THE UNFAIRFOLK

Valenbound Book 1

SARA WOLF

CONTENTS

Disclaimer/Content Warnings

Dedication

Map

1.  The Shadow (Or, How two boys discovered magic)

Nine Years Later

2.  The Before (Or, How things are never just once upon a time)

3.  The Man (Or, How one girl found the devil)

4.  The Journey (Or, How life is never fair to you most of all)

5.  The School (Or, How you’ve always felt older than everyone, older than time, and in every crowd you look for someone like you)

6.  The Beginning (Or, How a boy prepares for a battle he can’t win)

7.  The Fight (Or, How dangerous first impressions are in the right hands of the wrong people)

8.  The Touch (Or, How each finger is both the arrow and the apple)

9.  The Missing (Or, How you sometimes think death is just God sweeping out the bed crumbs so he can sleep)

10.  The Bridge (Or, How magic is the only thing that matters anymore)

11.  The Dinner (Or, How being evil is easy)

12.  The Forest (Or, How many steps you can count between you and the person you want to be)

13.  The Drawing (Or, How no one believes you until it’s too late)

14.  The Regret (Or, How a moment comes and goes and leaves you behind forever)

15.  The Duel (Or, How deeply a sword has to cut for it to be dangerous)

16.  The Word (Or, How five letters can ruin it all)

17.  The Moonlight (Or, How they’ll try to steal your light, all the good parts of you, and you will not let them.)

18.  The Candle (Or, How you want to run like a river, riotously, uncaring whether you’re clean or dirty)

19.  The Mother (Or, How you learned to build your armor piece by piece as you were fleeing)

20.  The Interrogation (Or, How being young feels like being a ghost)

21.  The Blood Promise (Or, How everything means nothing to some people)

22.  The Nightrose (Or, How a girl breaks the devil)

23.  The Story (Or, How you waited so long, alone, for no one to save you)

24.  The Picnic (Or, How being a person is the hardest thing you’ll ever do)

25.  The Wondering (Or, How a laugh can chew you up and spit you out again)

26.  The Whisper (Or, How impossible is a word we invented to spare ourselves)

27.  The Church (Or, How they love to bless you with their scorn)

28.  The Deer (Or, How many times you can tolerate being called prey)

29.  The Pool (Or, How the pain will always be ready for you to come home)

30.  The Camera (Or, How many medals you should have by now for still being here)

31.  The Family (Or, how to be satisfied with just the trees, with just the rain)

32.  The Fairy Ring (Or, How none of it feels real when it’s happening, because only in the quiet dark does reality hurt)

33.  The Dream (Or, How ‘probably’ has never been good enough for you)

34.  The Exam (Or, How they like to say getting over yourself is easier with booze)

35.  The Shadows (Or, How even as you sleep, yours gets longer)

36.  The End (Or, How many times you have to die to move on)

37.  The Teeth (Or, How words are the claws of the mouth, and some people never bite)

To Be Continued

Acknowledgments

DISCLAIMER/CONTENT WARNINGS

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2020 by Sara Wolf. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary right, please contact the agent at Jfaust@bookendsliterary.com

Want to follow Sara Wolf on social media? We got you:

- INSTAGRAM: @authorsarawolf

- TWITTER: @Sara_Wolf1

- WEBSITE: www.authorsarawolf.com

****PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING FOR CONTENT WARNINGS****

This book contains mentions of a car/train crash, heavy mention of parental abuse, domestic violence, sexual harassment, alcohol, drugs and drug use, nicotine use, self-harm, and heavy mention of blood.

DEDICATION

IN MEMORIAM, FOR THE YOU YOU USED TO BE, AND IN CELEBRATION, FOR THE YOU YOU WILL BE.

1

THE SHADOW (OR, HOW TWO BOYS DISCOVERED MAGIC)

SWITZERLAND

“This way, this way!”

Two young boys ran full-tilt over the vivid green grass of summer, shouting merrily at each in French. The velvet blue peaks of the Alps rose all around them, cradling the cheery noontime sun. The boys made quite the pair - one with a head of golden hair, and the other’s so dark it absorbed all light. They were opposites in spirit, too; the golden-haired boy tearing through the grass in a carefree way, and the dark-haired boy trailing after him, hesitant, mincing.

“What if we get in trouble?” The dark-haired boy called.

“Don’t worry! We’ll be back before dinner,” His friend shouted.

The boy swallowed his nerves and pushed on. He didn’t want to look scared - he knew his friend hated cowards. But he couldn’t help worrying about the consequences of going so far away from the adults; his mother would be furious. His skin ached with phantom bruises at the mere thought.

“Alistair!” The blonde boy called. “C’mon! Through the trees!”

Alistair pulled down his sleeves to make sure his friend couldn’t see, and then plucked himself a new piece of bravery from a nearby wildflower bush, little fist clenched around the stem. He ran into the forest and quickly caught up with his friend - even in the shadows of the woods, it was hard to lose sight of the glint of his solid gold hair.

“Okay,” His friend grinned at him. “We’re far enough, now. Let’s have a race.”

“But w-what if we get lost in the woods, Ciel?” Alistair wrinkled his nose.

Ciel thoughtfully searched the horizon, and then pointed at a square of light. “There! That’s where the trees stop. Head that way, okay? Three, two, one -”

Without even waiting for an agreement Ciel darted ahead, a gleam in his gray eyes. Alistair trailed after him, leaping over roots and around stones. Ciel was faster than him, but Alistair was bigger, and soon his legs caught up with his friend. The woods were so dark and deep, and Alistair found himself growing uneasy at how far they were going. This wasn’t a well-lit backstreet of Tokyo, or a park in Brussels. He was used to those. Used to being shuffled between those, back and forth. Summer, then winter. Orderly. But this? This was trees and nature, unpredictable and chaotic and…hungry.

Suddenly, there was a crack of a branch, and Alistair whipped his head around just in time to see Ciel go tumbling down a slope. No! He dashed over, shouting.

“Ciel!”

He slid down the slope to reach his friend. All of Alistair’s worries evaporated - to be replaced by irritation when Ciel came up laughing, his face flushed.

“That was so much fun!”

Alistair scowled. “You could’ve gotten seriously hurt!”

“I’m fine. God, you’re such a worrywart.” Ciel stood up, brushing his pants off.

Alistair flinched. “No I’m not!”

“Yes you are! It’s all you ever do. Worry worry worry.”

Alistair swallowed the sting. He had to worry. How else could he avoid the hurt? How else could he protect his baby sister Rose? He had to worry a lot, before everyone else, or bad things would happen.

Feeling equally betrayed, the two boys scaled the slope slowly. Alistair offered his hand to Ciel once, but he batted it away impatiently. Finally, when they were at the top, they took a moment to huff and puff, completely out of breath.

It was then, through the dark woods, that the terrified squeal resounded.

Both boys immediately straightened and looked at each other, all resentment forgotten as cold fear took over.

“What was that?” Ciel whispered.

“I don’t know,” Alistair murmured back. “It came from over there.”

“We…we should go see,” Ciel said. “Just in case someone’s in trouble.”

“Y-Yeah.”

The boys picked carefully over the floor of the forest, and the sound of rustling became apparent ahead of them. Ciel’s hand found Alistair’s and Alistair squeezed back, trying to reassure him like he always reassured Rose when Mother started breaking things. The rustling became louder, and they crested the last rise with fearful trepidation, one shaking footstep at a time.

They first saw gleaming white against the forest floor - a ring of white things, small and compact. Alistair squinted - mushrooms. A fairy ring. He remembered Father reading him a story, once, that called a ring of mushrooms a fairy ring. But in the story, there was no blood.

In the story there was no white deer torn open, with its spilled organs flecking the mushrooms red.

And definitely, most definitely, there was no thick, writhing shadow looming over the white deer, with unnaturally long limbs and glowing red eyes like two embers in ashes.

The shadow thing - man or beast, Alistair couldn’t decide - snapped its ember eyes to the boys, interrupted in its meal. It felt like a slash of fire across his face, down to his bones. Next to him he felt Ciel’s body go stock still. A whimper escaped Alistair’s throat that didn’t feel like his own. They could run. They should run.

But would it chase them?

The hairs on the back of Alistair’s neck stood, warning him of danger in a practiced way. The air was heavy, and he knew this air - it lingered in the house just before Mother changed. Before every storm, came a calm.

And so too was the calm here.

The shadow’s face split into a smile, hundreds of shark teeth thin and long and dripping saliva.

Alistair put his arms around Ciel, shielding him. It was an instinct - put himself around the smaller one, between the danger and the smaller one. It didn’t work sometimes - Rose screaming and twisting out of his grip - but he’d learned to hold fast. And he did now, as Ciel squirmed and tried to fight out of his arms.

Alistair braced for the pain, ready for it. Expecting it. Used to it.

But it never came.

The shadow thing’s pure red eyes burned into the two of them one second, and in the next it was gone. The white deer went with it - disappearing into nothing. Thin air. There one moment, and gone the next, leaving only bloodstained leaves and bloodstained tufts of white fur behind.

The two boys waited a still moment, waited for the thing to come back. For their eyes to fix themselves, for the dream to end. But the sun shafted through the trees, illuminating the bloodstained fairy ring. The empty fairy ring. It had been a blink, but the pale deer and the monster had truly been there, and truly vanished.

“Magic,” Ciel whispered, fevered and shaking. Alistair looked down to see the blonde boy flushed and smiling, ear-to-ear. “Real magic.”

It would be some time - nine years, in fact - before Alistair realized the reason he was shaking wasn’t because of the shadow, but because of Ciel’s smile.

NINE YEARS LATER

2

THE BEFORE (OR, HOW THINGS ARE NEVER JUST ONCE UPON A TIME)

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

IF - and I say this hypothetically - IF my mother got remarried, I wouldn’t be mad.

Because of course people want to be together. We’re social animals! We came into this world as packs of semi-hairless monkeys all grooming each other, and of course we wanna go out the same way. Of course we wanna eat dinners with someone and hold hands and talk about death and taxes and hard stuff and make omelets in the morning and all that jazz - because doing all that stuff alone sucks hot shit.

Love is something everyone wants. Except me.

Anyway, I’ve decided.

“Mom,” I announce at the breakfast table around a mouthful of my peanut butter toast. “If you wanna start banging a guy again, you have my blessing.”

Mom nearly drops the jam knife. “W-What?”

I sigh and rummage around in my backpack before pulling out a vial of water. “There. My blessing. And before you ask, yes, it is holy water and yes, I stole it from the church down the street. But it was sitting out in the open in front of a sign that said ‘WELCOME’, all caps, so I can hardly be held accountable for my actions.”

“Lilith,” Mom finds her voice somewhere beneath her smeared 12-hour-shift work makeup and unicorn-print nurse fatigues. “How dare you -”

“God’ll forgive me,” I button up my flannel shirt. “That was, like, Jesus’s whole deal, right?”

Mom’s face - that always-slightly-worried face with warm blue eyes - lights up from the inside. “ - how dare you ruin the surprise, young lady!”

“What surprise? Did you finally bang Ryan Reynolds?”

“Please, Lilith. Stop saying ‘bang’.”

“Ooookay,” I raise an eyebrow and put on a posh accent, donning a napkin on my head like a bonnet. “Pray tell whomst art thou courting, milady?”

“Oh no. I’m not going to blab. You’ll get to meet him, soon enough.”

I’m quiet for a generous three seconds. “Um, hello?! How long have you been dating? How old is he? Spill the beans!”

“That’s right,” Mom muses thoughtfully at the cupboard. “We are out of beans.”

“This is hell,” I groan. “I’m in hell.”

“Well you certainly came prepared,” Mom gets up from the table and snatches the holy water from my hand. “I’ll tell the pastor you’re very sorry.”

“Sorry I’m so fucking cool,” I flip on a pair of sunglasses that’ve just been permanently lying on the table since summer vacation. We were planning to go to the Santa Monica boardwalk, but Mom’s shifts never cleared up. She graciously ignores my f-word and washes her toast plate.

“Speaking of dating, when are you going to get around to it?” She asks in that fake-innocent Mom-who-doesn’t-know-anything-about-being-young voice.

“When I’m dead and buried in the ground,” I grunt.

She laughs. Mom takes all my jokes in stride - I got my dark humor from her. Working in the hospital in the ICU is killer on her mind and body, and sometimes she sees things so horrible and sad the only way to make it lighter is to fling jokes around like they’re liferings near a sinking ship.

“Who’s going to date you in the ground?” Mom asks lightly.

“My boyfriend the worm.”

“Very handsome worm, I imagine.”

“You don’t even know. Huge abs, huge cheekbones, huge…GPA. Thinks I’m super cute.”

“Well, you are.”

“In theory,” I mumble. Mom turns off the water and looks over her shoulder sternly at me, though not all that sternly considering both her hands are covered in soap bubbles.

“Lilith Elizabeth Pierce, you are very cute! And don’t let me catch you insinuating otherwise!”

“You’re the only one I’d ever let catch me,” I stand up and kiss her on the cheek, grab my backpack, and book it. I get to our beat-up welcome mat before I lean backwards and peer at her over the doorframe.

“Please tell me you aren’t dating a cop. They’re trained to be complicit in racist profiling and also I haven’t even smoked weed yet.”

Mom perks up, an offspring of the 70’s and ever ready to ease me into my first ‘dangerous’ experiences safely. “Do you want to?”

“God no. Love you.”

She laughs and shakes her head. “Love you too.”

THIS IS the part where I tell you that when I was six, my dad shoved me down a flight of stairs.

No, wait. That’s later. When I’m looking into a pool of water and being deep and introspective, or some shit. Right now, as I’m walking to school down the molten California-in-September sidewalk, this is the part where I tell you about my goals and dreams and like, how much I want to be an English teacher, or how I’ve already decided I’m going to culinary school or how bad I wanna travel the world after I graduate. Or something. Something about my future, and what I have planned for it.

Because, surprise! I’ve got absolutely zero planned for it. Everyone else in my class is already making plans for Yale and UCLA or the local community college or a job in a restaurant. It happened overnight in that bizarrely silent way important changes do - May of sophomore year we’re all talking about renting an ironic bouncy castle for someone’s birthday, and three months later in September when junior year started, we’re suddenly talking about ‘scholarships’ and ‘early applications’ and ‘resumes’. Everyone got ‘part time jobs’ - just saying the words feels stiff. Grown-up. Real. Everyone else is driven and ready to take on the world. And then there’s me, stealing holy water from churches. Negative sixty ambition, in a society that pretty much values only that. I want to do two things with my life; eat, and play videogames. And not ever be touched.

No, wait. Backspace that. Pretend I didn’t say it. Too soon. No pools of water around for miles to confess moodily into.

Fuck, it’s hard being alive.

I inform my best friend Ruby of this as I walk into our usual meeting place - right below Northview High School’s obnoxious neon sign that likes to scream about whatever sweat-soaked grindfest is next on the holiday-adjacent school dance table. We spent all night facetiming and watching movies, our eyebags mirroring each others’.

“It’s hard being alive,” I whine.

“Uh, yeah.” She rubs her eyes blearily. “But I had tofu and quinoa for dinner for the fourth time this week. So suck it up.”

“My mom’s dating.”

“Oof.” Ruby winces, her parrot earrings dangling. “Nevermind. You win.”

We duck beneath the bushes around the school and cross the football field arm-in-arm. This early in the morning it’s quiet, and considering it’s the back entrance, we don’t have to see anyone we don’t want to in the warlike throng of the morning drop-off. Win-win.

“You ever think you’re not gonna make it?” I ask.

“In Hollywood?” Ruby primps her lips. “With this face? No way.”

“No I mean like, past eighteen? Do you ever feel like there’s some big shadow hanging over you constantly? And it’s telling you, like, you’re gonna drop dead the instant you graduate?”

“Oh.” Ruby nods thoughtfully. “Yeah. All the fucking time. But isn’t that just the existential dread of capitalist America forcing us into massive amounts of college debt and a soul-crushing retail job to pay it off?”

Ruby is gorgeous in a dark-haired-dark-eyed-almost-six-foot-tall way, and her dad’s a sociologist, which means not only is she prettier and taller than me, but she’s also smarter than me by sheer osmosis.

“Either that, or I’ve got depression,” I muse.

“Well, if you do, definitely get help,” Ruby insists. “Ophelia Brown went to therapy last year and she turned out fine.”

“She got into crystals, Ruby. That’s not ‘fine’.”

“Hobbies are good for you!”

“She tried to cure the wart on my foot with a rose quartz!” I screech.

“Okay, well,” Ruby sighs, and then says exactly nothing else. My phone suddenly buzzes with a text, and I pull it out. Mom.

‘Hi sweetie :) Do you still have that dress I got you for your birthday?’

My fingers fly. ‘the one with rabbits on it? It’s in my closet’

I nearly stumble on the last few stairs going up the stadium. I pause, my brain rumbling like an old V8 engine. My fingers fly again.

‘y?’

‘Honey, ‘why’ is three letters, did you really need to shorten it?’

‘yes. self expression. teenager. hear me roar.

‘We’re going to dinner tonight,’ she types. ‘You’re meeting Ryan Reynolds’.

‘and all I have is a rabbit dress?!’

‘It looks cute on you. See you tonight! xoxo’

I put the phone back in my pocket and let out my last breath. Ruby waits for me to inhale again, and when it never comes, she thumps me on the back.

“I’m meeting her boyfriend tonight!” I explode, gulping air. “We’re going to dinner!”

“Congrats. Do you wanna borrow my sleeping earplugs? They were a lifesaver when Dad got okcupid.”

Nausea does not stop me from immediately cupping my hands around my mouth and shouting down from the top of the stadium steps; “My best friend’s gonna make me fucking yartz!!!”

My words echo gloriously. Coach Stevens, he of the ‘periods are an excuse’ fame chooses that moment to open his office door at the bottom of the stadium, and we stare at each other. He makes the ‘I’m watching you’ fingers at me, and I make them back, but at the last moment I get a stroke of divine inspiration and flip him the middle finger. He’s fifty and definitely can’t climb fast. Ruby and I dash away howling with laughter.

ONCE UPON A TIME my horoscope said ‘Dear Taurus, your hubris will be your downfall’, and it might’ve been three years too early, but it was absolutely correct.

Because he is an Adult(™) with Methods(™) and the support of a Power Structure(™) behind him, Coach Stevens tracks me down in the cafeteria during my riveting lunch of chicken fingers and chocolate milk and gives me detention. I try to appeal to his better nature.

“Anybody ever tell you you’re super cool, Mr. Stevens?”

He just stares at me, dead-fish-eyed. Nada. Go for the heartstrings.

“Listen; I’ve got a dinner date tonight. Well not me, uh, it’s my Mom’s. I’m meeting her main squeeze. She hasn’t dated for a whole decade, and if I miss it -”

“No wheedling, Pierce,” Coach frowns, and it makes his bulldog chin wiggle. “Detention. Room C15. After school.”

He tawdles away in his track suit and I shake my chicken-greasy fist after him. “If I miss it and she ends up dating a serial killer because I never met him and warned her, you’re going down as an accomplice!”

Ruby has all the pity in the world for me, but none of the time. She has debate club to get to. And math league after that. She gives me her pack of mini pretzels, though, so I decide not to disown her completely. I make it through the whole hour and a half of detention by sucking the salt off them very quietly. Stevens gives me a final assignment before I’m ‘allowed to go’ and I mightily resist the urge to call his hairline tragic.

He’s making me do detention the real old and real shitty way; I’m sitting at the scratched-up desk in-between writing ‘I will not make rude gestures’ on the paper a hundred times when Mom calls.

“Hi Mom,” I whisper. “Real nice weather we’re having, huh?”

“Are you in detention again, Lilith?”

I buzz my lips. “Pfft, what? No.”

Coach Stevens looks up from his newspaper, his voice booming. “No phones in detention, Pierce.”

“Okay,” I cup the phone closer to my mouth. “Yes - but only a little.”

“How little?” Mom doesn’t sound pleased.

“Like,” I look down at my barely-started paper. “If I risk developing carpal tunnel? Twenty minutes.”

“We’re going to have a talk tomorrow.”

“Okay.” I sigh. Mom’s voice gets a crack in it.

“I just - I just want this night to go well, Lilith.”

Guilt lodges in my heart like an arrow. “I know. I’m sorry. I did that thing again where I didn’t think about anybody else but me.”

“It’s okay,” Mom takes a shuddering inhale. “Just come home soon, alright? I’ll even let you use my hair curler.”

“Roger, echo niner.”

They say the pen is mightier than the sword, and I don’t know about all that, but a pen definitely moves faster than a sword, but no one says that sentence because you can’t smash two of the words together and make ‘penis’ on the back of bathroom stalls. My hand cramps, I start to sweat, my back hurts, and I keep wondering why we still write with our naked little paws at all. Technology is here for a reason - to make life better, not worse.

“Text-to-speech exists, you know, and it’d make both your teaching job and my delinquent job a lot easier.” I say to Mr. Stevens as I turn in my paper. He immediately starts counting my sentences with the back of a sharpie.

“Back in my day, they would’ve made you write twice as much,” He grunts.

“Yes, well. Back in your day, you thought LSD could mind-control. So.”

Mr. Stevens looks up at me with tired disdain, and waves his hand. “Go. Before I change my mind.”

The great thing about me is that I don’t need to be told anything twice. I make a chef kiss at him and dart for the door.

If someone were to say ‘you should join NASCAR’, I would say yes I should, because I’ve had my license for all of six months and I already know how to go very fast, and I know how to take turns well, and most importantly I know doing all that in Southern California in a fifteen-year-old Volvo is a great way to die and/or get a ticket. I’m solidly chaotic good on the DnD alignment chart, and I’ve had enough run ins with lawful evil today, so I go slow…if a cheetah was defining the word ‘slow’. I nearly flatten the tamale lady with my tire-smoking turn onto our street, but she’s encountered me enough times to know I didn’t mean it. When I screech into the apartment parking lot, Mom’s already in the door waiting, her maroon dress shining beautifully in the sunset light.

“We’ve got twenty minutes before the reservation!” Mom shouts the moment I open the car door. “Hurry!”

Stumbling over the straps of my backpack and untold amounts of old fruit-by-the-foot wrappers, I vault out of the car, up the stairs, and into the apartment, Mom hot on my heels.

“I’ve ironed your dress,” She says breathlessly. “And you can use my work shoes.”

“The loafers?” I lament, peeling off my shirt.

“They’re better than those nasty old converse of yours.”

“Mom, I happen to like those nasty old converse,” I whine with all the vibrato hopping on one foot out of my jeans elicits.

“And I happen to like you looking nice. This is not a discussion, young lady. Loafers or nothing.”

“Nothing,” I choose, wiggling my bare toes, and she sighs, pushing me gently into my room where the dress rests on my bed.

“Get changed. I’ll get the curler warmed up.”

The last thing I want to do is go out. Like, anywhere. I’m the sort of person who thinks walking to the fridge is exhausting, let alone meeting new people and pretending to like them. It’s why I haven’t joined any clubs, or any sports. Ruby’s friendship was a miracle created by a shitty school project. But on the whole, it turns out people are a mega-bummer and it’s mega-hard to be myself around them. I always feel like I’ll just screw it up, and because I’m thinking that so hard, I usually do. If life was a house party, I’d be the person in the kitchen petting the dog for four hours straight. I’m probably allergic to people. Spiritually speaking. But as I’m pulling on the almost-too-small middle-school-era dress with its multitude of tacky pastel bunnies, I hear Mom from the bathroom. Humming. Not sighing over bills, not crying into her pillow thinking I can’t hear, not worrying. She’s humming soft and sweet, and the hard knot of resistance loosens in my chest.

Alright. So. Meeting new people. How hard can that really be?

3

THE MAN (OR, HOW ONE GIRL FOUND THE DEVIL)

I stare at my reflection in the car’s sunvisor mirror. “I look like a clown.”

“You do not look like a clown,” Mom assures me, her eyes on the road as she drives down the highway.

“You’re right. I look like a clown in training.”

“Lilith, please. Have a little confidence. We’re going to go out, eat a nice dinner, meet nice people, and have a nice time.”

“In Nice, France.” I finish for her. “Which is where I will be flying, because after tonight I will need to flee the country.”

“That color is gorgeous on you, honey,” She assures me.

I purse my very pink lips. I’ve used lipstick exactly twice, and I’m thinking there won’t be a third time. “They can see me from space, probably.”

“Honey -”

“Just picture it; they’re all floating around, taking space dumps and eating space lasagna, and then all of a sudden one of them looks out the window and goes ‘Holy shit, is that a zit over in California? Is the Earth going through puberty again? Last time it did that it wiped out the dinosaurs!’.”

Mom gives up and laughs. She, of course, looks beautiful - her chestnut hair pulled back in an elegant bun with little wisps let through. With under-eye concealer and dusky rose lipstick she looks a lot less tired, but it’s the happiness that makes her glow, really - that giddy anticipation that rocks her high-heeled foot on the gas pedal, that has her fingers tapping the steering wheel. Her blue eyes are locked ahead, all crow’s feet and warm curves. The guy ain’t even here yet, and she’s like a kid at Christmas.

And then there’s, well, me; barbie-pink lipstick, a little eyeliner, and a lot of crossed fingers. I’m constantly haunted by the fact my fetus-self let Dad’s genes win over Mom’s, because I could’ve looked so good. I could’ve been adorably petite, with lustrous wavy brunette hair and eyes like a summer sky, but instead I’m a pin-straight dishwater blonde who cut her hair earlobe-short at midnight over summer break with a rusty pair of craft scissors, who’s been 5’10 and a size 12 jeans since fifth grade when my hips and torpedo boobs decided to make their entrance all at once. It wasn’t always easy, dressing. For a long time I tried to make myself small, too-big sweatshirts to hide my titties and my height and my issues, I guess. I didn’t want to be seen. By dudes least of all. A forty-something balding fart commenting on my ‘cute mosquito bites’ at a coffee shop when I was twelve was enough for me to never want to be seen again.

But I digress.

When I was young and still believed in magic, I used to wish on birthday candles for God to make me short and cute like every other girl in my class, instead of intimidating and clumsy, but here we are. Still tall. Still crude. Still rude. Mom gave it her best shot, though, and gave me the slightest touch of her beauty; blue eyes. Not the bright kind, or the piercing kind. Just a watery mix of blue and gray. Usually just call ‘em blue. My eyes Definitely Do Not change with my mood. Except when I’m mad. Then they turn red.

“Mom,” I wipe my lips with a surreptitious tissue at a stoplight. “If my eyes turned red would you still love me?”

“That depends. How red are we talking?”

I give her A Look. She laughs and reaches over to squeeze my knee.

“Kidding. Of course I would. You’re my Lili.”

The nickname from my childhood comes screaming out of the embarrassing dark. “If you call me that in front of your guy, I really am leaving for France.”

“Agreed,” Mom laughs nervously (nervously?), and pulls into the parking lot. We’re in LA proper now, all concrete and curated fan palms, and alarm bells start to ring when I realize we’re going to one of the fanciest Italian restaurants I’ve ever seen, in one of those areas where the rich-ass techie people come to eat. The front door is gilded with the restaurants’ name, and that’s how you know you’re somewhere really fancy - no sign, just a name on the door.

I open it for Mom and we walk in, the smell of fresh bread and tomato OHKO punching me. The tables are in private little alcoves, pristine tablecloths and soft candles and waiters who look like models in tailored slacks and white shirts busying around. Mom leans over and says something to the drop-dead gorgeous tanned hostess who looks like she just came from every music festival ever. I suddenly feel pasty and very musically stupid and slightly gayer than usual. Not that I’ve told Mom about that. Or anybody. Not even Ruby. Part of me thinks everyone will just laugh. Part of me isn’t even sure it’s real. I’m just a fake. Girls are pretty, of course they are. Everyone knows that. It doesn’t mean anything if I think so, too.

Confusing fears aside, the hostess nods with a smile and disappears. I might not know anything about music or looking amazing, but my love for free shit is universally unparalleled and there’s bowl of mints on the pulpit. I attempt to dump half the bowl in my pocket but Mom thwarts me by wiping away something on my cheek.

“His name is William Cunningham.” Mom sees my face crumple with a joke, and cuts me off at the pass. “Be nice.”

“I -” I choke on my own laugh. “I will. For sure. I just can’t stop thinking about a very smart ham. A Cunning Ham.”

Mom stares blankly at me as I devolve into fits.

“W-With a little graduation hat.”

The hostess’s return spares me from Mom’s lecture, and we follow her to the back of the restaurant, to a table with a well-dressed man in it. Is this him? He doesn’t look like a serial killer, but I guess they never do. That’s, like, the point; they always look like normal guys. This guy ain’t exactly normal - he’s got an impressive mane of salt-and-pepper hair for his age, all of it slicked back nicely. His skin is a smooth gold, his teeth so white I practically see stars when he smiles. He looks like an old-timey movie star, complete with the graceful aging and impeccable suit with a little titty-hankie.

“Hello there,” He smiles at Mom, and she goes five shades of red. He’s got a faint accent that I can’t place - British? He looks over at me with his blue eyes. “And hello to you too. You must be Lilith.”

“Yes. That I. Me mean, nice to - hi.” I blurt. He smells like lemon and offers me his be-Rolex’d hand and my brain stutters as I shake it. “I like your, uh, your thing -” The man looks lost and confused and Mom’s smile is faltering and what’s the fucking word for that thing, anyway, god. “ - your chest-Kleenex.”

He looks down. “Oh, this old pocket square?”

“Pocket square. Right.” I breathe a sigh of relief. “Because I’ve been calling it a titty-hankie in my head.”

There’s a beat, and Mom’s eyes go wide, and oh fuck was I not supposed to say titty? William, thankfully, bursts out laughing.

“That’s the most amusing name for it I’ve ever heard. Pocket handkerchief works just as well. I’m William, but you can call me Will if you like.”

“You can call me Lilith. Just Lilith.”

“It’s a very pretty name, Just Lilith.” Will’s eyes sparkle, and I start to like him a little more. Even with the tacky dad-joke. He motions to the table, and Mom smiles at me ruefully as she takes the chair across from him.

“Thanks.” I sit to Mom’s side. “It means night demon.”

“Or screech owl,” Mom corrects, then looks to Will. “I chose the name because I wanted her to be strong.”

“Ah,” Will smiles at me, his own crow’s feet deep and dignified. “She was Adam’s first wife, was she not? She wouldn’t obey him, so she was cast from the garden of Eden.”

“Whoa,” I murmur. “Color me impressed, monsieur.”

Will laughs softly. “I have to admit, it’s been a moment since I took theology in college.”

“Where was that?” I ask. “Like, England?”

“Close,” He motions for someone and a waiter pops out of the shadows to pour us water with all the alacrity of a fucking stealth jet. “Edinburgh.”

“Uh…”

“Scotland.”

“Right! Okay, yeah, that makes sense.”

“Does it?” He laughs. “I’m not exactly wearing a kilt.”

“I think she meant the accent,” Mom intervenes charitably for me. “Us Americans tend to get them mixed up.”

“But blindfold me and hand me two identical cheetos and I will tell you which one is the flamin’ hot one and which one is original flavor by touch alone,” I assert. Will laughs again, heartier this time.

“That’s a learned skill, indeed.”

The waiter brings our bread as Mom and Will catch up their days with each other, and I listen close. I know how her day will go already; burn victims, suicide attempts, things that aren’t all that great to talk about. Especially on a date. At first I think she won’t tell him any of that, but she mentions it in passing, squashed between her stories of paperwork and administering IVs. I watch him stroke his thumb across her hand slowly, comfortingly, his eyes always on her, and the heavy lead in my chest starts to feel lighter. He seems nice, and he looks like he really cares about her. A tiny voice in my head tries to tell me you can never really tell with people. They might look perfectly happy, but one wrong move, one wrong word, and they could turn and hurt you the next minute.

Like Dad.

I haven’t learned much in public school, but I’ve learned this down pat; you never, ever really know someone. Not even your parents. People are unpredictable, and even if they say they love you, that could all change in the blink of an eye. You can’t trust them. You can’t see into their brain, so you can’t trust them. The only person you can trust is yourself, because everyone else will lie to your face.

I pick at my napkin, listening vaguely to Will talk about his day; something about shipments, about shareholders and ‘quarterlies’, whatever those are. Business talk, it sounds like. Come to think of it, this place is balls-to-the-wall fancy, packed with old people with money. What does this guy do for a living?

Unlike most times, I wait for a lull in the conversation to assert myself. “How long have you guys been seeing each other?”

Will looks over to me, faintly surprised. “Oh. You didn’t - ” He glances at Mom. “You didn’t tell her?”

Mom’s whole face goes a light shade of pink. “I’m still…I’m sorry. I didn’t know if - I’m still so afraid, sometimes, that it’s all a dream. She deserves to know most of all, but I wasn’t sure - I’m sorry.”

What are they talking about? Will strokes her hand with a smile.

“You have nothing to apologize for, Rachael. I understand.”

“But I don’t,” I chime in. Mom shoots me an apologetic smile.

“I’m sorry, honey. Just give me a sec, okay?”

“One whole sec -” I nod. “- in bathroom time.”

Will gets up and moves to the empty chair next to her, and they bend their heads together and talk in quiet, even voices. I get up as gracefully as I can, which amounts to exactly one (1) case of me getting my pastel skirt stuck between my buttcheeks. It takes me roughly forty seconds of wandering the restaurant to realize people are staring because of course they are - they’re dressed in elegant black and diamond jewelry and I’m here with a baby-mode outfit of frolicking bunnies and too-big nurse loafers. Am I frumpy? Absolutely. Do I give a shit? Absolutely not. I’m here for Mom, not these six-figure fuckheads.

It takes me thirty seconds to do my business in the bathroom stall but five minutes to fling myself in varying dramatic poses over the plush waiting chair before a very alarmed lady walks in and catches me doing an upside down dab.

“Okay!” I declare as I bolt upright, clearing my throat. “Wow! That’s a well-made chair.”

My intruder doesn’t buy it, but I slink away before she can call security or something equally anti-fun. As I make my way back to the table, I end up locking eyes with a man sitting in a corner booth all alone. Which, weird. He’s as handsome as Will but way younger, and he’s staring out into the restaurant watching everyone pass him. His elegant hands stir his coffee slowly. He’s got massive cheekbones and a sharply defined nose, like a dramatic painting. Dark hair, dark eyes. Maybe he’s waiting for someone? I doubt anybody’d keep a guy who looks like a Da Vinci statue waiting for long.

And then it happens.

Maybe the lightbulbs are breaking. Maybe they serve vodka here instead of water. Maybe that’s why I see the man’s eyes flicker. They’re supposed to be dark, but I swear I see red. Not the joke red I talked about in the car, not momentary-red-stoplight-reflection-from-the-street-outside, not the James-the-stoner-guy-in-fifth-period red, but hell red; deep, glowingly crimson irises, like pooled blood.

Red.

The worst color.

I flinch away but the red eyes pivot, and the man looks at me. Right at me, slowly at me, knifing with his gaze through the crowd. We’re closer than I thought. His contact lenses are more expensive than I thought. More real. The sound of the restaurant fades. The clinking dishes, the conversation - it all fades to white noise as the man looking at me inhales and opens his fine lips, like he’s going to sing a note. Like he’s making the beginning of a song.

I know. It’s weird and impossible and doesn’t make any sense but somehow, I know. I know the song will be horrible even before it comes out. Horrible like nails. Horrible like the end of the world. All my wants, all my fears, they detach from Mom and William and school and homework and college and all condense into this one point, right here - this one burning desire to never hear this song. I’ll do anything not to hear it. Everything in me is begging the sound not to come out, for him to stop -

And then there’s a shove. My whole body staggers, and the waitress at my side apologizes profusely, her words punching a hole in the static for the restaurant noise to flood back into. I blink, look back, but it’s all gone. Da Vinci model just stirs his drink, smiling at another waitress that passes by.

His eyes are dark. Dark like ink. No red at all.

I rub my own eyes. What the fuck? Yeah, I stayed up until three last night with Ruby and movies, but that’s never made me hallucinate before. Not as vividly as that. And the feeling. The feeling stays with me, pulsing in my veins, like I just woke up from the world’s worst nightmare.

Breathe, Lilith. Just freakin’ breathe.

Mom watches me come back to the table, a huge smile plastered on her face, and it does miracles to blast away the lingering terrible in my veins. I’ve never seen her so freakin’ happy. There were times - when we got ice cream on summer nights, or when I said something really gut-bustingly funny, or when we opened Christmas presents together. But those were just moments. Flashes of color between the gray. Right now, it’s all color. Right now she’s a whole other person. She doesn’t smile like this; she’s usually too tired from work, too mentally drained from the ICU to ever really make more than a wilting grin. But this? This is her beaming.

“Lilith.” Will’s got joy written all over his dignified face too. “Rachael wants to tell you something.”

I glue on a smile, but it’s not all faked. Mom looks so goddamn happy. I’m happy for her by proxy, but I can’t help wondering; was I not enough? All those years we were together, just her and I…was I not enough to make her this happy? Was it my detentions? Was it the fact I forget to do my homework? Should I have looked at a cooking website, made more recipes for her when she got home from work at 5 a.m other than just spam and eggs?

Being this happy is just what romantic love means, I guess. I wouldn’t know. Girls like me don’t fall in love. They just worry about never finding it. Constantly. All the time. But like, quietly and to themselves.

“Will proposed to me two weeks ago, Lili.” Mom says, her eyes blurring with tears. “But I - I wanted to wait. I wanted to introduce him to you first.”

I look over at Will and he smiles back at me, warm and true. Maybe-true. Maybe-warm. I don’t know him. I can’t trust him. But apparently Mom can. After everything Dad did to her, to me - she can trust this one. So maybe I should, too.

It’s always been just us.

But this Will guy - he’ll become my step-dad. He’ll be a permanent fixture - a stranger that has total control over my life, and that terrifies me. I try to be brave, try to summon up some shred of courage from my roiling stomach.

“That’s - that’s great, Mom.”

“Is it?” Mom reaches her hand out and clenches mine nervously over the tablecloth. “Are you sure? Some things will change.”

I look into her hopeful, bright sky-blue eyes. If I say ‘no, it’s not alright’, I know she’ll turn him down. She’d do anything for me, and I’d do anything for her. If just saying yes can make her this happy, forev - not forever. I’m not that naive.

But if it can make her happy, even for a little while…

I squeeze her hand.

“I’m sure.”

4

THE JOURNEY (OR, HOW LIFE IS NEVER FAIR TO YOU MOST OF ALL)

Sitting in an uncomfortably large first class seat on my way to New York, I’m Definitely Not Sure anymore.

“S’cuse me,” I stop a blonde flight attendant flawlessly carrying a tray of precarious glasses filled with sparkling champagne. “Do you have anything…smaller?”

I motion to my seat, and she looks confused. “What do you mean, dear?”

“You know, something normal? More cramped? A little more crust on the armrests?”

“Crust?” She lightens. “Oh! Would you like more bread? We have leftovers from the meal service.”

“No.” I wince. “That’s okay. Thanks anyway.”

When she clip-clops away in her heels, I sigh and lean back into what’s basically a detached loveseat surrounded by a sleek fiberglass divider. There’s a little TV monitor embedded in the plastic, a real-polished-wood table for food and drinks, and with one push of a button the whole seat goes near-flat and I can lay down. Which I might need to do if things keep going at a whirlwind pace like this.

I look out the window to my right - the sky’s cotton candy pink, with wisps of purple rainclouds on the horizon. Sunset. That means California’s already two hours away. Ruby’s already two hours away. I stare at my airplane-mode phone with the last text I sent her;

if this huge metal bird goes down in flames, eat a shitty cafeteria pizza for me one last time, would ya?

Filled with unsure neurosis, I re-check my ticket. LA to New York. Made of flimsy paper and ink. This is all real. We land at 11:30, and then I catch a connecting flight with my brand spanking new passport ‘across the pond’, as Will called it. My passport photo looks great, and by great I mean I look like I have to shit.

I stare at my near-blank connecting ticket harder; JFK to Geneva International Airport.

I’ve been on an airplane once or twice, when Mom took me to Georgia to visit Grandma. But it feels fucking surreal to sit in something alone, by myself, that could comfortably fit at least three people. It’s weird to have so much space when I know upwards of a hundred people behind me are squashed into tin-can sardine rows. Is this capitalism? Am I the problem? Definitely. Or, to be more precise, Will is the problem. I insisted I was fine with a coach ticket, but he wouldn’t hear it. Probably wanted to impress Mom. Not that he can any further - much more and I’m pretty sure she’ll start thinking the sun shines out his Armani bunghole.

Not that I’m jealous or anything.

Okay, maybe I’m a little jealous. Mom loves him a lot. That much has been made clear since the night they announced their engagement. I’d hate him for it, but I can’t. Knowing Will for a month and a half now, I’ve realized first-class is just normal for him. It’s not that he wants to impress anyone, this is just how he lives, so why shouldn’t everyone else in his soon-to-be family live like him, too? He’s never concretely told me what he does, but he describes it as ‘trade management’.

Whatever that means, it’s gotten me here, in first class, on the way to some fancy boarding school in Switzerland.

When Mom and Will first told me the plan I - understandably - thought it was a joke.

“Boarding school?” I stretched across the couch in my worst sweatpants watching mindless Netflix. “I’m already bored at school, thanks.”

But then Mom got all serious about it. She and Will would take a honeymoon across the world for five months, together. Will promised he’d take Mom to all the ancient gardens, all the Michelin-starred restaurants, all the romantic parks and underwater cave tours. He wanted her to experience the world, and goddamn did she want to. She’s always wanted to. So what was I supposed to do? Say no?

Ruby, on the other hand, had many things to say.

“William CUNNINGHAM?” She almost spat her PB&J on my face over the cafeteria table. “Listen; your mom’s engaged to one of the richest men on the Forbes list, or whatever. I literally just read about him at the dentist’s office. He’s got three private planes, two yachts, and seventeen vineyards. His house in Beverly Hills is worth more than the entire state of Oklahoma.” She inhales hugely. “Which means?”

I pause and consider. “Time for the French Revolution?”

“No!”

“You’re right,” I pat her hand. “I’ll squeeze an Xbox out of him first. Then revolution.”

Honestly, Ruby probably still knows more about Will than I do. He’s been friendly and nice to me, but not much else. No deep sharing or anything. The paranoia set in days ago. This could be him getting rid of me so he can do whatever he wants to Mom. I tried to tell her that, tried to express my worry, but she just smiled that sunshine-joy smile at me.

“I’m a grown woman, Lilith,” she’d said. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

I lean my head against the headrest and try to breathe the paranoia away. My only shred of comfort in this half-dreamy, half-guilt-ridden fantasy is the fact that no matter what class of the plane we’re in, we’re all breathing each others’ farts. That shoddy little curtain in the aisle can’t change that. The fizzing champagne can’t change that. Death and farts don’t care how much money you have - they all strike the same.

I breathe deep. “Someone’s definitely had brussel sprouts.”

