Chapter Seven
3 Years, 47 Weeks, 2 Days
Everything happens all the time forever, and this would be a terrifying concept if I wasn’t so enlightened and in tune with the natural forces of the universe, which include but aren’t limited to: A) taco salad, B) taco salad, and C) my own glorious ass (glorioass). Which increases in size directly proportionate to how much taco salad is in the area. Science has come so far.
Regardless of how big my ass is, it won’t be big enough to crush Nameless’s huge fat head. Also, I would not touch him with any body part that is not spiked and/or doused in black mamba venom. Plus, he has the tape I’ve wanted to see for what feels like forever. I hate him, but he’s right—I want to see what happened that night more than anything. I want to understand the source of Sophia’s pain, of Jack’s regret, of Wren’s dismay. To do that, though, I have to stomach him. And I don’t know if I can do that.
Now that Nameless is going to my school and has that tape, I have to devise ways in which to rid myself of him sans homicide. Maybe, like, a fortuitous black hole.
But first, I have to throw a tantrum. It’s an area in which I have great experience.
“Do I even wanna know what you’re doing?” Yvette looks down as I attach myself to her leg the second she walks in the room. I whimper attractively.
“I’m taking the time to revisit your ‘drop out of college in the first year’ plan.”
“Oh, stop.” Yvette throws her laptop bag on her bed. She drags her feet to her desk. “While you’re down there, untie my shoes for me.”
“Like I was saying”—I untie with gusto—“I recently discovered someone that I really don’t like goes here.”
“That dude you were talking with the other night? Model McFartington?”
“Have I called him that? That sounds like something I would say.”
“You say it a lot. In your sleep.”
“Yvette!” I wail. “It’s not Model McFartington. There is another person on my shit list. Model McFartington is on the shit list also, but he is not number one, and also he’s got a bunch of red squiggly lines through his name, because sometimes I take him off the list and sometimes I add him back on.”
Yvette raises one studded eyebrow.
“It’s complicated,” I summarize. “Let’s drop out.”
“No,” she says simply.
“WhhHHHYY?” I inquire delicately.
“We gotta experience the whole nine yards of college agony before we drop out. We have to black out, drink a bunch, and swear off men forever and fail a bunch of classes and try cocaine. That’s at least seven months’ worth of work right there.”
“Says who?”
“Says every poignant coming-of-age movie ever.”
“Ugh!” I let go of her foot and roll under my bed. I see a moldy dick carved into the wood mattress slats and immediately roll back out. “Ugh.”
“Look, I’m sorry about this dude, okay? Or…two dudes, or whatever you have going on. Point them out to me and I’ll knock ’em out. But right now, I gotta finish this chem essay or I’m screwed. Metaphorically. I haven’t actually gotten screwed in a while.”
These are her famous last words, because when I go to get dinner and come back full of burrito and knock for her to let me in, there is groaning emanating from the door and I hear Yvette demand for something “harder.” I trip over a dust particle with alarming grace as I make my way to calmer waters. Jack opens his door with sleep-mussed hair and no shirt, and it’s then I realize these waters are about as calm as people who win free cars on Oprah.
“My roommate’s being gross, so I live here now,” I say as I push past him.
“You can’t,” he points out.
“They said that to Columbus, too, and look what happened there.” I flop onto his bed. I know it’s his because it’s perfectly made, the covers just a little wrinkly from sleep. His roommate’s bed is a mercifully empty nest of messy blankets. Jack pulls a shirt on and yawns, sitting beside me.
“You’ve got sleep boogers.” I point at his eyes. He rubs them vigorously.
“You can stay here if you want,” he says, still rubbing one eye. It is a drastically human, vulnerable motion I’ve never seen him do before. “But I’m leaving in fifteen minutes.”
“You look like a little kid.” I laugh. “With eye problems.”
“Shut up,” he growls, and rubs harder. His cheeks are sleep-flushed, and his hair sticks up every which way.
“Still got a duck’s butt for a hairstyle, huh?”
“Still got the most infantile insults for a defense mechanism, huh?”
