, face twisting with rage. Avery swears and takes off running, and as Jack advances, Wren’s paralysis breaks and he drops the camera, the lens barely catching his shoes as they flash by. Jack’s bigger shoes pass just a split second after.
“I’ll kill you!” His screams echo. “I’ll fucking kill you all!”
He keeps screaming, the sound fading and coming back, like he’s walking in circles. The metallic noise of a bat splintering wood resounds, and his screams are deep and strong and furious and riddled with pain, and over them, Nameless finally speaks.
“He keeps screaming. Then he calls 911. And then the tape cuts out.”
The tablet screen goes blue, then dark. My hands want to shake, but I compose them. Nameless is watching me for a reaction. I can’t give him that satisfaction. I’m disturbed and on the verge of tears, but I won’t show him that.
“So?” I ask. “What was I supposed to learn from this?”
Nameless quirks a brow. “You weren’t terrified? He beat four men to a pulp and killed the last one—”
“The last one ran off the cliff because it was dark,” I say smoothly. “Jack didn’t push him. Joseph, the man he thinks he killed, killed himself.”
“He wouldn’t have been running if Jack wasn’t chasing him,” Nameless counters. “Don’t defend him. He killed a man, and he’s going to jail for it once we turn this tape in to the feds.”
“He didn’t, and there’s no body anyway,” I retort. “You can’t prove anything.”
“Belina Hernandez. You know her, don’t you? You went to visit her.”
“How do you know—”
“It wasn’t hard to dig up facts. Belina Hernandez is the wife of Joseph Hernandez, the man who ran off the cliff. Your bloodthirsty nemesis has been paying her child support under the guise of federal funds because he’s so guilt-ridden. How do you think it’ll look when the jury sees that? He’s practically convinced he killed Joseph, and that’ll convince the jury.”
“He was protecting Sophia!” I snarl.
“Protecting is one thing. Mindless violence is another. This tape shows the difference very clearly.”
I clutch the tablet and weigh the pros and cons of throwing it into an incinerator, but Nameless laughs.
“I know what you’re thinking. Don’t try it. I have many copies on different hard drives. You’d just be ruining a perfectly good tablet.”
Nameless stands, and I shrink into myself, fully aware again of how close we are to each other in this room.
“I wanted to show you just who you think you’re in love with. He’s not me, that’s for sure. He’s worse than me. He’s a killer. He’ll hurt you more than I ever did.”
He ducks just in time as I throw the tablet at his head, my chest heaving. It clunks against the wall, leaving an indent in the pink paint.
“Fuck you,” I spit. “No one will ever hurt me more than you did. I won’t let them.”
The door behind me suddenly unlocks, and a wild-eyed guy with an afro walks in.
“Oh, u-uh, shit. Sorry, wrong room.”
I lunge for the door, but Nameless calls me back.
“It’s been nice talking with you. I know you don’t like it, but you’ll have to do a lot more of it.”
“Why?” I whisper. He smiles.
“I saw you defacing Summers’s office. Even took a video of it for myself. What will the dean think of that, I wonder?”
“Why?” I repeat. “Why the fuck are you on my case all the time?”
“Because”—he cocks his head like a mildly interested bird—“you’re mine.”
My stomach goes cold, and he laughs.
“You’ve always been mine, Isis. You know that. And no one, not even a pretty boy in shining armor, can come between us. Not after what we’ve shared.”
I run as far as I can from the room, from the house. When Nameless’s voice finally fades in my head, I collapse onto the lawn and throw up on the grass.