The maybe-ten-year-old over the aisle to my right giggles. She’s adorable, with dark hair in braids - pink bows on the ends and big green eyes. She’s too young to be flying this far alone, but she is anyway. I wonder where her parents are - rich enough to put her in first class, but not rich enough to be with her, I guess. She’s been bored and squirmy the whole way, so I reach into my bag and hand her the colored pencils and notebook Mom bought me for school. I wouldn’t let William get me a laptop - didn’t entirely trust him not to bug it - but I covered that up by insisting I like handwriting actually, thanks.

“Here,” I say to the girl. “You’re probably a better artist than I am.”

She takes them and nods. “Yeah. I saw you drawing that dog and it was b-a-d.”

“Gee, thanks. It was my greatest work,” I chime. She giggles, throws open the notebook, and chooses the brightest pink pencil she can find. The flight attendant swoops by again.

“Is everything alright, Rose?” She asks. The girl doesn’t look up from her artistry.

“She was just giving me these.” Her voice is oddly terse, like she’s used to people hovering.

“Oh. That’s so sweet.” The attendant smiles at me.

“That’s me. Sweet as a button.” I poke my own cheeks. Mercifully, someone dings their seat and the flight attendant leaves me to mutter under my breath; “And dumb as a sack of rocks.”

Sure, I’d do anything for Mom. I know that like a tattoo on my bones; permanent. I’d do anything for Mom. Full stop. I’d rob a bank for Mom. I’d do any number of illegal things to make sure she was happy and safe. I’d deffo kill a man for Mom. Hell, one time when I was seven I shoplifted a pack of sponges and put them in my Pokemon backpack because Mom cried when she couldn’t afford them. And okay, sue me; when she was still in nursing school and I was in middle school, I definitely did palm a bottle of fancy perfume off the mall’s makeup counter for her birthday. And the birthday after that.

But this? Going to some rich-ass boarding school in Switzerland for the rest of my junior year while Mom and Will honeymoon around the world? I don’t even speak Swiss! French? Swiss-French? God. What alternate-dimension Dumbledore decided it was my life he was going to wiggle his magical fate-changing fingers in?

“Fuck,” I whisper, and bang my head on the headrest. “If the school looks like Hogwarts I’m done for.”

“My brother says Hogwarts isn’t real,” The girl announces, and I jump out of my skin. She’s got exceptional little bat ears. “But I want it to be real because I want an owl.”

“Honestly, same,” I say. “Don't listen to your brother. He sounds like a di -” I catch myself. “- ngleberry.”

The girl giggles. “Dingleberry!”

I get the feeling I just handed her the keys to Pandora’s box, and I’m not entirely wrong, because the next time the flight attendant comes around, the girl chirps ‘Dingleberry!’ at the top of her lungs. Mortified, I pull the blanket over my head, and with all my combined knowledge of lovingly spying on Anthony Nguyen in drama practice after school with a crushing Ruby, pretend to be dead asleep.

Turns out even swaddled in the glitzy comfort of first class, twelve-hour-long flights are still super bad. Your legs cramp, you can’t really sleep because of time changes, and no matter how much you’re tempted by the champagne that keeps going around because you’re sixteen and it’s ‘Legal in Europe’ or whatever, you know the hangover just ain’t worth it. You want to show up to your new terrifying maybe-Hogwarts boarding school not vomit-encrusted, thank you very much, and you keep trying to tell the flight attendants that but no one will listen to you. Or if they do, they think you want an extra pillow.

By the time we land in Geneva, I am the Pillow King. I won Game of Thrones and I am the Pillow King sitting on my Pillow Throne. I’ve built a pillow fort. Let them come, I have pillow moats! There’s a pillow party, and no one is invited but me and my own huge ass, and maybe a dragon, because those things are fuckin’ rad. No breathing, dragon - only looking - else you destroy my glorious Fort Feather.

I extricate myself from the plush embrace of Fort Feather as the doors to the plane finally, finally, open. The little girl waves her hand as security comes down first to escort her out, and I wave back. She conked out somewhere around the time the plane was reloaded in New York, and only woke up when we landed. She gave me back the notebook, and she tried to give me back the pencils, but I insisted she keep those. May they keep her company like her parents apparently can’t be bothered to.

Okay, maybe that’s a little harsh. But seriously? She’s like, eleven max. No one should be flying so far all alone when they’re that young.

I guess when I was younger than her, I was at the bottom of a staircase. Crying. Clutching the splintered bone coming out of my leg.

I shake my head. Not the time, Lilith. Not in a plane, in public. These thoughts are for home, for bed, with a pillow so not even Mom can hear you.

I stand up to stretch my legs, and drop the last pillow I’m clutching back on the seat. As the first-classers in the plane queue up to leave impatiently, I flip through the notebook to distract myself. The girl’s drawings are just as adorable as she was, with their bright colors and charming stick-figures. She likes pink and yellow, and a lot of it. She sketched a much cooler dog than mine - with spikes and breathing fire. I laugh and turn the page. This picture is dramatically different, and it makes my stomach flip.

There’s a figure with glowing red eyes.

Just red.

It’s been a month and a half, but it reminds me exactly of that handsome guy’s gaze at the restaurant, the way it flashed briefly into crimson. But nothing about this particular figure is handsome. Something about the way she drew it sends shivers down my spine. Its hands are too long, and it has teeth - thousands of thin, sharp teeth like a piranha. I tear my vision away to see the whole picture; she’s drawn a dark green field with a few large buildings and dozens of windows, all of them shining square and gold into a moonless night. The sky is black and blue, punctuated by weird streaks of green and purple. Shooting stars, maybe? And the unsettling cherry on top, tucked away in the left corner by some trees, is the terrifying red-eyed figure. I squint down at its feet - it’s standing in a perfect ring of many small white things, like a well, or a portal made of pebbles -

“..iss? Miss?” I shake back to reality, where there’s a flight attendant smiling at me. “Did you need help with your bags?”

“N-No,” I snap the notebook shut and pull my backpack from the overhead container. “I got it. Thanks.”

It’s just some scribbles. Just some rich kid’s imagination. Strange things are just strange things. Coincidences are just coincidences.

Monsters aren’t real. They’re human. They have names. And sometimes, they raise you.

Walking up the runway after twelve hours sitting feels like heaven, my converse beating hard up the incline until I’m finally free. I feel like a fuckin’ zombie. The airport looms huge, noontime sun filtering over the crowds of half-rushing, half-waiting people. The yawning emptiness of the high glass ceiling hits hard all of a sudden; I’m like, seven thousand miles away from home. Away from Mom, who’s God-knows-where by now. Away from Ruby. Away from shitty cafeteria pizza and street-corner mercados and dusty fan palms and smog-rose sunsets and everything I’ve ever known.

I’m alone as hell. But this is only the starting line. The first day of seven-ish months.

Breathe in, out.

Be mature about this.

Go.

I follow the trail of weary people from my gate to the baggage claim, because even though most of the signs are in French with English below it, the glasses I require to see anything beyond fuzzy blobs are in my other bag. I figured, mistakenly, that twelve hours on a plane meant I wouldn’t need ‘em. This explains why, when someone taps me on the shoulder, I very calmly eject my entire nervous system from my skeleton.

“Miss Pierce?” A youngish-man in a driver’s cap and uniform smiles at me, his accent lightly French. “I’m Lionel. William sent me. I’m here to bring you to the Institut Le Silvere.”

He knows my name, and Will’s, and my school’s name. Good signs. I wheeze a nervous laugh. “Okay, cool. My bags -”

“They’ll be sent along,” he assures me. “Please, this way.”

Like any sane person with a working rationale who just flew half-a-day to a strange new country, I follow him. It’s weird - or not weird I guess, just surreal - to see that an airport in Europe looks pretty much exactly the same as one back home. Same little shops selling gifts and candy, same bustling coffee spots. It’s comforting, in a way.

Lionel leads me to the familiar florescent wasteland of a concrete parking area.

“Same parking garages!” I say, a little too happily. Lionel looks charitably amused.

“Yes. Very similar.” He motions for me to get into a sleek black car, and I go for the front seat.

“Miss - ” Lionel starts. I drop my fingers from playing with the delicate little potpourri pillow hanging from the rearview mirror. “Are you sure you’re okay there?”

“Yup!” I sling my backpack off and cradle it in my lap. “I promise I won’t fiddle with the radio. Much. Unless there’s a bop on. In which case I can’t guarantee your ear-safety.” His face doesn’t lighten.“Something wrong with that?”

“No.” He says. “It’s just, I'm a professional chauffeur. Most of my clients prefer to sit in the back. That’s the usual etiquette.”

I make a face. “Yeah, well. That’s not my vibe. You’re driving me. Least I can do is keep you company, or, like, talk to you. Is that weird?”

“No, not at all.” Lionel slides into the driver’s seat next to me, smiling. The car starts up with a whispering purr, and he taps in an address entirely in French into the GPS. “The Institut isn’t far, but it’s quite high up in the mountains. It shouldn’t take us more than a hour. You can sleep if you like.”

“Sleep is for the weak,” I wave my phone. “And for people without worried Moms.”

And for people who don’t have nightmare monsters drawn in their notebooks by little girls, but I don’t say that. Lionel smiles around his hooked nose. His eyes are blue, pale blue like stunning ice, and his hair is coppery and wiry and pulled back in a bun. He reminds me a of a scarecrow, if said scarecrow made a wish to become the guy on Mom’s technicolor romance paperbacks that I’ve definitely never stolen and read under the covers, I swear. He slows the car at the garage exit, rolls the window down, and blurts a stream of perfect French to the attendant before handing him what looks like a holographic dollar bill - a euro? No, franc. I looked that up, at least.

“So,” I say once I’ve hurled the obligatory ‘Landed safe’ text to Mom into the ether. “How do you know Will?”

“William’s my employer,” Lionel turns out of the airport and into a bustling road. “We met when I was very young.”

“Where?” I nose. “In Europe? Or America?”

“Montreal. I was thirteen and I had just, well.” He taps the steering wheel. “I had just run away from home.”

“Whoa,” I stare at him bug-eyed. “The guts!”

Lionel chuckles and shakes his head. “I was desperate, not brave.”

“Sometimes they’re the same thing.”

His ice eyes glitter under his cap. “That’s true. You’re quite smart.”

“If I was really smart, I wouldn’t have gotten into the car with the first guy who approached me,” I correct. Lionel looks alarmed.

“William didn’t tell you about me?”

I scroll through my texts, a bunch of them coming in all at once. “Oh. He totally did. ‘At baggage claim, be on the lookout for a handsome young man with good manners and a sign for you’.” I look Lionel up and down. “Okay, so one of those things checks out.”

Lionel chuckles. “Which one?”

“The sign.”

Maybe it’s because he’s so young - twenty-four, tops. Or maybe it’s because he gives off chill vibes. Whatever it is, he’s way easier to talk to than Will. Suddenly, twelve whole hours of flying whomps me on the side of the skull like a sledgehammer, and my zombified body just gives up on functioning completely. I lean my forehead against the window, watching as the car pulls onto a quieter two-lane highway surrounded on both sides by lush trees and farmland. Gentle hills roll in the distance. Everything is alive, fall leaves painting fire and gold across the skyline.

“Wow,” I murmur sleepily. “This place is really beautiful, huh?”

“Yes. In February it can be a bit dreary, but Switzerland as a whole is really very gorgeous.”

“Dunno what Will told you, but I’m from LA. So all this ‘grass’ and ‘leaves changing’ and ‘below 50 degrees’ shit? Totally new to me.” I watch the grass flash by some more with heavy eyelids. “I didn’t even know the ground could be this green.”

“What color is it in LA?”

“Gray. And browner gray. Unless you get a fake lawn to save on water. And then it’s scary-green.”

For a second it’s just the quiet purr of the engine and the clink of the keys in the ignition.

“Do you…do you ever miss home?” I ask. Lionel responds instantly;

“No. My home is where Will sends me.”

“What about your family? Do you miss ‘em?”

His ice blue eyes get all hard on the edges, sharp like crystal. “No.”

“I get that,” I mutter. “Well, half of that. My Dad can suck an egg in whatever corner of the world he’s in now, but I miss Mom like crazy.” I pause.“Sorry. That makes me sound like a toddler with zero coping skills, doesn’t it?”

“It’s alright to miss people,” Lionel says.

“Maybe. Or maybe I’m just a baby. I don’t speak anything but English. I can’t do this metric shit. I say ‘Fahrenheit’ and ‘dope’. They’re all gonna hate me at this fancy school.”

“In my experience, most teenagers just hate themselves,” Lionel says wisely. I try to form words to agree with him, to tell him he’s so right it hurts, but the heavy darkness of sleep gets me first.

5

THE SCHOOL (OR, HOW YOU’VE ALWAYS FELT OLDER THAN EVERYONE, OLDER THAN TIME, AND IN EVERY CROWD YOU LOOK FOR SOMEONE LIKE YOU)

So, peep this shit.

There are, like, places, right? Big impressive old places that old dead people built (probably slaves, shout-out to Ms. Grier’s eighth-grade Social Studies), and other people rebuilt, and then people did stuff in them like live and eat and poop and bang, probably. Can you freakin’ imagine pooping in one of those dresses with huge skirts? Did you just, like, squat mega-hard? Did you have to pull the whole skirt over your head? Or did you just take it off like a big detachable ballon? Most people want to go back in time to stop evil from happening, and I do too, but like, inquiring minds want to know about ye olden pooping. Desperately.

What I’m trying to say, is that if you think about it, a ton of people have lived and died in these super old places. The US of A - in all its colonizing genocidal glory - is a country that’s three hundred years old, but Europe is, well. Ancient. And buildings in places like the Middle East and China are even older! If the U.S. is in baby-mode, Europe is cryptkeeper status. I mean, we haven’t even figured out guns are bad yet! Or that free healthcare and paid maternity leave should be a thing! Or that racism sucks hot shit! We’re more than a little behind the times. Our oldest western colonial buildings are probably churches built by four hundred year old Spanish missionaries at best. And I mean, let’s be real; the ginormous chateau in front of me in was probably also built by slaves, and Europe probably also hasn’t figured out racism sucks hot shit any more than the U.S. or the world has, but standing here, in the shadow of this immaculate cream-colored building with its hundreds of huge windows surrounded by rose bushes and a gorgeous view of the blue mountains and green valleys behind it, I almost forget that. Keyword here being ‘almost’.

Okay, so it’s not Hogwarts. But it could definitely still be Beauxbatons.

“This…” I blink the sleep out of my eyes as I look up at the chateau’s gigaton polished wood front doors. “This is a school for rich white country club kids, isn’t it?”

Behind me locking the car, Lionel nods. “Used to be. These days they make a concerted effort. They have quotas and such.”

“Quotas,” I mutter. “Like -”

“Accepting international applications. Worldwide scholarships for the academically gifted.”

“And I’m not one of those,” I lead.

“No. Your ride has been paid in full by William.”

“Oh. Oh god. I’m the spoiled white rich kid!”

Lionel chuckles. “A bit of self-awareness never hurt anyone. Come on. Let’s get you to the headmistress’s office.”

I chase after him as he glides across the perfectly green lawn towards another, less pants-wettingly huge chateau. A gardener planting violets waves at him, and he waves back. A pair of girls my age in blue and white uniforms watch as we pass, and I catch half their words - a low mix of English and what sounds like French.

“Did she sit in the front seat?”

“Who sits in the front seat? With their chauffeur?”

“ - no self respect,” One of the girls says, and they both giggle and disappear behind a row of columns.

“Is the front seat a bad thing?” I chirp at Lionel.

“No. But it’s decorum,” Lionel says smoothly. “If you employ your own driver, it’s more in custom to sit in the back.”

“Oh.” I stare at my shoes and think on this. It’s a very long think, involving me and being born an idiot. Except how would I even know something like that unless I’d grown up being driven around? Excuuuse me.

“Welcome, Lilith,” Lionel stops in front of a sparkly marble fountain and makes a crinkle-eye smile, motioning around him. “To the Institut Le Silvere.”

He hands me a brochure, and I flip through it as I follow him. The front page announces it’s been around since 1260 A.D, when it was a convent for nuns. So, this isn’t just a school. It’s a piece of history. The second page lists all the alumni, and my eyes widen - a shit ton of people I don’t know, but the few I do are like, mega-famous. I’m talking, like, those geniuses you see winning chess competitions and inventing robots and plastic-eating mushrooms and shit. The third page shows statistics; ninety percent of people who go here go on to an American Ivy League, or an European equivalent. Ninety. Percent.

Ho-lee-shit.

“I’m not smart!” I yelp a stress-induced confession, avoiding a near miss with a trellis dripping with purple wisteria. “Are clothes from the sale rack even legal here? Can I fall asleep in class without being arrested?”

“I’m sure you’ll only get a minor reprimand,” Lionel nods.

“What about drooling on my textbook?” I clutch his arm frantically. “Can I still drool?”

He laughs and opens the front door to the smaller chateau, the elaborately carved darkwood walls and the expensive-looking vases filled with flowers giving me insta-hives. The smell of fresh, clean, non-LA air is practically suffocating. Everything’s edged in gold - the windows, the curtains, even the enamel fuckin’ tissue boxes. A secretary in a silk blouse and perfect bun waves us through into a smaller office when she sees Lionel. He pushes open the big doors for me, and I trail after him. The walls are absolutely coated in expensive paintings and silk tapestries and a particularly terrifying row of kabuki masks. The one on the end’s completely out of place, though - bright gold and beaked, like a western plague doctor mask.

“Hey, uh, quick thought; I don’t belong here,” I hiss.

“What makes you think that?” Lionel indulges me.

“Oh, I dunno; the flagrant abuse of gold foil? The paintings of old dead dudes in riding coats staring down at us like we’re trash?”

“Where do you belong, then?” Lionel asks as he turns the corner of a long, sunlit hall sharply.

“In, like, an apartment next to the freeway with maybe-bedbugs and constantly rising rent.”

“Nonsense.”

“Okay, fine. A Taco Bell bathroom learning my lesson about the chalupa supreme one digestive upset at a time. But that’s my final offer.”

Lionel chuckles, but I don’t, because my eyes fall on the giant desk in front of us. Or, to be more specific, the black glass deer statue on it. It’s incredible - a stag standing on a rock and proudly displaying his horns, all made out of black glass. Volcanic, maybe? It’s got little ruby eyes. There’s a bunch of other stuff on her desk, but for some reason I can’t tear my gaze away from the deer.

It’s mesmerizing. And…familiar. It feels familiar, somehow. But that can’t be right. I’ve never seen it in my life.

“Lionel!” A husky woman’s voice, and in a curl of tasteful gardenia perfume we’re descended upon by the most beautiful grandma I’ve ever seen. Her steel-gray hair is piled up in a prim bun, her dress suit fitting her slender limbs down to the last waifish collarbone. Her olive skin glows and her eyes…okay, I don’t wax poetic about eyeballs. I try not to, anyway. Eyes are just eyes. But this woman’s eyes…they have a life of their own. They’re fox-like, turned up at the edges, clever and quick and bright and shining like they have some inner light. There’s a pale, spring green starburst around her pupil, and it bleeds softly into rich evergreen. It’s hypnotizing.

She cups her hands around Lionel’s face and they do that cheek-kiss-three-times thing I’ve only ever seen in movies.

“It’s so very nice to see you again,” She says, and then her next few sentences are all in French. Or is it Swiss? That’s a thing, right? I’m instantly jealous of the way they effortlessly switch between languages - it’s so fuckin’ cool. It sounds like she’s asking him how he’s been, and Lionel answers back, smiling the biggest smile I’ve seen yet. I try to make myself look graceful and non-destructive and fail spectacularly at both when the orchid in a vase I’m touching snaps its stem.

“Do you like those flowers, Miss Pierce?” The woman’s voice resounds. “They were a gift to me from the King of Cambodia.”

I freeze. A forreal forreal king? Is she messing with me? No - something about her immaculately-put-together entire being says she doesn’t do things like ‘mess’. Sweating, I shove the broken stem behind my back and into the hem of my jeans.

“Yeah, wow. Great color. It’s a very purple, uhh…purple.”

The woman looks me up and down, and then back at Lionel. “She certainly has a way with words, doesn’t she?”

It’s a back-handed compliment, but considering I just broke her plant and hid it in my asscrack, I’m willing to forgive her.

“Thanks,” I blurt a laugh. “I try. Some days harder than others.”

The woman turns back to me, this time without a trace of smile in her eyes. That’s my first clue I’ve fucked up. My second is that all her graceful beauty suddenly turns sharp; her lips set, her peridot gaze imperious.

“You’ll be attending the Institut Le Silvere, Miss Pierce, under my admission; which means you will need to try exceedingly hard every day. We do not tolerate laziness here. Starting today, I am Ms. Von Arx, your new headmistress.”

I gulp. Her stunning eyes parse over an iPad in her lap.

“Your school record was forwarded to me this morning. I must admit, Miss Pierce, you are far less impressive than I expected from William Cunningham’s daughter.”

“Step-daughter,” I half-laugh. “For like, a grand total of four weeks.”

“Repeat tardiness, insubordinate comments to faculty, unexplained absences,” She ignores me in an icy voice. “Defacing bathroom stalls, defacing lockers, defacing a faculty member’s car -”

“To be fair,” I point. “The guy liked to lag behind girls in the stairwells so he could look up their skirts.”

“- smoking during class hours -”

“That was once! I learned my lesson. If ‘learned my lesson’ means ‘violently threw up for an hour and swore to never do it again’.”

Her eyebrow makes the barest silver twitch. “- And your grades are, frankly, abysmal.”

I nod in agreement. “Some of the smarter people have trouble with consistency. Me? Straight C’s since fifth grade.”

“On that note, you have quite a bit of required reading.” She doesn’t miss a beat, picking up a thick book from the polished desk and pressing it into my hands. “Etiquette and behavior are covered inside. It’s faster to read in German, but I’m afraid you’re stuck with the English version. I expect you to have it read by Friday - I will be testing you on it.”

I do a bit of jetlagged math. Friday is -

“In five days?” I gawk. “All of this?”

Von Arx shoots me a chilly look, the sort an empress gives to a jester. She breezes on, but it’s a breeze from Antarctica.

“Your room will be 322, on the third floor of the Knight Lyon building. It’s quite a walk up, but I’m sure the exercise will do you good after sitting in the airplane all day.”

I shoot a helpless look to Lionel. He tactfully avoids my eyes. Ms. Von Arx, on the other hand, confronts me.

“Your classes start tomorrow. Breakfast is at seven. Lunch is noon and dinner is at six.”

“But -”

“You will wear your uniform as per specifications - that’s covered in the book as well. Above all,” She shoulders my hesitation aside. “We pride ourselves on our manners here at Silvere. Tardiness is a most serious infarction, for which you will be penalized. Professors routinely inform me of such things. If you’re late to class with any frequency, your parents will be notified.”

I swallow lead.

“As a student, all buildings on the grounds are open to you. The exception being the watershed, the gardening sheds dotted around campus, and Knight Durand.”

“Knight what?” I blink.

“All chateaus on campus are prefixed with ‘Knight’. Knight Durand on the north end is currently undergoing refurbishment, which means its completely off-limits to students.” The headmistress fixes me with her stare. “Curfew, especially, will be observed; you must be inside your dorm no later than ten-thirty. Our highly-trained security teams patrol at night, and we cannot be held responsible if you incur broken bones simply because you decided to scuttle around the bushes past curfew. Is that clear?”

“Broken bones? Plural?” I blink.

“Curfew and Knight Durand.” Von Arx’s stunning green eyes narrow to slits. “Is. That. Clear?”

Like a contact you lose in the carpet, I think. As a borderline petty criminal, I’m pretty familiar with how the whole sphere of security works. In like, strip malls. But this ain’t a strip mall. It’s not like they keep gems or money on campus, right? So why would they need multiple super-serious security teams? Von Arx stares at me with that queenly gaze until I finally catch the hint and add;

“Crystal clear, ma’am.”

“Good.” She looks over at Lionel and all her terrifying evaporates in a split-second, replaced by a brilliant smile. “A moment before you show her to her room if you would, Lionel.”

Lionel shoots me a grin. “Do you want to wait outside? I’ll be right out.”

Anything to get out from under High-Lady-Asshole. “Sure.”

I make like a bullet out of the doors, paranoid Von Arx’ll spot the flower stem when I turn around and call me back. But she doesn’t, and I close the massive oak slabs behind me with only minor muscle tearing. Not entirely sure where to sit when every upholstery surface looks about ten thousand times worth my Old Navy ass, so I stand. Me and the very nice receptionist lady smile at one another and then stop. The doors are so thick you can barely hear anything. Not that I wanna hear anything anyway. They’re probably talking about my impending doom slash yacht club.

Except whoever invented those giant keyholes in old doors had to know they practically scream ‘EAVESDROP ME’, right? The receptionist gets up and goes to make coffee, her silk-bloused back buried deep in a little kitchenette across the hall. Nosiness gets the better of me. I bend down, pressing my ear to the old-fashioned breach, fully expecting to hear Von Arx talking smack.

“Do you know who it is?” Lionel’s calm voice comes through.

“No,” Von Arx answers, the sound of shuffling papers. “We never do. My grandfather insisted he did, when he was Keeper. But he was in the war - he liked to pretend he knew everything. It could be any of the students.”

“And you’re sure it’s happening now?” Lionel stresses.

“The roses couldn’t lie to me if they tried.” She laughs. “That’s one of their few perks, isn’t it?”

Students? I mouth. Roses? What the fuck are they talking about?

There’s a pause and then I hear Lionel, quieter than ever. Gentler than ever.

“Do you miss him?”

Another pause.

“Of course I do,” Von Arx answers, voice like a dulled hammer. Heavy. “Some days more than others.”

This is the longest pause of all, so long I think they’ve stopped talking and are coming for the door. I pull away but the sudden words pull me back in again;

“Do we call a meeting in Durand?” Lionel asks. “To tell them it’s happening sooner than usual?”

“No,” Von Arx says, hard. “No need to alarm them. We’ll inform them after it’s done. For now we send the usual invitations and mention nothing about it. ”

I thought Durand was being refurbished - why would they call a meeting in there? Why are they talking like aliens? Why is Will’s driver so tight with the headmistress of Silvere? Tight enough to have inside moments, to understand things about each other. To complete sentences.

Footsteps, muffled over carpet, and every devious bone in my body yanks me back. The door flings open, and Lionel strides out with a smile.

“There you are. Let’s get you to your dorm room, shall we?”

I trot after him, scrabbling for something that doesn’t make me seem like I’ve been eavesdropping for the last few minutes.

“So. Uh. Uniforms? Doesn’t Von Arx know those are anathema to uniqueness? And like, good taste?”

“Says the girl wearing converse,” Lionel flashes me a grin.

“They’re comfortable!”

“They’re bad for your arches,” He insists, leading me out of the chateau and across the lawn to a slightly more modern-looking chateau.

“How do you know that?” I pout.

“I was a kid once, too. I went here, in fact.”

“Is that how you know Miss Manners?” I marvel. “You failed to mention you were loaded during your whole runaway story. Or did you win one of the scholarships?”

Lionel laughs, red curls catching the fresh sun. “Neither. William sent me here. He attended this school himself when he was younger, and wanted the same experience for me.”

I knit my lips. Will’s taken Mom and I out to fancy dinners, to the movies. He let me get the giant-sized popcorn, which earns you at least one star in my Big Book of Decency. He’s been nothing but nice to me - and now that I know how decent he’s been to Lionel I like him more. But that doesn’t stop the worm in my brain from eating away at me; being decent means nothing. Money means nothing. Money doesn’t hide who you are. People change in a blink. Will could turn around and hurt me - or worst case, Mom - out of the blue when I least expect it. I have to be on guard. Always.

I sent Mom a ‘landed safe’ text, but it’s her safety I’m really worried about. I shake my head to clear it. It’s a honeymoon, Lilith. Mom’s happy - everything will be okay.

Everything has to be okay, or I’ll kill him with my own two hands.

Lionel opens the door of the dorm for me, if it can even be called a dorm. It’s furnished like a hotel; there’s a common room with chairs in front of a luxurious black glass fireplace and giant mahogany bookshelves and a huge 4k TV that takes up nearly a whole wall. I’ve never been in a place that smells so clean in my whole life, except maybe the delivery room in the hospital I was pushed out into screaming and covered in Mom-goo. Signs of life slouch in the chairs - two teenagers in uniforms of dark blue slacks, blue blazers with white dress shirts underneath, and matching blue ties tapping on their phones. Students. I do the jetlagged mental math - it’s afternoon. Most of them are probably in classes right now.

“William’s never had any children,” Lionel says as we walk through the lobby and towards an elaborate, gold-leafed (of-fuckin’-course) spiral staircase. I’m so busy staring at the tall stained glass window of flying doves beside it that I nearly trip on the first step. “His first marriage ended in divorce because of it. And then I came along. He’s always treated me as a son, and he’s always accepted me for who I am.”

“And now I’ve waltzed in clumsily and stolen your thunder,” I say. “Hey, completely apropos of nothing, he doesn’t have a history, right?”

Lionel frowns. “A what?”

“Like, is he mean? Does he, you know, lose his temper?”

He shakes his head and laughs. “William? No. He’s the gentlest soul I know.”

It’s gonna take more than the William-adoptee’s word to convince me, but I go along with it anyway and chuckle.

“Obviously. Duh.”

Lionel motions around us. “There are two dorm buildings on campus - Lyon and Belmont. They’re both co-ed, but separated by wings. The east wing is for the boys, and the west is for the girls. The ground floor is for the common room, and the dorm matron’s apartments. You can talk to her if you need anything; blankets, hygiene items, more pillows. Or, if you’re the tattling type, you can tell her the room next to yours blasts too much Coldplay at top volume, and she’ll have a word with them.”

“That’s oddly specific,” I muse.

Lionel shrugs. “We all did things we weren’t proud of in the 2000’s.”

He takes the stairs and talks at the same time like it isn’t a strenuous physical activity, whereas I’m reduced to an attractive pile of boneless chicken by the second floor, my left knee aching under the scar there.

“Fuck off,” I wheeze at the ostentatious chandelier dangling far above me. “I gotta do this every day?”

“You get used to it, eventually.”

That’s not Lionel’s voice. It’s way too deadpan, with a soft yet crisp accent. I look up to see a guy looming in front of me.

Okay, listen; I hate people.

But, and this is a big-ass butt; they’re hot sometimes.

It doesn’t happen often, because I have picky tastes. I think precisely three people on this planet are hot; there’s Rance Cook, the bright blonde junior guy on the varsity soccer team with Probably-Eight-Abs, there’s Melody Guerra, the AP Art sophomore girl who spends all her time making sculptures with her doe eyes and soft hands, and there’s senior Anthony Nguyen, who’s tall and dark-haired and dreamy and is the lead for every play ever put on by the Drama club.

Those people are hot. I knew they were hot, because I could feel it. Because people notice them. Because people are nice to them. Because Ruby hasn’t stopped crushing on Anthony since day one. Because yes, okay, maybe I fell asleep during The Scarlet Letter movie in English and maybe I had my first sex dream about Rance in which I wore nothing but a red cape and he had on a silly pilgrim’s hat but that’s neither here nor there. Hot people radiate heat like little mini suns, drawing everyone’s attention because nuclear fission Looks Neato(™) and human beings appreciate spectacle above all else. But those people are rare. And they’re definitely not in high school, where most people are in the liquefy-my-pimply-body-inside-a-cocoon stage of turning into a butterfly. Myself included. It’s a bonafide pagan miracle we have three hot people at Northview all at the same time. Had. I guess I’m not there anymore, huh?

All of which is to say the guy in front of me doesn’t just radiate heat. He’s practically charring all the oxygen out of the stairwell. There’s a reason human beings don’t have cheekbones that high or jawlines that glass-cut in real life, and that’s because it’s dangerous! You could hurt yourself on this guy’s face! He looks down his slender nose at me with gray eyes framed by impossibly blonde lashes. His hair is bright gold and slicked back, precise bangs framing his face on either side. He looks like God turned up the River Phoenix dial to eleven, or like an angel in a Renaissance painting decided to take a quick vacay down on earth for 100 mortal years. His uniform is spotless; not even a crumb, or a skin flake. All his buttons are shining, his starched collar perfectly pressed, his tie straight. And he’s actually…he’s actually taller than me. He’s too well-put together to be my age. Probably, like, college?

“Do they…” I say, strangled. “Do they do college here?”

He raises one fine gold eyebrow. “What?”

That one little move sends off warning bells in my head. Ho-lee shit, this guy makes Rance Cook look like a fucking gremlin. My entire body informs me of this by raising its temperature ten degrees.

“S-Sorry,” I stammer. “I’m not making sense, am I? Kinda overwhelmed right now tbh.”

Nothing. He doesn’t even blink. This guy is stone and ice. Hot stone and ice. Which is, uh, liquid cement and like, water, I guess? What’s wrong with my analogies all of a sudden? This is why twelve-year-old me wrote I WILL NEVER FALL IN LOVE in bubble letters in my diary with sparkly purple gel pen. God - she was so smart. And angsty. But mostly smart.

And then I see it; a curve. The golden-haired guy’s fine lips split in a grin, so slight it almost feels like an illusion. And I combust. Quietly.

“This place might look intimidating,” He says, voice musical. “But it’s not so bad under the surface. Just give yourself time.”

“Uh, I will. Thanks. Yeah.” I pluck up my bountiful courage, marching away up the staircase with as much grace as I can muster. Which is precisely none. I trip over my own converse and tilt backwards and as the great philosopher Pooh once said oh-fucking-bother-I’m-gonna-eat-shit-in-front-of-the-first-guy-in-my-life-I-actually-find-wildly-attractive-aren’t-I? My glasses fly off, and it happens so fast all I can do is flail my arms and squeeze my eyes shut to prep for pain.

But…there’s nothing.

I open my blurry eyes, the bones of someone’s arms digging into my back. Above me golden hair comes into focus, and a calm glass-cut face with silver-gray eyes. The front of my brain is megaphoning ‘KISS ME’ directly into his ear, and the back half is whispering with its tail between its legs that he just saved me from a potential coma.

Wait - hold up. He’s touching me.

This is the part where you say ‘duh, Lilith, he had to do that to save you from falling’, and this next bit is the part where I explain to you that when people touch me, we have problems. Big problems, along the lines of ‘instant-and-overwhelming-itchy-panic’ and ‘ten-gigaton-urge-to-run-away’. Probably should’ve told you earlier, but alas. There’s definitely a word for it in fancy psychologist latin, but like fuck Mom could ever afford to get me a shrink with all the student loan debt she has. So it’s never gotten an official name. For me, it just is. It’s just a part of me. You don’t give names to your eyeballs, or your skin.

It’s not bad with Mom, or Ruby - people I know really well. The problem is I don’t know anybody else. So everyone makes me panic. Little finger-touches are fine, accidental half-second shoulder brushing. It’s the intentional, close, body-on-body contact shit that sends my brain spiraling into a hole of fear. Hugs. Handshakes. Kissing, not that it’ll ever happen. Sex, not that that’ll ever happen. Nearness. And definitely this - this weird dance-dip embrace between me and Hot Dude should be more than enough to make the paranoia rear up.

Except right now, at this very moment, there’s nothing. My brain’s an empty echo chamber with nothing in it. No screaming terror, no prickling unease, no baseless but utter conviction that Hot Dude is going to hurt me. Just nothing where something huge should be.

He’s the first.

The first new person I’ve felt okay touching in…well. Forever.

“Oh shit.” I jump out of his arms. “I’m so fuckin’ sor -” Normal people think swearing’s nasty, right? “Sorry. You - I - I’m not-comatose right now. Haha. So. I owe you.”

The guy straightens, and my dumbass mouth takes that as a cue to motor up.

“I’m, uhm, Lilith. And I’m not normally this clumsy,” I laugh like a nervous hyena. “Promise.”

He bends down and comes up with my glasses, offering them with a soft smile, but I might as well be looking into the full brilliance of the sun. His silver eyes crinkle in the corners.

“Be careful. I might not be there to catch you, next time.”

I reach out to grab my glasses from his slender, pale fingers. My sweaty palms must slime his because he pulls away the second they’re passed over, leaving me with shame and the faint scent of fresh mint and rain on a hot sidewalk. He walks up the stairs, past Lionel, and disappears with the click of a door.

Holy shit.

Lionel calls down to me from a few stairs up; “Are you okay, Lilith?”

“No,” I moan, clinging to the railing to keep my trembling body upright. “Did you know I’m stupid?”

“You’re not stupid,” Lionel assures me.

“I failed basic algebra.”

“Some people are not good at certain things,” He agrees sagely.

“One plus one equals two,” I groan. “But zero plus hot does not equal talk.”

I manage to make it to the third floor; the hallway with its fancy lights shaped like shells and plush carpets stretching long between the rows of doors, but I barely notice any of it. Lady Luck usually just wangs full juicy diapers at me, and I can duck those, but now I’m in charge of cleaning her personal outhouse, apparently! How dare she give me the hottest guy I’ve ever seen - pretty much the only guy I’ve ever thought was wildly attractive - and then make me a gibbering fool in front of him? Bonus; I’m not even afraid of him touching me. Not even a little.

He’s hot, nice, and one of a kind.

“I don’t even like people,” I go limp with defeat, my converse’d toes dragging on the carpet. “Did you know that? They breathe too loud and get snobby about music and say stupid shit like ‘as long as they aren’t gay in front of me, I’m cool with it’. I’ve never had a single crush, ever. Not even in elementary school when getting fake-married with Ring-Pops was a big deal. Crushes don’t happen to me! I crush myself! With guilt!”

“I’m sure you’ve liked someone.”

“One middle school confession and a risqué dream during high school English doesn’t count, Lionel,” I whine. “Why didn’t you tell me there were people like that here? I would’ve worn eyeliner, at least.”

“He was very handsome,” Lionel agrees mildly. “Ah, here we are; room 322.”

He wafts an electronic key over the lock, and the hefty door clicks open. My exhausted eyes barely parse the small bathroom or the huge floor-to-ceiling window covered in lace. I flop down on the fluffy twin bed.

“Can you take me back to the airport?” I ask, my face half-mashed in a heavenly pillow.

“Why?” Lionel inquires lightly, opening the curtains. I beat my legs impetuously.

“I wanna go home. Where the people are ugly like me.”

I hear him laugh, feel the cool, gentle embrace of the duvet as he covers me with it. That’s fine. Fabric touching me, not him.

“Here -” He winds the old-fashioned clock on the bedside table. “I’ll set it for six-thirty, so you can be ready by seven for breakfast. It’s a buffet, so there’s no formal table etiquette, and you can be a little late. Lunch is informal, too, but dinner is quite the opposite. The professors will be sitting with you and teaching you table etiquette.”

“Pissssss,” I moan at the idea of multiple fork sizes.

“Your uniform’s on the dresser. Remember; button the shirt from the bottom. I know it’s hard when you’re half-asleep, but going from the bottom makes it easier.”

I grace him with an eloquent grunt.

“I’ll write down my number. Call me if you need anything, alright? I’ll be staying down in the village with the other drivers, but I can be here in ten minutes -”

“Lionel,” I mutter.

“Hm?”

I look at him with the last scrap of my energy, one eye sleepily glaring at him from over the pillow.

“If Will hurts my mom, I’ll have to hurt him.”

There’s a beat. The birds chirp outside. Lionel’s nod of agreement is hesitant, small, but there. It’s the last thing I see before exhaustion knocks me over the head and drags me off to dreamland.

6

THE BEGINNING (OR, HOW A BOY PREPARES FOR A BATTLE HE CAN’T WIN)

At seventeen and one month old, Alistair Strickland has a well-established routine at the Institut Le Silvere.

Mornings are for the rooftop of Knight Belmont - he’s the only one other than the cleaners with a key. They keep the herbs up here for the kitchens, and he sits on a bench flanked by spines of rosemary and the scent of the black coffee in his hands. He’s been up here since one in the morning - he comes here when sleep is elusive, which is usually. Rafe likes to joke that’s why he’s so grumpy all the time. He thinks Rafe likes his jokes too much.

He thinks the night has too many shadows.

Alistair watches the sun rise, slow and fragile and pink. He wonders if anyone will try him, today. He scoffs into his coffee; of course they will. He’s the only thing standing between them and a riotously good time in this secluded boarding school their parents have sent them to. Freedom is the headiest drug. Not that he’d know.

The sunrise paints the scar tissue under his shirt collar pink.

He looks out at the campus and tries not to linger his gaze too long on the deep woods that border it. It’s been years, but still, it echoes.

Magic.

Children see and hear things that aren’t there. They have imaginations. Their brains aren’t fully formed. Everyone has childhood stories, like he does, of seeing people made of shadow. Impossible things.

He shakes his head and instead wonders productively. He wonders if his sister Rose is alright. Children make things up, but she’s the exception. She’s only staying with that woman in the Brussels house for six months out of the year - Father got half-custody after Alistair left. Still, he wonders and worries. Six months is too many. He checks his phone; she hasn’t texted, so she’s fine. For now. He looks down into the black pool of his coffee, brings it to his mouth, and instantly feels the old fear well up, like branches scratching at a window. The feeling of foam at his mouth, the feeling of his every muscle seizing up, his small body trapped - unresponsive - in that huge white bed for months on end.

Munchausen by proxy, he’d heard the lawyers murmur to his grandmother in the dead of night, when they thought he was asleep. When he couldn’t sleep in the hospital, even if he wanted to.

‘No one’s here’, he tells himself. ‘No one has touched this coffee. It’s safe’.

But what if? She could’ve paid someone. What if the grinder wasn’t cleaned thoroughly? What if someone laced the coffee filters? It’d be easy enough - most central nervous system poisons are white powders in stable form, and all filters are white. Easily hidden, easily dusted. He could’ve overlooked it -

The door to the roof opens behind him and instantly he leaps to his feet, heart hammering in his ears. His fingers slip the coffee cup, the porcelain shattering and the liquid glinting on marble. A short girl with a white-blonde bob approaches, her footsteps nigh-silent and her uniform well-pressed. Maria.

“I thought I told you not to bother me up here,” Alistair snarls.

“Urgent,” She says, voice emotionless and flat. Maria is the epitome of speak little, hear everything. He claws himself back to normal, trying to breathe slow.

“Then it better be good.”

She nods. “New sixth-year student. From America.”

“Family?”

“Unknown.”

“So they’re scholarship.”

“No,” She corrects. “Paid.”

Alistair’s dark brow quirks up. It’s one word, but it means many. Paid people aren’t new here; their brothers and mothers and great-great-great-grandfathers have gone to Silvere. You don’t come in during sixth year out of the blue - you get put on the waiting list by your parents when you’re born, and you leap at the slightest fourth year spot. You’re screened and magnanimously gifted a spot. Silvere is a destination, not a school. It’s planned for. Random transfer students are an unheard-of delicacy. What was Grandmother thinking, letting such a person in? And from the States, no less. Very few old families there.