“At least it is not an animal’s backside.”
“The sounds are similar.”
I flip him off with both hands, and he retorts by leaning against the wall and closing his eyes. The dusk-rose sky looms outside the window, sunset slanting in and painting the white walls peach-striped.
“What do you want to know first?” Jack asks finally.
A thousand questions erupt, but I pick the least confrontational one. “Where are you going in fifteen minutes?”
“A friend invited my roommate to a barbecue. He’s dragging me along.”
“Who’s your roommate?”
“Charlie. An idiot, but a passionate idiot. I’ve heard that counts for something.”
“Uh, you are looking at living proof of that right here.” I point at my chest. Jack smirks and cracks his eyes open to look at me, the ice blue of them melted to faint purple by the red sun.
“You’re not an idiot, Isis.”
“I know. Duh.”
“You’re a moron,” he corrects, and closes his eyes again, falling to lie on his side. I debate the merits of pulling his fingers off one by one and decide they are much too pretty to be removed. For now.
I hug my knees and try to remember how to breathe right, like normal people do. People who aren’t chased by ghosts. Or in this case, chased by sadistic ex-boyfriends. And just as I start to spiral down into the darkness, where the monster lives and breathes and gnaws, Jack reaches up and pulls me down, and I squeak, and we’re lying on his soft bed, him behind me. His heat and weight almost press against my spine, the careful space still there, the smell of mint and honey surrounding me like a blanket. It’s the smell I longed for in the darkest nights alone, thinking about our war, and his hands, and what it would be like to kiss him, hard and for real and maybe more, because maybe, just maybe, he’s the one person in the world who might kiss my stretch marks instead of calling them ugly—
“Stop,” he mumbles just behind me.
“Stop what?”
“Stop looking so sad all the time.”
I scrunch my face up, and I’m suddenly hyperaware of his breath on my neck. He moves closer, and my stomach starts to burn, and Will’s voice is so clear and cold in my head.
But you’ll never feel all right here, will you? Not with me around.
My heart suddenly decides it’s an astronaut and attempts to do forty backflips in what feels like zero gravity. I immediately bolt off the bed. Jack sits up.
“Is something wrong?”
“I just—” I clench my shaking hands to still them. I don’t want him to see. I don’t want him to think he’s making me feel like this.
“Isis.” Jack gets up and moves toward me, but I hold out two hands.
“Stop. Just—just stay there.”
He does, but his brows knit deeply. “I will. Did I do something wrong?”
“No!” I suck in a breath to try to stop the crushing feeling on my chest. “It’s me. It’s always me. Or, it’s not all me. It’s him.”
It goes unsaid between us. Him. Will. Jack knows—I can see it in his ice eyes. Whenever Will comes up, those eyes turn to daggers, the anger in them not for me, but for him.
We stay quiet, and I rub my arms to work feeling back into them. The panic was so strong, so fast, I was taken by surprise. It’s been a while since it was that bad. Disappointment rages through me—I thought I was better than this. I thought I’d gotten better. Jack and I slept in the same bed at a hotel, for shit’s sake! I should be better now!
The truth seeps into me slowly, like a black cloud. How can one night make me magically better? It can’t. That’s the answer—it can’t and I’m still defunct, damaged, incapable of tolerating something as simple as lying next to someone. Was it the distance between Jack and me for half a year? Did my body forget who he is, how important he once was? Of course it did; I wrote him off for good. I did my best to black him out of my mind as a romantic option after Sophia’s death. And now it’s showing.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” Jack asks finally, carefully.
I make a huge exhale. “Let’s just talk. About something else. W-Why are you going here for school?”
“Work.”
The panic mutes itself, replaced with molasses and lead and spikes.
“Obviously. Frat boys just don’t cut it; college girls need a suave and experienced undertaker of the vajayjay to relieve stress, because everyone in the world is obsessed with sex, apparently—”
“I’m not an escort,” he says patiently. “I quit the Rose Club for good. I work for someone else now. Doing other things.”
“Wow. That’s so specific. I feel like I’ve gleaned a lot of valuable and specific information from this conversation.”
“Remember the guys who were in that forest? The guy in the tweed suit? The ones who chased you in the woods where Tallie’s buried?”
“Yeah, but—”
The door opens just then. Jack and I sit up hastily. In walks Tinyballs Mcsuitypants, he of the running-after-me-in-a-dark-Ohio-forest-because-his-boss-told-him-to. His black hair’s in spikes, skin amber. He freezes, dark eyes catching on me.
“You!” he squawks, and points.
“You!” I shout. “How are you still alive? I FIFA’d your balls!”
“What the hell is she doing here?” he snarls at Jack.
Jack sighs. “Isis Blake, meet Charlie Moriyama.”
“Already have,” Charlie and I say at the same time. I glare. He narrows his eyes even farther.
“Look, we don’t have time for this shit.” Charlie looks to Jack. “We were supposed to be there five minutes ago. Let’s not blow this, okay?”
Jack sighs and hefts himself off the bed, looking at me. “I’ll be back later. We’ll talk more then.”
“Sure, yeah, just work with the bad guys. See if I care.”
“Isis—”
“We’re going,” Charlie shouts, grabbing a towel off the end of his bed and slamming the door behind him. Jack frowns and follows reluctantly.
And I do the same. From at least five meters and two cars away. Charlie drives a white Nissan with a broken taillight. My mind runs circles around itself as they lead me down the highway and away from school. Why has Jack shacked up with Tweed-Jerk and Small Balls? Tweed talked about wanting to hire him, but I still don’t know for what. I guess he succeeded. Let’s be real, though—Jack let him succeed. Everything that happens to Jack is exactly because Jack lets it happen. Except me. But that’s a different story, full of illegality and joy.
Jack said he’s working, which means what? He’s at school, but on a job for Tweed? What job, stealing good grades for the poor-grade people? What could Tweed’s company possibly do for money, other than stand there and look dumb? It doesn’t make any sense, and it makes less sense when Charlie pulls into a huge white-stone plaza surrounded by a posh apartment building. A security booth lets cars in and out of the massive parking garage. Charlie’s Nissan disappears, and I pull up next. The security guard is a tan guy with a neat beard.
“Hey there, who are you here to see?” he asks.
“Um…” My brain scrabbles for a reason, and like all good brains, makes me blurt the first thing that comes to mind instead. “Jesus….? Christ.”
He squints, and just when I’m convinced he’ll launch a row of spikes under my car and into my tires, he smiles.
“Ah, yeah, you must be here for the North Presbyterian dinner.”
“Yeah! That’s right. Praise the Lord!”
He nods. “Go on in. Visitor parking is on the left.”
Either the rest of the world is exceedingly dumb today, or I’ve gotten smarter. Thanks, college. Wait, who am I kidding? College hasn’t taught me anything yet except how to have panic attacks and not pay attention to professors at all. Correction: thanks, National Geographic.
I park and walk slowly behind Jack and Charlie, who are waiting outside a fenced door that leads to the elevators. After minutes of silent agony in which I almost twist my ankle trying to hide behind a pillar when Charlie looks behind him, a redhead in a black bikini opens the door for them. She bats her eyelashes at Jack, and I pretend I did not see it, the same way I pretended not to see the end of Sixth Sense. Then again, she has titties up to her eyes and she has a wonderful smile, and if Jack’s taste in women has changed then he should by all means bed her, because she looks fairly fun and also cute, and who am I to get in the way of true love? Nobody. Nobody should get in the way of true love. Not even well-meaning Italian arch-nemesis families.
The three turn a corner and take the stairs, and as gracefully as an undercover ballet dancer, I make a mad dash to the door and manage to jam my pinkie finger in it just before it closes and locks me out.
“Banana shit-cake!” I whisper loudly, then nurse the tip of my finger in my mouth as I take the stairs. “What does a lady have to do to get a warm reception around here?”
“Stop her stalking habit, perhaps?”
I whirl around to see Jack leaning against the railing behind me. I look downstairs to my escape door, back to his calm yet irritated face, and then I peek over the railing.