He watches the groundskeepers move about the campus in their early morning rounds of watering the flowers and bushes. One of them in particular catches his eye - hiding surreptitiously behind a gardening shack. With a red-haired girl. In a uniform. Kissing.

Alistair is disappointed, but not surprised. People don’t surprise him, anymore. He’s thought of everything they could possibly do. He’s ready for anything they’ll do. Everything.

Worry worry worry.

He cracks his knuckles one-by-one. “Let’s be sure to give our new student a welcome show, shall we?”

Maria nods, silently. He swings his uniform blazer over his shoulders by two careless fingers, and follows her down the stairs.

Alistair Strickland has a routine at Silvere. And this transfer student has ruined it.

If he’d stayed and listened a moment longer, he might’ve heard the forest whisper to him; this is the beginning of the end.

If he stayed on that rooftop one moment longer, he would’ve seen the shadow shaped like a man flickering in the deep woods.

7

THE FIGHT (OR, HOW DANGEROUS FIRST IMPRESSIONS ARE IN THE RIGHT HANDS OF THE WRONG PEOPLE)

If mornings are the Hydra, then I’m Hercules; constantly chopping the heads off in the hopes they stop happening.

“Fuck,” I look in the mirror over the fancy sink in my bathroom, the sun nearly blinding me as I beat my skull with my hairbrush. “Stop. Saying. Fuck. You’re in Europe now. Be classy.”

I pause, strike a pose with the hairbrush like it’s a mic, and say with the most luxurious accent I can manage;

“Fucké.”

The mirror does not appreciate me nearly as much as I appreciate me. My dark circles are huge, but they’ll just have to deal, because TSA (The Suckiest Assholes) confiscated my concealer. At the very least, my ages-old chunky black glasses take the attention away. I smooth my ragged blonde bob down and inspect my uniform. Tie - tied. Calf socks - yanked up. Blazer with the lion-shield embroidered insignia - on. Buttons - all. Skirt - maybe consider asking for pants. I pull the hem as low as it’ll go, and slip on my converse.

“Okay, Lilith,” I hover my hand above the doorknob. “You definitely don’t look like you, but that’s fine. This isn’t about you. This is about Mom. She’s the real video game. You’re just the DLC.”

Anything becomes easy to swallow if you chop it up into small enough pieces. Like steak. Or in this case, my own inflated sense of teenage pride. So what if I walk out of this room and people don’t like me? I’m not here for them. I’m here for Mom. One foot at a time. That’s all I can do, now. Ruby’s not here. Mom’s not here. It’s just me. It’s just seven months.

I rub my left knee one last time - the scar thin and pale and the muscle beneath it aching. It healed as quickly as any broken bone does for a kid, but I’ve learned sometimes a wound goes deeper than bone. Even after ten years it lingers in weird ways. If the air’s too cold it starts to hurt real bad beneath the kneecap, in the flesh of it. Not bad enough I can’t walk, but just bad enough to make moving torturous. Summer’s fine. It’s just winter and late fall, and the occasional chilly days in spring. I have a warming brace for it, but I super did not wanna wear it on my very first day. It’s my scar. My problem. My past - not anyone else’s. And in my experience, wearing a brace is an open invitation for people to ask too many of the worst sorts of questions.

I stuff the book Von Arx gave me and my notebook into my backpack, and walk out. I immediately come face-to-face with another girl coming out of her room at the same time. She’s got a gorgeous mane of sleek black braids, each bookended by a bright pink rubber band. She sees me and the smile that blooms on her dark cheeks is cherubic.

“Guete morge,” She says.

“G-Guten morge?” I try.

“Oh,” She switches into perfect English. “Are you the American? They said you were moving in this week.”

“What gave it away - the fact I almost said ‘gluten morning’?”

The girl laughs. “Gluten morning is great. But that’s only for days when you’re planning to have waffles.”

“Which is every day,” I say. “If I can get away with it.”

“Obviously,” She nods in very faux-serious agreement, and then smiles. “I really hate the whole last-name thing everyone does here, so; I’m Ana.”

“Oh. Uh. I’m Lilith.”

We walk together down the hall - filling the space with an awkward, super-forced conversation that gets easier as we go. She’s from São Paulo, her parents are the Brazilian ambassadors to the UN, and when I ask how many languages she knows she says Portuguese, French, German and English. Fluently. I tell her I’m from California and all I know how to speak is English, the In-n-Out menu, and a side of Internet Keysmash.

“Asdfjkl should totally be a word,” She insists as we walk down the spiral staircase. Other girls start flooding in around us from their rooms, and I try not to notice how slender and fashionable they are.

“What would it mean, though?” I ask.

“It’s the noise you make when you’re so excited you can’t form a coherent thought.”

“You’re just describing my default state of being, now.”

Ana giggles. “Okay, that settles it; you and I have to eat together. Is that cool?”

I breathe a sigh. “You sparing me from total social isolation is very cool, actually. Thanks.”

The hall soon overflows with girls, all of them in the same uniform. Bags and shoes seem to be the one thing the dress code lets us decide, thank jeegus, because I’m not ready to part with my ratty converse just yet. Some girls choose sensible backpacks, others opt for fancy Hermes handbags that look like they can barely carry a nail clipper. Some choose beachy blown-out waves that look like they were done at a salon, others have silky masses of perfect curls, and a few, like me, don’t bother with anything but a ponytail or a braid. But every single one of us is half-awake - yawning and blinking blearily in the light filtering in from the chateau’s windows.

“There’s a lot of stylish people here, huh?” I mutter. Next to me, Ana nods.

“I like to joke with Papa that this place is more of a display case than a school. The most expensive brand names, the latest phones - for some people here, that’s all they care about.”

“And what about the rest?” I ask.

“For the rest of us, this is our proving ground.”

“That’s…definitely not ominous,” I mutter under my breath.

Ana doesn’t say anything more on it, and she and I are steadily carried along by the throng of sleepy girls. We make it out of the dorm and into the sunlit green of the morning campus. It looks even bigger and more impressive in the morning light than it did yesterday.

“God, the air is so fresh here,” I breathe deep. “I hate it.”

“We’re pretty high up. You’ll get used to it.” Ana laughs and points into the distance. “In case you haven’t looked at a map already, this is the Knight Lyon building. That building on the other end is the Knight Belmont building, the second dorm.”

“It’s all co-ed, right?”

“Yeah. Just don’t get caught in the east side of either dorm - that’s the boy’s side.”

“Considering I don’t have a compass on me…” I trail off.

“The east side walls are painted green. The west side is lavender.”

“Ugh,” I groan. “Strict gender barriers are so boring.”

Ana laughs. “Agreed. Still, you’re not supposed to go over to the opposite side. Especially not at night.”

“But, people do, of course.”

“Oh all the time,” She nods furiously, braids clinking.

“Do they ever get expelled?”

Ana purses her lips. “Sometimes? That’s for drug stuff, usually. If you get caught hooking up you get suspended for a week or two and then come back like nothing happened. So most people do it in the rose garden, instead.”

I choke on my spit. “S-Sorry?”

She points to the massive hedge maze down the hill from the school bursting with red and white and yellow roses. I raise a brow.

“And they say romance is dead. Don’t people get expelled?”

“Expelling isn’t much of a thing,” She continues without missing a beat. “Von Arx is strict, but she’s averse to pissing off the parents too much.”

‘Pissing off the parents?’ I mouth. Ana sees it, and giggles.

“Didn’t anyone tell you? We’re all very important here.” She points over our heads at a braided blonde girl. “Daughter of the French Minister of Culture. And her -” She points again to a girl with a helmet of short, slicked black hair. “Daughter of the president of the African National Congress in South Africa.” She points again, to a girl wearing a long scarf. “Her dad’s a Saudi prince.”

“A prince?” I gawk.

“I think he’s an Al Farhan prince,” She says very seriously. “But I could be wrong.”

“How many princes could there possibly be?”

“About 2,000 of them. Well, 15,000. But 2,000 in the line of succession.”

I stop walking, my brain short-circuting. No wonder there’s gold-plated snot-rags and Hermes bags and multiple security teams. Ana laughs and tugs at my backpack strap to get me to move again. I snap out of it with all the speed of a flipped-over tortoise.

“Okay, back up,” I breathe. “So everybody here is, like, rich?”

“Mostly. Aren’t you?”

My brain’s suddenly swamped by the unpleasant fact Will’s technically my step-dad. It doesn’t feel real, calling him that. Not yet. Maybe it never will. I shrug.

“By proxy. Like, pretend-rich, I guess.”

“That’s still rich,” She lilts. Suddenly, a thumping rhythm cuts the air and Ana turns and waves at something in the distance on the lawn. No way. No FUCKING way. I take my glasses off, wipe them, and put them back on, but it doesn’t change the fact a real-life big-ass helicopter is just…landing. On a helipad. Built straight into the lawn. A boy gets out, his uniform and backpack clearly visible. He waves back to Ana as he walks towards us, joining the thronging crowd of students.

“Jesus pleasus,” I whisper.

“Hm?” Ana looks over at me. “What’s up?”

“I mean, you guys know about gasoline and global warming, right?”

“Oh, that.” She waves. “You’ll get used to that.”

“Will I?” My voice pitches up. We pass a sign that points to the different buildings, the letters gold-painted. I decide to voice my opinion. “If I see one more useless gold thing I’m gonna heat my body by vibrating like bees do when they defend themselves from wasps.”

Ana laughs behind her hand. “That would be amazing.”

“Helicopter pad.” I repeat.

“Yes.” She asserts.

“But this place is still a school,” I insist.

“Of course.”

“So the actual classes happen…where exactly?”

“The Knight Roux building,” She points to the massive chateau I first saw driving in with Lionel. “Unless it’s exercise. Then you go to whatever field you’ve chosen. You can do football. Or swimming. Rugby, cricket, horseback riding. Fencing, if you think you can handle all the egos.”

“Fencing? Cricket-bugs?” I squint at her as my brain computes. “Horseback riding?”

“Yeah,” She grins, bouncing on what little soles her uggs have. “The school mandates an hour of exercise every day, except weekends. You get to choose what you want to do.”

I double check my itinerary - sure enough, I see INTRODUCTION TO ARCHERY in the last slot every day of the week. Archery? That’s just arm stuff. Either I got super lucky, or someone who knew about my knee recommended I take a non-leg-intensive course. Will and Mom, probably. All I have to do is channel Legolas for an hour, which consists of saying mysterious things and staring off beautifully into the distance - two things I’m great at. I feel tears welling up in my eyes.

“Does this mean I can say goodbye to getting hit in the head with dodgeballs and running fourteen-minute miles?”

Ana flashes me a brilliant white smile. “Definitely. Oh! That smaller building over there is Knight Augustin - the administration building. The teachers and staff who don’t live down in the village sleep there, and Ms. Von Arx’s office is there too.” She pauses. “Do you use tampons?”

“Uh…”

“You should know the bathroom runs out of them pretty fast. So if you’re about to -”

“Spray blood everywhere?”

“- Yeah. It might be a good idea to pull a few and stockpile them, you know, in case.”

“Delicious. Speaking of blood, where do we go to eat?”

“What, are you a vampire?”

“That’s for me to know and you to read fanfiction about.”

Her smile is small. “The dining hall’s in Knight Roux, on the ground floor. I know it’s a lot. Here, do you want my number? That way you can text me questions and stuff.”

I squint suspiciously. “You’re being awfully nice to an American who can only make you a cheeseburger in return.”

She laughs again and I’m starting to really like making her laugh - she’s got a sweet, delicate, chime-like giggle that reminds me of Mom. Not that she’s my Mom. I’m just wildly homesick on my first day but holy shit I am six-goddamn-teen and homesickness is for babies, actually. We step out of the shuffling crowd to exchange numbers.

And that’s when I notice it, past Ana’s head of braids as she bends over my screen to input her name. The stream of people from the Knight Belmont building and the stream from Knight Lyon melds halfway as they filter into the Knight Roux building. Little groups break off, greeting each other with yawns and smiles and fist-bumps. It looks like Northview High on any given morning, except everyone’s dressed up fancy and there’s a lot less white people. I mean, Northview was majority white kids, with a lot of latinx and some asian kids and a smattering of black kids. Silvere is different, though. There’s still a lotta white kids, yours truly included, but everybody looks like they’re from everywhere. And everybody looks beautiful. By that I mean everyone just looks…good. I can’t put my finger on it, and I can’t figure out if it’s just me or the tapwater in Europe, but all the boys are uniquely handsome in their own ways - energetic and lanky with winning smiles. And the girls; oh hell, don’t even get me started. They’re downright angelic - perfect hair, perfume, vibrant laughs. Most of them roll with minimal makeup and still manage to look fresh out of a magazine.

I gawk as a guy walks by with his backpack completely covered in anime girl pins. He’s absolutely adorable - with a head of perfect brown curls and long lashes.

“Even your anime nerds are cute, Ana. Where’re the zits? The awkwardness? The overwhelming stench of week-old armpit?”

Ana looks up briefly from my phone. “Didn’t you have hygiene classes as part of sex ed?”

“Oh my god,” I stagger back. “I forgot. European governments aren’t made up of abstinence-only puritans. They actually teach you about sex here! I’m gonna learn about sex!”

Three girls walking past us in very stylish boots give me a Pity Look. Ana snorts her laughter this time.

“Congratulations.”

“Hey, it’s a big deal for me. Up until right this moment I thought babies came from storks.”

My eyes scan the crowd half-instinctually for a head of silky golden hair. That guy who saved me yesterday had a uniform on, so he must go here, right?

“Looking for someone?” Ana hands me back my phone.

“Uhhh, no. I’m just not used to seeing so many well-adjusted teenagers in the same ten-mile radius. There’s gotta be at least one gremlin-looking motherfucker at this school.” I slowly point at myself with newfound horror. “It’s me. I’m the gremlin, aren’t I?”

“To your credit, you’re a very funny gremlin.” Ana smiles.

I’m about to blurt a thank you when a commotion knots up the crowd by the big entrance stairs of Knight Roux. The sea of blue-and-white uniforms tightens around one spot like a school of fish, like a whirlpool forming. The flash of camera lenses as people point their phones at something is unmistakable.

“A fight?” I ask.

Ana sets her lip. “There’s only one person who’d -”

“Let him go!” A girl shrieks. Ana finds a tree root to stand on and I tiptoe to see over the crowd. Three people are in the center - a guy on the ground doubled over, a girl with long red hair kneeling at his side, and a super tall, broad-shouldered guy looming over both of them, thumbs hooked in his pockets cockily.

“Or what?” The looming guy asks, folding himself in half to taunt her on her level. “Are you gonna call your daddy?”

“Fuck off, Strickland,” The doubled-over guy grunts.

“I don’t feel like it,” The guy called Strickland smirks. “But you clearly do.”

My foggy glasses make their faces hard to see. I clean them on my shirt as Ana groans.

“Deus. Of course it’s him again.”

“Again? Who is that guy?”

“Alistair Strickland,” Ana sighs. “The bane of all our existences. He likes picking fights almost as much as he likes bossing us around.”

I shove my clean glasses on my face at last and squint. The guy on the ground’s got a bloody lip - from a punch? - and the redhead girl looks pissed. Said Alistair Strickland, on the other hand, has confidence oozing out the ears half-hidden beneath his chaotically tangled mop of black hair. Two people flank him - a petite, milk-white girl with a svelte platinum bob and a walnut-tanned, ridiculously muscular guy whose uniform looks like it’s about to pop all its buttons. Their backs are to me, so I can’t see their faces, but then the platinum-bob girl flips her hair at the bleeding guy and says two disdainful words in French;

“Un gaffe.”

“That’s Maria Sauveterre,” Ana whispers to me. “She doesn’t say much, usually. She and the big guy - Rafael Perez, Rafe for short - are step-siblings, and Alistair’s cronies.”

“Cronies? That’s a weird word for ‘friends’.”

Ana scoffs. “Alistair Strickland is the second cousin of three Belgian princes. He doesn’t have friends. He has subjects.”

My eyes bug out. “Wait, you weren’t kidding about, like, actual royalty? Is that even - I mean I know England has a Queen and all, but -”

Ana shrugs offhandedly. “His father is some kind of CEO in Tokyo, but his mother is a marquise.”

“Bless you.”

“No, marquise is a title.” Ana corrects. “Below a duchess, above a countess.”

“Noted. And who’s the guy he’s beating up?”

“A groundskeeper who works here, I think.”

My glower is instant and aimed right at Alistair. “Taking our anger out on the hired help, are we?”

I try to look anywhere but the groundskeeper’s bleeding lip. It’s just blood, Lilith. Just a little. Don’t freak out here, on the first day, in front of the first nice person who’s bothered to talk to you. All of a sudden, Alistair kneels down at eye-level with the bleeding groundskeeper, his voice deep and exhausted and faintly accented British - not all the way, but just enough that it’s noticeable.

“Gabe, Gabe, Gabe. I warned you last week. And instead of listening, you kept doing it. Do you need me to write it down on a sticky-note for you?”

It reminds me acutely of a cat playing with a half-dead mouse. This is the last straw for Gabe’s pride, and he lunges for Alistair. There’s cheering and swearing and grunts, and in a blur of movement my eyes are too morning-groggy to follow, Alistair wins out - pinning Gabe on the ground with a knee between his shoulderblades. Like a fire-arrow, the redhead girl flings herself on Alistair’s back and beats it with her fists, screaming in French. I can’t understand her, but I get the gist; she’s trying to defend Gabe. Alistair, completely non-plussed at the assault, just sighs wearily over his shoulder;

“Rafe.”

On cue the big-huge muscle guy lumbers over.

“Get the little bird off me, would you?”

Rafe encircles the furious girl with his thick-ass arms and extracts her from the sitch like a crane lifting a crate away. She looks small as a doll as she flails uselessly against his hulking body. The crowd shuffles with nervous half-laughter and a low rumble of cheering and I’m the only one frowning.

“Hey, uh, where the flying fuck are the teachers?” I ask.

Ana leans in so I can see exactly where she’s pointing. “See that green thing on Alistair’s shoulder?”

I squint - sure enough, there’s some sort of embroidered green badge on Alistair’s shoulder. Ana points to Rafe’s shoulder, and then to quietly glaring Maria - both of them have green badges on their shoulders, too.

“Please tell me those are ironic weed leaves,” I whisper.

“Worse. Disciplinary badges. The school has this tradition of a student-run disciplinary squad. Usually it’s just for running in the halls, smoking in the bathrooms - small things. But Alistair’s pretty fanatic about it.”

“Yeah. Looks like he thinks it’s a free license to beat the shit out of people.” I narrow my eyes at him. “Why doesn’t Von Arx stop this?”

“Von Arx is Alistair’s grandmother. She just uses her maiden name.”

Suddenly it all clicks into place. “Oh. Oh no.”

“Oh yeah,” Ana exhales. “And it sucks.”

“Okay, so; Big Asshole, Little Asshole, and King Asshole,” I point to Rafe, Maria, and Alistair in turn. “Got it.”

“Well…” Ana hedges.

“Well what? He’s just taking advantage of the power dynamic to beat the shit outta someone. Not only is he King Asshole, he’s King Classist Asshole!”

Ana doesn’t outright agree with me; she just watches the altercation silently with her dark eyes. Anger bubbles up in my throat. This might be called ‘disciplinary’ in six-figure terms or whatever, but in cup-noodle-for-dinner terms we call it plain old bullying. The crowd gets rowdier, shoving each other out of the way to see. Now this place finally feels real to me, and not like some gilded champagne fever dream. The chaotic energy of a fight feels like regular-ass high school. The roaring anger, the voraciously curious onlookers, the complete lack of social niceties; all the uncomfortable energy buzzing in me since the first-class ticket finally finds a place to rest. No matter where you go, people fight. People love spectacle - even the super-smart, super-rich, and super-entitled. And in a sick way, that comforts me.

Or at least up until Alistair grinds his boot gratuitously into Gabe’s back, and the poor guy yelps like a stepped-on dog.

“Consider yourself fired, Gabe. Effective immediately.” Alistair drawls. Gabe can barely force his voice out of his swollen mouth.

“I didn’t do anything wrong!”

Alistair gives a bitter scoff. “I’ve heard that one before.”

There’s another blur, and his fist crunches sickeningly against Gabe’s face. Shit. He’s serious…seriously got issues he’s taking out on people who can’t fight back. The injustice of Gabe’s bloody lip, the red dripping down to the green of the grass. Blood pooling. Blood pooling on an old carpet, around my knee, on my hands. It hurts. It hurts to look at -

I squeeze my eyes shut and open them again, trying to refresh my brain. The crowd parts just then, and Alistair stands up and turns and I can finally see the dickhead properly.

What is it with this school and its weird infestation of attractive people? They’re like roaches - if roaches were made of freakishly clear skin and good cheekbones. If the guy who saved me yesterday was the sun, Alistair is the dark side of the moon, his hair jet-black and tornado-chaser messy, like he’s never brushed it in his life. His eyebrows are another story - precise and thick and intimidating. But it’s his eyes below that make me look twice - I’d recognize those wicked eyes anywhere; Von Arx’s. His are much darker than hers. No starburst pattern, just shadowy green copper gleaming out of the bottom of the ocean. And unlike his grandma’s queenly haughtiness, Alistair wears the openly self-satisfied look of a cat with a canary in its mouth. His nose is prominent, his jaw stone-cut, his neck strong down to his broad shoulders - he’s nowhere near as big-huge as Rafe, but he fills out his blazer considerably.

He’s sure as shit not incandescently hot like Ciel, or even conventionally attractive like the anime-pins guy, but there’s something about him. Something that keeps me studying his face longer than I should. Quick question, God; why give all the intangible charisma to violent assholes like this guy? They’re just walking booby traps for anyone naive enough to fall for them - like Mom fell for Dad.

Suddenly, as if on cue, a half-dozen adults in sweater vests come running. Even rich kids have the good sense to scatter, and the crowd quickly evaporates. Alistair sees the approaching adults and lazily hefts himself off Gabe. There’s a flurry of worried French as the teachers swarm Gabe and pick him up off the grass. They pry the redhead out of Rafe’s huge arms, and Maria gets in a glaring contest with a teacher who tries to ask her questions.

Weirdly, none of the teachers ask Alistair anything. Or confront him. They barely acknowledge him, even though he’s standing right there with bloody-fucking-knuckles. They just walk around him like he’s a fixture in the topography, a statue - never quite meeting his eyes. Except he definitely tries to meet theirs, watching them defiantly as they walk by, as if he’s silently daring them to say something. Anything.

“Those are the teachers, right?” I look at Ana. “Isn’t there some gold-plated dungeon they can throw him in?”

She sighs. “Like I said; Alistair Strickland doesn’t have friends. Or teachers. He has subjects.”

“Everybody? Even the adults?”

Ana knits her lips and doesn’t say anything. Are we supposed to stand here and just watch this happen? Are the teachers so worried about Von Arx and losing their jobs they never reprimand him? I stare at Alistair’s back as he wipes his knuckles idly on his uniform pants.

“C’mon,” Ana finally nudges me. “Let’s go eat. I’m starving.”

The smell of breakfast - fresh bread and warm honey - wafts through the air, the only pleasant thing that manages to pierce my bubble of fury and disgust. The crowd’s all but gone. The teachers help Gabe to hobble somewhere - nurse’s office, probably. Rafe and Maria linger on the lawn, waiting for Alistair like loyal flies on a heaping pile of shit, but he waves them off. They finally head towards the Knight Roux building side-by-side, cutting an almost amusing silhouette of verylittle and bighuge.

This isn’t how things go down in real life. People don’t just get to walk away scott-free from doing shitty things, no matter how much money they have. Not in my world.

Alistair pauses on the immaculate grass, cracking his neck casually. His untucked shirt is blood-spattered - red on white - and I flinch away. His belt’s barely buckled, and his pants have dozens of dirt and grass stains on them - but the old kind, like he barely washes. Related to royalty? This rude, violent ass? As-fucking-if. Out of all the footwear in the world he’s chosen to wear scuffed, ancient black leather boots that make my fall-apart-at-any-second converse look practically new. But it’s not the shoes that get me - it’s his injuries. A few scars mar his olive arms. What, does he get in bladed accidents a lot? Or does he actually fight people that hit back, occasionally?

Except then I spot the burn scars.

You can always tell burn scars from every other type by the way they pucker the healthy skin around them. It’s by his collarbone, the skin pearl-white and shiny in the sun, the pucker running like a seam down into his shirt.

You don’t get burned in fights.

I swallow, hard.

An easy smirk crawls across Alistair’s lips as he wipes the flecks of Gabe’s blood off his cheekbones. I half expect him to lick it like the grody sicko he is. He just beat a guy up for no good reason and he’s smiling about it. In a school full of entitled kids, there was bound to be at least one raging dickwad - I was just hoping they wouldn’t be violent. Or unstable. Or that I’d meet them, like, ever.

Deep green eyes suddenly slide over to me. And then narrow to deadly slits.

Fucké.

“What are you looking at?” Alistair asks in a clear voice. It’s a confrontation for sure, but he just sounds…tired about it. Like he’s done it a million times before.

“A waste,” I blurt. He raises one intimidating brow, the corner of his lip twitching.

“Of what, exactly?”

“Oh, I dunno. Good genes, mostly.”

His mouth goes flat. It feels like the wind dies and the birds stop chirping as those deep green eyes vacuum in every inch of me. I hold my ground like he’s a charging bear - he could come for me next. I could yell, or kick him in the nuts, or better yet swing my heavy bag at his nuts; whatever I’m gonna do to him it involves nut-damage, that’s for damn sure. But just as I’m waxing poetic about targeting testes, he suddenly breaks eye contact and pulls at his tie, the thing coming loose around his neck and the starched collar of his white dress shirt drooping open even more. It’s a transparent attempt at seeming cool and unaffected, but I struggle not to look at the way the burn scar just keeps going down his chest, and going, and going -

“I’ve learned not to put a lot of stock in genes,” He finally says. “Unless they’re boot-cut.”

So the asshole likes to make dad puns. Fantastic. What am I even doing? This guy isn’t worth my best Sunday roasts, let alone my limited lifeforce on planet earth. His cuffs are splattered in blood, and it’s making me nauseous - that feather-stuffed head and worm-stuffed gut feeling. I turn on my heel and start to walk away.

“Name.” Alistair’s one word resonates over the lawn. I freeze, but refuse to give him the satisfaction of turning around.

“Sorry?”

“You have a name, I assume?” He drawls.

“No. I was raised by giant fruit bats.”

“That explains the smell,” He says. I sniff warily at my armpits before he asks again. “Do you have a name, or not?”

“A few,” I lilt. “‘Annoying’, ‘Know-It-All’, ‘Troublemaker’, ‘Pick-Up-Your-Socks-Or-So-Help-Me’. My personal favorite is a tie between ‘Hell No’ and ‘That Bitch’, though.”

He makes a clicking noise with his tongue. “You’re a chatterbox, aren’t you?”

“More of a chattertupperware, really.”

“Cheap, see-through, replaceable,” he muses lightly, adjusting his bloodstained cuffs. “Sounds about right.”

I blink. Once. Twice. A hundred times in a second. Through my sudden bout of inconsolable rage, I’m almost impressed. I’m used to people stuttering and tripping over themselves, but Alistair didn’t even pause in ripping me to shreds. He was ready for me. Or…it’s more than that. He wasn’t just ready for me. He was daring those teachers to say something with his eyes. He was ready for them, too, but they didn’t say shit.

I, on the other hand, have said Some Shit.

I turn and face him, finally, and almost swallow my tongue.

His eyes gleam out from beneath his whirlwind bangs; not tired anymore. Patient, dim-lit, like a fox waiting at the end of a tunnel for the rabbit to come out. Waiting for anyone to come out.

But Lilith Pierce isn’t ready to come out. It’s safe in here, in her own bubble. Impenetrable. She’s blocked up all the entrances, and only she knows where the exit is. Since the day she broke her knee she’s started setting up trip-wires around her mind for people like Alistair. Traps. For people who want to hurt others. Who could hurt her.

You can never really know someone. Not even the people you love. Not even the people who say they love you.

Memories are weird. Things fade, but the odd inconsequential thing stays, like a memory of eating a PB&J or listening to a certain song, or watching Mom put on makeup. But I remember this, always, clear as day - lying in the hospital bed, looking up at the white ceiling with a cast on my leg and pain searing through my IV-drip morphine haze. I remember making a promise to myself, to the tile ceiling, to the machine beeping out my pulse; this would never happen again. I wouldn’t let myself get hurt again. I’d keep a lookout. I’d be my own guard, my own sentry, my own brave knight. I’d keep my eyes open all the time for anyone who looked like a threat, for anyone who didn’t look like a threat. Anyone. Everyone.

Never. I’ll never let it happen again.

Alistair Strickland wants me to say something like everyone else won’t. To poke my head out so he can crush it like he crushed Gabe.

A single flicker of his dark eyelashes. One of my trip-wires snaps. I push my glasses up on my nose.

“Nice try. But I’m not falling for your bullshit.”

I turn on my heel and dash after what’s left of Ana in the distance.

8

THE TOUCH (OR, HOW EACH FINGER IS BOTH THE ARROW AND THE APPLE)

When you take all the douchebags out of the equation, life suddenly gets a lot more enjoyable.

“Chocolate croissants!” I chime in the breakfast buffet line, and point rabidly down the table laden with gleaming pastries and steaming trays of scrambled eggs and ham. “Ooohhh shit! Those little jam cookies grandmas always have!”

“Linzer cookies,” Ana says next to me, patiently filling up her plate with sensible eggs and toast while I pile as many sugar-drenched pastries into a cereal bowl as I can. The chef behind the buffet line making crepes to order winces as I point at his round flat pan and shout ‘HOLY CREPE!’. People stare. I lower my voice to a whisper.

“Ahem. I mean…holy crepe.”

Ana just laughs. “You should try the orange juice - it’s fresh-squeezed.”

I snatch a cuppa, and a handful of little chocolates in a bowl just sitting there for no reason (candy for no reason!!!), and follow her through the glass-ceiling’d cafeteria. The piercing blue sky shines down on us, the usual bleach-scented tables of public school jammed with screaming cliques nowhere to be seen. In their place are dozens of small, round tables with white tablecloths and only five chairs at a time. It’s like a damn restaurant.

I sidestep a cheery potted plant. “How many people are there at Silvere, anyway?”

“Four hundred or so?” Ana tilts her head. “About a hundred for each year.”

“Year?” I frown. “You mean like, grade?”

“Fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh year,” She says. “I’m in sixth year. And you’re…?”

“I’m, uh. A junior?”

“Oh riiiight; because Americans do the Sophomore-Freshman thing. Are they? Fresh men?”

“Ugh, not a chance in hell.”

Over breakfast Ana does her best to give me directions to my first class (A Global History of Economics), but halfway through she checks her phone and gasps, saying she’s got exercise at the volleyball court across campus. She’s so fast I can barely shout my ‘thanks for everything!’ after her before she’s gone in a puff of vanilla perfume. The empty table reminds me where I should be around this time; meeting up with Ruby, walking across the football field, talking about life and death and college and whatever else we worry about. Everything else. Now that Ana’s gone and I’m left with the sound of my own brain, it’s hard not to notice the distinct lack of noise in the cafe; no frantic parrot-shrieking or piercing hyena-laughter like I’m used to from Northview High. No banging of plastic trays on plastic tables or blasted music from tinny phone speakers. Instead, there’s just peace. Quiet. A gentle murmur and the faint tinkling sound of silverware scraping over ceramic. It feels like I could sneeze too loud and bring the whole place down. It feels wrong. Grown up. Lifeless.

I’m so deep up my own auditory ass I almost don’t see Alistair walk into the cafe. And considering how he towers over the tables and cuts paths in the crowd like hot piss on snow, that’s saying something. With his blazer casually slung over his shoulder and his blood-flecked shirt on full display, he lopes over to Rafe and Maria’s table, but he doesn’t make it all the way. Most of the crowd has the good sense to part around the tall ass dude with a bloody shirt, but three or four guys in particular didn’t get the memo. They stand there like a hairball in the shower drain, blocking everything up, pretending they don’t see him. And they’re definitely pretending. It’s impossible not to see someone like Alistair - he’s tall, sure, but he’s one of those people who are just really there, dark and heavy and impossible to ignore; a thundercloud on a sunny day.

One of the guys pretends to just notice Alistair then, measuring him up and down with a glare. Is there gonna be another fight? I thought this was supposed to be a fancy school with proper manners and shit.

“Something wrong?” Alistair asks the guy. Tired. Conversational. It does nothing to lighten the guy’s intense glower. But it does everything to attract the entire cafe’s attention. He didn’t even say it loud, but everybody looks; over their teacups, their phones, their last-minute textbooks-before-first-period. The cafe still rumbles with words, but quietly, like someone’s turned the collective volume down even more. Everyone’s waiting on tenterhooks for something to happen. Expectant. Like this is a thing that’s happened before. Or happens a lot.

The guy stabs his furious brown eyes into Alistair’s flat, unmoving green ones. They’re dick-whipping, aren’t they? Having just a big ol’ dick-whipping competition, but like…silently. Psychically. Psyilently. There’s definitely animosity between them, somewhere I can’t see.

And then it passes. The guy scoffs, and the dangerous tension dissipates like cigarette smoke in the wind.

“No.”

“Good.” A smile pulls Alistair’s long mouth up, but grimly and barely. “Now get out of my way.”

The guy tilts aside, and Alistair pushes past him and his friends at a clipped pace and makes it to Maria and Rafe’s table at last, collapsing in a chair and crossing his boots on top of the table. I’d be pissed at the sheer arrogance, but I won’t allow him to take up that much space in my brain. The redhead girl from this morning, though, feels strongly otherwise. She sits at the table diagonal from mine and does the same thing the guy did except even more furiously, if that’s possible; glowering at Alistair with the power of a thousand teary suns and viciously stabbing a waffle with her fork the whole time. Her beautiful hair is completely disheveled. She looks a hot mess. I shepherd the chocolates from the bowl into my bag and slide into the seat next to her.

“Hey. You okay?”

“No,” She says. “How can I be okay when he’s - when that asshole -”

I’ve seen enough Sundance movies to know when someone’s swearing in French. She mutters a nonstop barrage and stabs her waffle again and again and the fork makes a spine-tingling screech across porcelain every time. I clear my throat.

“Speaking of assholes, you’re tearing that waffle a few new ones.”

She looks down and releases her deathgrip on her fork. “Merde. I’m just so…so angry!”

“Completely understandable. Alistair was a fucking mega-jerk to that Gabe guy, and you were just trying to stand up for him!”

And with the tiny bit of empathy, her anger wavers, her lip blubbers, and she collapses on the table with her head in her arms. I judiciously move the waffle plate away before she can syrup her bangs. She sobs, and I rub her back as comfortingly as I can manage on a Monday morning jetlagged to hell and back.

“Hey, it’s okay,” I murmur. “It’s okay to stand up for people! You did the right thing. Alistair’s just a raging chode.”

She sniffs and looks up with watery eyes. “What…what’s a chode?”

“A ding dong that’s wider than it is long.” She immediately starts wailing again, and I coo. “It’s okay! Everything’ll be okay.”

Over her shuddering shoulders, my smudged glasses spot Alistair looking right at our table - dead-center at me. Even when he isn’t making any expression with his mouth, his wide lips are drawn-down at the edges, like his face is stuck permanently, deeply frowning. Deeply disapproving. He clearly doesn’t give a shit about the girl next to me, or her pain. She’s bawling her eyes out and all he can do is stare like she deserves it and it’s all I can do to not flip him off. He’d like that. Bullies like him feed on attention, and I’m determined to starve him out.

“Here,” I reach into my bag, and pull out a chocolate. I put it in front of her sobbing head, and she looks up a fraction with puffy eyes.

“That’s not going to help,” She hiccups.

“It might.” I smile. “When I was a kid, it helped all the time. Just a little treat, you know? When you’re feeling down. It might not look like much, but sometimes it’s all you need.”

She stares at it, glowering, and finally drops her head back into her arms. I sigh and pick the chocolate up - can’t let it go to waste.

Silvere doesn’t have any loud, screeching bells to indicate class changes because of course they don’t - a friendly, musical little chime ringing out over the PA speakers instead. The redhead girl trudges off, so miserable and bleary-eyed she nearly runs into a pillar. I watch nervously as Alistair and his cronies start to merge in the crowd towards her. Redhead notices him, too, and stabs her finger in his direction.

“I’ll never forgive you for this, Strickland! Je te hais! JE TE DETESTE!”

It all happens so fast. She grabs a half-finished orange juice from a tray and before anyone can blink or pull out their phones she dunks it directly on Alistair. The pulp splashes over his tangled mop of black hair, his face, soaking his blood-flecked shirt so thoroughly it clings to the long v-shape down his stomach. I freeze. The crowd moving to class goes stock-still. The chef behind the counter making crepes gapes, batter dripping of his frozen ladle. Everything poises on a knife’s edge of silence.

Maybe it’s the jetlag. Maybe it’s the liquid sugar coursing through my veins from the ten pastries I just ate. Maybe it’s a fundamental personality flaw in the form of a lack of discretion. Or maybe it’s the fact I just can’t stand the dude, because I whoop at the top of my lungs.

“Hell yes! Kick his little nuts in!!!”

The redhead is smarter than me - she doesn’t cheer. She runs. The entire cafe whips around to look at my yelling - Alistair included, his pulpy eyelashes glaring - and I make an alarmed ‘oop’ sound and instinctually drop underneath the nearest table. There’s a burning ten seconds where I’m 200% sure someone’s gonna yank the tablecloth up and start shouting at me to respect the headmistress’s grandson or what the fuck ever, but the crowd’s shuffling resumes eventually. I peek out from under the tablecloth - Alistair’s boots still standing there.

Next to him, short-enough-to-see Maria clears her throat. “Two new enemies.”

Alistair exhales. “I’ll add them to the list, then.”

Are they talking about me and the redhead? There’s a scribbling sound, and I peek out to see Alistair writing something on a small pad of paper. My name? God I hope it’s not my name. How would he even know my name? Wait a freakin’ second - he has a whole list of enemies? He just carries that around, ready to add onto it whenever? What the fuck? That’s miserable. Les Miserables. Wow. I can speak French too.

Rafe’s booming, barrel-chested laughter scares my intestines out of my anus as it echoes off the cafe walls; “Hey, at least you got your Vitamin C for today, Ali!”

If life had a keyboard I’d be smashing the lmao at this point. But like, stealthily. There’s a beat. I hear Alistair scoff, and then watch his scuffed boots walk away.

“Dunce.” Maria nudges Rafe in the ribs with a sharp little elbow and follows Alistair dutifully.

“Whoa - where’re we going?” Rafe blurts, his massive Timbs stamping after her. “Wait for me!”

I BARELY MAKE it to my Economics class with thirty seconds to spare - Ana’s directions were great, it just took me longer than expected to crawl out on all fours from the cafe without being seen by another living soul.

The classroom’s smaller than I expected from this massive chateau, with a polished wood floor and extravagant oil paintings of battles and half-naked ladies everywhere. It looks like any room in a museum, except for the part where the windows are ceiling-to-floor and flanked by lace curtains, and the part where there’s a very modern-looking roundtable in the middle of the room.

“Desk?” I mouth at what I assume is the teacher - a man in a charcoal grey sweater and horn-rimmed glasses.

“Pardon?” He quirks a brow in French.

“D-Desk?” I mime a rectangle desperately. “Sitting…place. For me. New person.”

“Ah,” His wrinkled eyes light up. “You must be Miss Pierce. I am Professor Guillard. The headmistress told me to expect you today.” He gestures to the roundtable. “There are no desks in Silvere. We prefer a communal style of learning. Please, choose any seat.”

“Sure. Thanks.” I ooze past the groups of students leaning against the gold-etched walls talking, whispering, looking at their phones. No one’s sitting down, though. The roundtable is completely empty, except every chair has a backpack in it already. Like the seats are claimed. I awkwardly slide into the only free chair.

The chime-bell rings, and the teacher claps his hands with a smile. “Bonjour á tous.”

“Bonjour, Professor.” I jump out of my nerve endings as the entire class echoes him, accompanied by a cacophony of shuffling as everyone finally sits down. I open my notebook way past the creepy pages drawn by the little girl on the plane and write;

Note #1: Do not sit before the teacher greets the class, you steaming dingleberry.

Professor Guillard introduces me with the barest of sentences (Lilith Pierce from America, everyone, please treat her well) before barreling into a lecture. It’s weird not seeing the back of heads like in a normal classroom - I feel exposed. Everybody can see me, and I can see them. Equality? In my high school? It’s more likely than you think. Except then I see a bag on the table emblazoned on every inch with the tacky Chanel symbol, the diamond earrings dripping from a girl’s ears. Don’t let the roundtable and gum-free water fountains fool you, Lilith; this is a place where dreams of equality go to die. Or get put in a nursing home, at the very least.

I decide keeping my eyes on my own paper is my best bet. Everyone else takes quiet notes on their laptops or pads. Some doodle and some check Insta or Snapchat - but Professor Guillard doesn’t bat an eyelash. He sees them doing it - I know he does, because he walks slow circles around the table as he lectures. I expect him to bark a reprimand, to assign detention, but…nothing. Not so much as a ‘please pay attention’. There’s no blackboard, no whiteboard, no powerpoint. He just talks, mostly about the economic system of the Qing dynasty, drawing in Silk Road anecdotes and the maritime technology of the era. Suddenly he clicks a remote, and the lights dim and from the donut hole in the middle of the table a lightshow straight out of a club starts. A hologram, laser-painted in flickering green. It rotates in perfect 3D - a picture of a stone slab of some kind, with kanji on it. Nobody but me even blinks at it.

“Ooookay,” I breathe. “Ya’ll do this Star Wars stuff all the time, then?”

The neighboring brunette girl answers me by snapping the gum in her mouth softly and cleaning her nails with a file. Gum? Nail files? These rich kids get away with anything, don’t they?

“Miss Trevino,” Professor Guillard clears his throat. “Who was the longest reigning emperor in the Qing dynasty?”

The girl next to me barely looks up from her nail file as she says; “The Kangxi Emperor, Xuanye.”

“And how long did he reign?”

“1661 to 1722 A.D,” She says without missing a beat. “He’s the longest reigning emperor in all of Chinese history - famous for quelling the Revolt of the Three Feudatories and blocking Russia on the Amur River.”

I shove my eyes back into my sockets. Okay. So. Gum and nail files are clearly working for her. I get a better look at her; she’s gorgeous, with the same amazing bone structure and bright clear eyes everyone else here seems to have, but her prominent chin and graceful posture puts her a cut above the rest. She holds herself like a ballerina - a ballerina who knows a shit-ton about Qing China, apparently.

“Correct.” Professor Guillard smiles at her and goes back to the lecture seamlessly. The students don’t look like they’re paying attention, but they are. They know the answers to almost every question he asks, and they offer them freely. They laugh at his jokes instead of groaning at them. It’s like learning is actually…fun for them.

“Can’t relate,” I mutter to the spotless tabletop.

“Miss Pierce,” Professor Guillard says, and I instantly bolt upright in my chair.

“Yes? Uh, sir?”

Giggling goes around the room. Is ‘sir’ not the right word?

“Do you know the year the Qing dynasty fell?” The professor asks. “I’ll give you a hint - it was fairly recently, and there’s a war named after it.”

“Um,” I swallow, watching as dozens of hands shoot up at my hesitation. They all know the answer. “I’d love to, Professor, but the part of my brain that would usually hold history has been replaced by the lyrics to every Destiny’s Child song.”

The professor blinks. Rapidly. A quiet snicker ripples around the room, and my face heats. Abort, abort!

“Uhh,” I smile to hide the sheer pants-wetting fear. “1940?”

“Close,” He nods. “1912.”

“So, not close at all,” I deflate.

“It’s the attempt that counts, Miss Pierce. It’s a very brave thing, to answer a question you don’t know. Thank you.”

Guillard smiles, which makes me feel a hair better. I sit there staring at my aimless doodles for what feels like the rest of the class. Is this real life? A teacher…thanking me instead of getting disappointed with me? The ballerina girl next to me - Trevino was her last name? - scoffs audibly as we’re packing up after the bell.

“The American education system is as ineffective as I’ve heard it is, then.”

“Sorry?”

She looks at me like I’m a toddler to be pitied before she gets up and leaves. “Nothing.”

I’m sure she knows French - everyone here seems to. Yet she chose to say that under her breath in English, so I could understand it. Big yikes.

“Ah, the homework!” Professor Guillard calls after us, handing out papers to everyone making for the door. “Do all the essay questions, and I’ll be collecting them on Friday!”

I look down at the homework assignment in the bustling hallway - can’t read any of it. It’s all in…French? Swiss? God, I am an idiot; I don’t even know the difference. If there is any.

“Uh, Professor?” I call, but my robust frame is swept away by the jostling crowd and into the main hall. I heave a sigh - maybe I can bribe Ana into translating it? I should be grateful; at least the freakin’ lecture was in English.

“Damn you and all your moneybags, Will,” I clench my fist dramatically. “I could be skating by with C’s and eating shitty chili-dogs right now, but you had to come along and force-feed me linzer cookies and child prodigies.”

Everyone knows where they’re going. They stream around me, easy and knowing exactly what to do. Exactly what to answer. Exactly how to speak French-Swiss-whatever.

And then there’s me.

I wander off to the side of the hallway, the sound of clicking shoes and soft laughter echoing in the high ceilings. I blink back tears.

This shit sucks.

This shit fuckin’ sucks.

I wanna be home. I wanna be in a place where I understand things.

My teary eyes catch on the huge window on my right. Sanctuary. Or at least a break. I stare at the glass, forehead pressed on the coolness. Breathe, Lilith. Seven months. For Mom.

It’s the least you can do after all the pain you’ve caused her.

My knee feels heavy, but I ignore it.

I stare outside, trying to get lost in something other than my own head. The school’s Olympic-sized sapphire pool stands out like a gem embedded in the lawn. There’s a fenced-in pasture for riding class - the horses no bigger than toys with how far away they are. I try to pinch one between my fingers as a student in stuffy breeches and a helmet makes it jump over a railing, and it makes me feel a little better. The rose-maze is just over the hill, the gardeners standing on ladders and carefully trimming hedges kissed with little blossoms of color. Black roses, orange roses, and even a gorgeous white rose with a red center.

Sometimes, I begrudgingly guess, the color red can be pretty enough not to remind me of blood.

It’s not a phobia. Technically. Or at least that’s what the psychologist would’ve said if we could’ve afforded one after. After™. My life is, and has always been, divided by Before™ and After™ the incident. ‘Incident’. I scoff. Even after all these years I still don’t know what to call it. Mom and I never do. It just exists between us, between the gaps in the conversation, between the pauses before we smile at each other.

Anyway.

It’s not a phobia. I just don’t like it. People say blood is one color but it’s three, actually. Dark red when it pools, bright red when it smears, and brown-red when it dries. It’s not a phobia of the color red. It’s just that certain reds remind me of how much I don’t like seeing blood. I’ve tried, in that way everybody tries to overcome their weaknesses by pretending they don’t exist. Blood’s under my skin. It’s on my pads when I have my period. Mom gets stress-nosebleeds. She comes home bloody after a car accident comes into the ER. I can’t be afraid of it. So I hold my breath and pretend I’m not.

And it’s worked. Thus far.

Beyond campus, the velvety green valleys of Switzerland roll for miles and miles, the stately fir trees and yellowing oak trees and perfect blue sky with its perfect white clouds sit pristine and untouched, like a postcard or a painting. It feels like a prison, but I gotta admit; it’s a gorgeous prison. It’s a whole other world. It’s nothing like any of the prep schools in LA. The students here aren’t anything like the trust fund party animals I’m used to seeing in their BMWs back home, who care about coke and getting laid and Insta and only coke and getting laid and Insta. These people at Silvere…they aren’t just rich. They speak languages. Multiple. They’re beautiful and worldly. They’re whip-smart. They don’t make stupid jokes during class, or answer things wrong. They’ve got Families™ who are princes and UN ambassadors. It’s like a whole different mindset. I feel like everyone’s thirty years old here and I’m twelve; the daughter of a nurse and a deadbeat, who only speaks one language and is used to instant ramen and beans and doesn’t know diddly-shit about Qing dynasty China.

This place isn’t for me, with its gorgeous white chateaus.

Well, four of them are white.

From this height, and this particular window, I can see the whole damn campus. The four chateaus grouped tight together in the center, and then one far off, peeking out from between pine trees. It’s smaller than even Knight Augustin, and half-hidden in the forest. Compared to its pristine kin it looks practically dilapidated - part of the roof’s collapsed in, the beveling and roman columns edged with moss like green rust. Some of the windows are boarded up, too. That’s gotta be Knight Durand, right? The one Von Arx said was being refurbished. The one Lionel asked her if they should have a meeting in. And that was weird. Who’d wanna have a meeting in that dump when there are four other chateaus way prettier and with, you know. Ceilings.

“Why are you here?”

I jump at the disdainful voice. Ballerina girl Trevino slides in opposite me, tucking herself against the windowsill. Her sheet of ash-brown hair shimmers in the sunlight, and even though she’s an inch or so shorter than me, the graceful way she carries herself makes her seem a lot taller. Her uniform is crisp, and she doesn’t tug her skirt down every two steps - she looks perfectly comfortable in it. I was too nervous to look at her face-on before, but now her deep indigo eyes focus on me - a blue so dark they almost look purple. Where was I when God was handing out the Sick-Ass Eyes? Not at this school, apparently.

“S-Sorry?” I blurt.

“Why are you here?” Trevino asks again, soft and slow, as if she has all the time in the world. Her accent sounds slightly British, too, like the beautiful sun-guy and Alistair - makes sense if you grew up with that as your closest English-speaking neighbor.

When I don’t say anything, she moves her eyes from me to the window, rosebud lips curling.

“I know you Americans like to make inappropriate jokes, but there are actual people here who want to learn.”

I blink. “Oh! You’re talking about the Destiny’s Child thing-”

“I’ll make this simple for you -” She cuts me off ruthlessly. “- There’s no place at Silvere for people like you. It’s a place for learning, for growth. It’s a special place, not some playground for wannabe class clowns trying to stand out. Start taking it seriously, or don’t waste our time.”

And with that, she brushes past me - not touching, but enough that her perfume lingers in my nose long after she’s gone. How can I take it seriously if I’m not really one of them? If I don’t really belong here?

Suddenly, I feel totally alone. Alone in the whole wide world. The whole universe.

This isn’t my universe.

The time difference means Ruby’s still fast asleep - it’s like two in the morning on the west coast. Can’t call her. I wonder where Mom is? Probably Italy, by now. Her last text said she was at the airport. My fingers fly as I text her;

hey, it’s your spawn. Just got out of my first class. The people here are -

My finger hovers. The snickering. Alistair’s waiting-fox eyes. Trevino’s lip curl.

really nice! I’ve made one semi-friend. Her name’s Ana.

What else do I say? ‘I miss you’? ‘I wanna go home already?’ ‘Hey, can we wake up from this dream and go back to real life? The way things used to be? Just me and you?’

But this isn’t about me.

Mom’s been through so much. She put up with Dad for six years. She’s put up with detention-regular me for sixteen years. She worked her ass off in school to become a nurse. She’s been a single mom breaking her back to keep me fed and happy and safe for a long time, now. She deserves this fairytale ending more than anyone.

I inhale huge.

Sometimes you can’t just grin and bear it. Sometimes you have to smile real big and bear it.

Eat some good-ass spaghetti for me. Love you.

I put my phone away and look back out the window. There’s still a smear of blood on the grass where Alistair beat up Gabe, and I shudder. Where was the security Von Arx talked about for that whole thing, anyway? The only people I see outside are professors in sensible shades of brown, and white-and-blue clad students. There’s no hulking dudes with shaved heads, no batons, no repurposed golf carts buzzing around the campus.

“You should start walking if you don’t want to be late.”

My nerves frazzle as the soft voice resonates over my shoulder. I whip around - silky golden hair and a pair of silver eyes look down at me coolly. Sun-guy. Pure anxiety gets stuck in my throat.

“Y-You’re the guy from yesterday!”

“I would hope so,” Sun-guy agrees mildly. “Otherwise that would mean someone’s cloned me.”

I blink. Was…was that a joke?

“Right,” I laugh nervously. “That’d be ridiculous.”

A big, awkward pause. Fuck. Say something funny, Lilith. You might be too tall, and too wide, and too annoying, but you’re good at making people laugh, if nothing else.

“I-I’m glad I found you again,” I manage. “I can finally thank you properly for saving my cranium yesterday. I’ve got culinary class tomorrow, and not to brag, but I’m a pretty much a professional baker. Of microwave mug cakes. I can make you one if you want, as like, a thank you -”

“You have Applied Calculus next, right?” He turns to walk. Did I say something wrong? Did I say too many things? Is cake a no-go subject? God - even his long stride is dreamy. Wait a second, dreamy? Me, saying a dude is dreamy? Unironically? In this economy?

I consider dipping my entire brain in bleach and tag behind him breathlessly. “Yeah! How’d you know that?”

“It’s in the opposite wing.” He smiles back at me, the sunlight turning his gray eyes molten silver. “You need to hurry, or you’ll be late on your first day.”

He’s nothing like Alistair - the complete opposite, actually. Nothing about his eyes are dangerous, nothing about him is wildly sloppy. His uniform is perfect; his tie expertly knotted and his pants pressed. He wears snappy suede shoes. It’s not just his clothes, or how spotless they are. It’s the way he wears them, the way he moves. I feel like I could look at him eternally and never get bored. Beauty has always just been this thing people talk about abstractly but now I really get it. It feels like I’ve been in a museum my whole life, looking at the same paintings people gush about, and just now I’ve come across the one that actually makes me feel something; the one painting that makes me finally ‘get’ art.

“Have you ever seen Lord of the Things?” I blurt.

“What?” A quizzical golden brow.

“Rings. Lord of the Rings.” I correct. “It’s got these magic people with pointy ears and, uh, you look like kinda them.”

Like an elf god. But I don’t say that because that’d be gross. Even if my entire being is vibrating with the words YOU’RE HOT, reducing people to their physical appearance out loud feels really grody, actually? Also, pointing out to hot people that they’re hot is like telling a giraffe it’s tall - big whoop, Sherlock, it’s not like anybody can choose the bodies they’re born in. Sun-guy doesn’t even blink - staring at me like I’m an idiot. Because I am one.

“Okay, so yeah,” I hold my hands up in quick defense. “J.R.R Tolkien wasn’t the chillest. He constantly harped about the orcs being dark-skinned as like, a bad thing, so he was maybe-probably racist like Lovecraft - who was mega racist by the way, you can google it - and it’s like, what’s with all these old dead white dude writers and being shitty people, am I right?” I laugh nervously. “That’s my new standup comedy bit.”

Silence. And then; “You mean I look like an elf?”

“Yeah! Um.”

Sun-guy’s eyes crinkle on the corners, and then he bursts into melodious laughter. Swear to the G-man it sounds like a brand new harp being plucked. I smile faintly.

“Did I…say something funny?”

“No, I just -” He wipes a tear from his eye. “I know what elves are. We have books and movies in Europe too, you know.”

“Oh,” My cheeks burn. “Yeah. My bad.”

Sun-guy lifts one long, graceful finger towards the ceiling, where a little gold-painted orb sits.

“You wouldn’t know this, because you’re new. But being on time is sort of a thing around here.”

“Right. Von Arx was blathering about that -”

“She likes to keep tabs on the new people. Via the cameras.”

He jerks his finger up more. I look up at the gold orb I thought was just part of the decor. “Those -”

“You should get going, Lilith. She’s watching as we speak.”

H-He remembered my name! My name! The joy instantly turns to clawing terror. If I’m late on my first day…Von Arx might not kick me out, but she’ll tell Will and Will’d definitely tell Mom and Mom would start worrying on her own honeymoon and -

I pull out the scrunched schedule from my pocket and flatten it. Sun-guy’s right - the map shows my class on the opposite end of the building. I suck in a banshee-wail and zoom past him at top speed.

“Thank-you-I-owe-you-at-least-one-Snickers-bar-the-full-size-ones-not-the-disappointing-fun-size-ones-bye!”

The windows blur as I push my legs to the limit, (shoutout to the heating system in here for keeping my knee in working order) sprinting through a massive hall of gilded mirrors. I can’t be late. It resonates in my head like a struck bell, like the pendulum that won’t stop swinging in the pocket of the white rabbit; can’t be late can’t be late can’t be late can’t be -

“You! Stop! No running!”

The remnant joy from the Ciel-encounter gets sucker-punched out of me by that tired, irritated voice. I know exactly who it belongs to, but I can’t stop, so I don’t, and like an insta-punishment I turn the corner of the hall and feel a hard yank on my wrist.

“New girl,” The voice snaps breathlessly. “No running in the damn halls.”

I turn to see a heaving chest and loose, lazy tie. Alistair Strickland. Fucking hell. His mess of black hair look like it’s been torn through by a squirrel on a sugar high, and his fingers burn like fire on my wrist. Dangerous, my brain screams. Too dangerous, he could do anything to me at this range -

“Running?” I wheeze. “I wasn’t running.”

“Really,” He pants. “What were you doing, then?”

“Moonwalking. Forwards. Really fast.”

Alistair narrows his eyes at my shoes. “With those on?”

“They’re called converse and they’re very fashionable,” I sniff, hoping desperately he doesn’t hear my thundering heartbeat. “A-Also, I’m very skilled.”

I try to dart away, but he holds me in place and my heart starts jack-hammering. How dare he. How fuckin’ dare he -

“Nice to meet you, Very Skilled,” He scoffs. “I’m What-Part-Of-You-Can’t-Run-In-The-Halls-Do-You-Not-Understand.”

“Charmed.” I flash a terse smile. “Did you know holding people against their will is a crime?”

“Not if you’re doing it for their own good,” Alistair says. “They polish these floors every day - I’ve seen people slip and eat shit hard.”

“Considering I don’t like the taste of shit, and I’m not a toddler, I think I’ll be okay.”

Alistair points at my converse again. “Could’ve fooled me.”

I look down and see my laces totally undone. I rip my wrist from Alistair’s hand with a massive effort, but he gives surprisingly easy this time. Finally. Finally, my heart slows down.

We stand there, him glowering out from under thundercloud brows and me glowering out from under my own pride. He’s not wearing the bloody shirt anymore - getting orange juice on it was too much for his sensibilities, clearly. He waits expectantly for me to bend down and remedy the whole situation, but I won’t give him the satisfaction of kneeling in front of him. Not even to tie my shoes.

“You look considerably less pulpy than this morning,” I chime.

“No thanks to your friend,” He counters.

“She’s not exactly my friend.”

“Sure.” He folds his arms over his chest. “That’s why you cheered her little display on at breakfast.”

I smile aggressively sweet. “Tacit approval and cheering someone on are two very different things, good sir.”

“You told her to kick me in the nuts.”

“Little nuts,” I correct automatically. There’s a pause. I briefly consider the pros and cons of leaping out the window to my left. Pros - I wouldn’t feel the immolation of embarrassment anymore. Cons - I wouldn’t feel anything at all. I decide to play it cool. “Heard that, did you?”

“The whole school heard it.” He exhales laboriously.

“And I’m sure you’re very embarrassed and want revenge for your wounded male pride and all, but I’ve got a class to get to -”

“Ah ah ah,” I stumble at the hard tug he gives on the collar of my blazer. “Not so fast.”

My heart hammers into my throat again - he’s got me by the neck.

“What is it with you and getting handsy with people? Fuck off!” I duck, freeing myself. Alistair stares at me, deadpan, like he’s done absolutely nothing wrong. Like this is a normal, boring day for him on the job while I’m halfway to Freakout Town. Finally, he exhales.

“Have it your way, then.”

With all the sickening advantage of his height (what do they feed ‘em in Belgium that he’s this much taller than me?), he drops a piece of paper onto the top of my head, and I scrabble to catch it before it falls. It’s a bright yellow slip with a mass of intimidating French written on it.

“In case you can’t read,” he drawls. “It says you have campus beautification duties for breaking in-transit decorum.”

“Uh, I’ll take Double Translation for 200.”

He grins for the first time, faintly lopsided and tense, like he hates every second of this. Of speaking to me. Like he’s being forced to. It’s not a real smile in any way shape or form - more like a snake’s idea of one.

“You, new girl, get the honor of picking up trash for running in the halls. Detention, in layman’s terms.”

“Is this your idea of revenge?” I squint up at him.

“No,” he says with mocking patience. “It’s my idea of the rules.”

“You like ‘em, then? ‘Rules’?”

He crinkles one eye at me in faint disgust. “I like the way they keep pains-in-the-ass like you in line.”

I know he’s Von Arx’s grandson. I know he’s part of the disciplinary squad or whatever. Keep my head down, don’t worry Mom. That’s it. That’s all I have to do. But since the very first second I saw this guy, I’ve felt sick to my stomach. People like him - who think violence is a tool to use against the weak - aren’t worth the dog shit on my shoes. And I want him to know it.

“I think I see a minor problem between us,” I say.

“Just the one?” He drones.

“You’re like, into keeping the status quo and shit. And I’m not.”

“And?”

“And. Well. You ever seen an alignment chart before? Some real nerd shit. Anyway, you’re a lawful evil and I’m a chaotic good.”

“Which means?”

“One of us has to die. And it’s sure as shit not gonna be me.”

I drop the detention slip into the nearest trash can. The dust particles dance in the sunlight between our still bodies, until I see the slightest vein strain against his throat.

“Out of curiosity,” He starts, voice casual. “Do you enjoy pissing people off on purpose?”

I smile. “Not particularly. But my gut tells me to make an exception for you.”

“Interesting. Does it always talk loud enough for you to hear, or did you just eat a lot of probiotics this morning?”

“What do you want from me, dude?” I exhale. “I need to get to class.”

“And I need you to do it safely,” He insists.

“And if I don’t? What’re you gonna do about it?” I raise my chin. “Beat me up? That’s your style, isn’t it - take your frustrations out on people who’re weaker than you just because you can.”

Neither of us twitches so much as a single facial muscle. He’s good. I’m better. He won’t give in. And neither will I. What the ever-loving fuck am I doing, testing my will against this shithead? He’s built like a truck, if a truck was also a panther. He’s taller than me. Behind that exhausted facade I know he’s violent. I know guys like this. They start fights and hold on to petty grudges and don’t give a shit about anyone else except themselves. He’s a walking timebomb and I’m standing here clicking a lighter on the fuse. If he reaches for me, if he moves for me at all, I’ll run. His first blink in my direction and I’m booking it.

There’s no closet I can lock myself in anymore, but I’m taller now.

I can run faster than my devils, now.

“If you won’t tie them, then -“ Alistair makes a move. Bends forward. Down. For my shoes.

I instantly jump back.

Okay, so it’s not quite running, but at least there’s space between us. I watch him straighten back up, expecting that perma-frown, but his whole face is a genuine, blank surprise. Like that was the last thing he expected from me.

“What?” I snap breathlessly, adjusting my glasses. “I saw what you did to Gabe. Can't be too careful around bloodthirsty fucks like you.”

He’s frozen for a heartbeat. Another. And then he defrosts. “You don’t know anything about me.”

“I know enough.”

“Enough to not ‘fall for my bullshit’,” He echoes my words from this morning. “But not enough to stay out of trouble, apparently.”

His pure, unfiltered arrogance is the final straw. What does he know about trouble? What does he know about what I’m going through in this place? He practically owns the pinball machine I’m getting tossed around in.

“Fuck you,” I snarl.

“After dinner. Outside the Knight Augustin building -”

“That was an insult, perv, not an offer.”

“ - We’ll be picking up trash there.” He finishes calmly. “There are thorns. Wear something thick you don’t care about. I’m tired of hearing people complain about their couture sweatpants getting ripped.”

I start to storm away when he calls after me;

“Oh, and new girl? If you no-show, I’m reporting you to Von Arx.”

“And I’m reporting you to Beelzebub,” I gnash my teeth. “So he can drag you back with him to hell.”

9

THE MISSING (OR, HOW YOU SOMETIMES THINK DEATH IS JUST GOD SWEEPING OUT THE BED CRUMBS SO HE CAN SLEEP)

“I offered the hottest guy in the world a Snickers bar!” I groan, slamming my head down on the table just to the left of my lunch of a refined-looking pasta. It’s the loudest sound made in the Institut Le Silvere maybe ever. The lady professor eating next to me grimaces. “That’s THE most American thing I could’ve done!”

“There’s nothing wrong with being American,” Ana says, tidily consuming her polenta.

I whip my head up. “Have you seen our politics lately? Or, like, ever?”

She pauses, thinks about it, and then gives a weary nod of agreement, braids clinking together. I shovel pasta into my mouth despairingly. The chef in the open-air kitchen is still whipping up plates of it, his white hat bobbing and his Italian bouncing off the walls as he snipes at his sous chefs. He’s the loudest person in here besides me. People weren’t just tired this morning - lunch is exactly the same volume level, which is to say barely any. The murmurs are kept to a minimum, overlaid with the faint clink of crystal glasses. No one laughs loudly. No one shouts at each other. No one randomly bursts into dance. Nobody even throws a single baby carrot at someone else’s cleavage! The atmosphere might be crushingly polite, but the pasta, at least, is better than anything I’ve ever tasted - even at the fancy restaurants Will took me and Mom to in LA. But I can enjoy exactly none of it.

“I don’t even know the guy’s name,” I lament.

“Blonde, you said?” Ana asks. “Tall? Gray eyes?”

“Silvery eyes,” I sigh. She taps her chin.

“There’s only one person here like that; Ciel Lautrec.”

“Where’s he from?” I blurt instantly.

“I think he’s the son of some famous fashion designer. Sorry, I don’t keep up with the fashion sphere as much as the political sphere.”

“Not ‘who are his parents’. Where is he from?”

“Oh.” Ana blinks. “Paris. Ciel models sometimes, too.”

“Ciel,” I repeat slowly. Even his name is like an elf god’s. I can see it now, carved in stone. In a tombstone, to be exact. Right next to my own tombstone. After living a long and happy life together.

“Do you like him?” Ana nudges me.

“Pfft, whaaaat? No way.” She looks doubtful. I clarify; “I just got here yesterday.”

“Time doesn’t mean anything to matters of the heart,” She chimes.

“I don’t even like myself! How can I like someone else?”

Ana looks very impressed around a mouthful of sun-dried tomato. “Beautiful and self-aware! He’ll fall for you in no time.”

I sniff and sit up with my full height. “I’m way too busy doing important things to be in love right now.”

“Like what?”

“Reading this hell book, for instance,” I hold up Von Arx’s rule book she gave me. Ana’s dark eyes widen.

“What is that?”

“The Necronomicon.” She stares blankly. I auto-correct. “The rules. Didn’t Von Arx give you one, too?”

“No. I got ten pages in the mail about etiquette and dress code before fourth year, but that was it.”

“You didn’t have to read this whole thing?” I slap the book.

“Nope.”

I make the executive decision to wail into my pasta. “Why? Why pick on me?! What did I do to her, other than break her Very Important Plant?”

“Which plant was it?” Ana asks.

“The purple orchid thingy.”

“Oooh.” She winces. “She loves that one. I hear her singing to it sometimes when I pass her window.”

Utterly disheartened, I flick through the pages of the huge book. Boring, boring, more boring, and I have to read it all? This is worse than the time Ruby recommended me that werewolf hot-dude book and I tried - I swear to God I tried - but I somehow ended up sleep-drooling on the first five pages. At least this rulebook is guaranteed not to use the words ‘rippling biceps’ in any way, shape, or form. Halfway through my flicking, a page falls out onto my plate. Ana’s hand shoots out before mine can, and she picks the paper up and unfolds it carefully.

“Huh. This is strange.” She holds it up. It’s a flyer of some sort, and on it is a photograph. It’s a headshot of a boy - no, a teenager? Late teens, maybe. He’s handsome, in that old-photograph-old-timey way, with perfectly coiffed dark hair and strong brows and cheeks. The colors are all but faded, and the paper is smooth, as if it’s been folded and unfolded a million times.

“What does it say?” I point at the giant French words across the top.

“Missing from the Geneva area,” Ana pauses. “Since June, 1977.”

“Who? This guy?” I point at the picture.

“His name is…” Ana’s finger glances over a faded sentence smack dab in the middle of one of the paper’s many folds. “It’s been folded so many times, the name is worn completely away.”

“Why would Von Arx keep something like this in a book?” I whisper.

“Maybe she knew him,” Ana muses. “Or maybe he was important to her.”

She and I glance up at each other, the mystery thick in the air. It doesn’t make any sense. It can’t be Von Arx - she of the iron frown doesn’t seem the type to get overly sentimental. Or sentimental at all.

‘Do you miss him?’

Lionel said that to Von Arx. I heard it. But it can’t be about this missing kid, right? I sigh and tuck it back in the book.

“A weird flyer doesn’t change the fact I have to read this whole damn thing before Friday.”

Ana resists the tantalizing enigma’s seduction better than me - suddenly plucking the fork out of my hands and replacing it with a bigger one.

“Small fork for fish and vegetables,” She instructs. “Big fork for every other meat and starches - potatoes, pasta, bread.”

“I have to eat bread with a fork?” I hiss.

“If it’s on the plate -” She nods. “- yes. Oh, unless it’s canapés. Then you use your fingers.”

I look at her with utter hopelessness. “What’s a canopy and why am I eating it?”

“Don’t worry - it gets easier.”

“He said that too,” I mutter down at my plate. “Ciel.”

I think Ana catches on to my spiral of despair, because she dives headfirst into talking about her classes. She loves her Human Biology class the most - the professor is some hotshot from Oxford, apparently. All I can think about are my fuckups - the Destiny’s Child joke, the way I sat too early before the bell, getting detention from that Strickland prick. Prickland. Just a whole land of pricks. I hold back a snort - dignity and noodles up the nose don’t exactly mix.

I can’t bring myself to tell Ana about getting detention already. Part of me just doesn't want her to know this early on in our maybe-friendship what a failure I am at boring things like following the rules and showing respect. I guess my Applied Calculus class wasn’t too bad. Even with Prickland running interference, I got there just as the bell rang. I didn’t sit down embarrassingly early or crack any bad goofs, but I still couldn’t answer a question to save my life. Math’s always been the worst, and it’s the worst times two in French.

“I’m gonna fail,” I decide.

“You’re not going to fail,” Ana tries to assure me. “I’ll translate all your homework questions. And you won’t even need me to translate the maths. It’s a universal language!”

“I’m gonna fail and I’m gonna die and at my funeral my Mom’s gonna be wearing Gucci.” I heave a sigh. “That’s one good thing, I guess.”

“Ana!” A handful of girls call out to her from two tables over. They say something in French, but their hand motions are universal - they’re trying to get her to sit with them. Ana looks surreptitiously over at me, and I flash her a smile.

“Hey, it’s cool. I’m talking about funerals, they’re probably talking about not-funerals. Plus, you don’t have to teach them how to use their forks, I bet.”

Ana puts her hand on mine as she gets up. “I’m serious - I’ll translate your homework tonight, okay? Just slip it under my door.”

“Okay,” I nod. “Thanks. You’re a lifesaver.”

“More like a Starburst,” She corrects with a wink. “I like those better.”

“Right. Note to self; find a candy store ASAP.”

I watch her go, and the moment she slides into the table the girls around her burst out laughing. My brain automatically assumes they’re laughing about me (too tall, too big, too crass), until I remember they probably have better things to talk about - like fashionable handbags and Qing dynasty China and going to Ivy League colleges. Fucking hell - who cares what anyone says about me? I’m not here for me. It’s just…seven months sure is a long time to be here for not-me.

Mom’s face, her teary smile as she waved me off at the airport.

I’ll make it, somehow. I’ll make it if I have to drag myself up a cliff by my fingernails.

I shovel pasta in my mouth and dump my bowl in the washing bin as fast as I can.

I’m still not used to the massive polished-wood halls that echo your every fart, the gold leaf on the wallpaper, the quartz-shot marble around the windows. I walk around with my jaw open so much I’m surprised a damn fly hasn’t flown down my esophagus. Who am I kidding - flies don’t exist here. Such a huge, decadent place, all of it just to teach rich people’s kids. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say this is unfair. I mean, it is unfair. Capitalism is a sharty little bitch. But as I watch kids in uniform walk by laughing and taking selfies, smoking juuls on the lawn behind trees, I realize they don’t care about the gold-leaf wallpaper, or the Oxford professors, or five-star meals handmade by a chef.

This is just normal to them. This is just how they live.

And that’s what really blows my mind. Precious, expensive, important things are just a part of their normal, every day existence.

So what - when they have all the money in the world - do they consider precious? What does ‘special’ mean for them? Sure, there are scholarship students who’re normal people, but for most of these kids, they won’t have to worry about anything for the rest of their lives. Everyone here is smart, full-stop. They’ve had tutors since diapers. But if they can’t get into the exact college they want, I’m sure Mommy and Daddy will buy their way in. Even after they’re done with school, their parents have access to enough wealth and influence to get them jobs. Good ones. And even if they don’t get jobs, Mommy and Daddy will give them money for rent so they’ll never be homeless, or go hungry.

I wonder what it’s like - to be that secure?

The kids here…their future is so certain. The total opposite of the rest of us, of me, whose Mom is killing herself taking extra shifts just to pay off the school she attended to get the job in the first fuckin’ place. They’ve never had to worry about missing rent or the electricity being turned off or beans and rice and hot dogs five nights a week for dinner, have they?

I freeze. But Mom…she married Will. Which means I’m one of them now, aren’t I? Until Mom and Will divorce. Not that I want that, but. I know the statistics. They got a pre-nup because Mom insisted on it, which means she doesn’t get anything after it’s over. I’m one of these rich kids until Mom and Will divorce, or until he hits her -

C’mon. He wouldn’t do that. Try to trust people, maybe, idiot.

‘Daddy wouldn’t do that to you, honey. You’re the most important thing in my life.’

If I close my eyes, I can feel his hands on my back, and the push. The push that ruined my life. Ruined me.

I focus on a massive oil painting of a gentle hill, a rising sun, and breathe. One step at a time. But the answer still remains all around me, without a single question ever being asked.

People lie. And sometimes, it even sounds sincere.

Sometimes, it even makes you feel safe.

From somewhere down the hall, someone’s singing interrupts my dark thoughts. It’s a smooth voice, a gentle voice.

“Make new friends but keep the old…”

The massive wooden hall echoes every syllable eerily, crisp and yet quiet. It’s a kid’s song. Sung by a guy my age, it sounds like, with a slightly British accent. That’s a Girl Scout song, isn’t it? An American Girl Scout song. At least, that’s where I know it from.

It’s just a song.

So why does it sound so creepy?

It’s the big halls, isn’t it? It’s the fact no one’s here but me. I can’t see the person singing it, but I can see their shadow hanging around the corner. My height. A dark blue Silvere blazer cuff on their arm, the one part of him that sticks around the corner. Long hands, elegant fingers. He’s just standing there. Singing.

“…One is silver and the other’s gold.”

I don’t know why. Or how. But the man in the restaurant - that impossible red-eyed man - rears his head in my mind. He tried to sing. Maybe not this song, but a song.

It’s just a student. Just a rich kid. Just a guy, singing listlessly.

But a cold, sick feeling tightens in my stomach, and I leave the hall as fast as I can.

10

THE BRIDGE (OR, HOW MAGIC IS THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS ANYMORE)

PARIS, SIX MONTHS AGO

A golden-haired boy smokes a cigarette and sits cross-legged on the railing of a bridge overlooking the Seine.

He’s hungover. He hasn’t been home for four days now. He’s been to loud clubs, to louder bars, to quiet cafes, to people’s apartments where the quiet is filled with the moans of little deaths. To the uptown and downtown, to the old and new arrondissements - he’s been everywhere. His parents never notice, nor do they care - as evidenced by his cold, unmoving phone and the empty flat filled with bottled water and vodka and not much else.

This is not all true, he admits to himself. His phone indeed moves; it buzzes with texts and missed calls begging him to come and party. To come and visit. To come. Wanted, longed after. Attention. But none of it from the people he wants.

The summer lights of Paris burn like acid, tonight.

Because he knows.

He knows no matter how many beautiful creatures ply his bed, no matter how well freely-offered drugs distort reality with colors and shapes and noises, he knows now magic will never be real. This is the end. He’s tried everything. Searching every high, every low. When the distracting ride is over, gray normalcy always waits for him in the doorway back to reality, like an aging, disappointed father.

He’s held on to that shadow, that white deer, for so long. Refused to consider it was wrong. He saw what he saw with his own two eyes, and nothing can ever change that. Not time. Not Alistair telling him children like to play make-believe. Nothing. He thought he could hold on to the shadow and the deer forever, no matter what it took. But hope is a dangerous thing to keep a hand on, full of hidden thorns. They’ve pricked and bled him for so long. He’s anemic for magic. Sick for it. So many months of waiting. Of watching. Of going back to Silvere year after year and staring into the dark woods for any sign of movement. Any sign of those red eyes, of white hooves.

Nothing.

Magic came, and then abandoned him.

He watches the water rushing below and thinks; in the next world, will there be magic? There’s none here. There’s nothing but people and buildings and lies here. Humans so desperate for escape they drown themselves in booze and chemicals. He thinks, for a moment, everyone is like him. Everyone wants magic to be real. And yet somewhere on the road of life everyone’s grip on that belief is crushed by the iron fingers of reality.

But unlike everyone else, he has not given in. He’s not weak like them. He’s not let go. He’s not loosened his grip on it, not once.

Until now.

It hit him, in the strobe lights of a club at 4 a.m. The ecstasy had worn off, in more ways than one, and he’d looked around him and saw the crowd for what it really was - not angels of neon with a hundred eyes and singing hands, not horned creatures with glittering skin, but humans. People, sweat-soaked and desperate to forget their worries.

Him, too.

You’re not special, the blacklight had crooned. There is nothing special in this world. It is all smoke and mirrors. Light and shadow. There’s only life ahead of you, the only race that feels so terribly dull and slow.

He leans forward, letting the cigarette fall out of his mouth. It spirals towards the water, red-hot end twinkling like a meteor until cold steel drowns it.

He teeters.

He teeters.

He teeters.

On the edge between despair and hope.

11

THE DINNER (OR, HOW BEING EVIL IS EASY)

According to the snoozefest of a book Von Arx gave me, every student at Silvere has six periods. Just six. And here I am, cursed to have 12 a year.

Hah! Ha-ha.

Objectively perfect jokes aside, there are only three periods a day here at Silvere - the evens on Mondays and Wednesdays, and the odds on Tuesdays and Thursdays, with alternating Fridays. Which means my next period - sixth period - frees me from the stuffy chateau and inflicts me on nature. I walk past the exercise field in which they’re most definitely playing Un-Football a.k.a soccer, past the manure-scented horse field and to what Ana called the ‘general’ field. On the very end of the perfectly green and perfectly rectangular stretch someone’s set a bunch of multicolored hay targets up. A little wooden stand holds a bunch of dark bows and quivers stuffed with arrows. The bows are so high-tech they look more like James Bond gadgets - all tension wires and weird gears.

I do a quick head count; only four people, teacher included. Obviously this ain’t the most popular P.E. class - not compared to swimming, with its pool full to the brim with splashing students. The teacher - Ms. Soyon - has massive hands and a fresh smile and straw hair wilder than the wind. When she takes off her jacket to demonstrate proper bow drawing form to me, I try and fail not to ogle her incredibly defined shoulder muscles. Jesus Christ, I’m gay. Well, half-gay. Maybe. Nobody knows jackshit about what I am, what neat little box I’m supposed to fit into, least of all me. I don’t know any French and she doesn’t know very much English, but that doesn’t stop us.

“Archery is not single force,” She says, smiling wide. “The string moves when you move, but is not the mechanism. I teach you to move the string, but you learn to move the arrow.”

“Okay. Uh, I mean,” I wince. “Oui, madame.”

A snide ribbon of laughter ripples through the other three students at my terrible accent, but Ms. Soyon’s face just brightens. She turns and fires the bow, the arrow whistling across the grass at breakneck speed and landing on a distant target, smack dab in the little red center. The four other people ‘ooo’ a bit.

I sigh dreamily. “I love watching women succeed at everything they do.”

“Um.” A guy next to me irritates in perfect English. “Men exist too?”

“Theoretically.” I pick up a bow and immediately try to draw the string, but it doesn’t budge. It looks like a string, feels like a string, but it might as well be a bag of bricks.

“Oh!” Ms. Soyon thunders over the grass towards me. “Not that. That string is for experience.” She hands me another bow. “This one for easier.”

I aim the bow and Ms. Soyon flutters around me, adjusting my stance, my shoulders, even my chin with her firm hands. When she’s finally satisfied, she stands back and beams with expectation, motioning to the only unused target on the line.

“Move your eye to the red, and draw.”

Determined not to look weak in front of this amazing warrior-woman, I suck in a breath and pull the string back with all my might. It’s just a color. Just red, Lilith. Like a crayon, or an apple. Something nice. Not blood. Not -

Unholy vampire shit - pulling this bow is like trying to pull apart a spring-loaded bear trap.

“G-God.” I pant. “You do this every day?”

“And many nights! Sometimes in Olympics!” Ms. Soyon pats me on the back and laughs, except her idea of a pat sends me plummeting face-first into the ground. I wasn’t ready for herculean strength which, honestly, my bad. The other students try to smother their cackling and fail miserably. Ms. Soyon ignores them, boisterously helping me up with a string of apologies.

“Wow,” I right myself. “That is some tasty grass.”

“Very sorry,” Soyon brushes her massive hand over my back to get the green bits off. “I did not think -”

“It’s okay,” I assure her. “Tres bien. Seriously. As far as eating shit experiences go, that was a pretty pleasant one. Not even one concrete. Or dog dookie.”

Soyon cuts a stern look to the giggling students, and they quiet down and go back to shooting their bows. And thus ends my first flirtation with archery. After another half-hour of pure tricep torture, I’m covered in raw fingerskin and sweat. My arms quiver like crazy, and all I did was try to draw the bow a few times. I thought this’d be a get-out-of-P.E-free card! Think again, silly bitch.

I can’t be pissed at myself for long, though - not when the sunset washes the campus in a silky peach-jam glaze. I turn and watch the gold medallion of the sun slide below the hills. People push busily past me, all of them sweaty and hungry and used to it, used to this breath-taking view, so utterly used to it they just turn their backs on it. But the sunlight melting like a pat of butter into the dark, severe jigsaw mountains, the black-veined trees reaching out gilded leaves…I can’t just ignore it. This sky is so fuckin’ clear. There’s no smog, and the light pollution from the tiny village nestled in the valley below the school doesn’t do diddly to hide the sky. You never see trees like this in LA - hell, you never see stars like this in LA. They glow like diamonds up here, like the god of beauty threw glittering fistfuls of precious gems on a stretch of ice-blue velvet just for me.

But when the sun finally disappears is when the sky truly decides to go off.

“Fuckin’ hell,” I whisper through awe-clenched teeth.

Color seeps into the twilight sky. Light, sweet colors. Wavy bands of luminous violet and emerald stretch across the heavens. Those…have to be auroras, right? I thought they only showed up near the poles? They’re not as bright as the pictures I’ve seen but they’re wispy and here, and they’re real, and they look like the tails of ghost dragons.

The sky never looks like this in LA.

I’m pretty sure it doesn’t look like this anywhere else in the world. This is a fairy tale. A movie. Something too perfect and beautiful to exist. I rub my eyes, check my glasses to make sure I haven’t smeared anything. Nope. Still there. I snap a picture on my phone, even if the machine eye only does it half-justice, and send it to Ruby.

“I told you, didn’t I?”

I’m so mesmerized I barely look over at the voice - Trevino. She stands next to me, uniform still spotless even after a full day of school. I’m sweaty and oily and she looks as fresh as if she’s just woken up. How does she do it? Miracles? Baby powder? The world will never know. The gentle night wind plays with her sheet of ash-brown hair as she presses on.

“Silvere is a special place.”

“Why’s that?” I ask. Trevino sighs softly.

“It’s a place to escape. To get out from under the thumb of our parents’ expectations. Society’s expectations,” She looks up at the aurora. “It’s a place where we can become our own person without the pressure of countless eyes watching us.”

“None of the eyes,” I agree. “But still all the wealth and luxury.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” She shoots me a look, the remnants of sunset highlighting some gorgeous amethyst streaks in her irises. I try and fail not to be entranced.

“Nothing,” I wrap my arms around my knees. “It’s just, you make being rich sound bad. And I can’t stand that self-pitying shit.”

“Is that all you can see?” Trevino scoffs under her breath. “The money?”

“Hard not to,” I jerk my thumb back behind me. “When you’ve got all these chateaus and chefs.”

Is this…fighting? Are we fighting? I don’t fight with people - I avoid them. I know Trevino doesn’t like me - she made that clear after class. So why’s she standing here with me, talking with me?

“So, uh. What does your family do?” I ask. Trevino raises one finely plucked brow.

“Family?”

“Yeah.” I nod. “Everyone here like, leads with what their family does, instead of their names. Or where they’re from. It’s weird. So I figured you -”

“I’m a scholarship student.” She cuts me off.

“Oh.” I pluck a blade of grass. “That’s why you know so much shit in Econ.”

“I do not ‘know’ so much ‘shit’,” She repeats disdainfully.

“How’dya explain the chain-hand-raising you do in class, then?”

I’ve got her on that one, and she knows it. Trevino sighs, folding her arms over chest.

“How else is one supposed to stand out in a place like this?”