“How many stories does it take before you break your knees? Medically? Asking for a friend.”
“Don’t you dare jump.”
Jump. Sophia jumped. I flinch, but Jack is a tower of ice, murky and rigid and unreadable. I draw myself up to my full intimidating five feet five inches of height.
“I am out,” I say with great dignity, “for a stroll. I wasn’t stalking you.”
“You were following Charlie and me. I saw your car.”
“Oh. In that case, yes, I was stalking you.”
“You should leave,” he says without missing a beat. “Nameless might be here.”
I grit my teeth but manage words. “So? I don’t care about him. I want to know what you’re doing in Tweed’s company, and why. Is it dangerous? You said you wouldn’t join them, you said—”
“I said a lot of things”—Jack sighs and rubs his eyes—“before Sophia died that I ended up regretting.”
My stomach churns. Was saying he liked me one of them? I shake my head—selfish. Stop being so fucking selfish and focus.
“Since when is going to a barbecue ‘work’?” I hiss.
“Since the one throwing the party is our target.”
“Uh, hello? Earth to Zabadoobian Jack? This is reality, not Call of Duty. There are no ‘targets.’”
“In my line of work, there are,” he counters.
“And what, pray tell, is your line of work?”
Jack’s frigid eyes harden, becoming clear and sharp as he answers. “I’m a freelance bodyguard who just so happened to be slotted into gathering intelligence. Now get back to campus and leave this to me.”
I bluster about for ten seconds, squirreling my hands together. I say “sp” a lot but never quite manage to get the “y” out. Jack, ever sensitive to my plight, turns and leaves. I follow.
“S-Spy?” I choke. “What blind idiot died and made you a spy?”
“I’m not a spy. I’m a bodyguard who’s been posted here.”
“You’re like…you’re…what’s the word for the opposite of ‘subtle’?”
“Isis Blake,” Jack offers.
“Jack Hunter!” I correct. “Jack Hunter isn’t subtle.”
“I’m very subtle when a girl shouting ‘spy’ isn’t following me,” he argues.
“You’re a mobile, permafrost glacier with killer eyebrows and rapiers for eyes. People don’t forget Jack Hunter so easily.”
“I wish they would,” Jack murmurs. It sounds so hollow and weak, so unlike him. I slap him on the back.
“Nonsense! You can never be forgotten. If you were, the last major glacier on planet Earth would fade from existence, and global warming would become a very scary reality. Scarier than it already is. And closer. And hotter. In the temperature sense, not the let’s sex it up sense.”
Jack stops walking and stares at me. I stare back. There’s a profound quiet. Bikini Girl chooses that moment to run into the stairwell and give Jack a very drunk kiss on the cheek, accompanied by an extremely subtle drop of a pink condom wrapper as she runs back out. I pick it up and hand it to him.
“Wrap your willy before you get silly,” I remind. Jack facepalms spectacularly, and I count it as a victory, because at least he is not sad-looking anymore. He is something-else-looking and it’s not much, but it’s better than sad. He comes up with the barest smile on his lips, but he quashes it quickly.
“Look, you can stay. But when Nameless gets here, you should leave.”
“Yes, thank you for giving me permission to continue what I’ve been doing for the last three years.”
Jack stops, hand against the stairwell door. “I apologize.”
“Don’t. It makes you seem nice.”
“He’s wanted by some very powerful people for helping some bad people do bad things.”
“Good. Before you arrest him with your spy-goggles or whatever, let me punch him.”
“Isis—”
“Just one punch. In the eyeball. With a spoon.”
Jack considers it, then smirks. “Fine. On one condition.”
“Name it, dork.”
“I get the other eye.”
I mull it over and nod. “I’m a generous god.”
I’m more grateful than he knows. Or maybe he does know, because his eyes are soft and warm with the knife of his quiet blazing anger. I’d seen it pointed at me enough times to know that this time, it’s not me it’s pointed at.
It’s Nameless.