“Oh, I dunno. Couple Chanel bags might do the trick.” I tease. “One on each arm.”

I make a motion like I’m carrying double-heavy bags on each bicep, my nose high in the air. Trevino doesn’t give a single twitch - her expression pure steel.

“And actually, what the fuck is up -” I start. “- with everyone referring to each other by their last names?”

“Etiquette,” Trevino deadpans. “Specifically international business etiquette. First name basis is for family and close friends only.”

“Freakin’ weirdoes,” I mutter.

“‘Weirdoes’ only because it’s not your way of doing things.” She corrects stonily.

I half-expect her to leave any second. But she just stays, her spotless white tights at my eye-level as she stares up at the aurora. It’s not like I’m looking up her skirt, but with so much light from the sky, and my angle slightly beneath her, it’s easy to see the faintly raised, parallel lines on her thighs. I know that pattern.

Cutting.

I swallow hard. It was a thing, back in middle school. Mariah started cutting in the bathrooms during recess. Everybody knew her mom was super religious and super strict. Then Jasmine started, and Selena. AJ wore sweatbands on their wrists, but we all knew. It moved through eighth grade like wildfire, and then once we hit Freshmen year it all seemed to stop. But I knew better. They weren’t stopping; they were just hiding it better. I’d never tried - I was too much of a coward. Maybe ‘coward’ isn’t the right word. Maybe my life just wasn’t as shitty as theirs. Maybe I just wasn’t hurting enough on the inside to try.

The lump in my throat hardens. Maybe, at the end of the day, pain doesn’t care about how much money someone has.

Maybe, when you’re rich, the only difference is that the closets you hide in are a little bigger.

“Hey - I’m sorry.” I exhale. “That was my bad. Weirdoes was a shitty thing to say.”

Trevino’s quiet, and then she turns and walks off with a snort. “You really don’t belong here.”

“Was it the dirty shoes that gave it away?” I drawl after her. “Or the lack of a second language?”

She flips her lustrous hair over her shoulder without looking back.

“It was the apology.”

TREVINO HAS a point - no one actually apologizes here.

Now that she’s said it, I start to notice it. One of the French words for ‘sorry’ is ‘pardon’. But the only people I’ve heard it from are teachers. Even now, as I follow the dinner crowd into the Knight Roux building - the cafe tables dressed with red cloth and fine porcelain and lit with soft candles - a guy bumps into me from behind. Hard. I whirl to apologize to him immediately, but he’s already long gone. Oblivious? Hungry? Or just plain ol’ rude?

I look around for Ana, for a single lifeline in the uncaring crowd, but her table’s full of those girls again. Fantastic. I’ve never wanted anything more in life than to eat a super-formal dinner with absolute strangers.

Just then, I feel a tug on my sleeve. It’s the red-haired girl from this morning. She motions to the seat next to her.

“You can sit here.”

“Thanks.” I slide into the chair. “Hope the rest of your day wasn’t as bad as this morning.”

“It was awful,” She frowns. “But it’s nice of you to ask.”

Not ‘thank you’ for asking. But ‘it’s nice’. Two more students and a professor sit at our table, filling it up to the brim. They pass around the bread basket, none of them ever saying the words ‘thank you’ out loud - in English or in French. It’s just faint smiles. Trevino was on to something. They don’t say thank you here. And they don’t apologize. It’s not like they’re openly rude - they still smile and nod and make the polite gestures. But none of them admit fault or extend gratitude directly or openly, and definitely not first. Is this a cultural thing? No - if it was cultural we’d all be reacting differently. It’s absolutely 100% just a Silvere thing.

‘What the fuck’, I mouth into my bowl of soup.

“Do try to sit up straight when you’re eating, Miss Pierce,” The professor says. “It shows your figure properly.”

Because I am a paragon of forgiveness I substitute ‘Keep your eyes on your own titties, hag’ with; “How did you know my name?”

“It’s a small school,” She says, daintily ripping her bread into a bite-sized piece. “Most of the students here have been on the enrollment list since birth. You are the one exception.”

“Wait,” I put my spoon down. “Since they were born born? I can’t be the only one who’s ever transferred in, right?”

“Silvere is highly selective,” The professor sips her red wine. “We screen each applicant thoroughly, and the scholarship students are never accepted at any other time than the beginning of fourth year. Some students have been on the waiting list for years, but have never been accepted, and certainly never with test scores as low as yours. You, Miss Pierce, are quite the, well. The anomaly.” She reaches over for a crystal decanter and smiles at me. “Would you like some wine?”

I glower at the onions in my soup. The hidden message behind her wrinkly gaze is clear; I should be grateful I got in. I should be grateful to be sitting here, eating little ice-cream-like ovals of lobster puree dotted with fancy vinaigrette and micro-greens. I should be grateful to be offered wine by her, an esteemed professor at a prestigious school. I should be grateful to be laughed at and sneered at. I don’t belong here, and so I should be grateful.

“Nah,” I swallow a lump. “I’m good.”

“It’s not illegal in Switzerland, you know,” She laughs. “You won’t get arrested, or thrown in jail, or any such thing.”

“I know - !” Anger makes me fast and loud and everyone at the table startles. I flush and force my voice lower. “I know that.”

The professor nods airily. “Very well. Borbeau? Would you like some wine? Thirteen is certainly old enough.”

The red-haired girl holds out her glass. “I’m fourteen, actually.”

“Ah, fourteen, then.”

How is it possible to be this embarrassed and also still be confused on what exactly I’m embarrassed about? She made me feel like a kid with her tone, all sixteen years of my living reduced to nothing in a split-second. Whatever. I’m not here to impress cobweb-infestations like her.

I crane my neck around at the other tables; I spot my calculus professor sitting with Trevino, who eats as gracefully as a well-trained swan. It looks like there’s one professor to each table, correcting the manners of the students offhandedly. Not that any of them need much correcting - they fold their napkins good and slurp soup good and I’m obviously the only glaring error. They’ve had years to practice and I’ve had a full eight hours.

The sound of gentle conversation and barely-clinking silverware wafts in the air. Von Arx herself sits at a table towards the front, dressed in a stunning shimmery lavender gown with her hair pulled up in an elegant bun. I sure as shit didn’t get the memo to dress up like it’s prom, but okay. You do you, oldie. Alistair sits at her table, too, his cronies on either side of him. At least he has the good sense to keep his fucking boots off the table this time around. Maria’s small fingers look even smaller clutching the stately silverware. And I mean, of course, actual silver-ware, the sort that’s gotta be polished once in a while or it’ll lose varnish. Thanks, Will, for that tidbit of rich-people info.

Rafe eats with a gusto Von Arx loves to snap at as much as she loves to smile at Alistair winsomely - that same pleased smile she flashed at Lionel when she greeted him. I expect McStick-Up-His-Ass to ignore her. But Alistair smiles back. Like, forreal. He grins at her like he means it - barely-there and honest - and it’s like seeing a fish fly. Who knew he had the facial muscles to do anything but megafrown? Not me. Not anybody. Except Von Arx, apparently.

I’m not, like, stalking him or anything, but I can’t help but notice his plate is already clean. Too clean. His napkin’s in his lap, but his silverware’s untouched, like he doesn’t plan to eat. All he does is take sips of water every so often, rimming the glass with one long finger absently.

I scoff under my breath. “Is the food not good enough for your highness?”

My grumbling stops the moment I spot Ciel sitting at a table with three other chittering girls, all of them blushing as they ask him questions. Ah, shit on a buttermilk biscuit. He’s popular. Of course he is - if he could win over a choosy gremlin like me, he can win over anyone. Even the professor at his table is charmed by him; a glazed look in his eyes. The candlelight glints off Ciel’s golden hair as he calmly and perfectly eats, talking with a low voice. The occasional soft smile of his smooth lips stops my heart cold. I whip my phone out to not-creepily record the moment forever.

“Miss Pierce?” The professor at my table clears her throat, angling her big pompous head directly into my camera. “This is a time for etiquette, not social media. Let’s have a direct conversation, shall we? What do you like to do in your free time?”

“I like to look at myself in the mirror and say ‘You’re the funniest person alive’. It gets me up in the morning. And at night.” I pause. “I’m pretty much constantly worried about being funny.”

“Anything else?” The professor’s brow twitches minutely. “Anything a little more…structured? Or relatable?”

“I eat a lot of garlic,” I say. “To keep both men and vampires away.”

“Good. Right.” She looks up at the rest of the table, slightly desperate. “Anyone else?”

A boy at our table chokes down his lobster and offers timidly; “I do tennis.”

“Tennis! A lovely sport. Do you enjoy it?” I reach for the salt, and the professor’s voice does a complete 180. “Pierce, we do not salt our food. It’s an insult to the chef.”

“Then why do you put the shaker on the table?”

The other students look at the professor curiously, and she blusters. “Well, obviously, for decoration.”

I nod like I understand when I abso-fucking-lutely do not. The professor mercifully starts talking the boy’s ear off about Wimbledon’s many bouncing balls. Next to me, Borbeau giggles.

“You eat garlic to keep men away? Does that mean you’re a lesbian?”

“Yes?” I pause. She’s one of those people who say lesbian like it’s a bad thing. “No. Maybe? Girls are pretty. Honestly, I dunno. I’m just here to party.”

She laughs again. “You sound like Gabe.”

“Gabe,” I repeat. “That’s the groundskeeper guy from this morning?”

Borbeau nods. She doesn’t start to tear up at the mere mention of him, which is an improvement from this morning, but her smile is oddly rueful. She leans in to me and whispers around her napkin.

“We’re dating.”

“Dating.” I repeat.

“Dating!” She sighs happily. “He’s fired now so it’s going to be harder to see him, but he’s promised to come visit me. On the weekends he takes me down to the village, and we eat bread and fruit in the fields and…you know.” She goes red down to her neck. “He’s very sweet.”

You know. I know? I do not know. I have no clue what sex is, or what it consists of other than bumping uglies in the theoretically vague Ken doll-esque, embarrassing-movie-sex-scene-you’re-forced-to-watch-with-your-family-oops sense, but I know for sure when someone’s alluding to it. Comes with the territory of turning fifteen one day and noticing keenly just how omnihorny everybody got overnight.

The gears in my head start to grind to a halt. I remember Gabe’s face - how could I not? Thin eyebrows, blood running down his nose and into his beard from Alistair’s punch. Wait - he had a full-blown bushy beard. He’s employed here. He had crow’s feet around his eyes and a career and -

I look over at the still-blushing Borbeau. She’s fourteen. What’s the hell is a full grown man doing with a fourteen-year-old?

Horror creeps up on me, bit by slithering bit. I adjust my glasses rustily and turn my gaze to Alistair, to his place at Von Arx’s table. That’s why Borbeau defended Gabe this morning. That’s why she beat on Alistair’s back furiously, that’s why she dumped juice on him. And I cheered her on. For a flash of a second, Alistair’s dark, green-shot eyes meet mine between the dinner crowd. They flicker over to Borbeau, to me, and then he rolls them tiredly.

That’s why Alistair Strickland punched that guy’s lights out.

He wasn’t beating the shit out of someone more powerless than him for fun.

He was beating the shit out of a pedo.

12

THE FOREST (OR, HOW MANY STEPS YOU CAN COUNT BETWEEN YOU AND THE PERSON YOU WANT TO BE)

“Hi, Alistair,” I breathe deep and pull my favorite oversized knit sweater on, the one I got from Goodwill with letters across the chest that say I NEED PIZZA OR I WILL DIE. “So I’ve been doing some thinking, which is something I try not to do too often -” I yank on sinfully comfy rainbow fuzzy socks. “- and I’ve come to the conclusion that maybe I was…that maybe I was…” I hiss the syllables slowly into the mirror with utmost pain. “…wrrrr-oooon-ggguh.”

The girl with the oversized sweater and rainbow fuzzy socks and no pants on stares back at me, the letters on her chest backwards and making no sense and her underwear three years old with a hole in the side because she refuses to let her step-dad take her ‘shopping’. Her black glasses are huge against her zit-scattered face - like some drunk pilot went on a crop-dusting pus bender. Her blond bob looks like a mop that’s soaked up a bunch of rain puddles in an oily parking lot.

What a catch.

“Wrong? You?” Ruby laughs from my phone resting against my dresser. She finally answered my Facetime after dinner and I caught her up on everything that happened today. “You’re Lilith Pierce. You’re never fucking wrong.”

“We are wrong,” I say slowly and imperiously as I attempt to salvage my hair by yanking it up in the usual messy, gotta-concentrate tiny bun. “Sometimes.”

“What if this Gabe guy just looks old for his age? What if he’s like, actually 19? That’s not so bad.”

“It’s all bad,” I hiss at her. “Anyone who messes with high school girls and isn’t in high school themselves is a 100% bonafide predatory creep.”

“Yeah, no, you’re right.” She agrees with a sigh, painting her nails slowly on her desk. “Welp, put your big girl pants on, then. You’ve got some apologizing to do.”

“To whomst?”

“Whomst do you freakin’ think? That Alison guy.”

“I will die a thousand noble deaths by the sword - !” I yank on one leg of my jeans then the other, sticking my legs way out like I’m kicking someone. “- before I apologize to that prickhole Prickland!”

“Stop.”

“He grabbed my wrist, Ruby! And like, held me there!”

“You were running in the halls. How else was he supposed to stop you - a javelin?”

“Uh, his voice maybe?”

“You don’t listen to voices.”

I consider this. “Yes, but people shouldn’t grab other people! Especially people named me!”

“Did you tell him you have a no-touching rule?”

“Yeah!”

“With your mouth? And your words?”

I flinch. “N-No. But like any functional human, he shoulda picked up on my body language! Also, do I still have a no-touching thing?”

“Of course you do.” Ruby exhales. “Remember what happened with Ethan in P.E. last year?”

I groan. “His mom still hasn’t stopped glaring at me every time I see her in the grocery store.”

“It’s fine. Everything turned out fine.” She hand-waves it off, black polish gleaming. “He always wanted plastic surgery on his nose, anyway.”

“But!” I blurt. “But this Ciel guy - Ruby, he caught me from falling on the stairs and I didn’t - I didn’t freak at all, Ruby. Like, period. I was totally fine! No panicking or urge to punch or anything!”

“Hrmmm.” She taps her chin. “That’s a good sign. Maybe you’re getting over it.”

“Or maybe…” I lead. “Maybe he’s special.”

She grunts. “More investigating required.”

“Okay. Fine. But I want to make it clear I am not apologizing to Prickland. Ever. Talking to him is like talking to a pincushion with all the pins facing out. Apologizing would be like using it for a back massager.”

“Oh, quit acting so above it all. Like you wouldn’t have joined in on punching that creepy Gabe dude this morning if you knew the truth about him?”

“No! Of course not!” I pause. “I would’ve gotten a baseball bat, first.”

Ruby’s grin is huge. “That’s my girl.”

“I love you,” I sigh.

“Gross,” She laughs. “I’m hanging up now. Text me more pictures of that place, okay?”

“Why? You hate landscape pictures.”

“Not anymore! I’ve started a new aesthetic Insta. The username is my-friend’s-very-cool-trip-to-Europe-without-me.”

“Ruby…” I groan. “It’s not a trip. I like, live here now.”

“Physically,” She agrees. “But spiritually you’re always here with me. That’s why I have that envelope with your hair in it, remember?”

She pans the camera to the aforementioned envelope tacked to her corkboard. I exhale wistfully.

“I miss you. All they talk about here is, well…I don’t actually get what they talk about here, because it’s in French.”

“They’re not aliens. It’s probably the same shit we talk about; death and college.”

“And girls. And sometimes boys. If they’re pretty. How’s Anthony Nguyen, by the way?”

She gets all bashful. “Ew, now I’m really hanging up.”

“Bye!”

“Remember,” She adds at the last second, her mouth so pressed-up against the phone it aggressively crackles her voice. “You can’t expect people to know how you feel about shit unless you tell them.”

“Yeah,” I mumble. “Yeah, okay.”

“Love you,” She chirps. “Bye-bye.”

Nothing like an hour-long Facetime to your best friend to make your chest seem lighter. I feel stupid for being so homesick. No matter how much I bitch and whine, I’m not really alone, am I? Ruby and I, Mom and I - we’re still on the same planet, still under the same sky. Even if my view of the sky right now is a lot fancier than theirs.

As always, Ruby’s got a point. Everybody at Northview knew not to touch me unexpectedly. Or at all. I was - quite fuckin’ literally - untouchable. I only got out of trouble with punching the daylights out of Ethan because he refused to let go and also Mom talked to the principal for three hours. But here at Silvere, I have to start all over again. Build that reputation again from the ground up, and without getting sued by ultra-rich family lawyers.

It sounds exhausting. But maybe…maybe I won’t need to build from scratch. Maybe Ciel will fix it. Fix the broken part of my brain. Not like, totally. Nobody can fix things totally. That’s impossible. But maybe just being around him will get me used to it again.

It.

I laugh despairingly and shake my head. Who am I kidding? I’m so fucked up. Messed up deep down where it counts.

I stuff my phone in my pocket and leave my room. Ana’s door is closed, and I pause just before I slide the homework beneath her door crack. The dark thoughts start to crawl up my neck, into my ears. They come like a wave, like a snake, like a curl of fog on a windless day. Why has Ana been so friendly? Why is she so friendly with me already? Who would do extra work for someone they just met? It doesn’t make any sense. She could just be nice, maybe.

Or she could be planning something.

What does she get out of this? Nothing. She can’t be this nice. Not this fast. No one is. Or if they are, they’re just using that niceness as a mask. An angle to stab you from when you least expect it.

No, c’mon brain. We talked about this.

I know it’s paranoid. I know it doesn’t make any sense. But it still lingers in my shaking fingers, in the trembling French words on the paper. Google translate exists, and I can’t depend on her forever. Or at all. Even if she’s not trying to get an angle on me, once she figures out what I’m really like - how immature and anxious and paranoid and fucked-up I am - she probably won’t wanna be my friend for much longer. I don’t like seeing blood. I don’t like getting touchy. There’s plenty of girls to be friends with who are much easier. Friendlier. If I can’t do this much my own, it just means I’m relying on others. And that always comes back to bite me in the ass.

Weak.

I stuff the homework in my pocket and take the spiral stairs two at a time down to Alistair-Dickhead-Strickland’s Funtime Chopping Block, AKA detention.

The campus looks totally different at night - all the green grass turning into long stretches of dark silk. The air smells piercingly like fresh flowers and dew. The auroras still hang iridescent in the sky, even brighter now that it’s gotten darker, and I swallow a gasp. People meander back and forth, their stuffy uniforms abandoned for casual clothes at last. Well, as casual as you can get with the words BALENCIAGA and TOM FORD splashed everywhere. What’s up with couture and names in huge capital letters? It’s like they don’t want you to take a shit without remembering how expensive what you’re wearing is. It’s so status-symbol-y. So tacky. Everywhere I look, some brand name screams out at me on t-shirts, jackets, hats - even freakin’ socks. A guy walks by absolutely covered in brand names and I clear my throat politely.

“Are they…are they paying you for that advertising?”

“More than Pizza Hut is paying you,” The guy says, wrinkling his face at my sweater like it smells.

“This is - !” I splutter. “This is handmade! It’s art, you swine! You cretin! You absolute buffoon!”

He doesn’t stick around to hear my excellent retort slash insult, zooming away on a hoverboard. Ana was right - sometimes this place really is more like a display case than a school. I exhale, my bangs fluttering rebelliously, but the whole world’s too pretty right now to be peeved. The four chateaus look like giant boats floating on a grass sea, their windows warm gold squares of light. And then there’s Knight Durand. From certain angles you can see one of its spires peeking up from the trees, broken and mossy, it’s empty windows catching starlight and glittering black. Like eyes.

Like teeth.

I shake the creepy thought out and trudge towards Knight Augustin, dreading every too-fresh breath of air. Gaggles of students leisurely walk the campus in an attempt at freedom before curfew kicks in at ten-thirty. Between the lazy crowd, I spot a flash of gold. Gold hair, lit by the soft lampposts lining the walkways. It’s far off, but I squint - Ciel. Ciel for sure.

My heart does a backflip by its ventricles, and I catch myself freezing up and staring at him. He’s staring too - not at me, but into the deep, dark woods that surround the school. His silvery eyes fixate into the pine-brush shadows with a quiet intensity. He’s not looking at Knight Durand - the only thing that’s in the forest to stare at, really. He’s looking everywhere but at Durand. It feels like he’s searching for something, for the smallest sign. Can he see something I can’t? Does he know something about the woods I don’t?

I try to look where he’s looking, but there’s nothing. Just darkness and whispering tree branches.

Maybe you should leave the guy in peace, Lilith. Like a normal person would.

Point taken, brain-voice. I trudge towards Knight Augustin again, this time at double speed to warm my knee up. It’s weirdly comforting to see couples walking around, holding hands, sneaking in PDA - just like Northview. Just like any high school. Theoretically, this place would be perfect for romantic walks. The lights, the architecture, the flowers, the fountains.

I smirk. “I can always take myself here on dates, I guess.”

Realistically, that’s the only date I’m ever going to get. I know from three years of personal high school observation; guys like average height girls who are cute and sweet. Conventionally pretty. Girls like average height girls, who are cute and sweet and conventionally pretty. Everybody does. And here I am. My eyes are too heavy-lidded, my cheeks too round. But more importantly I can’t seem to ever lower my voice. Can’t stop swearing. I argue. I’m dramatic. I talk about poo and piss too much. Who would want that, really? Like, really? Who would even want someone who can’t stand being touched? That’s the whole point of being in a relationship, isn’t it? To touch. Sex. Kissing. Shit, just hand-holding. Impossible, impossible hand-holding.

And even if someone didn’t mind the fact I can’t do all that stuff, hell, I’m picky. The chances that someone I like would like me back are slim to none. I don’t know math, but I know how gambling works. And if anybody came to my table I’d take them aside and say in all honesty; ‘The odds are pretty shitting miserable on this one, mate’. Or something. With or without the random Australian accent.

One to a million odds.

I look back at Ciel - that golden spot in the dark. I want to believe he could be the one. Not The One (because I’m not that fuckin’ naive, c’mon). Just. My one chance. Ugh. What am I even saying? I’m a whirlwind, I’m a storm, I’m a ghost. I believe in things with all my heart. I say the things I feel, I know the things I feel. I fight and I scratch and I bleed, and I never go down quietly. I never stay still. I don’t know how to be nice, or gentle, or kind - not the way people want. Not the way people think is right.

I’m not right.

It’s so easy for everybody else, isn’t it? I look around at the beautiful couples smiling at each other, squeezing each others’ hands and taking selfies. It’s so easy for them. Like someone, tell them you wanna get Starbucks together. Like someone, send ‘em a text asking to meet. Like someone, like their snap, talk in the dms. Like someone, just smile at them. Flirt with them. But it’s not that easy for me. Love isn’t easy. It arrives hard and blazing and screaming, or not at all. I want it to be easy. I want to be one of them, laughing together. Holding hands like it’s easy. Kissing like its easy. I want to fall in and out of love easily, without the world ending, without dying on the inside for the first and last time. I want someone kind. I want someone gentle. I want someone who, above all, understands me. Understands what it’s like to be a storm, and when to hold me until it passes. But who would do that, for a girl who can’t stop saying fuck? For a girl who makes piss jokes? For a girl who argues until she can’t anymore?

For a girl who can’t trust anyone?

Who would want to hold fire, when all it does is burn?

Save it for the pillow, Lilith.

The brain-voice is right. Again. Too much angst, not enough detention getting done and over with. I swallow and walk in the other direction, away from the couples. Away from Ciel. Away from what feels like hope.

Alistair’s easy to spot, even in the dark - towering over the hydrangea bushes, staring off into the distance quietly like a grumpy gargoyle. The wind ruffles the edges of his plain leather jacket and the plastic trash bags clenched in his fist. I stop in my tracks. His eyes aren’t those ready, unsheathed claws like I saw this morning. His silhouette gloams softly against the night, his proud nose and jaw outlined in light. For a second, by himself, with no one else around for him to glare or harp at, he looks almost…peaceful.

I inhale. “Hi -”

“No,” Alistair breaks the reverie by tossing a trash bag at my feet and immediately walking away. “We’re doing this without talking.”

“But!” I stumble after him, clutching the bag. “What if I have something important to say?”

“Then say it.”

“I -”

“To someone who cares.” He cuts me off. I fume. Elegantly. With a lot of hissing.

“You can’t act like you’re too cool for school when you’re currently walking inside of a school.”

He ignores me, moving fast towards the wooded back parts, where school lawn meets forest. Catching up to his long strides is torture in this cold air with my knee, but I grit my teeth and push on. It hits me for the millionth time just how many trees there are out here. Like, I saw Twilight. I knew trees and forests existed, like, hypothetically. The same hypothetical way you know other galaxies exist - through stories and pictures. Nobody tells you pine trees smell so fuckin’ good - like a million Christmases. A million night-darkened, slightly-creepy Christmases, but. Still. We stand outside the forest proper for a second, in from of the wall of Christmas trees, and then Alistair starts forward.

“We’re -” I stammer. “We’re going in?”

“That’s where the trash is, yes.” He drones. I follow, ducking under branches and around trunks. All the light from the campus disappears in here, swallowed up by bark and soil, the shadows moving as the wind moves and suddenly I get why cavemen invented fire - because this shit big scary.

Something in the dirt pulls my eye just then - many somethings, small and white and round.

“Are these…mushrooms?” I breathe. Another hypothetical I never saw growing up in LA, grocery stores aside. But they’re here now, in the wild. Peeking through the mulch of the pine-needle floor is a pitch-perfect circle of adorable white mushrooms, some caps big, others tiny, but all of them plump and round.

“Fairy ring,” I hear Alistair say ahead of me. “That’s what they call them when they grow in a circle like that.”

I straighten. “I’m surprised no one’s trampled it down yet.”

“Right,” He drones. “You’re American. Respect for nature is a new concept to you.”

“Or maybe you Europeans are just super-superstitious. Hellastitious.”

“I’m going to pretend - charitably, mind you - that you did not just say that.”

“You can try!” I crow. “But it was said. And I regret none of it!”

Alistair whirls to say something, but he cuts off, his gaze riveting over my shoulder. I glance behind me and bungee-jump outta my under-moisturized epidermis at the sight of two massive guys in suits suddenly standing there, perfectly still. When did they get here? Why didn’t I hear them? The forest floor’s littered with crackly branches.

“Is everything alright, Strickland?” One of the men asks. They both wear impenetrable black sunglasses - the ultra-douchey-especially-at-night kind. I thought Rafe was huge, and Alistair was tall, but these guys make them look like ants. They’re both moonshine-bald and nearly half as tall as the freakin’ tree they’re standing next to, their immaculate black suits straining at the seams to keep all their muscles in. They’re famous-basketball-player huge. Evolution-having-a-good-laugh huge. Security. These guys’ve gotta be the security Von Arx warned me about. They’re nothing like the polo wearing, visor-sunburned, beer-gut, distantly-related-to-the-principal guys who ride around in golf carts back at Northview. These guys are legit. The real freakin’ deal. Professionals in suits. Pro-fresh-ionals.

Alistair’s tone shifts suddenly; going crisp and quick, not an ounce of his usual tired drawl to be heard.

“We’re fine. I’m accompanying this student. She’s doing detention for running in the halls.”

One of the security guys looks between us for a long second, face unreadable and eyes completely obscured by those stupid sunglasses. Finally, he nods.

“You’re too close to Durand.”

Alistair slides his eyes over to him, gaze weirdly flat. “Am I?”

“Construction is still ongoing. The risk of falling debris is high,” The guard insists.

I squint into the woods - sure enough, Durand’s close; way closer than I thought. It looms like a skeleton, an empty ribcage with no organs, all its bones darkened by the night. I can see the path leading up to it, near-overgrown with wildflowers and blackberry thickets punctuated by half-rotten planks of wood and piles of discarded bricks. Broken glass glitters like scales at its mouth - the massive double doors the only wood still untouched by the moss. Suspiciously untouched. It’s clean as a whistle, while every other part of the chateau is rotting. And if it’s so ‘under refurbishment’, where are the machines? The cranes, the cement mixers, the trucks hauling stuff in and out? There isn’t a single tire mark on the overgrown path. Not a one. What the fuck?

“Noted,” Alistair drawls. “We’ll move ourselves.”

The security guys start lumbering towards us and I squeeze my eyes shut, waiting for them to break me in two with their pinkies. But they just walk right past, a faint flower scent following both of them. Rose? Definitely rose. Rose is one of those easy, unmistakable smells. The shadows of the forest swallow their inky black suits up quickly, and when I’m sure they’re not gonna lunge out of the trees at us, I turn to Alistair.

“Whew. Didn’t expect ‘em to be that big. Let’s hope they don’t get paid per pound of muscle, huh? Uh, wait. ‘Gram’. I meant gram.”

Alistair says nothing. And because I’m both beautiful and intelligent, I decide to poke the hornet’s nest.

“Even your security has a dress code, huh? Fancy suits and rose cologne.”

He snorts. “If you patrolled a well-maintained rose garden daily, you’d end up smelling somewhat like roses, too.”

“Somewhat? They fuckin’ reek of ‘em.”

“Your nose works surprisingly well.” He cuts. “Much better than your brain.”

“I’m good at sniffing people. Not-weirdly.”

“Like a dog.”

“Or,” I posit. “A cool superhuman with cool superpowers.”

Alistair ignores my self-compliment and strides waist-deep into the woods, the two of us leaving Durand behind - way behind - before he turns and throws me a pair of gardening gloves.

“You’ve got a half-hour. Make it count.”

He pulls his own gloves on and starts searching the ground - coming up with an empty soda bottle in seconds.

“You’re gonna clean too?” I ask, surprised.

“No, I’m going to pick it all up and dump it back on the ground when I’m done. Out of pure spite.”

“Wouldn’t put it past you,” I mutter, pulling my gloves on.

“We’ve established we know nothing about each other,” He says lightly, wild bangs shading his eyes as he bends down. “So maybe cool it with the insults.”

I glower and pick up an empty cigarette pack. Bend, pick. Bend, pick. I make sure not to get too close to him, always parallel so that if he tries any funny stuff, I’ll have time to dodge at least. With all this bending, and the fact it’s way colder in these mountains at night than I thought it’d be, my knee aches like its being stabbed. I should’ve worn my brace. And this is just October, still fall - it’s gonna get even worse over the winter! California has mild winters, but I’m pretty sure Switzerland doesn’t. Skiing is a big deal here. Which means being cold is a big deal. I swallow the pain as best I can until I notice my shoe laces are untied. Again? This school is cursed with bad shoelace karma. I bend over to tie them, but my knee stabs at me with a rusty knife.

I gasp softly. “Fucké.”

“You alright, new girl?” Alistair’s voice reverberates.

“Fine! Mother Nature tried to shank me with a thorn is all,” I say. I can’t show any weakness here - and definitely not in front of Prickland of all people. I might’ve called his nuts little in front of the entire school, but I’ve still got pride to maintain, damnit! Our shuffling footsteps and the puffs of our white breaths into the chilly air are the only things breaking the work-rhythm, and even with a bad-knee it’s kind of calming after the buttso nuttso first day I’ve had.

“What state?”

His voice ruins it all. I look wearily at Alistair, who’s collapsed on a stump nonchalantly, trash bag half-full at his feet.

“Pardon?” I say with an overwrought French accent. “What happened to doing this without talking?”

Alistair ignores me and tidily picks up a soda can. “The U.S. is a big place.”

“No shit, Sherlock. Or should I say no shit Poirot? He was Belgian, right? Like you.”

He massages the space between his eyebrows like he’s in pain. “I’m just trying to make friendly conversation, here.”

“So am I!”

“You’re terrible at it.”

“Thank you,” I smile.

“What state?” Alistair repeats.

“Mindyourownbusinessville.”

“Fascinating name,” He sighs. “Is it indigenous?”

“Everything over there is technically indigenous. We stole it from them, remember?” I pause. “Why do you care?”

“About colonialism? Historically, it’s been a serious problem -”

“About where I’m from,” I correct. He leans back, green eyes banded with iron and framed by the slightest shrug. Not even a shrug. More like a shoulder-twitch.

“New people are rare around here.”

“Okay, but I’m a person, not some holographic Pokemon card you can collect. So unkindly fuck off.”

He stands up from the stump (angry?) and I scrabble backwards, pine needles and leaves flying. My heart rabbits around in my chest, my knee throbbing at the effort. I tentatively look up at his face, the pale lavender aurora in the sky haloing his head. He’s stopped moving.

“Why -” He starts slowly. “- are you afraid of me?”

“I’m not.” It rolls off my tongue before I know how to stop it. I’m not afraid. Not of him, not of anyone. I’m not afraid of red. I’m not afraid of pain. I’m not afraid of people. I’m not. I’m stronger now.

I’m sixteen years old now, and I’m not afraid of anything.

Alistair takes another step forward with his boots and like a trap instantly snapping shut - like a fucked-up mirror image - my converse dart backwards. He tilts his head in an ‘I told you so’ way.

“Can we skip the doth protesting too much and get to the truth?”

“It’s because you beat Gabe up,” I stammer.

His mouth flattens. “And I’d do it again. He’s twenty-seven, and Borbeau’s a fourth year -”

“I know,” I interrupt. “I know that now. He’s…taking advantage of Borbeau. Like a fucking creep.”

“Then you know why I had to do it.”

“Yeah - pedos deserved to be punched. But why do it in front of everyone like that?”

“You’d prefer I privately break his nose? One-on-one?” He considers it, and then points a stray pinecone at me. “You know, you’re right. What’s really lacking from justice these days is an intimate atmosphere. Maybe next time I’ll light a nice candle, put on some smooth jazz -”

“No,” I wince. “Just…why the big audience?”

“Because,” He sighs. “It’s not just about punching him - it’s about sending a message to every other worm who’s thinking of trying it.”

“And what message would that be?”

“If you fuck with Silvere, you fuck with me.”

The light, unaffected boredom that naturally oozed out his pores a second ago is nowhere to be seen. His brows set hard. His easy features, his tired posture - all of it sharpens in the time it takes him to say that one sentence. He’s so serious. Drop-dead, ten-ton-heavy serious.

“Why get all serious about a school? Why is it so important to you?”

“That’s none of your business,” A snap works into his voice. So I pivot with another tactic.

“Borbeau hates your guts for what you did.”

He laughs, self-satisfaction flooding back into his expression. It’s the first time I’ve heard him laugh - the sound like metal-striking-metal. Harsh and quick.

“Sometimes doing the right thing means being hated, new girl. People don’t like taking their medicine, but they still have to.”

“But -”

He reaches into his breast pocket and pulls something out. It’s that small pad of paper I saw him write on earlier. He holds it up, flipping through the pages slowly. There’s dozens of names, all written in precise ink, all of them numbered. A list. He sees me looking.

“It’s a ledger. Of everyone who ‘hates’ me,” He says evenly. “I’ve done something to every one of them - reported their smoking, detention for being late, broken up their make-out sessions, and then there are the more serious crimes. Unsavory bits. I’ll spare you those.”

“Why would you -”

Let’s see,” he muses, then points to the end of it. “The most recent offenders. There’s Borbeau; ‘Beat up her pedo boyfriend’. Ah, there you are, Pierce. Your reason for hating me; ‘Completely unknown’.”

I’m quiet. He’s not.

“As far as I can tell, you’ve hated me the second you saw me. Before I gave you detention. Before anything. Usually it takes a little more than that for most people.”

“Why would you keep a list like that around?” I change the subject. He shrugs.

“It’s a nice reminder. And a convenient paper trail - if anything happens to me, the police have a perfect list of suspects. You included.”

“Why would anyone - what about what people think -”

“As long as Borbeau’s safe -” He cuts me off. “ - I could give a shit what people think.”

“You should. Give a shit.” I press. “Because if you keep making people hate you, one day you’re gonna end up all alone.”

“And how is that any different from now?”

The question is so quick, so heavy, I stagger. A hammer to the side of my head. Dizzying, unanswerable. I try anyway.

“You have Maria. And Rafe. They’re your friends -”

“Their families have a vested interest in my father’s company,” He cuts me off smoothly. “They’ve shadowed me since fourth year because their parents asked them to. They were asked to be my friend. And that’s not really a friend at all, is it?”

My mouth works faster than my brain; “Why?”

“They’re hoping I’ll put a good word in for them to my family. To the people my family knows. So, no. I don’t consider them friends. If anything, they’re parasites. I’m the host. And we’re in a mutually beneficial arrangement.”

“That’s -”

“Friendship isn’t a realistic concept,” He cuts me off again. “It’s for stories. For movies. In real life, people come and go. They take what they want from you, and then they leave. And that’s just the way things are.”

He says that like it’s fact. Like it’s a law of the universe written in steel and diamond - something that can never, ever be changed. I thought I was jaded, but he’s been dipped in the stuff from head-to-toe. I almost - thisclose to almost - feel sorry for him. Carrying around a list of people who hate you, thinking friendships are pointless…from anyone else, I’d say it reeks of edgelord. But the way he talks about it - the tiredness in his voice. The matter-of-fact, weather report way he lays it out. There’s not a hint of dramatic, or purposefully edgy. Just exhaustion.

“How full of shit are you?” Alistair asks abruptly.

I blink. “Full to the brim, pretty much always.”

“I meant your bag.”

“Oh. About halfway.”

“Then consider your time served,” He ties his bag closed. “Leave it there, and I’ll take it to the incinerator. Don’t let me catch you running in the halls again, or I’ll make you clean the rose maze next time.” When I give him a blank look, he adds; “The students like to leave their used condoms in there.”

I scoff and start to walk back to the dorm when I hear a shuffling in the pine needles behind me.

“New girl, your -”

I whirl around. He’s so close I can see the loose threads in his black jeans, the way the burn scar on his chest peeks through his collar and all I can remember are the bloodstains. The blood. Too close. Too sudden. My heart beats against the roof of my mouth.

Don’t give it away, Lilith. He’s still the fox waiting for you to come out of the tunnel. They all are. Act cool.

“What’s up?” I ask lightly.

“Did you hurt your leg?” He points.

“No.”

“Then why are you hiding a limp?”

Fucké. Did I not disguise it good enough? I swear I did. I’m used to making sure no one worries, Mom least of all. California made it easy - barely any cold. But here it’s harder.

“Don’t -” I swallow. “Don’t worry about it.”

There’s a long quiet. Alistair narrows his eyes. “It’s your knee, isn’t it?”

Asshole. Asshole asshole asshole. Stop. It’s less real if you don’t talk about it.

“Nope. I’m perfectly fine, thanks.”

There’s that quiet again, me staring defiantly at the tree trunk over his shoulder and him frowning that impossibly long, impossibly tired frown. God, it fucking hurts. My kneecap feels like it’s made of needles, needles stabbing into and out of each other, my whole leg trembling with the effort of staying straight. But I won’t let this dickhead see that.

“Ridiculous,” He finally mutters, breaking the staredown by rustling around in his pocket. He pulls out a plasticy something and tosses it into my hands. I just barely manage to catch it. The text is in all French, but it looks like something…medical?

“A heat-relief patch,” Alistair rumbles. “Put it on. It helps. I promise.”

“Why do you -” I bury a disbelieving laugh. “Why do you have one of these?”

He shrugs. “I carry things around. In case someone gets hurt.”

“Like the people you fight?”

“The people who pick fights with me, you mean,” He corrects.

“You can’t expect me to believe -”

“The list should be evidence enough.” He taps the book in his breastpocket. “Here at Silvere - no. Anywhere in the world. If you ruin the wrong entitled person’s fun, they get violent. Rich kids in particular are known for short tempers. They aren’t used to not getting their way.”

If we talk, it’s easier to ignore the pain. “You could just walk away.”

“And let them abuse someone else? I don’t think so.”

“So I’m supposed to believe every fight you’re in, you’re just defending yourself?”

He shoves his hands in his jean pockets. “Believe what you want. It has nothing to do with me.”

“Nothing to -” I gape like a fish. I look down at the heat-patch and contemplate just straight-up tossing it at the garbage bags. I don’t need his bullshit, or his pity, or his thorny attitude.

“It does help,” Alistair presses. “I use them frequently.”

“For what? Your tiny aching brain?” I scoff, and instantly regret it when my eyes flicker down to his chest, where the burn scars peek out. Scar tissue gets tight sometimes and aches. I know that. He…he probably knows that, too.

He takes a step forward. Every trap in my mind-maze snaps closed at once, one of them grabbing me by the ankle and rooting me in place with iron teeth. He’s too close, so damn close I can see the way the aurora light catches each dark strand of his hair. I can smell salt-sweat and, faintly, the spicy part of black tea. Bergamot. An unsubtle one. A difficult one. Not easy like rose or mint. His eyes flicker back up and meet mine - an accident. A crashing of two cars, two trains colliding on the opposite tracks. Our gazes flinch away at the same time.

“Use it or don’t,” Alistair suddenly snaps. “I really don’t care.”

He grabs the two trash bags, lugging them over his shoulder as he walks away. When I’m sure he’s gone, like, gone gone, I put my hand to my chest and tell the rabbit beating its feet against my ribcage to calm the hell down. We survived, didn’t we? He came close, and we didn’t get hurt. This time. Who knows what could happen next time.

There won’t be a next time, if I can help it.

As I walk painfully and slowly out of the forest, my breathing evens out. All the traps reset themselves, springs creaking, jaws yawning open again and waiting for the next one who gets too close. Shitload of good they did. They’re supposed to protect me, not catch me, too. I blame my knee. Hurt too much. Distracted me. Why doesn’t Ciel set off any of my alarms like he does? It’s the red, probably. The blood. First impressions are everything. All I can think about when I think of Alistair now is blood.

The sharpest jab in my knee I’ve felt all night makes me stop. Can’t keep going. Not like this.

I stare down at the heat-patch like it’s my mortal enemy and unwrap it, grumbling the whole time.

“If this doesn’t work, Prickland, I swear -”

I press the pad on just below my knee, and a soothing warmth ekes into my muscles bit by bit. It’s not gone, but I feel okay enough to make it to Knight Lyon, at least.

So, yeah. It worked. But like shit I’m ever gonna tell him that.

I look back one last time at the incredible skyline before I go in. This time something feels different. Familiar. From where I’m standing the shadows, the lights of the chateaus, the auroras and the line of trees - it all looks familiar. I’ve seen this before, this exact snapshot. But how? Purple and green auroras. Wavy purple and green colored pencil lines. The chateaus - all the windows side-by-side, scribbled in messy yellow pencil.

I turn my head creakingly slow. Across from me, the line of trees, the shadow there -

It can’t be.

My brain melts into white noise.

I bolt into Knight Lyon, past the crowded common room and the blaring 4k TV and up the spiral stairs, the stained glass doves mocking me as they fly so easily upward while I’m clumsy and slow. Pure molten adrenaline blurs the pain better than any heat patch. My converse thud heavy down the carpeted hall and my fingers furiously wave the card in front of my room’s electric lock. The door swings open and I dive for my backpack, pulling my notebook out and flipping frantically through the pages until -

The girl’s drawing.