I’m not the only one who knows. Jack might not know details, but he knows enough. He guessed enough. And he didn’t pry. His eyes show no pity or guilt. They are clear and they see me, and my secret isn’t a secret anymore. The weight is shared and divided, and I try to say thank you, but all that comes out is a wry smile.
I am half as dark as I used to be.
Jack turns and opens the door. We walk out of the stairwell, and my jaw pops like my old Beetle’s shitty trunk. The apartment building is all white stone and marble, massive patio-style walkways intertwining between mounds of purple hydrangeas and autumn roses. People mill about, walking their dogs or sitting in fancy patio chairs near the covered glass fire pit, wood crackling and embers dancing. A hot tub and an enormous lit pool are surrounded by umbrella-covered tables and grills, drunk college students flinging burgers and nasty jokes like they’re going out of style. Charlie is talking to the black-bikini girl, looking grumpy and munching on chips. People shove each other in the pool and shriek with laughter in the hot tub. Jack touches my forearm lightly and leans in to whisper.
“I’m going to socialize. I need information. Stay where I can see you.”
“I don’t need you to babysit me,” I say. “Do your job. I’ll just be over here, you know, having fun. You should try it sometime.”
I grab a hot dog and sit on a lawn chair, near the hot tub. A blond guy with svelte abs and a friendly smile glances at me.
“Hey.”
“Hi.” I spew meat delicately onto the patio tile.
“No swimsuit?” he asks.
“Left mine back home. On Mars.”
“Is that why you stand out like a sore thumb? Because you’re an alien?”
“Or, or—and this is a crazy theory—I’m just hotter than everyone else here,” I offer.
The guy laughs. “It’s true. Your hair’s awesome.”
“So is yours. In that beachy, I’m-definitely-from-California-and-spend-five-days-a-week-in-the-gym kind of way.”
He laughs again, louder, and gets out of the hot tub to sit by me, dripping wet.
“Three days, thank you very much. I’m not that much of a swole broski.”
“Coulda fooled me.” I nod at his stomach. He pats it like Santa after eating too many cookies.
“It’s my one pride and joy. I’ve got no brains and no future, but I’ve got these babies.”
“That’s all you need,” I say. “Take a picture and send it to Kim Kardashian. Marry her.”
“I’d have to fight Kanye,” he laments.
“Eh.” I wave my hand. “Just tell him his sunglasses suck. He’ll keel over and die.”
The guy laughs. “I’m Kyle Morris. Nice to meet you.”
“Isis,” I say automatically. “Destroyer of hearts and dreams. And any cakes in a two-mile vicinity.”
“Ravenclaw.” He offers his hand to shake. I grab it with my greasy one.
“Hufflepuff,” I say. He quirks a brow.
“Really? You don’t seem all that nice.”
“Oh.” I point what’s left of my hot dog bun at him. “Just wait until you see my friends. I practically run a charity show.”
“The guy you came in with?” He nods to Jack, who’s currently being exceedingly merciful and letting black-bikini girl cling to his arm and jabber at him, and she has a pierced belly button and probably a pierced vagina and her name is Hemorrhoid, by the way. The girls in the hot tub Kyle came from are slowly starting to notice just how good-looking Jack is, and they get out in a group, strutting past Jack and diving into the nearby pool with aching sexiness. The boys follow like hungry hounds.
“Yeah, the goober being goobed on,” I say. “He’s my friend.”
“Just a friend?”
“Is that like, some subtle cue-slash-question I’m supposed to confirm so you know whether or not you’ve got a chance to sleep with me? Because if so, it’s very not-subtle and lacking finesse, really, so next time maybe try a neon sign taped to your forehead that says Loser Looking to Get Laid. With the numeral two replacing ‘to,’ obviously, to save time, because that seems to be all guys really care about—getting laid as fast as possible.”
Kyle takes it in stride, looking mock-wounded. “Hey, at least I’m being honest.”