I pivot and limp down the hall, down the stairs, and back out to where I was standing in front of the chateau, the exact spot. My hands quiver as I open the notebook again, holding the picture up to the world in front of me.

The lights, the lawn, no moon - it’s all the same, down to the purple and green she chose for the aurora. Down to the length of the trees. It’s the exact same place, with the exact same buildings in the same location. The same exact angle. How? She even got the chateau windows to my right down to a tee; three by two, with a door interrupting them. Knight Augustin’s on my left, except I can only see two windows from this angle.

And she’s drawn only two windows on the left.

How the hell -

The distant trees, hers scraggly with brown pencil, line up perfectly with the wooded area I just came from. The thing standing in front of them - the thing she drew, that stomach-churning dark stick figure with red eyes and a thousand piranha teeth - just stands there in front of the wooded area, a ring of small, round white things around its feet.

The perfect circle of mushrooms I saw just minutes ago.

Fairy ring.

Slowly, inch by trembling inch, I lower the picture, and look at the real world.

Nothing.

Nothing but darkness in those trees.

13

THE DRAWING (OR, HOW NO ONE BELIEVES YOU UNTIL IT’S TOO LATE)

“On a scale of one to ten, how likely are you to believe me when I say I met a little girl with ESP?”

“Uh…” Ruby ponders this. “Like, a negative four?”

With the phone facing me and swaddled in the pristine white comforter of my room like it’ll protect me, I tell her everything. The notebook sits on my desk, definitely closed and definitely as far away from my physical body as possible.

When I’m finished, a silence settles over the line. Until Ruby says;

“Isn’t it like, one in the morning there?”

“Midnight. But I can’t sleep anyway,” I brush it off. “I know it sounds nuts, but I have proof.”

I send her the photo I took of the exact spot on campus. And then I send her the picture I took of the drawing in my notebook. There’s a second, and I blurt;

“Did you get ‘em?”

“Yeah. I’m looking at them now.”

“Look at the windows - its the same number of them on the same sides. And the aurora in the sky - it’s the same color the little girl chose. Green and purple.”

“Holy shit,” Ruby exhales. “That thing in the corner is creepy. What’s it standing on?”

“The mushroom ring I told you about. Prickland called it -” My voice lowers of it’s own accord. “ - He called it a fairy ring.”

“You saw it? Like, for real?”

“Forreal forreal,” I pull the comforter around me tighter. “The ring, not the thing. What if it’s a ghost?”

“We went over this in third grade, Lilith - ghosts don’t exist.”

“That was in America! Maybe they were chilling in Switzerland all along!”

“Go try Bloody Mary in the bathroom just to be sure.”

I eye the mirror gleaming out at me through the open door, still steamed-up from my emergency stress-relief boiling hot shower.

“Don’t even joke about that right now. I’m in megababy-mode.”

“Okay, sure, the drawing looks really similar,” She sighs. “I’ll give you that. But it’s just a drawing. Kids have wild-ass imaginations.”

“Wild-ass imaginations that recreate an exact moment in the future they won’t even be there for?”

“Maybe she’s seen that place at night way before you. If I was a kid and I saw an aurora like that, I’d never forget it. I’d draw it every fucking day.”

“With unicorns and princesses frolicking in the background,” I hiss. “Not monsters with red eyes and long teeth.”

“Maybe she likes goth stuff. Maybe she had a bad dream.”

“I’m having a bad dream! Right now! It’s called you not believing me!”

“I believe you, I promise,” Ruby assures me. “It’s just hard, is all. People don’t see the future. They just…don’t. There’s gotta be some explanation. Or it’s a coincidence.”

I stare at the notebook warily.

“Get some sleep, okay?” Ruby presses. “And maybe things will make sense in the morning.”

“Y-Yeah,” I agree. “Okay. Love you.”

“Love you too, dingus.”

She hangs up, and I watch the empty screen longer than is spiritually healthy. Who am I kidding? Of course she’s right - there has to be an explanation. I’ve read way too many of Mom’s old-ass Agatha Christie murder books to think otherwise. There’s an explanation out there, and it doesn’t involve demons or ghosts or fairy circles. Maybe I’m just overblowing this. I wouldn’t put it past my lonely, homesick brain to look for the smallest speck to use as an excuse to call Ruby and hear her voice over and over again.

I’m safe, up here on the third floor of the chateau, snugly sequestered up in reality. The smell of the mango shampoo of my shower lingers, comforting. My door’s locked. My windows are closed. There’s no closet. I can’t hide. But I don’t need to.

He’s gone.

I don’t need to lock every door, check every window. There are no more monsters coming to get me.

(we got rid of them all)

I collapse on the bed in a flattened cocoon, and slowly doze uneasily into dreamland.

THERE’S YELLING AGAIN. He’s yelling at Mom, again. Why are they fighting? Don’t they love each other? Something breaks downstairs. Something glass.

My room is too open. He’ll find me again if I hide under the bed. I can’t go out the window - I’d die, probably. The bathtub doesn’t work, either. He sees me through the shower curtain.

Something dark. Something safe.

My chubby little fist reaches for the closet. It’s darker, and quieter. The yelling and the breaking isn’t so bad, in here.

I’m safe.

I want to be safe. I want Mom to be safe.

I don’t want to be scared, anymore.

TIME, I’ve decided, does not make things easier. It makes things harder, actually. Unless you are a fruit. Or a human. Then it just makes you all soft and mushy.

“Are people fruit?” I whisper into my oatmeal. Ana looks up from her tea and toast and textbook, her braids amassed on top of her head and held back with a vibrant pink scarf.

“What?”

“I think people might be fruit,” I say.

“Whyyy?” Ana leads.

“Because I’m going bananas,” I sigh, thinking back to last night.

“Is this about the homework? I couldn’t find your paper under my door.”

“I didn’t slip it under the door, actually.” I admit. Her cherubic face flashes disappointed.

“Why not?”

“I just figured…I have to figure it out on my own, right? You’ve got your own bitchin’ life to live.”

“Sometimes it is ‘bitching’.” She agrees. “But I don’t mind helping you, Lilith.”

“I know! And that’s exactly why I do! I hate taking advantage of nice people!”

“You’re not taking advantage.” Her voice goes soft. “I’m offering.”

“Yeah. Still.” I jab my spoon into my bowl, suddenly feeling both incredibly not-hungry and incredibly not-mature. Can’t tell her the truth - that in my worst moments I suspect her of trying to get an angle on me. That I suspect everyone of that.

Ana’s quiet, and then she says; “It’s okay to let people help you, you know.”

“Theoretically,” I murmur.

“Well, tonight I’m staying up until you knock on my door. Let me help you with your homework -” She flashes me a smile. “ - theoretically.”

The tight lump in my throat loosens, and my eyes water. It’s nice, to have someone insist. She’s so damn nice to a scared, prideful baby like me. I’m ashamed. I’m ashamed someone as cool as her even wants to hang with me. The bell rings, and before I can say ‘thank you’ Ana sweeps up her bags and is swallowed whole by the crowd, her pink scarf bobbing as she waves back at me.

She’s just trying to help.

Helping, but you can’t rely on her. You can’t rely on anyone but you.

I drown out the darkness with a chocolate, unwrapping the gold thing and popping it in my mouth. The sweetness is a nice distraction from bad moments. Always has been. Always will be. It’s too bad Borbeau didn’t take one. Her loss, I guess. They really do work.

It helps. I promise.

I shake out Alistair’s voice and trudge to my first class of the day - Beginner’s French - and it takes me three seconds of the lecture to realize French is, to put it politely, fucking bonkers. There’s a lot of letters that aren’t even pronounced, the word for cat sounds like shat as in shat yourself, and all the words are either male or female.

I raise my hand. The professor - a woman with watery eyes and a frizzy ponytail - points at me.

“Are there, like, non-binary words?” I ask. “Maybe, uh, genderfluid?”

“Wh-What sort of fluid?” The professor’s face goes pale. “Please, Miss Pierce. Save the more visceral anatomical questions for your sexual education class.”

It doesn’t take long for the snicker that goes around the room to devolve into full-blown laughter. I sink down in my chair and disguise my face with my entire backpack as the professor crows desperately at everyone to quiet down.

“I was just trying to be, like, considerate,” I whisper into my bag’s folds.

“You’ll have no luck with that,” A girl leans in to my right. “We’re slow to change out here in the middle of the countryside.”

I look over at her - she’s shorter than me, but her face is round and sweet, her cheeks wide and her nose small. Her hair is jet black and cut in a fashionable lob, and the pad in her lap is alive with vibrant colors - a drawing program of some sort.

“My parents do global textiles.” She smiles. “Chunhua Zhao. Nice to meet you.”

“Lilith Pierce,” I scratch my cheek. “And my parent does, uh, nurse things.”

She cocks her head. “Just one parent?”

(people who hurt us don’t exist)

“Just one.” I assert.

“Ooooh, so -” She squints at me closely. “ - you’re the new girl from America, right?”

“Guilty as charged. Are you drawing something?”

Chunhua looks down at the pad in her lap. “I’m just doodling a background for the ranking meeting tonight.”

“The…what?”

“Ranking. You know.” She taps the pad, putting it on the roundtable so I can see it better. She zooms in on the beautifully drawn flowers with her fingers, revealing columns of text overlaid on it. It’s a massive list. Way bigger than Strickland’s hate-list. “The ranking for the boys.”

“We’re…ranking people?”

Chunhua giggles. “It’s not as bad as it sounds. It’s just a game to pass time, you know? My sister says it’s kind of like American fantasy football, and she goes to college in Virginia, so.”

“So…” I lead.

“So it used to be just the four of us; me, Jihyun, Sadeen, and Alice, and we’d eat snacks and drink soda and talk waaaay late into the night,” Chunhua purses her lips in a pout. “But then! Someone left their ranking list lying around! Probably Alice because she’s so scatterbrained sometimes - you should’ve seen her in fourth year before I helped her, she was a mess - anyway, it got really popular and people started showing up, and we couldn’t have it in our room anymore so we had to schedule a room from the headmistress, and now it’s every Wednesday night in Room 239. In Knight Roux.” She inhales hugely. “You’re welcome to come. It’s pretty fun. We have high tea. Little sandwiches and stuff. But nobody wears a dress or does the etiquette.”

I’m winded just listening to her. “I’m lost. What do you do, exactly, at this meeting?”

“Oh.” Chunhua blinks. “Well, we rank the boys of the school by a combination of their looks, their smarts, their personalities, and their fortunes. The list changes through the year, depending on how they act or what they do. Sort of like The Bachelorette. My sister tells me about that show all the time. I don’t watch it because I prefer K-dramas and I keep trying to tell Jia that but she never listens to me, and I’m always like ‘JIA! It’s two in the morning there in Hong Kong and Mom’s going to kill you! Just because Dad’s company’s doing well again doesn’t mean she’s stopped checking the phone bills!’, but she just ignores me -” Chunhua stops. “I’m blabbing, aren’t I? Anyyyway. We do it for the girls, too!”

“All of them?” My eyes widen.

“All of them! All four-hundred students at Silvere.” She nods proudly. “Well, except Noel, and Wu. Oh, and St. James and the Ramirez siblings. They asked us to take their names off, so we did. I mean, we’re reasonable about it, you know? We take people off if they ask us to. But most people wanna see how they measure up. Wu was cool with still being on the girls’ list, though, but that one doesn’t get updated as much. Most people just come for the boys’ list because it’s more fun to be mean to them.”

My mind blurs at all the last names being used and I nod like I understand. I watch her rose-gold nails flick through a few pictures on the pad, her tongue stuck out thoughtfully between her teeth.

“Let’s see…aha! There I am, number 56. And look - there you are!”

Sure enough - at the very bottom of the girls’ list, in the 214th slot, is my name. Chunhua pats my shoulder sympathetically.

“Don’t worry. It’s just because you’re new. In a few weeks I bet you’ll move at least four spaces up. You can definitely get past Theresa who eats that rancid herring stuff every lunch. Maybe. If you stop saying weird shit about Destiny’s Child.”

“How do you - you weren’t even in that class with me!”

“Everybody talks,” She asserts. “About transfer students most of all.”

“I can’t help it if I’m chock-full of discography.”

“And chock-full of yelling at Alistair Strickland about his little nuts,” she adds.

I inhale. “That…was a stroke of misguided genius.”

“Oooh,” Chunhua coos, biting the end of her stylus thoughtfully. “You’re good at words. That’s at least worth one space up.”

“I’m not - look, I’m sure it’s fun and all, but I don’t care about this ranking -”

“Not-caring gets you five spaces up!”

“- but back then I didn’t know about Alistair,” I finish. “I thought he was just beating up Gabe for the fun of it, not for being a pedo.”

“Oh.” She thinks on this. “Yeah, Gabe’s nasty. And it probably would’ve been fine, you yelling about Alistair’s little nuts. If he wasn’t number two.”

I blink. “Sorry? Like, poop?”

“No! Like, Alistair,” she says simply, pointing to the boys’ list. “He’s number two. He’s, uh, Danish royalty, I guess? Or, uh, Austrian -”

“Belgian.”

“ - And he’s got a je ne sais quoi terrible about him. Or something. That’s what Jihyun says.”

Her French accent is perfect. I’m starting to think I’m the only one in the world who doesn’t know how to say anything. And also the only one with any taste. She lets me take the pad from her and scour the list - sure enough, in the number two slot, higher than 220 other boys who are probably much nicer and much funnier and much sweeter, is Alistair Strickland.

“He - He doesn’t smile!” I gape.

“A minuscule smirk is technically a smile,” Chunhua corrects.

“He never tucks his shirt in!” I argue. “And he doesn’t wear his tie right!”

“A lot of girls think it’s cute that he’s sloppy. And that he has cheekbones.”

“Oh my god.” I facepalm softly.

“Listen, I agree with you; Alistair orders people around, he’s rude, he uses too many big words, he gets into way too many fights, and he hands out punishment for the slightest thing! And he’s super hard-assed! He doesn’t even give passes to people he likes. Not that he likes anyone, anyway. He’s not my personal taste, but I don’t judge anyone with an asshole fetish,” Chunhua pauses delicately. “Not, actual assholes, just -”

“Yeah.” I wheeze. “I get it.”

Chunhua fearlessly pushes on. “Actually, that’s rule number one in the meetings; ‘Don’t judge anybody’.”

My mouth hangs open, my eyes darting between her face and the entire list of people on her lap that have been and are constantly being judged.

“Except if it’s for the list,” She finishes with a sweet smile.

“Do you guys,” I manage to re-hinge my jaw. “Don’t you guys have anything better to do? Art, maybe? Or a bath bomb?”

“Ciel Lautrec is number one, by the way.”

I freeze. “Your list is brilliant, actually.”

Chunhua looks genuinely touched, putting her hand over her heart and beaming at me. “Thank you!”

Both impressed and terrified by the power of teenage boredom, I focus on my French with renewed vigor. The lunch bell chimes finally, and Chunhua cheerily waves to me in the hall before she bounces into the crowd pulsing towards the cafe. I’d follow her, but the weight in my backpack reminds me I have a whole rulebook to read through in t-minus two days. So I meander through the halls in the quiet peace of the crowd’s wake, looking for a room to sit in by myself and just focus.

But how can I focus when a kid with ESP drew my future? I look at my phone for the billionth time today - Ruby texted me a blowing-heart face before she went to bed three hours ago, but that’s it. No mention of the weirdness. Logic has to have an answer. Someone has to have an answer. Someone who’s been around Silvere and it’s weird shit longer than me. Someone like…Lionel.

I open his number and text; Can u meet me outside the dorm after dinner?

His answer comes twenty seconds later. Of course. Do you want me to bring you anything?

My mouth twists in a smile. Got any chalupa supremes?

No. But I can bring you a burrito. Switzerland’s idea of a burrito, anyway.

Deal.

Lionel’s gotta know something. He’s been here at Silvere longer than I’ve been alive. Or at least menstruating. I lean against a wall and sigh up at the high ceilings and the glowing, sunshine-kissed wood. Completely out of nowhere, it creeps up on me; that awful cottonball-mouth feeling. A dark cloud seeps into my heart and lungs, making my whole body heavy. That irrational fear that I’m not going to make it - past eighteen, past graduation. Like I’ll disappear off the face of the planet the moment I stop being in high school. Like there’s nothing left for me after.

I joked about it with Ruby. But it’s true, and real, and it’s followed me here.

Why am I like this? Why does it pop up at the worst times; when I need to concentrate, when I’m trying to make new friends? Why does it crawl into my eyes and bleed out my ears so silently, so stealthily? Why couldn’t it just come barging in banging pots and pans? At least then I’d have a warning, time to prepare. I could brace myself for it. But no - it crawls on feather-light centipede legs, dripping tar up my spine before it lodges in my brain stem.

And it’s always the same feeling.

Paranoia.

I pull out another chocolate. This is the last one, but god, is it the most important one. I knew these little suckers would come in handy. Sugar helps everything. Or at the very least, it lets you pretend everything is okay for a while. I learned that from Mom - whenever I was feeling really sad, the kind of sad where you can’t think about anything but crying, she’d use her sixth-mom-sense and appear with a piece of candy. And it would always, always make me feel better. No matter where we were. Even if my knee hurt like hell. Even if the kids at school had called me weird all day. Even if we were sitting in a police station being interviewed for four hours straight. A little sweet thing, and the world would always seem brighter afterwards.

Maybe an actual room would be a better place to enjoy my treat. Too much space for pointless thoughts to echo in these high-ass ceilings. I test the row of doorknobs along the hall. The third and fourth doors don’t budge, but the fifth’s doorknob gives easily, and I swing it open. Sunshine blazes white over my eyes, sparkling off the oiled table in the center of the room. It’s a long one, like a banquet table, the usual haughty paintings and marble statues carefully placed around the room. A person sits at the head of the table, a lunch of a sad-looking, droopy sandwich and a thermos of tea laid out before him.

Him. A dark rosebush-tangle of hair. Green eyes. Fierce brows that knit the moment he sees me. He drops his sandwich suddenly, bread and cheese splitting on the floor, and his chair screeches over the floor as he stands, looming tall over the table.

“Get out.”

Alistair Strickland’s voice bounces off every wall and statue in the empty room. Completely empty except for the two of us.

“I - I didn’t know anyone was in here -” I start.

Confusion makes me still, makes my eyes roam. Why is he in here all alone? Where are Rafe and Maria? They’ve stuck to his side like glue until now. And he’s actually eating - something I didn’t see him do all day yesterday, or this morning at breakfast -

“I said get out.”

It isn’t a shout, or a scream. It’s an animalistic snarl, furious and reactive, with the taste of blood to it. Anger. Anger like I poked him with a spear, wounded him. Even fighting Gabe, he sounded calm. Tired.

Not now.

His eyes aren’t tired, anymore. They’ve reforged themselves, snickering sharp like axe blades against a whetstone. His shoulders are squared, tense. Sharp. Ready. Every part of him. The fox is inside its own tunnel, this time, and it’s baring its teeth at an intruder.

He’s the first to move. He thunders over the floor and I scrabble backwards, clinging to the door as I slam it closed and back away. On the other side of the wood, his boots come to a stop, and then I hear the lock click into place. There’s a second - just a millisecond - where I consider asking him what’s wrong.

“Are you…” My voice cracks. “Is everything okay?”

The streak of light beneath the door and the shadow there stays still. He doesn’t make a sound. Not even a scoff or a ‘mind your own business’. If I could hear his boots moving, he can definitely hear my words now. But he says nothing.

The shadow disappears all of a sudden, and I hear thudding as he walks away from the question.

Because he’s Alistair Strickland, isn’t he? And he doesn’t answer to people.

Because they’re subjects, not friends.

I stare down at the last chocolate in my hand. It looks a lot better than that pathetic sandwich did, all shiny gold in its wrapper. Happier.

It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just me, scribbling on a corner of paper. It’s just a chocolate, and there’s a bowl of a hundred of them at breakfast every day. He’s probably seen them a million times, ate them a million times. I don’t know why he’s so freaked right now, but…something sweet lets you pretend everything’s okay. For a little bit.

I put the chocolate on the floor in front of the door, on top of the note, and it glints there in the sun.

14

THE REGRET (OR, HOW A MOMENT COMES AND GOES AND LEAVES YOU BEHIND FOREVER)

Alistair Strickland regrets it.

He regrets the fear that clawed at his throat the moment he saw her. He was still half-swallowing when she came in. She couldn’t have known. She couldn’t have known what it means to him, to eat alone.

Safety. Comfort. A rest.

He hates his brain, sometimes. All the time. He hates that he’s ended up this way, twisted and incapable of even the most normal human things. Eating with others. Taming his knee-jerk reaction to take his food into some secluded place, like a terrified, insecure dog.

He’ll always be like this. He knows that.

But she doesn’t.

“New girl,” He exhales, unlocking the door and opening it again to apologize. But she’s gone.

Of course she’s gone.

Alistair steps forward, and hears the crinkle of foil under his boot. A chocolate. One of the ones from the morning buffet. It glitters in the sun, bright gold and cheery. He bends and picks it up, and that’s when he notices the scrap of paper below it, with his own words staring back at him in the worst handwriting he’s ever seen;

It helps. I promise.

15

THE DUEL (OR, HOW DEEPLY A SWORD HAS TO CUT FOR IT TO BE DANGEROUS)

Okay, so. I can handle people being furious at me when I deserve it. But this time I didn’t, so. Jot that one down. And then I was ignored(!) when I tried to give a shit. Is he aware I don’t give a shit very often? Frankly, he should be honored. And nicer.

I’m quickly learning there’s nothing like a bit of casual archery to solve budding resentment issues.

“ - think you’re so cool,” I grumble, pulling the taut bowstring as far as it can go and aiming down the sight at the straw target a million miles away. “Too cool with your stupid weed leaf badge and hate-list and your prince cousins or whatever -”

“Better!” Ms. Soyon thumps me happily on the back and I’ve developed enough survival instinct by now to plant my feet before I go sprawling. “Very better from yesterday, Miss Pierce! You draw string with much purpose!”

“Merci beaucoup, Ms. Soyon. It’s this new thing I’m trying called Healthily Redirecting Frustration.”

She nods very seriously and moves on to demonstrate proper arrow setting technique to my neighbor, who’s somehow managed to slot it feathers-first. Which, honestly, is more than can be said for me - I might be doing better than yesterday, but I still don’t have the strength to both pull the string and hold literally any object.

Soyon’s off retrieving the spent arrows for the next round when someone in the blue sweatpants and white shirt of our ubiquitous gym uniform comes jogging up, breathlessly blurting something in French. I crane my neck and look past him - a crowd of gym uniforms writhes excitedly in the distance. Did something happen? I look to my other neighbor, who by my estimates only speaks half as much English as Soyon, but that isn’t really an issue because the single word he says in response to my inquiring look speaks volumes;

“Duel.”

A duel? Like, a swordfight duel? I glance around for Ms. Soyon, but she isn’t coming back anytime soon. My morbid curiosity combined with my morbid obsession with pirates since I was ten means I’m obligated to follow the guy and find out. I trot after him over the grass, towards the big circle of people who’ve gathered. There’s cheering, but unlike the whole thing with Gabe, these cheers feel brighter. And there are teachers watching. Which means it isn’t an actual fight-fight. The sound of clanking metal rings out, and I linger at the back of the crowd and peer in.

“Holy shitting Grail,” I whisper. “We’re really out here doing King Arthur at four p.m. on a Wednesday, huh?”

Two figures in black armor fight each other in the center of the circle. Well…’armor’ is pushing it. Most of what they’re wearing actually looks like padded hockey gear, except it’s a little tighter and smaller, and only on the torso, the forearms, and the shins. Both of them are clad in full-body sweatsuits, and both of them wear these big black beekeeper-esque masks completely covering their heads and faces.

And in their hands are swords.

Not foam swords. Not the little bendy rapier swords with the caps on the ends to avoid punctures. But full, gleaming, two-handed metal swords. And they’re beating the shit out of each other with ‘em.

“German longsword fencing,” I jump at Ms. Soyon’s voice as she appears next to me. She looks more pleased than mad that everyone in her class took off to watch a duel. “Very new sport. But students love.”

“This is…a class?” My eyes widen. Ms. Soyon nods, crossing her massive arms over her chest.

“Fencing is exercise. Usually, is Italian rapier. But on special days, is German longsword.”

“They’re gonna - ” I wince as the two duelers smash their swords together. The teacher holding a long wooden pole and watching them yells something. “Those are actual swords! They’re gonna cut each other!”

“Blunt blade,” Ms. Soyon insists. “Bruise, oui. Cut, non. Ah! The ribbons, too, so pretty. Lovely tradition.”

I follow her dream-struck eyes to the duelers’ biceps, where a ribbon is tied. One of them wears a blue ribbon, and the other wears red.

C’mon, Lilith. It’s just a color.

Thankfully, the feverish action of the duel doesn’t leave a lot of room to dwell. I squeal high in my throat when Red brings their sword down on the head of Blue, but at the last dizzying second Blue defends, tilting the blade sideways to catch the attack on their hilt. The clear, loud impact of metal-on-metal sends my ears ringing. The swords look super heavy, but they’re moving them so incredibly quick. They lunge at each other - not the agile tippy-toe lunges of the fencing I’ve seen in the Olympics - but huge, deep lunges with power behind them. It’s fast, but it’s also freaking furious. Their swords slam into each other, sometimes grazing helmets or torsos or arms. Almost every time a blade makes contact the teacher with the wooden pole yells something, and the two duelers immediately separate and set up for another explosive round.

“Blue is very defensive,” Soyon murmurs. “Red is very aggressive. Yet they are both skilled fighters. You see the feint, yes?”

She points, and I watch with her as the duelers position themselves for the next round. They hold their swords up - Blue holding theirs low and at an angle, and Red holding theirs high and wide. They move back and forth, faking each other out, and then Red makes a side swipe. Except it’s not a side swipe. Almost faster than I can see they cleanly stop halfway through and change to an overhead strike.

“There!” Soyon shakes her thick finger, beaming. “Feint.”

I suck in a breath as Blue reacts, holding their sword lateral over their face barely enough to deflect the blow. Next to me, Soyon sighs.

“Always, he is defense.”

He? Now that she mentions it, Blue is feasibly a he; under all that armor is someone tall and fairly broad, and Red is no slouch either - nearly Blue’s height.

“Are they both boys?” I ask. Soyon nods.

“Yes. But Monsieur Friedrich too pairs girls and boys. In German longsword, any can fight any. Muscle is important. Technique is more important.”

Just as she says this, Red gets a solid hit on Blue’s torso with his full blade, and the crowd cheers wildly. Blue doesn’t so much as flinch when it hits, but as the teacher calls for them to part he walks away rubbing the spot gingerly.

“Two points. It will hurt tomorrow,” Soyon chuckles.

“Blue’s getting his ass kicked, huh?” I muse.

“I would not be so sure as you.” Her eyes glimmer as she watches the two clash again. This time Red lunges in from the get-go, sword bearing down on Blue. Blue backs up, and Red follows, almost chasing him out of the white circle painted on the grass.

“Out is one point for enemy,” Soyon whispers to me, then claps her hands. “Oh!”

Blue makes an incredible save at the last second by ducking low, kneeling on the grass and pivoting with his sword aloft, the blade cutting clearly across Red’s torso. The crowd goes nuts and in that second I get it - I get the cheering, the size of the crowd, Soyon’s glittering excitement. It might be horrifyingly real-looking, but it’s awesome. They have to play mind games, make decisions in split-seconds and execute them fast and well. It’s like every action movie come to life, but tactical and unpredictable and real. Even if they look like giant goth beekeepers doing it, the dire brutality of the swordplay speaks for itself.

“Blue is six points to Red nine,” Soyon says next to me, her wild hair practically quivering with anticipation. “Next point could end.”

“So it’s up to ten?”

“Yes. But head is four points.”

“So either of them could still win.”

She nods. “Moving for head is danger. Blue will never choose danger - not daring like Red.”

In the quiet before the next round, I watch Blue look around at the crowd as Red adjusts his gloves. The black beekeeper mask is completely impenetrable as it sweeps over us, but I think I see it pause in my direction - or not, because Blue quickly continues his sweep and Red finishes adjusting and then the teacher calls for readiness. Blue and Red wait like poised black lions, and then lurch at each other. Their blades ferociously slam together, locking at the hilt, and the teacher calls out something and they separate. But they don’t go back to their starting positions on the edges of the circle like they’re supposed to. Or rather, only Blue tries to. Red makes a lightning-quick lunge, aimed directly for Blue’s arm.

It’s over. It has to be. Blue isn’t ready. He’s half-turned away from Red - no way can he see the attack coming. Is that even legal? Attacking when you and your opponent are resetting?

There’s the shrill ring of metal-on-metal as Blue whirls and blocks it, somehow, blade pressed up against his bicep, sword-teeth embedded in each other, and the fighters twist and turn and grunt and suddenly Blue contorts Red’s empty hand behind his back and forces him to the ground, holding his own sword across Red’s throat.

An unspoken head-hit. Four points.

Blue wins.

The crowd fucking erupts. Cheering, whistling, shouting. It’s thunderous, vibrating the ground and shaking yellowing leaves out of the trees.

“Bravo!” Ms. Soyon calls, clapping her huge hands together. “Encore! Encore!”

Blue gets up from pinning Red, and their grinning teacher pats both of them on the back and says something. Red takes his helmet off, and Blue takes off his, and they reach their hands out and shake. Both of them wear satisfied, breathless smirks.

Ciel Lautrec wears the red armband.

And Alistair Strickland wears blue.

“Maybe this’ll teach you not to try a dirty trick in my general vicinity ever again,” Alistair says lightly, just loud enough to hear over the rapidly calming crowd.

“And maybe, just maybe -” Ciel laughs. “- This will teach you to take some risks once in a while.”

“No thank you,” Alistair wipes his sweaty face on the inside of his shirt. “I’d rather be alive than brave.”

“You mean you’d rather be a coward,” Ciel corrects.

“Not this shit again,” Alistair sighs. “You always get like this when the swords come out.”

“Get like what?” Ciel asks innocently.

“All romantic and drastic in the medieval sense. We’re not ten anymore.”

“Fine, fine. I’ll respect your wishes and stop trying to talk you into it. But it’s such a waste; you’d make a very dashing knight.”

Ciel’s smiling face is pristine, but a healthy flush dusts his obscenely high cheekbones, and his sleek gold hair is ruffled from the helmet. He looks like he just rolled out of bed. Or heaven. Bedheaven, up in the clouds. I could be there. I’d stand on the tiniest cloud a million feet in the air if it meant I could see his bed…no! Bad brain! Nasty brain! Are you gonna be rational and not-creepy or are you gonna make me get the fuckin’ spray bottle?

Turns out I’m not the only one who’s chosen creepy, because a handful of people in the crowd - mostly girls - call Ciel’s name, and he turns to them and smiles. He sees me, then, and his smile brightens as he waves at me.

Just me.

He likes us~ We’re getting married~

BRAIN!! PLEASE!!!

“You’ve got a weird way of showing respect -” Alistair throws his sword on the grass and starts un-velcroing his forearm guards with a particularly vicious gusto. “ - what with that strike from behind.”

“I was testing you.” Ciel unbuckles the armor around his tapered torso.

“Testing my damn patience,” Alistair grumbles. Ciel reaches over with one milk-white hand then and ruffles Alistair’s mop of wild hair affectionately, his silver eyes crinkling.

“If I catch you hesitating to hit me again, Ali, I’ll have to find myself another sparring partner. And yes, that is a threat.”

Half the girls in the crowd lose their shit - squealing excitedly. Why? Not entirely sure. But it’s a short-lived squeal, because Alistair throws a flat glare at them, and the girls quickly titter into silence. He looks fine now - tired eyes, dour mouth frowning, the usual. Whatever was bothering him in that room and making him so bristlingly angry, he clearly got over it.

The red ribbon around Ciel’s arm comes loose, then, the wind carrying it into the crowd. The ear-piercing squeals ricochet again, and the fans dive (actually dive, socks getting grass-stained and everything) for the red silk like it’s a lottery ticket or some shit. The French in their voices turns from excited to furious in a blink, and a boy and a girl come up shrieking at each other, clutching the red ribbon between them and playing a particularly vicious game of tug-o-war with it.

“Ah, desole, c’est ma faute.” Ciel darts over with an apology, the others unknotting themselves to let him through. He plucks the red ribbon from their slack hands with a smile and a wink. “That’s not for you. Not yet.”

My heart does a backflip (chill!) just as the bell rings, most of the crowd dispersing. The handful of shriek-happy girls stay, their eyes glued to Ciel and Alistair as they whisper fervidly and flash shy smiles their way. Number one and two on the ranking, indeed.

And then there’s me.

I’m frozen to the grassy spot. Watching Ciel and Alistair - it’s like watching brothers, almost. Like watching two people who have known each other forever. Why is Ciel friends with him? They’re nothing alike. It’s like a pedigree cat hanging out with a feral dog. Or pizza hanging out with brussel sprouts. Ms. Soyon grins at me.

“Good work today, Miss Pierce. See you tomorrow.”

“M-Merci,” I blink. “See you.”

I can’t wrap my head around it, not even as Alistair and Ciel pass me flanked by their squealing fans, who’re now insistently offering them bottled water and towels.

“Lilith!” Ciel pushes through them and trots over, and seven hundred broncos choose that moment to start bucking against my ribcage.

“H-Hey.” My smile probably looks like rigor mortis. Ciel doesn’t seem to notice such minor medical conditions.

“Could you find your classes easier, today?” He asks.

“For sure,” I fixate on his beautiful face and definitely not the ring of girls plus three boys behind him scrutinizing me to death. “I owe you another thank you. That whole ‘being not late’ tip of yours really helped.”

“I’m glad,” Ciel’s smile widens, and then his silvery eyes do. “Oh! Lilith, this is Alistair. You’ve met, I presume.”

“Regrettably,” Alistair drawls as he lopes up to us. He doesn’t look me in the eyes, frowning somewhere above my head instead. Is he still pissed at me for walking in on him? Ciel doesn’t pay his sour mood any mind, grinning back at me.

“Our families were close when they went to school here at Silvere. And they work together. My parents are fashion photographers, and his mother is -” Ciel stops himself. “Anyway, we’re childhood friends.”

“Friends?” I quirk a brow at Alistair. He rolls his eyes and corrects;

“Acquaintances.”

“That explains it,” I muse. “Much better than the theory I had kicking around.”

Ciel tilts his head, silky bangs waterfalling to one side. “What theory?”

“That he was blackmailing you into being nice to him.”

“Who do you think I am?” Alistair shoots back.

“You’re unpredictable,” I chime. “And you know what they say; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

“If I had absolute power you’d be back in the States learning how to knock before you enter a room, and I’d have a cappuccino and a bubbling hot tub at my feet right now.”

Not even a ‘sorry for snarling like a wounded animal at you for no reason’? I briefly consider flipping him off, but I catch Ciel’s eye and force a smile at Alistair instead.

“It’s never too late to keep dreaming.”

“If engaging in pithy conversation with you is my dream, I’d hate to see my nightmares,” Alistair scoffs. “Not that I have either of those.”

“Well Ali, if you didn’t stay up until all hours of the night, you might be able to fix that problem.” Ciel chides him good-naturedly. Alistair shoots him a flat look. Prickland does have thin grayish circles under his eyes. I was too busy avoiding his face before now to notice. Is that why he always sounds permanently exhausted? Insomnia? And here I was, thinking it was a terminal case of teenage ennui.

“And if you kept your nose out of my business, Ciel, we might actually be as good of friends as you say we are to total strangers,” Alistair grumbles. “We’re going.”

He turns and strides across the lawn, Ciel chuckling after him. “Sorry about him, Lilith. He takes some getting used to. I’ll see you later, yeah?”

I can barely form a ‘bye’ before Ciel’s gone, catching up with Alistair eagerly and elbowing him in the ribcage. Alistair brusquely brushes him off. Ana wasn’t quite right - Alistair has one sort-of friend, at least. And it’s the guy I…

My whole body goes hot and I stick my tongue out. ’Like’ is too strong a word. And admitting I like him at all, even in my head, means I lose, right? It feels like I’ll lose. But lose what, exactly? My dignity? Some invisible tug-o-war with that gleeful little bastard Cupid? I can’t admit to myself I like him, or I won’t be able to hide it, and guys like it when you play hard to get. Or at least, that’s what everyone says. Why - I shake my head so hard my hair comes loose out of its braid - why am I giving an ounce of a shit about what guys like? Even if I like someone, I’ll never be able to trust them. Enough to touch them. To have them touch me. Anybody can be anything, deep down.

Anybody can do anything they want to you, and if you love them, you’ll never even see it coming.

Loving someone means being weak. It means willingly putting on a blindfold. And not being able to see just makes running away a whole heullva lot harder. So even if I like Ciel, even if he doesn’t set off my body’s alarm bells, there’s no real point. It’ll never happen. I’m too far gone for that. Too fucked up, somewhere deep in my core processor. Maybe all these thoughts of dying after graduation, all these baseless convictions that I’m going to perish soon - maybe it’s just God’s warning being directly projected into my messed-up brain; Heads up, I’m coming to factory reset you. This you is doomed, but we can always try again with a new model, right?

Tonight, there’s no aurora. The sunset is just as pretty as it was yesterday, though - thick bands of gold and silver clouds rimming the world until orange and blue break them apart like gemstone blood seeping into pale cloth. The smell of fresh-cut grass and roasting meat catches my nose, but I can’t enjoy any of it. My feet drag me back to the dorm for a shower before dinner when I hear the voices.

“I’m sorry, Cecilia. I just don’t understand why it’s happening again so quickly.”

I stop in my tracks. Lionel? The voices are coming from above and to my left - the Knight Augustin building. They drift out of an ajar window one story up. I recognize the cheery, too-perfect lettuce on the windowsill - that’s Von Arx’s office. They’re talking again - him and her. I press myself against the ivy-covered wall and listen.

Von Arx inhales patiently. “The ash may have finally reached the point of no return. In my time there, the Archrose predicted the curse would reach a zenith - a critical mass, so to speak.”

I feel like I’m having a stroke, a concussion. All the words are English, but the order’s wrong. They don’t make sense. A curse? Like a…magic curse? Ash - the kind fire leaves behind? Archrose is the weirder word of the three, though. Is that a French term? Might be. Lionel says something in French. Von Arx says something back, and then halfway through she switches to English.

“ - I won’t let them take Alistair. On my grave, and my father’s grave before me, and on Julien’s empty grave, I swear to you, Lionel - I will not even let them consider Alistair an option.”

Von Arx’s voice sounds so different from when I first met her - bitter and sad. Like she’s cried all the tears she has, and now she’s just saying the words left at the bottom of an empty cup. Consider Alistair for what? Who is Julien? Why is his grave empty? And who is this ‘them’, and why does she say the word like it’s poisonous?

“You.”

I whirl around at the close, monotone voice only to come face-to-face with platinum bob Maria - her fine, doll-like features clearly displeased.

“Cook an egg on my sidewalk ass,” I wheeze. “You scared the shit outta me! Thankfully, I magic’d away the result from mine own pants.”

Maria stares right through me, cold and expressionless. If looks could kill I’d be hypothermic. Her green disciplinary badge sits there on her arm like a stoplight warning. Rafe is nowhere to be seen - this is the first time I’ve seen them apart. They’re usually connected at the hip.

“That’s…remember?” I break the awkward. “That’s what JK Rowling said wizards do - nevermind. Probably better you don’t know. She’s said some shitty things online. Turns out your childhood heroes don’t age well. And are TERFs. You don’t strike me as the Harry Potter type, anyway. Lemme guess -” I squint at her. “True crime?”

“Go.” She grunts, pointing.

“Right, sure.” I smile wanly and slap the chateau’s warm stone wall. “I was just resting. Whew! Takes a long time to walk up that field, you know? I shouldn’t complain, you probably have it way rougher than me considering how much less legroom you have -”

“Now.”

She means business - the bloody choppy butcher shop kind, not the soft felty craft store kind. No wonder she’s part of the disciplinary squad; she’s tiny, but she glares like the devil on the worst day of his period. She’s way scarier than any puffed-up mall cop with a midlife-crisis-induced bullying agenda. I scuttle away from Knight Augustin and back to Knight Lyon, feeling her eyes hurl icicle-knives into me the whole way.

In the quiet porcelain cloister of my hot shower, I watch the mud and grass slough off my ankles and spin helplessly down the drain as my brain spins equally helplessly.

Von Arx said ‘Julien’s empty grave’. She said his name like he meant something to her. Like he meant the whole world, once. Who is he? Was. People don’t talk about people like that unless they’re a ‘was’.

I’m a straight-C student who’s only ever gets brilliant in the shower.

I wrap my bod in a towel and trot over to my backpack in a puff of steam. I pull out the rulebook I’m supposed to be memorizing, letting the worn missing poster fall out of it. I flatten it, staring at the dark-haired boy’s steady, clear, immortal dark gaze.

Empty graves are only ever for the missing.

“Nice to meet you, Julien,” I whisper softly. “I’m Lilith.”

16

THE WORD (OR, HOW FIVE LETTERS CAN RUIN IT ALL)

Alistair Strickland unwraps the sweat-soaked shirt from his body carefully, and considers himself lucky. He can see the pooling purple bruise forming on his ribs. It’s not the worst, and he knows that because he knows by now the worst bruises take the longest time to show. Not purple, those ones. Those are deep black.

He thinks, idly, that if the swords had real edges and if Ciel had been serious, he’d be dead. Disemboweled cleanly.

Ciel wouldn’t kill him.

He knows that.

Their sparring was only ever a way for them to hone against each other - when they were younger it’d been pool noodles, willow branches, old canes, anything they could get their ambitious hands on. And then at school it’d become structured, with techniques and stances. Alistair hated sparring at first, hated the idea of more violence on top of his life, but Ciel begged him into playing knights every time, and because the little shit had a frustratingly golden smile no earthly being could resist, he agreed. Somewhere along the way, Alistair discovered it made him feel powerful in a way nothing else did in his young life. In control, when everything spiraled out of control at the smallest wrong word, the slightest wrong glance.

But they’re too old for knights, now.

And Alistair is too old to just play at control.

Lately, sparring doesn’t feel like play at all. It doesn’t even feel like friendship. It feels like a test, one set up specifically by Ciel, and one Alistair consistently fails, no matter what he does. It’s the darkness. That impenetrable seed of it. In the moments before their swords clash, every time - Ciel’s eyes darken the same way they did that day in the forest with his smile.

Magic.

A terrible word.

A pointless word.

A hair-trigger. A word he could never utter growing up, not once, or the wrath would be instant and all-consuming and leave him looking out of a swollen eye for a week. If he was lucky. A word he’d taught Rose to never say, desperate and hushed under the midnight covers.

Because for some irrational reason, that word made everything worse.