I roll my eyes and wander over to the pool, trying my darnedest and failing my darnedest to not glance at the way black-bikini girl is grinding her hip into Jack’s as she leans on him. Charlie’s off in the deep end of the pool with a bunch of girls, even his grin somehow grumpy as they splash him. Last time I checked, spying involved a lot more grappling guns and poison dart pens and a lot less giggling. I stand at the edge of the pool and watch the moon reflecting on the water in a wiggly silver medallion.
Kyle stands beside me. “So, what’s your major?”
“I’m a freshman. Undecided. Nuclear thermophysics. Culinary arts. Depends on how I feel when I wake up that day.” I hold two hands out and balance them like scales. “Destroy the world, or make a cake to celebrate destroying the world. The choice is so gosh darn difficult.”
Kyle laughs. “God, you’re cool.”
“It’s been said,” I agree. “Screamed, really. By my enemies. Just before I decapitate them.”
Suddenly there’s a sharp pressure on my ass, a squeeze. I jump, my squeal entirely ugly and entirely necessary as I look to Kyle, horrified. My first grope ever. He smirks and shrugs. I ball my fist, but I never get the chance to punch him. Kyle goes flying, splashing into the pool with an embarrassing flailing motion. Jack stands at the place Kyle used to be, his expression cool.
“Oops,” he drones. Hemorrhoid laughs, and the other girls start laughing, and so when Kyle comes up sputtering he has no choice but to laugh nervously with the rest of them.
“Ha-ha, nice one, bro!”
Jack quirks a disdainful brow at him. Charlie comes wading over and gets out, pulling Jack aside. Charlie’s words are rapid and low and hissy, and Jack’s are monotone.
Hemorrhoid stands with me, sighing. “He’s so dreamy, isn’t he?”
“Yeah,” I agree. “If we are in opposite world, and dreams are actually nightmares.”
She ignores me and latches back onto Jack the second he separates from Charlie, steering him toward the pool. Jack goes along with it, grimace obvious. Why is he doing it if he doesn’t like it?
“You,” a voice growls in my ear. I turn to see Charlie, anger etching his mouth.
“Me,” I say. “Now that the introductions are over, we can finally move on to tea.”
“You’re distracting him,” Charlie says. “You’re a goddamn distraction he doesn’t need right now.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me,” Charlie insists. “You see that redhead in the bikini? That’s an important source of info we need on our side. Jack’s gonna wind her around his pinkie, and he would’ve already, but you’re here, and for some fucking reason he likes your dumb ass and is putting it off.”
“You’re mistaken. We hate each other. Platonically.”
“You’re cock-blocking him,” Charlie snarls. “Now get the fuck out of here, before I throw you out myself.”
“My, are you always this polite with the ladies, or am I the exception? Or perhaps it’s the dudes you reserve your politeness for? Understandable. Dude-asses are polite-worthy as hell.”
“Get. Out.”
Over his tanned shoulder, I see Hemorrhoid lean in and graze Jack’s cheek with her lips. Jack doesn’t recoil, taking it like a frozen statue, inclining his head only slightly in response. I get the message. I always get the message, because I’m Isis Blake and I’m last choice for teams in gym, always, and whatever we had has been swallowed up by the void of Sophia, by the pain, by the ice-cold shield against it all that he calls “work.” The little ball-light of hope I held in the darkness flickers, weakening irrevocably.
“I was already leaving,” I say. Charlie watches me the whole way to the garage. My fury is the dull, aching kind, lingering even as I park and trudge up the stairs into my dorm. Yvette is, mercifully, not there. Her text from four hours ago reads: staying at a friend’s, don’t worry. Another booty call, maybe. I don’t care. It’s her life, and as long as she’s safe and happy, I’m fine with it. I’m curious, but the throbbing hurt from the night beats louder against my skull as I lie in bed and stare at the ceiling, hot tears clouding my eyes.
I can’t sleep. Not until I say something. I grab my phone and text.
Do you know how many times you’ve made me fucking cry?
His answer comes later, much later. It wakes me in two hours. I imagine him in her bed, sitting over the side of it, naked, and with her naked and sleeping opposite him. I imagine his tousled hair, his lean muscles, his blue eyes made silver by the moonlight.