Alistair shakes himself out and turns the shower on, steam puffing over his serious face. He’s never known what Ciel’s thinking. Not really, anyway. That’s the way of Ciel Lautrec - put on a good front, a good smile, and get away with anything. Smile, but alone, frown. Smile, but alone, smash the vase on the mantle. Smile, but alone, disappear into Germany for the summer.

It’d been an ugly vase, Ciel assured him. It’d been for a sports camp, Ciel assured him.

But Alistair’s seen the powdered-white plastic bags in Ciel’s jean pockets. He’s seen the amateurishly stamped pills in all colors of the rainbow. He’s visited him in London, Milan, he’s seen the girls leaving his hotel room in a never-ending parade of use and discard.

He’s seen Ciel, curled up on a hotel armchair in the low lamplight like a lanky cat, disheveled from sex and exhausted by the drugs, reading tenderly aloud from a book of fairytales.

And that is, Alistair thinks, the only time he’s ever seen that impenetrable seed of darkness in Ciel’s eyes really and truly disappear.

He tries to wash the uncertainty off. The water embraces his body like a warm, trembling hug. He scrubs at his mud-smeared knee, hand freezing above the bone. Knees. A knee, wounded. Pierce. Those off-blue eyes, like fog at dawn. She’d been in the crowd. Watching. Watching him.

For a moment he goes hot all over, and his mouth tastes sweet, like chocolate.

17

THE MOONLIGHT (OR, HOW THEY’LL TRY TO STEAL YOUR LIGHT, ALL THE GOOD PARTS OF YOU, AND YOU WILL NOT LET THEM.)

Not understanding things has never once stopped me.

Except that one time when I didn’t understand how the brakes on my brand new Christmas-morning bike worked and I went flying into twenty yards of wicker reindeer on the neighbor’s lawn. That definitely stopped me, and conveniently got rid of three of my remaining baby teeth. But that’s beside the point.

Not understanding things just makes me go faster, like a rolling snowball, getting bigger and faster and bigger and faster until it hits something strong enough to break it apart. Something like the truth. Or ten bodybuilders in a trench coat. I’m not picky.

My tomato bisque and little olive-leaf packages of ricey dolma would disagree - I pick at them relentlessly. Would it kill Signor Chef to melt some cheese on top of something every once in a while? Maybe offer a side of tater-tots? Like, I know Mediterranean food is good for your health and all, but I was born with a craving for hot garbage and it will not be sated with lentils and sardines. The professor at my table tonight is different from last night’s Huge Bitch, and thankfully she corrects my table manners minus the condescending attitude.

I watch Ciel and Alistair as closely as I can without being a creeper. Ciel looks so blatantly comfortable around Alistair, throwing bits of bread at his empty plate and smirking in retaliation to his glare. Rafe joins in at one point, pelting gluten at Alistair as Maria watches the three of them with faint amusement on her face. Von Arx is decidedly less amused; she’s dressed to the nines in a burgundy suit-dress, but the worry-wrinkles on her forehead are showing deep. Is it about what her and Lionel were talking about? Archrose and ash, or whatever. She makes an attempt at normalcy, though, and flashes smiles at Alistair when their eyes meet.

An empty plate. Again. He eats food like the rest of us, so why isn’t he eating The Good Shit™? Or is he one of those people who only eat, like, two things? One of which is droopy sandwiches?

I stuff a dolma in my mouth and chew like it owes me money. The only person I should be worrying about in this gilded pinball machine is me, myself, and I.

“Did they? Seriously?” A girl across from me giggles.

“Uh-huh.” Another girl sips her water with a cat-like smirk on her face. “Who knows if it’s actually going to happen.”

“What’s going to happen?” The third girl at my table leans in. They all shoot a look at me and the professor, but the professor only has eyes for her wine, and because I went to public high school for three years and forty-two days I’m painfully good at the ‘too bored to listen’ face.

“Apparently,” The first girl murmurs. “Coresung and Tellon Pharmaceuticals are considering a merger. The soft kind.”

“Oh,” The second girl’s eyes light up. “Oh. You mean, Choi and Riendeau?”

All three of them pivot subtly in their seats, not enough to be noticeable - heads tilting towards a raven-haired girl and a blond guy at the next table over.

“God,” The third girl sighs. “Can you imagine how beautiful that wedding’s going to be?”

The second girl frowns. “Arranged marriages are way too archaic. Practically medieval torture.”

“My cousin did one,” First girl muses. “It was really awkward at first, but now they’re best friends. It’s also really good for the stocks, or something. After the wedding, Papa bought this cute little apartment in New York for me when I go to university.”

New York? Pretty sure New York’s even worse than LA in terms of real estate prices. We’re talking hundreds of fuckin’ millions. Third girl is stuck permanently sighing dreamily into her water. Second girl is stuck looking at her dolma with mild disgust. I can’t hold it in anymore.

“Are you guys serious?”

All three of them look up at me with varying degrees of disbelief. Shock. Like they didn’t think I was actually here. First girl leans woodenly over to third girl and whispers;

“She can talk?”

I clear my throat. “You guys aren’t serious about that arranged marriage shit, right - ”

“Language,” The professor idly murmurs into her wineglass.

“- because that doesn’t happen in like, the real world.”

“Well,” Third girl’s disdain is tempered by her perfectly pink lipstain. “It happens in our world.”

Our world. Not mine. Definitely not mine.

“It doesn’t happen a lot,” First girl corrects her friend. “If the parents are the old-fashioned kind -”

“You mean the old-fascist kind,” Second girl scoffs.

“- but the nobility people do it way more. Way, way more. I kind of feel bad for them.”

“Nobility people.” I deadpan.

“Yeah. You know, people like…” She muses for a second. “Holgersson, Calvo-Navarro, Strickland. Those sorts.”

“Old family sorts. With titles they have to pass on,” First girl says imperiously.

“Titles,” I breathe. “Right.”

They pay even less attention to me after that. Aggressively. The bread basket never gets sent my way again, and I can forget about the fuckin’ butter. That butter’s in no-man’s-land surrounded by dragons. Dragons with very nice eyeshadow.

Strickland. Old family sorts. Does that mean Strickland’s gonna have an arranged marriage? I should feel, like, sorry for him, but all I got in my emotion tanks at the moment is pity for the poor girl who gets stuck with him, sarcastic little porcupine that he is. Okay. Maybe there’s a bit of pity for him. The idea of having such a huge choice stripped away scares the shit outta me. I mean, actual marriage. Does it scare him? It’s gotta. Or maybe it doesn’t. Maybe he doesn’t care. Prickland doesn’t strike me as the type to give a shit about love and romance - or about anything. He doesn’t care if dozens of people hate him, so why would he care if his family wants to choose someone to like him? Is ‘like’ even a requirement for arranged marriages? Probs not.

It’s all so tragic, so alien. But it’s not really any of my business, either. Seven months, and I don’t have to hear about any of this shit ever again.

After dinner, I stand in front of Ana’s door with my homework in my faintly-shaking hands. She’s nice. She’s just nice, and nothing else. I can rely on someone this once, right?

“Asking for help is fine,” I whisper encouragingly. “Normal people do it all the time, and they don’t die! Unless they ask for it from a horror-movie guy in a truck with deer carcasses in the back.”

“Lilith -”

“It’s okay to ask for help,” I coach myself. “As long as you’re really, really polite about it, and don’t take up all their time, and -”

“Lilith!” Cool hands wrap around mine, and I look up to see Ana grinning at me, her silk pajamas bright pink and her toes punctuated by sponges between her equally pink pedicure. “Are you coming in? Papa sent me beijinho - you have to try them.”

I marvel at the fuzzy bon-bon things she shoves at me the moment I walk in. Her room is nothing like mine - all the bare whiteness covered by pink; a pale pink bedspread with a cherry blossom pattern on it, pictures cut out of magazines of rose-blush sunrises and pink-draped fashion models mural’d up on every wall. Every last thing pink and fluffy, but also gorgeous and tasteful. Silvere taught me within the first two days good taste and money aren’t exclusive, but Ana’s interior decorating is a massive exception.

“You eat one of those,” Ana twirls and lands on her bed. “And let me handle the paperwork.”

She holds out her hand expectantly, and I inch over the homework like it contains all my approximate lifeforce.

“I should do this myself,” I start.

“Not necessarily.” She smiles sweetly. We have a fight over the paper for a rousing ten seconds, her yanking one end of the sheet and me the other until I finally relinquish my grip.

“Agh. Sorry,” I mutter into the coconut-y goodness of the beijinho.

“For what? Did you think I’d make fun of you for this? I won’t. I’m not a terrible person. The exception is Monopoly. Monopoly turns me ruthless.” Ana smiles ruefully up from her pen, and I make a wry smile back. I fiddle with her pink lace curtains as she scribbles madly.

“So, uh, what do you guys do for fun around here, anyway?” I ask. “Steal eclairs? TP an office with gold foil? Casual arson a pile of very expensive first-edition books, maybe? That’s always fun.”

She looks up from the homework. “Fun isn’t a word. You know what are words? International relations. University applications. Charity functions. Most everyone here has famous parents, in some way or another.”

“And? Does that mean you can’t get shitfaced once in a while?”

“It means,” She says slowly. “Fun is different for us than it is for other people. Some of us are…um. Watched more than other people.”

“Watched? Like how?”

“You know how everyone has a driver? Well, not everyone everyone, but -”

“Yeah. Most students, right? So?”

“They aren’t just drivers,” She fiddles with her Hello Kitty pen. “They’ve been hired to drive, and also to report.”

“To who?” My stomach tightens. “No way. Their parents?

Ana nods. “Everywhere that student goes. Everyone they’re friends with, or what their grades are like. Some parents ask for reports on diets. Who they’re talking to. Just talking to.”

“Christ,” I hiss through my teeth. “You’re not joking.”

“How can I joke about it?” She smiles sadly. “When it’s my life?”

My mouth knits shut, but she presses on. She claps her hands, smiling. An empty-ish smile.

“So. Fun is different for us. If, hypothetically, I was to drink a bottle of cherry schnapps and go skinny dipping with my friends in a fountain, there’d be at least one man following us with a camera taking pictures. Sometimes they get clever and hire an old woman, or a child with a phone - people who stand out less. But it doesn’t matter. Tomorrow morning those pictures will be front page in every gossip magazine and every article on the internet. Papa will call his secretary, and she’ll have to call his PR people, and they’ll spend a few hundred million reais getting the pictures taken down, and quickly, because he’s going to Spain next month and the politicians there don’t appreciate un-Catholic behavior.”

It’s a far too-specific example.

“And that means…” I lead. Ana’s gone completely still, now, smile gone and pen bouncing anxiously back and forth in her fingers.

“They’ll refuse to meet with him publicly if they know his daughter is getting drunk and making a show of herself. Bad for appearances. For the public’s opinion. So I’d be putting Papa’s job at risk - his international job, on an international stage.”

“Oh.” My chest sinks. “Oh shit.”

She tries so hard to keep her shrug light it breaks my heart.

“Some people’s situation isn’t as bad as mine. But some have it much worse. We’re different, is all. Everyone at Silvere is…you know. Different. We’re the pride of our families. The ones to carry on their legacy. Full of potential. Given all the best things in the world. And god forbid we waste them.”

Ana’s bitter smile fades as her scribbling intensifies. I had no idea. Not one fuckin’ clue. Is Lionel - is Lionel like the other drivers? Has he been asked to keep tabs on me by William?

I push that horrible thought down and focus on who’s really hurting right now. Ana. What happened to being a kid? Being allowed to be a kid? To fuck up and have fun and make mistakes and memories - that’s what being this age is all about. I think. Lord knows I’ve done my fair share of screwing up. Ana’s dark braids skim her bedspread as she translates the homework, and my heart contracts. Maybe she’s never been allowed to fuck up, always walking this tightrope of being the U.N. representative’s daughter. Since she was born, maybe.

“There’s Genevieve’s exam, I suppose,” Ana finally sighs and waves the pen dismissively. “But that’s for other people.”

“Genevieve’s what?”

“It’s a codename for a party some students throw every month. It’s in the woods behind the school, so none of the professors can find it.”

“What about the security?” I ask. “I saw ‘em - they’re huge.”

“Yeah, they’re awfully strict.” Ana agrees. “And they show up out of nowhere, no matter how quiet you are. Especially if you get close to Knight Durand.”

“The one that’s being renovated, right?”

She nods. “But, I mean. It’s been ‘being renovated’ for years now. It was being renovated when my Mama went here.”

“And how long ago was that?”

She shrugs. “Thirty years?”

“And that’s not weird to you?”

“It totally is. You’d think Von Arx would just hire people and be done with it. She has the means.”

By ‘means’, Ana means ‘money’. Of course Von Arx has the money. Silvere is swimming in fuckin’ money. So why? Why would the renovations of Durand take so damn long? I exhale.

“I mean, wouldn’t the security hear a party?”

“Maybe. But they don’t ever go beyond the campus perimeter.”

“What? Are they seriously that lazy?”

Ana shrugs again. “I can’t blame them. The idea of trying to wrangle fifty drunk teenagers isn’t my idea of fun, either. They’ve never broken up Genevieve’s exam, and we’ve always held it outside the campus property line. But that was for the music volume, you know? Just to be safe. We only noticed the security-not-busting-us stuff way later.

“So you’ve never gone to this party -”

“Please, Lilith.” She looks around, then whispers. “Exam.”

“Riiight. You’ve never been to this, uh, exam?”

Ana shakes her head. “No. I don’t want to risk Papa finding out, and I don’t want to disappoint him. There aren’t paparazzi who care about me here, but you never know when a phone will take a picture of the wrong thing at the wrong time and tag me in it. The media is always watching. Waiting for me to -”

She swallows and goes silent, writing with a furious speed. By the time she hands me my homework back, I’ve fully formulated a flawless plan.

“I owe you,” I say.

She laughs softly. “It’s just a bit of French. You don’t owe me anything.”

“Fine. I don’t owe you. The world owes you.”

“Huh?”

“We’re going to the next Genevieve’s exam. Me and you. I’ll watch for people taking pictures the whole time.”

Her dark eyes widen. “But -”

I smile crookedly at her. “Just this one time, Ana. Just once, you should get to fuck up like the rest of us.”

I LEAVE Ana’s room with my perfectly translated homework clutched in my beijinho-grubby fist - coconut bits and a lingering sadness. The halls are practically empty at this time of night, people walking around in fuzzy pajamas and robes with face masks on, and I know I should go into my room and start working on this fucking shit, but I just can’t. It doesn’t sit right with me - the whole thing. Parents shouldn’t spy. I know that in my bones. All the trust I have with Mom is because she’s never once pried into my personal life. I’ve always felt like I’ve been able to tell her everything - janky knee aside. All my emotional problems, all my feelings…I’ve told her everything on my own terms. When I was ready. And she’s been open with me about everything, too. Her struggles, her fears, her joys. That’s the only way to communicate, now that I think about it. With anybody. Open and honest, on your own terms. When you wanna be. Being spied on - especially by the people you’re supposed to call ‘family’ - is just unfair. It takes all your agency away. It’s fuckin’ cruel. Manipulative. It’s forcing you to tell things before you’re ready.

But I know, sort of, what it feels like not to trust your parents. Half of them, anyway. I can’t imagine not trusting both. Can’t imagine how fucked in the head I would’ve ended up if Mom hadn’t of been there for me.

Is that why? Is that why the glances in the classroom, in the halls, always feel so suspicious? So appraising, like they’re trying to figure out what I’m made of, and why, and how best to use it.

“Lilith?”

I look up at the silky-smooth voice. Weighed down by everything that’s happened today, my heart only has enough energy to skip a single beat at the guy who rounds the corner. The guy.

“Ciel,” I say. “You - hi. Where’re you off to?”

“Ah, well,” His silver eyes slide over to a door down the hall. “It’s not so much where I’m going but where I’m coming back from, I suppose.”

I blink. His hair’s a little disheveled, the first few buttons undone from his shirt. The most messy I’ve ever seen him, really. Right now, in the soft moonlight filtering in through the windows, everything feels floaty. Not-real. My piranha nerves aren’t frenzying at the sight of him for once. Is he the same as Ana? As the rest of the kids here?

“Can I ask you a weird question?” I start. His smile is thin, but not unwelcoming.

“Always.”

“Do your parents…do they spy on you?”

It’s his turn to look surprised, his eyes widening slightly before his smile does. “With a driver, you mean.”

“Yeah.”

“Wow. It’s only your second day here, but you’re learning all the ins and outs pretty quick.”

I hug myself a little, trying not to let the compliment get to me. “I’m not the type to learn good, so. Might as well learn quick, you know?”

He laughs. Laughs! Just a bit, and under his breath, but all my insides start floating in zero-g anyway.

“No,” He says finally. “My parents don’t spy on me. But sometimes I wish they did.”

“Why?”

He turns to leave, and the moonlight gleam in his smile turns cold and heartbreaking.

“Because that would mean they care.”

The deep pang that runs through me roots me to the too-shiny wooden floor, and I watch him walk away.

It’s unfair.

It feels unfair. Not for me. But for him.

For everyone here.

It’s only when I’ve given up on my half-finished homework, doodling a very detailed anime eye on it, when I realize things; things that feel stupid compared to the loneliness in his voice. But it makes sense, now. Why Ciel was standing there, disheveled, glancing ruefully at a door down the hall from mine.

My pencil freezes and the words fall out.

“Oh. This is the girl’s side of the dorm, isn’t it?”

18

THE CANDLE (OR, HOW YOU WANT TO RUN LIKE A RIVER, RIOTOUSLY, UNCARING WHETHER YOU’RE CLEAN OR DIRTY)

A golden-haired boy of sixteen years and four months stands on a hill, looking for magic.

Tonight, his hair is disheveled. Tonight, his peers float around him holding hands, giggling, traipsing the flowered paths. Ignorant. Or maybe, he thinks, they’ve found a different kind of magic. One made of brain chemicals and shared tenderness and manufactured experiences. One he’ll never know. A pale, manmade imitation, no different than hallucinogenic drugs or alcohol or serotonin. Just chemicals, just reactions in a body’s chemistry. He’s sampled them all, sampled them just minutes ago in a girl’s bed, and he knows it’s a magic only made by fooling the brain. This magic is not for him - he will not settle for imitation.

It would not satisfy him. It has never.

He’s after the real thing.

He wants something real, in an unreal world.

Silver eyes pierce the star-strewn horizon, raking the darkness of the forest surrounding the school. It has to be here, somewhere. He saw it once. He can see it again. He didn’t imagine it - it wasn’t a fluke. It was real. He still remembers the ashen smell of its skin, the acrid smell of the white deer’s blood.

The golden-haired boy looks over his shoulder, left and right. Only idiots, and none of them watching. He strides quickly to the edge of the forest, pine greeting him as he plunges greedily into its breast like an arrow. He pushes past thorn bushes, swinging branches aside, breaking a path inward.

It has to be here; the red eyes. The teeth. The white fur.

It wasn’t a dream. Alistair was there, too. It was real, there one blink and gone the next.

No matter how short, it was real.

He knows it was real, because the white deer is real. A legend, the urban sort, whispered from old students to new ones, but always the same; there’s a white deer in the forests around campus, and seeing it is good luck. It’s never died. It’s always been there. As far back as he could find, as far back as Silvere has been a school, the white deer rumor has existed.

And that day nine years ago, he and Alistair saw it being eaten.

Saw it disappear into thin air.

But the rumors didn’t stop. Students still saw it - posts on old message boards, cleaners working on campus upwards of thirty years insisting they’d seen it recently, whole and healthy. How many pure white deer could there be in the forest of such a small area?

Just one.

One that has died, and returned.

Magic.

He pushes deeper into the woods, dress shoes cracking twigs and vines, towards the crumbling Knight Durand, it’s empty shell beckoning him inward like an old enemy. Durand has always been falling apart. It’s always been guarded. He can remember coming to it so many times, being chased away by the damned pinpoint-perfect security over and over, always when he crosses the same thirty-meter boundary. Never until then. Never after then.

Only Durand.

They’ve only ever stopped him near Durand.

He’s seen the chateau so many times; quiet and dark. But he’s seen it lit, too, broken windows humming with eerie candlelight. He’s heard it speak, voices like song, deep chanting echoing in the trees. If he reaches far back enough into his childhood memory, he fuzzily remembers gold robes, and beaked golden masks. Dozens of them walking the thorny path into Durand - a Durand with its perfect doors flung open, beckoning.

It has to be here. He’s looked for so long, come into this wood so many times, but never close enough to Durand. Tonight it changes. No more skulking. No more childish, fearful tiptoeing. He has nothing more to lose.

Maybe he never had anything to lose to begin with.

“Where are you?” He bellows, French searing the air. “Show yourself!”

The forest rewards him with silence and blood from his scratched hands. He shouts again, a twisted laugh tinging his words;

“I saw you! I saw you, and you can’t take that from me!”

A flash of white in the branches. His heart soars. It’s there, and he crashes after it, the thorns begging him to stay, the roots demanding he slow down, but they can’t stop him. He’s his own force, a finger of lightning, illuminated from the inside by the fire of hope.

Finally.

FINALLY -

“You there.”

He doesn’t pause for the voice, but it pauses for him. More than one voice, coming out of nowhere. There one second, gone the next. Hulking men in suits, black sunglasses impenetrable as they shoulder themselves into his path. Red-hot acid licks at his patience. The golden-haired boy can’t be bothered with niceties, his beautiful face contorting.

“Move, you titanic bastards.”

Three. He can take three. With a sword. Any weapon. But the only weapon he has now is the pink one in his mouth, and it cuts like a whip.

“Get out of my fucking way!”

“Headmistress’s orders,” The middle security guard deadpans soullessly. “For your safety, you will go no further.”

He seethes, a volcano with a million hidden parasitic cones venting sea upon sea of lava. A punch, a clawing hand caught mid-throw, but he has two of them. The second connects with the guard’s cheek, but the enormous man barely staggers, and then his hands are roughly caught behind his back. Restrained. He bucks like a rabid thing, his obscenities echoing off the trees, incendiary as they are futile. If his classmates could see him, they wouldn’t know him. They’d see an animal - a golden, thrashing, furious beast. The security pick him up like a doll, like he hasn’t a muscle in his body when his body is nothing but muscle. Muscle and pain and sorrow and a keening desire for the white thing, for the black thing, for the forest’s secrets.

For magic.

For an escape. At last.

He scratches, bites, but there are no screams from the guards, no flinching, and in his delirium his teeth taste something like dandelion sap.

19

THE MOTHER (OR, HOW YOU LEARNED TO BUILD YOUR ARMOR PIECE BY PIECE AS YOU WERE FLEEING)

This is the part where I throw a fit, right? Or buy a pint of ice cream and eat it all while crying at rom-coms. Something drastic. Something drastic should happen here, all my training tells me. All my years of reading books and watching shows tells me if the guy you like sleeps with someone else, you should feel devastated. That’s how it goes in movies.

And I guess I am. A little.

I mean, I knew it, right? Deep down? Someone who looks like Ciel doesn’t not get hit on. The girls and guys squealing over him during the duel was sort of a dead giveaway. I had to know, obviously. I’m not the only one who likes him. But I’m the only one who’s got an allergic reaction to getting close to people. Which means I’m probably the only one without kissing exp. If this was a videogame I’d be level 1, and he’d be like, level 69.

The sex number. Ha-ha.

I groan and experimentally hit my head on a nearby railing. Maybe it’ll reset me. Maybe I’ll black out. Either way, big win. No - I clench my fist. My version of a pint of ice cream is a burrito, and it’s waiting for me. No moping. Only munching.

But still, it haunts me. If I could just be…not me. If I could just be normal, normal height, normal jokes, normal smile. If I could just show Ciel I’m normal, he’d see I’m worth it. He’d kiss me too. Right?

When I finally pull myself out of my own ass and head downstairs, I realize my eyes are searching around campus for the security guards. No hulking men in suits patrolling. Or if they are, they’re in the woods. But why be concerned with the woods, when the chateaus are where the prince-related royalty students and expensive paintings are? What’s so important about the forest that they have to guard it 24/7, instead of the chateaus?

I try and fail not to look over at the looming pine trees.

Lionel offers me a faint smile as I walk up and I’m about to grill him on everything - maybe-spying on me, what I heard him and Von Arx talking about, but I’m so bummed out and desperate for that damn burrito all human language fails me. I pull the tinfoil back and almost weep at the holy sight.

“Thanks,” I mutter around a massive bite of beans. “If I don’t eat cheese at least once every 72 hours I go into a despair coma.”

“Oh,” Lionel murmurs, now in a pair of casual slacks and a boho linen shirt instead of his driver uniform. His unruly copper hair is still in its low ponytail. “Do you take medicine for that?”

“Uh yeah.” I make a motion at my half-mangled burrito. “A medicine called cheese. Oh - Oh god.” I smack my mouth. “Is this what they think salsa is here?”

Where there’d usually be a cursory laugh, there’s just Lionel staring at me for way too long.

“What’s up?” I ask. “Something on my face? A bean?”

“Lilith,” He says thoughtfully. “You’re being careful, aren’t you? About following the rules?”

“I mean, I’m trying to. For once. Doesn’t mean I’m all that successful at it.”

“You know, William told me to protect you while you’re here.”

“Protect me?” I tilt my head. “Or spy on me?”

Lionel’s pale blue eyes flash. The easy friendliness that’s existed pretty much from the beginning between us suddenly hardens. I can feel it icing over like a lake. Lionel breathes in, deep.

“William wants you to have a good experience, here. I wouldn’t spy on you and ruin that, Lilith.”

“But you’d protect me. From what? Nepotism? Rampant classism? Getting hit with a Burberry bag? Because lemme tell you, it’s too late for all those things.”

“I’m just making sure - you’re following the rules. Staying safe.”

“Yeah, yeah.” I wave him off. “Wearing my uniform, trying not to be late, turning in homework -“

“You wouldn’t make a promise with someone you didn’t know well, would you?”

“What?” I wrinkle my nose. It’s totally out of left field. “Haven’t read anything about that in the rule book.”

“Lilith, please.” He sighs. He sounds worried. Like Mom. And it only makes me miss her more. “This is serious.”

“Since when are promises serious?”

Lionel looks at me patiently, and with an eighteen-wheeler’s worth of weight. He’s incredibly good at being serious. So good it makes me itchy. Never would’ve guessed, with how casually pleasant he is all the time.

“I’m saying this because there are people here who’d take advantage -”

I interrupt him, balling up the burrito tinfoil. “Even if someone offers me a trillion dollars, or like, a goth-as-hell Scottish castle, I won’t make promises with strangers. Or I’ll at least think twice. Is that good enough?”

Lionel’s face washes over with relief. Too much relief for such a small thing. “Yes. Thank you.”

I lob the tinfoil orb into a distant trash can, nailing it first shot. My eyes comb the distance. I didn’t realize it through the siren song of the burrito, but we’re standing in the same spot with the same view as the little girl’s drawing. No auroras, but the same windows spilling light, the same blanket of rolling grass, and the same line of ominous black pine trees that rise up to meet it. Except now, a tiny crescent moon slivers the sky.

And then the impossible.

A shadow deep within the trees moves.

“Is something wrong, Lilith?” Lionel’s voice sounds like it’s underwater. The instinct part of my brain works even if my whole body is frozen - rapid-fire thoughts and fears needling through the paralytic haze. It should stop moving. But it doesn’t. And it’s moving like it has two legs, too tall to be an animal, too tall to be an animal, please don’t let there be red, please, God, don’t let there be red -

Two points of red flicker in the shadow. Fire, laser pointers, tail lights of a car. Anything. Could be anything. My glasses - greasy. I take them off and rub frantically, rub my eyes, put them back on.

Please.

Gone. The tall, moving shadow is nothing more than a distant tree trunk slotted with moonlight. The moonlight is making me see things, or am I so paranoid of that picture I’ve started hallucinating it? But I swear…I swear on my fourth-grade goldfish’s grave something was there just now, and it had red eyes like that guy in the restaurant, like the picture -

“- ilith.” Lionel’s warm hand on my should brings me out of it. “Are you all right? You’re pale as a sheet.”

I slide my eyes up at him. I don’t know if I can trust him, but I might not have a choice. If Will told him to protect me…I have to take the gamble. I'm seven thousand miles away from everyone else.

“T-There’s something you have to see. The whole reason I called you up here.”

“Ah, so the chalupa was a misdirection, then?” Lionel tries a smile, but it falters when I rummage in my bag and pull out the notebook. I open it to the page - not looking at it - and hand it to him.

“It’s the same.” I motion around. “The windows. The trees. The size of the buildings and where they are. It’s the exact same perspective as where we’re standing. Those squiggles in the sky - that’s the aurora that was here yesterday night. Same colors and everything - purple and green.”

Lionel doesn’t once look up from the drawing. He’s stares right at the middle of it, at the shadowy figure there.

“Where - ” He swallows. “Where did you get this?”

“Some girl on the airplane,” I say. “I gave her my colored pencils and she doodled that.”

“This is hardly a doodle,” Lionel whispers.

“Then what is it? Because from where I’m standing, it looks like she saw the future. My future. But people can’t do that. They don’t do that.”

Lionel traces his finger over the shadowy figure. “What did the girl look like? Can you remember?”

“Dark hair.” I shrug. “Big green eyes. She had two braids.”

“With little pink bows on the ends?”

I search my memory, and with cold dread I realize he’s right. “Yeah. But how did you - what does that mean? Who is she?”

There’s not a trace of a smile in his eyes. “I’ll be right back. Stay here.”

“Uh, being alone is kinda how horror movies start.”

“Then stay in the lobby. But wait for me.”

Lionel strides off into the dark, straight towards the Knight Belmont building. I shuffle into the warm lobby buzzing with conversation and the faint sound of videogames being played on the huge TV. What the buttery fuck is going on? People don’t see the future. They can’t. Ruby grounded me so deep in the earth I can smell the diamonds and dinosaurs, and she’s right. There’s a reason for everything. Even if that reason is pure chaotic coincidence.

Except if Lionel knows the girl, that makes it one helluva coincidence, doesn’t it?

I’m staring out the window at the line of trees, at the creepy shell of Knight Durand poking out of them, when my phone buzzes and ejects my skeleton from my skin.

“Mom,” I wheeze. “Hi.”

“Hi sweetie! We’re on the same time zone now, so I figured I’d give you a call! How’re you doing? How’s school?”

I close my eyes and savor her voice. It’s like a balm on my frayed nerves. Normal. Everything’s normal. Everything’s fine.

“It’s great,” I make my voice cheery. “I mean, I can’t express my impeccable fashion sense of threadbare t-shirts and holey jeans here, which, honestly? Their loss.”

She chuckles. “I bet you look so mature in the uniform.”

“I look like I work at a bank,” I lament. “And they gave me a skirt but I’m definitely gonna plead for pants. I’ve seen like twenty other girls wearing them. The food is amazing, though; there’s this Italian chef guy who makes it all and I thought ‘damn, Mom’s getting the same stuff, isn’t she? Maybe even better’.”

“Probably better,” She admits shyly. “Will’s taken us to all the best restaurants in Venice.” She sighs. “I feel so spoiled, Lili. As if I’m living someone else’s dream.”

“No! No way. This is yours, Mom. You’ve worked your ass off for the hospital lately. Enjoy it, or I swear I’ll jailbreak from this place faster than you can say ‘lock-tampering’ and fly over there and enjoy it for you.”

“Threats from my own daughter, is it?” Mom laughs, and the tight knot in my chest loosens a bit. “Alright. I’ll be sure to la vie en rose it as hard as I can.”

“Oh, you know French too, mademoiselle? I’ve learned five whole words. I can say ‘thank you’ now. And ‘pass the butter’. And ‘toilet’.”

“Amazing - my girl the linguist.”

“I know you’re biased because I was in your stomach leeching nutrients for nine months but objective newsflash; I’m nothing compared to the kids here. Most of ‘em have had private tutors their whole lives. Their whole lives, Mom! From like, toddler on! They know everything. Trilingual is the freakin’ norm. They’re all like mini-Einsteins. Oh! Also! Ana learned English just from watching TV shows and stuff. Isn’t that sick?”

“Seasonal flu-levels of sick,” Mom agrees. “But you’re smart, too, honey.”

“Smart-ass,” I agree. “And sometimes, sometimes, if I close my eyes and pound hard enough on the calculator and threaten to sacrifice my first born, I can guess the answer to a single math problem. Please, no applause.”

Mom claps anyway, laughing. It’s like we’re back in our tiny, run-down kitchen. I can see the little curtains over the sink window swaying, the linoleum cheap and scratched but clean. I can almost smell the spam and eggs I’d be cooking for her right now, Mom slumped at the kitchen table in her fatigues after a long night saving people’s lives.

“I…miss you.” I fight the tears in my eyes, my face reflected against the night-glass of the window hopelessly scrunched.

“I miss you too, sweetheart.” Mom says softly. “I’ve been collecting souvenirs for you. I put them all in a box. Chocolates - dark, the kind I know you like - hard cheeses, these incredible sun-dried tomatoes and a bit of cured meat. I’ll ship it you tomorrow. Will says it should arrive at Knight Augustin in about a week, customs regulations be damned.”

“Okay, thanks.” My laugh is watery. Always that sixth-mom-sense, knowing when I feel like shit and ready with a treat.

“Thank you, Lili.” Mom’s voice glows with warmth. “For agreeing to go there. For letting me do this silly traveling thing.”

“It’s not silly,” I set my lip. “It’s not silly to have fun. You deserve it, after…everything.”

She’s quiet, and I know we’re both thinking about Dad. About what we endured to get here over the years - (all the rainy hospital visits, the police visits asking where he was, missing school, my cast, the pain, both of us waking up in the middle of the night crying) - what we had to suffer through just to stand on this precipice of relative peace and quiet happiness.

“Is Will…being nice to you?” I ask.

“Yes,” Her voice is soft. “I don’t want you to worry about that, okay?”

“I know. It’s just -”

“I know you know. And I know it’s hard to know.”

I bite back tears.

“Sleep well, okay?” Mom finishes.

“You too. Love you.”

“I love you over the moon and back sweetheart, and I always will, no matter where you are.”

20

THE INTERROGATION (OR, HOW BEING YOUNG FEELS LIKE BEING A GHOST)

At seven years old, Lilith Pierce knows what it means when her mother squeezes her hand under the table.

It means ‘don’t worry’. It means ‘I’m here’. So when she feels it beneath the cold steel of the police interrogation room table, she relaxes. Not much. But enough that her tiny stomach doesn’t feel like throwing up anymore. Her leg with the cast on it hangs heavy under the table, doodled with technicolor flowers and fairy stickers.

“Please, Mrs. Pierce.” The lady-officer across from them folds her hands on the table, a terse unsmile on her face. “It’s a very simple question. Were you, or were you not, the last person he spoke to?”

Lilith’s mouth parts. No - she was the one. Her and Daddy had been on the bed, watching cartoons. She asked him if she could get a chocolate milk. He said yes. So she got up to go down into the kitchen. He looked right at her and said it; ‘You know Daddy would never hurt you, right?’. His last words to her. If she closes her eyes, she can still see his mouth moving around them.

And then the push. The stairs. The fall. The red.

She picks at one of the fairy stickers on her cast - deftly peeling off its wings. Her mother is utterly silent. The lady-cop sighs, and leans in to whisper so Lilith can’t hear. But she can.

“The blood, Mrs. Pierce. It wasn’t all your daughter’s.”

A beat. A pause. Mom squeezes her hand again, hard, and finally lifts her head.

“We’d like to speak to our lawyer, now.”

21

THE BLOOD PROMISE (OR, HOW EVERYTHING MEANS NOTHING TO SOME PEOPLE)

By the time Lionel finally returns with someone else in tow, I’ve decided something drastically life-changing; it doesn’t matter. Nothing. Matters. Not in the nihilistic ‘I don’t give a shit about anything’ sense, but in the ‘I give a shit about precisely three things (Mom, me, food) and everything else can fuck off into the desert’ sense.

Lionel and Von Arx talking like aliens doesn’t matter. Lionel spying or not doesn’t matter. The freaky drawing doesn’t matter. The red eyes don’t matter. The drawing’s coincidence doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters - that’s ever mattered - is that I stay here at Silvere, pretending my hardest to be a well-mannered, socially delicate not-gremlin for seven months so Mom can have fun and not worry for once in her life.

“Hi, Lionel!” I chime as I skip down the steps. “Me again.” Lionel turns, and I see who’s with him properly - Alistair. “Prickland! Nice of you to join us. Did you run out of people to growl at? Or are you here to give me detention for disturbing the peace with my immaculate good looks?”

Alistair just exhales and holds his hand out. “Let me see the notebook.”

“Oh, I will. Just as soon as you promise you’re not here to throw me in the rose maze and make me clean up the sex socks.”

“Sex…socks?” Lionel blinks.

“Condoms,” Prickland rolls his eyes. “The American likes to make up words.”

“Is it still that bad in the rose maze?” Lionel frowns. Alistair sighs.

“Even worse than your time, probably.”

“Sorry, do you two, like, know each other?” I ask. Lionel shoots a smile to Alistair.

“Should I tell her about all the time you spent in my school years running around this campus in a soggy diaper?”

“Preferably not,” Alistair says, clipped.

“A diaper?” I clap my hands. “Oh, that’s perfect, actually. ‘Wallowing in my own feces’ is the ideal look for you.”

But Alistair has no patience for me. “New girl - notebook, now.”

“You should give it to him, Lilith,” Lionel encourages. “It’s important.”

“You know how it is in these streets; tit for tat, info for info. If I’m gonna give you this, what’s the whole deal with you not eating?”

Lionel’s gaze widens, and Alistair’s darkens.

“Since when did you become my nutritionist?”

“Since now. You’re Ciel’s friend, and I’m Ciel’s…friend,” I stress. “And so we’re officially hemi-friends by proxy. And hemi-friends get to hemi-worry about each other.”

“I am not Ciel’s friend. You are not Ciel’s friend.”

“Did you peep the way he walked up to me after your duel? I’m at least one teaspoon vanilla his friend.”

“Remind me to add ‘delusional’ to your dossier, right next to ‘can’t mind her own business’ and ‘god-awful metaphors’.”

I bristle with a comeback, but Lionel clears his throat; “The drawing, Ali.”

Ciel called him that, too. And Rafe. He has more people calling him nicknames than Ana led me to believe. At the reminder Alistair’s expression does that sharpening into all-business thing, molten glass turning hard and clear.

“Give me the notebook,” He demands. “Now.”

“Haven’t you heard of equal exchange? Free market? I have something you want, so you give me something I want.” I flush. “You won’t leak your info, so…you get to help me. With Ciel.”

“‘Help’ you?”

“Help me. Um. Date him. But like, platonic dating, obviously, nothing serious -”

“Here,” Lionel’s voice rings out as he gives Alistair the notebook that was in my hands seconds ago. “It’s in the first few pages.”

“HEY!” I shriek, aghast. I didn’t even hear him behind me! “That’s private property, mister!”

“And now it’s my property,” Alistair says as he flips through it. “Considering my sister’s drawn in it.”

“S-Sister? What are you -”

“Her name was Rose, right?” Alistair interrupts. “The girl who drew this on the plane?”

I think back to the flight attendant addressing her. “Yeah.”

“She should be in school. Why is she flying to Geneva?” Alistair mutters, brows knitting. “Unless that woman is…she can’t be in Chamonix. It’s too early for the season.”

“Yanagiko had a press release last week,” Lionel says beside him. “It said something about a shareholder’s meeting in Chamonix.”

“Good,” Alistair lets out a relieved breath. “As long as it’s Father with her.”

They’re basically speaking gibberish. I only catch the feeling of it. Alistair says ‘that woman’ with a hefty dose of not-so-hidden venom. Disgust. It’s the same sort of disgust that laced his whole interaction with Gabe yesterday, but dialed up to thirteen.

“Hey, uh, ring ring,” I mime holding a phone up to my ear. “Can this be a group chat?”

Alistair’s about to open his mouth when he flips the page and freezes on the drawing. His whole posture changes; his spine going ramrod straight. I watch his throat bob as he swallows hard.

“It’s hers,” He murmurs. “It’s definitely Rose’s work.”

“The real freaky part is the perspective.” I point into the distance. “It’s the exact same. Look.”

For once in his mega-trust-fund life Alistair deigns to listen to me, and his eyes flicker up to take in the line of trees, the lights of the chateaus, and the unlight of Knight Durand. He snaps the notebook closed with his long fingers.

“I’m bringing this to Von Arx. And you -” He points the book at me. “Won’t breathe a word to anyone about it.”

“Too late,” I chirp. “I’ve already told my BFF.”

Alistair steps in suddenly, but I’m ready for him this time. I quickly move to make space between us, and then I look up. His eyes cut. No exhaustion, no irritation. They’re clear and bright - galvanized by determination.

“You won’t tell a single person in Silvere about this, or I’ll have you cleaning the rose maze for the rest of the year.”

“Jeez, overprotective, much,” I grumble. “So what if I keep quiet or not? What’s in it for me?”

“I’m offering you the privilege of not cleaning the rose maze.”

“And I’m offering you the privilege of getting launched through seven layers of drywall by yours truly,” I snap. “You think the threat of kicking around nasty rubbers will keep me quiet? I went to a public school. I did that shit for funsies.”

Alistair glowers German longswords at me. Lionel sighs. “Lilith, please -”

“If you two want me to keep quiet, you gotta pay me. Them’s the rules. I don’t make ‘em, I just follow them. Straight off a cliff and into a pit of money.”

“This is much more important than you think it is, Lilith -”

“I’ll help you. With Ciel.” Alistair interrupts Lionel. I perk my non-existent cat ears up to the non-existent ceiling.

“Really?”

“What, don’t trust me?”

“I don’t make it a habit of trusting people who chase me out of rooms.”

“I was eating.”

“Something you don’t do often, apparently.”

“I do it as much as anyone else. Just not to your specifications.”

I narrow my eyes. “What -”

“I help you with Ciel. You keep quiet about this drawing. Forever. Do we have a deal?”

I gnaw my lips.I shouldn’t trust him. My gut says not to, but the idea of an actual date is like a tempting dream and I start to get all kinds of hope. It could happen. It could actually happen to me. I could be the one Ciel kisses. The one he -

“Pinky swear?” I start, my face already flaming red.

“Would a pinky swear really stop the likes of your motormouth from babbling?” He asks.

“Definitely not,” I admit. “Probably.”

A flash of silver arcs in the moonlight, and he suddenly pulls something metal out of his pocket. It takes me a second to realize it’s a switchblade, but Lionel gets it way faster than me.

“Alistair, this isn’t necessary -”

“It’s a Silvere tradition,” Alistair says without breaking eye contact with me. “Used to be an initiation ritual, back in the days with no TV or internet or anything interesting to do. But it still stands. A blood promise made on Silvere grounds means something. If you break it, there’ll be consequences; one way or another.”