Too many, his text says. Thirty minutes pass, and then: Find someone who doesn’t make you cry. Find someone better.
Do you know how many times you’ve made me fucking cry?
I stare at the text, the sickly electronic light boring into my eyes like spears. Spears of guilt. Spears of regret. I shouldn’t be here, and what’s left of my heart knows that the second I read the words. I should be there, with her. I should be a normal college student, not playing at one while trying to catch a criminal.
Not sleeping with the criminal’s ex-girlfriend so she’ll give me dirt on him.
It had been boring and routine, the steps ingrained in me from my time at the Rose Club. I’d added every trick I could to satisfy her—satiate her so fully she’d be crawling on her knees for more in the morning, and next week, and the week after that. Her mouth is the only useful part of her—spilling the secrets of her ex-boyfriend Kyle, and consequently, his partner, Will.
It was the first time I’d slept with someone since spending the night with Isis at the hotel. Isis’s smell surrounded me, vanilla and cinnamon, even when I hadn’t touched her for very long. The hurt in her brown eyes haunted me as I finished, the silent name on my lips spilling from a place of heart-torn, guilt-laced pleasure, and if I shut my eyes I could pretend, if only for the briefest second, that it was Isis beneath me.
But the illusion faded quickly.
Use everything you can to your advantage, Gregory’s voice resonates from training. And that means your damn pretty face. Women will love it. Use them.
The evidence we need is one step closer.
Redemption is one step closer. Redemption for Sophia. Redemption for Isis. Catching Will Cavanaugh, putting him away so that she never has to see him again, is the one good thing I can do for her. It got me through Gregory’s training at the ranch. It got me this far. It’s the one good thing I can do, period. The one thing that could put a dent in redeeming the hurt I’ve inflicted.
I pull on my shirt and button my jeans, leaving the posh apartment quietly so as not to wake her roommates. I pause at the door, looking back into the shadowed apartment that holds the evidence of my sordid manipulations.
I thought I was done with it, with this, with sleeping with people to get what I want—money for Sophia’s surgery, information. But I got it backward—it was never truly done with me.
“Redemption,” I murmur, and leave. The guilt sears me, gnawing at my insides. I need relief. I need distraction. I need something other than Isis’s text, my phone burning up in my pocket with her sadness and disappointment.
What does she want from me?
I can’t give her anything. I can’t give anyone anything anymore. My heart is empty and broken and useless.
The neon lights of the college district flash with Technicolor temptation—pawnshops, strip clubs, liquor stores open late. I find what I’m looking for in a seedy club packed to the brim with sweat stench and greasy bodies. I watch the crowd carefully from the bar, then pounce on the one man who slips a roofie into a brunette’s drink.
He is bleeding—his nose broken and his arm dislocated—when I am done with him. It takes forty seconds, and he punches back with equal fervor and splits my brow with his knuckles, hot blood oozing into my eyes. For those forty seconds it’s all static—I am a blank canvas, moving like Gregory taught me, punching and dodging like he taught me. Nothing is in my mind but moves and countermoves, observations and rapid calculations of how fast my opponent’s fist is moving, where it will land, how to sidestep and trip him so he’ll eat a precise stone step of the club. I am empty. Isis is gone. Sophia is gone. There’s only the taste of blood and anger and sweat, and the soundless roar of the beast in my head. But the roar is different now. It is sharp and honed and precise. It is softer, yet more chilling.
When it asks to be fed, feed it promptly, and in small portions. It will never rebel, and you’ll never hurt anyone you don’t want to, as long as it’s fed. Gregory’s words echo. As long as it’s fed, you are the master.
The bouncers break us up, and as they lead me out I nod at the brunette, who gathered around to watch the fight with the rest of the club.
“Your drink was spiked. I suggest you take a cab home.”
She looks shocked, and her friends sniff at the drink in her hand. Her horrified face is the last thing I see before they dump me onto the road. The beast gives me strength enough to stagger back to campus and collapse in bed, the blind rage fading rapidly, cooling like lava hitting ocean water.
I will never hurt anyone who doesn’t deserve it ever again.