It’s a not-so-subtle threat. But he can’t mean, like, an actual blood promise. Who just casually offers something like that? Scratch that - there’s no casualness about him right now. He hasn’t once looked away from me. He won’t even blink, and it’s blistering my face off.

“Why are you so fuckin’ serious about this?” I press. “Why do you want me to keep quiet so bad?”

Alistair doesn’t miss a beat. “It’s happened before.”

“What has?”

“My sister. She’s drawn the future before.”

I look over at Lionel for some kind of indication Alistair’s joking, but Lionel won’t meet my eyes, staring at the switchblade warily instead.

“Okay. I get it,” I finally say. “This is some kind of hazing. You tell new people impossible shit, and see if they’re gullible enough to believe it. Yeah, I believed Santa existed until I was twelve, but this one’s not gonna get me.”

Alistair’s fast when he wants to be. But I knew that from the duel. I blink and he’s above me, looming there in a faint curl of bergamot and sweat and looking down at me like I’m a child to be pitied. I can see myself in his irises - I’m stupid to him, aren’t I? I’m just some nonsensical American girl with a bad knee, who can’t tie her shoes properly, who’s naive and easy to manipulate. The instinct to back away from him rears up, but I force my legs to stand firm. Not this time. He doesn’t get to win this time.

“I’ve seen it for myself,” Alistair mutters, so tall he’s speaking just above my ear. “The things my sister draws - they happen.”

I glower at his neck. “Is this the part where I boo you offstage for your shit attempt at stand-up?”

My joke’s hollow in the face of his seriousness - it just hits the floor and stays dead. I’m standing near him. Close. The difference is I’m too pissed to listen to the warning bells, this time.

“It started out small,” He insists. “She drew pictures of my grades before they came out down to the last number - before she even knew what numbers were. She’d draw pictures of toys Grandmother would get her for Christmas six months in advance. True to the color, the size, the number of sparkles.”

My throat goes dry. “But that’s - that’s coincidence -”

“I thought so too,” He says, peeling away the first few buttons on his shirt. “Until she drew this, a whole year before I got it.”

My blood curdles to icewater, even as his skin radiates heat. There, inches away and down his broad olive chest, is the massive stretch of pale scar tissue. It begins at his sharp collarbone and runs the line between his pecs, bleeding over between his ribcage and down to the beginning of his stomach.

The burn.

“Oil,” His voice digs bitterly, like an old thorn. “It healed messily, but it’s got a distinct shape to it, doesn’t it?”

Like a flower. A spider, a lily, a spider lily with thin petals blooming in a clear trail where the oil dripped down his skin. Not splashed, like an accident a child might make grabbing a pot on the stove. But dripped. Slowly.

Purposefully.

I can say I understand. I can try to pretend being shoved down the stairs by Dad and snapping my leg is anywhere near as painful. But when I work up the courage to look at Alistair’s face I realize I don’t understand anything at all. Not about him, or about what his life’s been like up until now.

Someone hurt him on purpose, maybe.

And at the very least I know what that’s like.

I inhale a shaky breath. “Say I decide to go against my better judgement and believe you. You’re saying your sister can see the future?”

“I don’t know if she sees it, or dreams it, or makes it up. All I know is she’ll draw pictures of things that haven’t happened yet,” Alistair continues. “And sometimes, there’ll be this thing in the background. This same dark figure, with the teeth and the red eyes - ”

The red eyed man in the restaurant, dark hair, high cheeks.

Breathe, Lilith.

“- so I started looking for it. Whenever the picture would finally manifest in reality, I’d look for the shadow thing, for its exact location in the picture.”

“And?” I manage.

“I could see a watery shadow out of the corner of my eye. Shadows can be explained away - tricks of the light, furniture, the time of day. But the one thing I couldn’t explain was the sound. I couldn’t always see it, but I could always hear it.”

“Hear what?”

“In the exact same spot it would be standing, according to the picture,” He murmurs. “I’d hear singing. Not words, but the sound. The notes.”

And then Alistair hums. And my brain jumps instantly to the words.

Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other’s gold.

All my brain can see is the shadow around the corner, in the hall. The red-eyed man in the LA restaurant, slowly opening his mouth to sing, and the horrible feeling crawls up my skin inch by demonic inch. Is it the same? The same monster? The one Rose draws, the one Alistair hears, the man I’ve seen. The thing in the picture…was that thing the man in the restaurant? But that doesn’t make any fuckin’ sense. He didn’t look like that. Aside from the red eyes, he looked normal. Human.

None of this makes sense.

Lionel clears his throat. “Alistair, that’s enough. You’re scaring her.”

I snarl to drive off the cold chills. “Why would you tell me this?”

“You asked me why I’m so serious about this blood promise.” Alistair peels away from me, buttoning his shirt, and I finally start to breathe easy again. “I don’t know if that singing shadow is real or not. I don’t know what my sister can do. Or why. But I know if that woman found out about it -” His fingers pause. “Rose would get hurt.”

“Who would hurt -”

“My mother would.”

His voice is hard, final. He finishes with his shirt, and in the next neat second slices across his palm with the knife, no hesitation, no decorum, the shallow cut welling crimson instantly. Blood. Bright red blood. The urge to run away, to hide (in a closet, something small and safe and dark) crashes over my brain like a tidal wave and all I can do is stand and endure it, frozen to the spot as the blood seeps down his palm and drips into the grass, drips into the carpet, my leg bone splintered and piercing through my paper skin at the knee, the pounding of Dad’s feet on the stairs as he approaches, a shadow looming tall, and I raise my hands and scream and then there’s red, red everywhere -

“You said -” I swallow and look at Lionel. “You just warned me not to make promises with strangers.”

Lionel’s quiet, and then; “She has a point, Ali. Surely a handshake would be much simpler -”

“She and I can’t stand to look at each other, let alone trust each other with handshakes,” Prickland scoffs, fingers dripping red. “This is the only way.”

“Y-You could just pay me off,” I offer woozily. “I’d…pretty sure I’d shut up for money.”

“Money is easy. Blood is hard.”

“Says you.”

“Alistair,” Lionel’s voice tinges weirdly desperate. “Please. Reconsider. Rose is safe with your father right now. Devonne is not coming to Silvere anytime soon. This is all so unnecessary -“

“Your choice, new girl,” Alistair extends his hand. “Do you want my help with Ciel or not? It’s now, or never.”

Abruptly, like a guillotine moving too fast to see, Lionel’s hand darts out around Alistair’s wrist, stopping him from reaching me. Their faces are starting to blur as the panic grips me around the throat and squeezes in red, but I can see Lionel’s ice blue eyes, so strong, so pointed. Winter.

“What?” Alistair’s chuckle at him is bitter. “You were the one who taught me the importance of promises, Lionel. Now I can’t make any?”

“Your grandmother -“

“I can bleed a little. It won’t kill me.”

“What if Lilith has a sickness? If you contract it -”

Alistair’s snarl rips the air in two. “I’m not a child anymore, Lionel. And I certainly don’t need two of my Grandmother harping at me to be careful all the time.”

Lionel tries to reach out again, to stop him. But he suddenly pulls back, like he’s been shocked by static or something. His mouth knits, lips struggling over one another like he wants to say something, like he’s trying with every muscle to say words but…can’t. It’s weird. It’s weird, or it’s normal, I can’t decide. This is all so fucking weird. This whole place. Durand, the arranged marriages, the forest, the helicopter, the drivers spying, the way people treat each other, Von Arx, Lionel - all of it. The world’s spinning, my insult-comeback lost in the tornado of light and dark and color. All I can hold on to is the chance. This is my one chance. A one in a million chance. I have to try. Ciel’s the only one I’ve never felt the fear with. And I might never find someone like that again in my whole life.

Alistair flips the switchblade and hands it over to me, the actual cutting part of it still slick with his viscous red. I’m gonna fucking black out right here.

“Are you afraid of blood, too?” He scoffs softly. “Me, blood, your own shadow. What a terrified thing you are.”

Asshole. I’m not afraid. I’m almost seventeen. The world is almost ready for me. He’s gone. The one who hurt me is gone. I lived. Mom lived. I survived. There’s nothing to be afraid of, anymore.

I snatch the switchblade from Alistair’s fingers, my vision swimming violently as I hold it up to my palm.

“F-For the last time,” I hiss up at him. “I’m not afraid of you. I’m not afraid of anything.”

I slice. The feeling is cold across my skin, and then hot, unbearably hot as blood oozes down my fingers. I force all my willpower into staring at Alistair - holding his gaze, neither of us blinking. Neither of us giving in. A long moment. Two. But as he extends his cut hand, I swear I see the edges of his long, dour mouth curl up. A ghost of a smile. No, not even that. A ghost of a ghost of a smile.

“A blood promise, then, between a girl who’s not afraid, and a boy who very much is.”

I’m shaking so hard I can’t say anything back - my teeth chattering in my skull. But if I could say words, they’d go something like this;

My name is Lilith Elizabeth Pierce, and I’m not fucking afraid, anymore.

I slip my hand into his, our warmth mingling, our blood exchanging slick and magma-hot, and that’s the last thing I feel before the world goes totally black - red on red, red on black, red on his dour frown, red on my hands, red on nothing at all.

22

THE NIGHTROSE (OR, HOW A GIRL BREAKS THE DEVIL)

So in the cold and unforgiving retrospect of four a.m, making a Dracula deal with Dracula Jr. probably wasn't such a good idea. Was Dracula Belgian? No, idiot, my phone says. He was obviously Transylvanian.

Okay. But that doesn’t change the fact Alistair now has my genetic blueprint. He can do all sorts of illegal shit with that. Number one being, like, cloning me. Which I'm not totally against because like any rational human yes, I’ve thought about it, and yes, making out with myself would be very sick, in fact. If I’m going to lose my first kiss to anyone, it better be someone who respects me. And really, the only person in the world I can rely on to respect me is me. You show up to class once in seventh grade with a tiny smear of nutella on the entire left half of your face and BAM - that’s it. Game over. People think you eat poop for breakfast and all your respect points go down the metaphoric toilet.

Sorry. Toilette.

Alistair could totally feasibly clone me, too. I know that because the first thing I do when I wake up in my dorm room bed with my bandaged hand is read Lionel’s note on the desk that says; ‘Please get your injury checked out by the nurse in Knight Augustin every few days’, the second thing I do is drink a refreshing glass of asscrack-o’-dawn water, and the third thing is google everything I can remember about the conversation pre-blood. The Girl Scout song, turns out, is just a song. No ghost-connections, no creepy nothing attached to it. Just a song, made by someone. ‘Red eyes scary singing’ gets me a shitload of very bad and very fake ghost-hunting videos. ’Seeing the future’ just gives me a fuckton of hokey occultist sites trying to sell me essential oils and palm readings. So I turn to something more concrete, instead.

Yanagiko - that word Lionel said - is apparently some big-time biomedical company based in Tokyo. It produces one half of all Japan’s medical equipment, ships a ton more overseas, and it’s heading some pretty prestigious Tokyo University-adjacent research into cancer mutagens - and hopefully, as their website reads, an eventual cure.

Yanagiko is headed by one Eric Nakano. It takes me all of two seconds skimming his google results to realize A. He’s an extremely smart man, and B. He’s an extremely handsome one. He was born in Seattle, attended Harvard at the age of fifteen, and got his PhD in biomedical engineering and his doctorate in medicine by the age of twenty-three. Even at fifty-seven the guy’s a bonafide hot toddy; super tall, dark slicked-back hair, gentle brown eyes, and a jawline to die for. There are a ton of pictures of him mingling with European socialites at charity balls and stuff. If you told me he acted in some Hollywood movie, I honestly wouldn’t even think twice.

But it’s his mouth that really gives it away; that long, tender, sad-looking mouth, like the world is ending and only he can see it. Alistair’s mouth. Mr. Nakano is his dad, or I’ll eat my imaginary snapback.

And, of course, googling Alistair’s dad means I find his mom, too.

It’s an article about their wedding twenty years ago. And it’s immediately followed by an article about their divorce, six years later. But it’s the wedding that entrances me; I might not be able to read Belgian-French or Japanese, but I sure as shit can look at the pictures. Mr. Nakano is in an immaculate black suit, his face even handsomer when he smiles. Cherry blossoms rain down from the grand church’s gothic-as-hell ceiling. And the woman waiting at the other end of the aisle…I suck in a breath. Her massive wedding skirt billows out like a bank of snow, her veil barely able to hide her beauty. Her hair’s long and curly and the exact color of tempered milk chocolate and just as shiny. Her face is Von Arx’s elegant face, almost down to the last detail. She’s got a rounder chin than Von Arx, and bigger shoulders. But she’s her daughter for sure; those green, fox-like eyes pierce out into the photographer’s lens.

The definitively bizarre part is finding the Wikipedia article on Alistair’s mom - Devonne Frances Isabel Strickland, 14th Marquise of du Larc-Thien. There isn’t much on her. She’s a socialite-philanthropist and was a model in her early twenties, mostly starring in commercials. A little footnote says she married Eric Nakano, much to the vocal protestation of her family, and had two children; Alistair Theodor Ryou Strickland and Rose Celeste Hikari Strickland. What is with these royal people and their seventeen names?

But at the very bottom of the article I find the most surreal words of all; By rule of primogeniture, Alistair will inherit the title of 15th Marquess of du Larc-Thien on his 18th birthday.

‘IT’S 5:34 am on a Thursday,’ I text to Ruby, who’s definitely up at this weird time. ‘You know what that means.’

‘Uh…getting ready for school?’ she offers.

‘Nope. It means it’s time to eat chips until I feel sick and watch videos about how things are made.’

She doesn’t answer me. I do the aforementioned with much gusto - trying to forget how bad my cut hand hurts under the bandage - until crumbs are splayed across my bed like a crispy murder scene and my phone is at 10% battery left. I text her again;

‘Update; feel pretty shitty. Cool machines, though.’

‘Maybe consider sleeping?’ She asks.

‘No can do. Brain broken.’

‘I love you regardless,’ she says, and it gives me just enough courage to put my suffocating uniform on and head out.

“Prickland is going to inherit the title of marquess at 18,” I say to Ana, pulling my stubborn skirt lower between each mincing step down Knight Lyon’s stairs.

“Mhm,” Ana murmurs absently, her braids gleaming in the morning sun as we shuffle to breakfast. She looks utterly nonplussed. I throw my hands up eloquently.

“You know what I’m getting at 18? Over it. And half a million dollars worth of student loan debt, probably.”

“Ah, that’s right,” She taps her chin. “College is expensive for Americans. Well, someone had to pay for you to come to Silvere.”

“My, uh, step-dad?” I try the word on my tongue, but it tastes bitter.

“He obviously cares about your education. So you won’t have any debt. He’ll pay for everything.” She pauses. “Right?”

The way she sounds so sure reminds me exactly of who she is, and who I am. It’s a luxury to be that sure about college. About anything. Where I come from it’s a luxury to be that sure about any money, ever. I look at the floor, my converse squeaking on the freshly-polished wood.

“Maybe. If him and Mom are still together two years from now.”

Ana smiles. “I’m sure they will be.”

Sometimes it’s easy to see she was raised by politicians. That little smile she gives speaks volumes while saying nothing at all. It’s a pleasant smile, don’t get me wrong, but it feels like shards - not the whole crystal. Like a facade. A way to keep people happy. Then again, I don’t blame her. S’not much you can do when someone else talks about their parents breaking up. It’s not like you have any control over it. All you can do is reassure them. It’s their world crashing down, not yours. You can’t ever go into someone else’s world because it’s been theirs from the moment they were born - like a glove fitting a hand or skin fitting a body. There’s no room for you. You can’t go in but you can watch from the outside and shout encouragement.

Just because cliche words are all anyone can give sometimes doesn’t mean they don’t matter.

Even if all my fucked-up fears are screaming at me that Mom and Will won’t last, I try to cup Ana’s words like falling sand. They won’t fall apart. Mom will be happy like this, forever.

He won’t hurt her.

“What happened to your hand?”

I look up and smile. “Aw, this little thing? Papercut. Turned a page in my brand-spanking new textbook angrily and too fast.”

She seems to buy it, thankfully. Because how the hell would I explain to her how I got roped into making a blood promise with Prickland? After being specifically warned against making promises in this place by Lionel? I can barely understand it myself - it made sense in the moment, but now in the cold light of morning it seems so over the top and dramatic. All I know is if I keep my big mouth shut about Alistair’s sister having ESP or whatever, he’ll help me with Ciel. Simple. GG EZ.

“Ana, you’re like, one of the smartest people in the world,” I decide.

Her onyx-polish eyes widen as we plop down at the cafe table with our plates, hers healthy eggs and mine full of pastries again.

“Since when?”

I mash a pain au chocolat into my mouth. “Like - strictly hypothetically - is seeing the future uh, possible? For a person? Just any regular old person.”

Ana sits back in her chair, tapping her eggy fork against her lips thoughtfully. “Well, quantum physics proposes the theory that all things that exist also don’t exist until observed. You know, Schrödinger’s cat.”

I choke on my tea. “Whose dinger has a cat on it?”

“And more recently - ” Ana continues, her eyes glossy and completely enamored with Science™. “- several experts in the field have suggested there are multiple flux states sandwiched between existence and non-existence. To take it one step further, the theory of relativity implies to see the future would require your perception - your eyes, your brain, your whole body - to move faster than the speed of light. Or at least as fast as. Anything with a mass is affected by gravity, and therefore can’t move faster than light. But if one is in a flux state - neither here nor there - one has no mass. So, if you think about it, there could be a great amount of correlation between these flux states and future-sight.”

“Sick.” I shove another pastry in my mouth, half of it crumbling down my blazer. “So that’s a yes?”

“Sort of. There might be someone out there who can see the future. But I highly doubt they’d be a regular person like you or me. Or…maybe they would be! That’s the great thing about science - nothing makes sense. Until it does.”

She beams at me and munches on a square of toast. I nod and try to pretend I didn’t scrape by physics with a C-. Alistair chooses that moment to swagger into the cafeteria, Rafe and Maria at his side. I narrow my eyes in his general direction.

“Will you excuse me, Professor Ana? I’ve got a parent-teacher conference to get to. My boy’s been behaving very badly.”

Ana laughs and waves me off. I do my best impression of a confident, not-injured saunter as I walk over to Alistair’s table.

“G’morning, ladies and gentlefolk -” I smile at Maria and Rafe, and then turn to Alistair. “- And ogres.”

Alistair graces me with a single-shouldered shrug, his bandaged hand sequestered under the table. Maria is far less accommodating.

“Go away.” She grips a butterknife for effect.

“We didn’t get to introduce each other yesterday. I’m Lilith.” I extend my not-bandaged hand to her. “Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you too!” Rafe bolts up, grabbing my hand with his meaty one and shaking so hard he might as well be trying to dislocate my arm. His smile’s so huge and cheeky, it’s almost infectious. “I’m Rafe. Alistair’s talked a lot about you -”

Three things suddenly happen all at the same time; Alistair goes completely rigid like a statue, a clattering thump resounds from under the table, and Rafe lets out a wounded howl.

“Moron.” Maria sneers at him.

“What was that for, Mare?” One tear wells up in Rafe’s eye as he rubs his shin frantically. “I was just talkin’ to her - ”

“Enemy.” Maria jerks her syrupy butterknife in my direction, and Rafe looks between it and me and then Alistair, whose green gaze is suddenly riveted on a distant potted plant.

“Oh. Oh yeah.” Rafe turns back to me with a frown. “Sorry we can’t be friends. I mean, not sorry. I mean…uhhhh - ”

I smile. “It’s fine. Enemies cost way less upkeep, anyway.”

Rafe thinks about this very seriously with his nose in a crepe. Alistair finally lets out the sigh I know he’s been holding in.

“Why are you here, new girl?”

“Because my parents reproduced,” I say. “You?”

“An extraordinarily long streak of bad luck.”

“Well your luck’s about to change, because I need my notebook back before first period, and I’ve chosen you -” I jab my finger at him. “- to retrieve it for me.”

Maria watches every word fly between us like a hawk watching a tennis match with a squirrel as the ball. Alistair’s tired eyes harden.

“Getting your notebook back wasn’t part of our deal.”

“You said I couldn’t talk about it,” I say. “And I won’t. But that notebook’s still mine. I had important notes in it. For, you know. Class. Classes me gots to passes?”

We stare each other down, me smiling as big as I can and him glowering as deep as he can. And then, something breaks. One of us wins and I think it’s me, because Alistair leans back.

“Von Arx has it now. And you’ll never pry it out of her painstakingly-moisturized grip.”

“Watch me.”

“Wish I could, new girl,” He hefts off the chair suddenly. “But I just remembered I have literally anything else to do.”

I slam my hand down on the table, rattling the silverware. It’s the loudest noise in this damn cafe, and people stare. Maria’s eyes narrow, Rafe’s widen, and Alistair’s just roll.

“You promised me,” I insist.

“Refresh my memory?” He drones in the general direction of the ceiling.

“Ciel.”

“In all honesty, you’d have a better chance at winning the lottery than him saying yes to dating you.”

“Why?”

“He’s not the type to date.”

“Excuses?” I simper. “This early in our relationship?”

“Hardly,” He scoffs. “If anything, it’s a warning. Ciel doesn’t date. He walks every Fashion Week in Milan, Paris, Seoul. He’s been in every major designer’s show since the age of thirteen. He accrues girls like you accrue bedhead - with sheer offensive effortlessness.”

I glower and pat my hair. Alistair looks down from the ceiling with a lazy smirk.

“I’m more in your range, new girl.”

I blink. Is he saying what I think he’s saying? My whole body deflates as the traps snap closed. Figures. Just like every other horny teenage dude.

“What range would that be, Prickland? Dirty and desperate?”

“I was thinking more ‘roguish’ and ‘painfully self-aware’.” When I don’t stop glaring, he exhales. “That was a joke.”

“Don’t change the subject. You were the one who made me cut my fucking hand open. I’m keeping your dramatic Dracula promise - now you keep your end of it.”

Our gazes meet for another moment, the quiet murmur of the cafe dulling to nothing more than background noise. The dark circles under his eyes are deeper, today, and I hate that I notice that. I hate that I’m talking to him like it’s a normal thing. I hate that life has forced us into each other like this, when the only thing I wanted was to stay fifteen feet away from him at all times.

Finally, he shakes his head, and mutters wearily under his breath; “I should’ve expelled you the moment I saw you.”

“That’s a yes, then.”

“It’s a promise, new girl. Not an agreement. Just don’t blame me when everything doesn’t go according to your rosy teenage fantasy.”

My face immolates, and I barely manage to spit out a “Fuck you”.

“That would be easier, yes,” He sighs and walks off, voice fading as Maria and Rafe follow dutifully. “But something tells me you’ve never taken the easy route in your life.”

SO, Alistair’s right.

No, I will not say those two words ever again in that exact same order. But right now, staring down the Knight Augustin building, I realize…he’s right. The hard way is my way. Everything else feels like a cop-out. I’d rather beat my head against a brick wall than eat my way through a cotton-candy one because I’m me, and I need to feel like I’ve deserved my rewards. Lilith Pierce needs to constantly test her abilities against the world or she will perish out of utter boredom.

Which is why I’m retrieving my notebook myself.

Von Arx’s office looks a lot more intimidating with its doors closed. The nice secretary lady with her hair in a bun waits for me to knock with a saintly-patient smile.

“They may look thick, but I can promise you the headmistress will hear you.”

“I forgot,” I blurt.

“Forgot what?” She asks.

“How to knock. They should have, like, professionals who can do it for you. If you forget. Or don’t want to. Professional knockers.” I pause. “Not titties. Just. You know.”

The secretary blinks. “Pardon?”

“Uh, nothing. Thanks.”

“Of course. I’ll be behind my desk if you need further assistance.”

I listen to her clip away in her mature-working-lady high heels and swallow acid. Like fuck I want to be here, in the lion’s lair of a lady who doesn’t exactly like me, but that notebook’s mine. Sure, it’s got a creepy future-picture in it, but it’s also got my notes from the past two days. I’m not trying to fail out of school. Not this year, anyway.

My knuckles hover over the door. Why am I afraid? Von Arx is just an old lady. I’ve met a lot of those, and only two have ever tried to metaphysically gut me. We’ll be fineeee. We’re not afraid of anything, remember? Pretend-bravery. If you’re fancy you call it bravado. But alas, we are not. We are the one not-fancy thing in this stupid school.

C’mon, Lilith. Pretend-brave.

I raise my bandaged hand and knock. There’s a beat, and then the giant wooden doors click open and a cool voice filters out.

“Come in.”

This time, I get to see everything in her office slowly, at my own, decidedly less jetlagged pace. The paintings are still here, the line of kabuki masks and that one weird, out of place gold beaked mask on the end. Glowingly healthy plants burst out of every vase on every table. Von Arx sure loves her green shit, doesn’t she? I do too, but like, from afar. Without getting poked by thorns. Also, these plants feel different than the carefully-manicured campus trees and hedges. They feel…alive. Like as I pass they’ll try to reach their stems out and strangle me. Like the flowers could turn their gorgeous faces to me at any moment and spit poison right into my eyes. Everything smells overpoweringly like green stuff - wet soil masked by hundreds of competing flower-scents. But among the choking greenery, there’s a spot of fresh air by the windowsill. An airy little windowbox, crowded with the cute heads of lettuce I’ve seen from time to time. But now that I’m up close, I can tell it’s perfect lettuce. Too-perfect. The sort you see in, like, garden magazines, or food photography that’s been photoshopped to hell and back. Each little head of lettuce is such a vibrant green it doesn’t look quite…real.

Note to self; don’t break any shit, this time. A tall order for a chaotic good, but she’ll give it a damn try.

“Please take a seat, Miss Pierce.”

Von Arx’s voice rings, but I can’t see her anywhere in the office. Unnerved, I flop into the chair in front of the massive desk. Principals always have boring stuff on their desk - cheap ‘best teacher’ awards and those lines of hanging iron balls that click together on their own - but not Von Arx. All kinds of weird shit sits next to her ultra-modern computer; an ancient gold scale that’s broken and tipping to one side even with nothing on it, a tiny bonsai tree in a red clay pot that’s utterly withered, a glass orb as big as my fist with a real holographic-green butterfly frozen in it. And then, of course, there’s the breathtaking miniature stag, the black glass gleaming darkly in the sunlight. It rears up, antlers proud and tall and its eyes two small, perfect rubies.

Red.

This time, looking at the rubies feels different. It makes all the baby hairs on the back of my neck stand up for no reason at all. It’s just a deer. A goth-as-hell piece of deer art. So why does staring at it now make my stomach lurch like the beginning of a throw-up? Wait. I know. I know what it reminds me of - the shadow in Rose’s drawing.

But that still doesn’t explain why in the seventh layer of hell I want to touch it so badly. It feels like I’ve gotta touch it. The sunlight fractures through the smoky black of the deer’s body. I reach one trembling finger out, slowly. Inch by inch, until I’m almost -

“I see you’ve found the Nightrose.”

Von Arx’s voice is disturbingly close, my finger retracting fast. “T-The what?”

“The Nightrose.” She rounds the desk, her arms full of fresh flower clippings. Her mauve dress billows out as she settles in her high-backed chair, the flowers scattering on her desktop. “That’s the name of that impressive piece of art. My friend made it for me - constructed of volcanic obsidian from Greenland, and the antlers are jet from Spain.”

“And the rubies?” I lead, my mouth dry. “From hell, by any chance?”

“Close. Scotland.” Her emerald eyes still stun me, that pale spring-green ring in the center glowing brighter in the sunlight. “I presume you’ve come to be tested early on the rulebook I gave you. I must say, I appreciate the initiative.”

“No.” I blurt, and she quirks one gray eyebrow. “I’m actually here for my notebook. Alistair gave it to you yesterday. Or this morning, I dunno. But I know he gave it to you for sure.”

I watch her face, but it doesn’t so much as twitch. So that’s where Alistair learned that stone-face trick. She reaches for a pen, and then starts to write something in a heavy book. There’s a whole two minutes of silence, her scribbling and me sitting there, the thick scent of flowers and her own dignified gardenia perfume nearly choking me. I stare at the uber-lettuce behind her on the windowsill. She doesn’t eat it, does she? Maybe she does. Curiosity suddenly burns a hole in my brain.

“Why doesn’t he eat in front of people?”

She looks up briefly. “Excuse me?”

“Alistair. I noticed he doesn’t eat in the cafe. And then I accidentally found him in this room, with this sad little sandwich? And he got pissed -”

“It is a family matter,” She asserts. “Which means it’s none of your concern.”

“Yeah, I get that. But he snapped at me and sort of made it my concern, is all, and I feel like -”

“When he was younger, someone attempted to poison him. He very nearly died.”

All the wind presses out of my lungs at once. Von Arx continues on.

“He doesn’t eat in front of others, and he doesn’t eat food he hasn’t prepared. The psychologists call it a defense mechanism. There. Does that satisfy you?”

Her voice sounds as painful as licking a metal pole in winter feels. Poison? It sounds so 17th century, so outdated, so surreal.

“Who would wanna -”

“The powerful have many enemies.” Von Arx cuts me off simply.

“But you said it’s a family matter. Someone in your family poisoned -”

A loud thud makes me jump as she shuts the book she was writing in with vicious force.

“You will not burden him or I with this line of questioning any longer. Is that clear?”

“Y-Yeah. Sure. You got it.”

I think back to the scar he showed me on his chest, the way he seemed so convinced his mother would do something to Rose if she found out about her maybe-ESP. I could be jumping to wild-ass conclusions, but…it couldn’t’ve been his mom. Couldn’t be, right? No mom would be that shitty. No mom would try to kill their kid. I mean, you hear it on the news sometimes, but it doesn’t really hit home as real. Why would she even want to kill her own son? Maybe I’m just projecting. Their family’s Belgian nobility, or whatever. A jealous uncle, or an aunt who wants money. That’s way more plausible. Doesn’t mean it’s any less shitty. I almost start to feel bad for him again.

Seven months. That’s all I’m here for.

“So, uh.” I start. “About my notebook -”

Von Arx speaks without looking up from her computer. “As headmistress of the most selective boarding school in all Europe, Miss Pierce, I’m sure you can understand that I’m quite a busy woman.”

“I get that. But you can just give me the notebook, and I’ll get out of your hair. Great hair, by the way.” There’s an awkward pause. “What conditioner do you use?”

“Do you know why I love plants, Miss Pierce?”

“Because they don’t talk back?”

“I love them because they are still things in a very busy world,” She says. “Their trunks are still. Their stems only ever move when they are blown by the wind, or parted by human hand. They have the wisdom to remain quiet, inert, when the entire universe bustles and seethes around them. Plants are the closest thing there will ever be on this planet to true peace.”

She pushes her rolling chair back elegantly, resting her elbow on the windowsill and stroking the uber-lettuce daintily. Happily. She never smiles at me, but she does at Lionel, her plants, Alistair - three things she loves. Obviously. She glides back to the desk, her fancy ink pen scratching across paper as she signs something with flourish.

“I regret to inform you your notebook belongs to me now.”

I blink. “But…my mom gave it to me -”

“And I am confiscating it, which, if you read the rulebook, you’d know means I may dispose of it at my discretion.” She smiles up at me with all her impeccably straight teeth. “If you’d like, we could take the matter to a small claims court, but I’ll do you the service of projecting your loss ahead of time - William Cunningham’s solicitors are good, certainly, but I make it a point to employ the best in the world.”

Court? For a little ol’ notebook? She and Alistair are so damn protective of Rose’s drawing. Wait, no - Von Arx just hates me, doesn’t she? She thinks she can just steamroll over me like I’m nothing. Because I am, to her. Bad grades, worse permanent record. I’m only here because of William’s money. It’s not even about the notebook anymore. This is a matter of pride - a war of wills. I bristle down to my toes.

“You can’t do this.”

“I can. And I do. But I take no pleasure in it,” She says coldly. “Now, if you’d please; the door is over there.”

Two can play her solitaire game. I know now. Or at least, I think I know. The missing poster, the Julien she talked about. They’re the same. It’s worth a gamble, at least. I shove my hand in my bag and rummage, pulling out the rulebook. I slide the missing poster out from between its pages and slap it on the desk.

“How about a trade, then?”

She doesn’t even look up from her screen. I clear my throat.

“I think you’ll be interested in this -”

“I doubt it.” She cuts.

I unfold the poster, and when she sees what’s inside her whole face goes slack. All her queenly coolness evaporates, and what’s left is a thunderstruck old woman. Her bejeweled hand darts out for the poster, but I’m faster - I grab it and lightly shake it between two fingers.

“This belongs to you, doesn’t it?”

“Where did you find that?” She demands.

“It was chilling in the rulebook you gave me. I thought it was just trash. But seeing how carefully preserved it is, I’d say that’s not true at all, huh?”

Von Arx’s veiny fist almost imperceptibly tightens on the desk’s surface. I was right - this thing means something to her. But why? Part of me wants to see her crack. And part of me just wants to know the answer.

“His name is Julien, isn’t it?” I prod.

Von Arx goes still, like a deer in the headlights. Like the deer on her desk, frozen and made into art.

“Is?” She murmurs. “No. His name was Julien. And he was my son.”

Instantly, the arrogance I built up taunting her feels cheap, brittle, and it comes crashing down like a castle of glass toothpicks. Her son. Alistair’s uncle.

Her son went missing all those years ago?

“In the end, even a mother’s love was not enough to save him from fate.” Von Arx’s eyes hollowly watch the space over my shoulder. Her eyebrows knit, as if what she’s recalling hurts somewhere I can’t see.

“Did he get…kidnapped, or something?” I try softly.

“He was not the first,” Von Arx ignores me. “And he will not be the last.” She suddenly snaps out of it, fox-eyes focusing on me. “But that’s neither here nor there. You should be in class, not listening to an old woman wax about a past she cannot change. Leave the paper and go.”

She stands, rifles around in her drawer, and then pulls out my notebook. She offers it in one hand, and I take it and put it in my bag. Kidnap is heavy, serious shit - shit that’s definitely too heavy for a Thursday morning. I take it and put my backpack on and stand up, tracing the missing poster one last time. My finger stops on the blank space made by wear and time.

“Julien Strickland,” I mutter. “So that’s what belongs here.”

There’s a sound like stale, crackling bread against my ears, and black rubble suddenly spills across the poster, like someone’s tipped over a glass of black sand. Shiny dark shards, and a single tiny, perfect ruby spinning as it comes to rest against my nail.

“You -” Von Arx’s voice cuts out. My eyes slide up to her, but she’s not looking at me. She’s focused down and to my left. On the deer statue.

Or…what used to be the deer statue.

The whole statue is just gone. All that’s left of it now is its wooden stand, and a pile of black glass shards, so fine it had to have been smashed with enormous force. Who did this? Von Arx - did she break her own piece of art? She doesn’t have a hammer in her hand. Was it just old, and I was unlucky enough to be here when it finally crumbled?

I look up expecting fury in the headmistress’s eyes, but it’s not there. She’s not angry. Her quivering gaze is something I see in the mirror every day.

She’s afraid.

“You…” Her voice comes out raspy. “It’s you.”

“I swear I didn’t touch it,” I blurt. “I don’t - ”

In a superfast second a woman of her age shouldn’t be capable of she rounds the desk, her eyes lucid and slightly glazed as she grabs my wrist.

“It’s you he wants. Not Alistair. Not any of the other students. You.”

I try to shake her off, but her grip is so unbelievably strong. Her eyes roam over me hungrily, happily?, but then she sees the bandage around my palm and her expression crumples to anger. White-hot fury.

“You -” She chokes. “Alistair had one the same. You didn’t - You didn’t make a ridiculous blood promise! Not on the grounds. Not with him!”

“I -”

Her manicured nails grip like talons in the meat of my shoulders as she shakes me, my teeth vibrating in my skull as she screams. Screams. The utterly cool and composed woman I saw on my first day screams her fucking head off, the sound ricocheting off the marble walls.

“You didn’t! Tell me you didn’t give my grandson your blood, putain!!!”

My heart hammers, my thoughts hammering louder. Is she nuts? Was she secretly batshit nuts this whole time?

“Get your hands off me!” I shriek loud to startle her, get some advantage. Any advantage. But she doesn’t budge, her fingers like ice. The secretary has to be hearing this, right? So why hasn’t she barged in to see what’s wrong? Von Arx stares into me with undiluted fucking hate. Even the plants in the room seem to quiver with malice, petals looming huge and too-colorful. The sunset orchid looks too red. Too red and it’s the panic, I know, but I swear I see one of the flower’s overflowing roots twitch in my direction.

I suck in air and bellow with all my might; “LET. ME. GO!”

Von Arx’s cruel-mad eyes, locked voraciously on mine until now, suddenly widen. She drops me like she’s touched hot iron, frantic wisps of her hair coming lose from its strict bun. I pull away and grab my backpack, fleeing for the door.

“Go, then!” She shrieks, her howling following me the whole way out of the building; “You’ve destroyed everything! All my work, all my effort! You’ve destroyed my grandson when I have done everything to protect him!”

I don’t even stop to look at the secretary, my converse beating hard on the marble until finally, finally, grass.

Von Arx’s words don’t follow me outside.

But what does is the sound of sobbing - of pure gray grief - pouring out of the second story window, the one with perfect lettuce plants on the sill.

23

THE STORY (OR, HOW YOU WAITED SO LONG, ALONE, FOR NO ONE TO SAVE YOU)

It’s entirely possible Von Arx was just having a really, really bad day. When I have shit days I too lose all sense of reason and start accusing people of destroying my grandsons.

Today was just a bad day for her.

That’s what I’d like to believe. ‘Having a bad day’ is much easier to digest than ‘screaming like you’ve been stabbed with a nonsense knife just because one of your fancy desk statues broke’.

Except her voice was pretty calm after the statue broke. She even looked a little happy. It was only once she saw my blood promise wound that she went apeshit. She saw Alistair with the same bandage - she must’ve put two and two together. She’s headmistress, so it makes sense she knows about blood promises if they’re actually a thing here at Silvere. But that doesn’t explain why she’s so mad we made one. It’s just blood! It grows back! It’s just two teenagers, one of them being a dramatic little shit overprotective of his possibly-extraterrestrial baby sister and the other party going along with it because she’s desperate for Just One Relationship From His Not-Friend, Pretty Please™.

I should write the whole thing off as Von Arx having a bad day, but I can’t. She was too loud, too furious. Too real. I spend all of first period (Economics again) staring at the flickering kanji-laced hologram in the middle of the table, her words echoing in my head.

‘It’s you he wants. Not Alistair. Not the other students. You.’

Who in the beef stew hell is ‘he’? For some reason, the image of that statue pops up in my head. The Nightrose - rearing up, his black antlers proud and his eyes gleaming crimson.

The classroom’s dreamy-warm with the October sun, but I shiver anyway.

Next to me, Trevino raises her hand to answer a question. Flawlessly, of course. Professor Guillard smiles at her and swans on in his lecture about Silk Road taxation methods. I put on my best not-chicken-scratch handwriting and doodle on a corner of my worksheet before I slide it under her sharp elbow.

‘Hey, smarty-pants. What’s the deal with blood promises round these parts?’

Trevino narrows her eyes down at the question, and then…completely ignores it. I take this as a sign she desperately wants me to try harder. I sneak my pen under her arm and add a dozen smiley faces to the paper. She looks down at it for a charitable beat, and then up at me. She stares - two violet-blue sapphires piercing into my soul - and says nothing. She goes right back to being a genius and I have to wait an agonizing ten minutes before the bell rings and I can ask her the question out-loud. I approach her in the hall with a swift bit of skipping.

“Hi!”

Trevino turns and looks me dead in the eyes. “Don’t.”

I spin on my heel. “Understandable. Have a nice day.” I immediately remember what I’m here for and whirl around again. “Actually, I need to ask you something.”

Trevino invites me to speak by walking in the other direction down a long hall of super old paintings. I bounce after her breathlessly.

“I get that you asked me to leave you alone just now, but you’re one of only four people I know in this Rembrandt-coated hell and I have questions.”

She looks up at the paintings flashing by. “These are Ruebens.”

“Haha! Nice try. I might look stupid, but even I know sandwiches can’t hold paintbrushes.”

Trevino groans and massages her delicate forehead. “Were you born without a sense of shame? Or just an inability to understand social cues?”

“Both!”

She lets out a labored sigh. “If I pay you, will you leave me alone?”

“You’re a scholarship kid, though. Can you even afford me?” I tap my chin. “I’m surprised you haven’t already told me what your parents do. Everyone else around here leads with that.”

“I don’t tell personal details to not-friends. And we are assuredly not friends,” Trevino says coolly.

“God no,” I agree. “But we can be information-exchanging enemies. If you want. If you’re, like, comfortable with that.”

“I’m not.”

“Oh. Well, I am!”

“What - ” She spins around, sheet of brunette hair flying like a shampoo advertisement. “ - on God’s green earth do you want from me?”

“Answers.”

“You’ll have to settle for ten francs and a middle finger.”

“Deal.” I take the holographic bill she drops in my hands between her middle and index finger. “Do you always bribe your way out of uncomfortable situations?”

She quirks a brow. “Something wrong with that?”

“No. It’s weird though. If you’re poor and you wanna get away from someone you usually just gotta book it in the other direction as fast as you can.”

“Oh, I assure you,” Trevino speeds up her pace. “I’m employing both methods.”

“It’s just one little question!” I whine as I sprint to catch up with her. We’re nearly the same height, but genetics gave me the long torso and her the long legs and she’s kicking my ass with them.

“It’s a pointless question -” She corrects. “ - about fairytales and superstition, and I don’t have time for that nonsense. I’m here to get into Cambridge Law, not to be your witch’s almanac.”

“If you tell me, I’ll leave you alone. Forever.”

Her indigo eyes spark as she turns. “Forever-ever?”

“Super forever.”

Trevino folds her arms over her chest. “The locals in the village believe the campus is cursed.”

“Like, Defense Against the Dark Arts cursed, or Blair Witch cursed?”

“This place used to be a pagan ritual site; war rituals, fertility rituals. Sacrificing goats, sheep, possibly humans. The people thought spirits of nature lived here, and that they had to be appeased with blood.”

“Spirits.” I deadpan.

“You might know them by the name ‘fairies’.”

“No way.”

“Yes, way,” She sighs. “The legend goes if you spill blood on the campus, then it belongs to the fairies. Which means if you make a blood promise, then it belongs to them, and they’ll punish you for breaking it.”

“With what?”

“Plague. Crop failure. General death. It ranges.”

“What about, like, period blood?”

Trevino blinks at me a thousand times in one second.

“Not using it for a blood promise, because ew! I’m just asking do all my tampons here belong to the fairies or not, which I’m pretty sure is a reasonable thing to wonder at this point!”

She looks up at the ceiling as if asking the big man in the sky for help.

“I’m just saying! Something to think about! Anyway all this blood stuff’s bullshit, right? Just a story.”

She regains herself. “I’m not here to tell you if fairytales are real or not. Your mother should’ve done that years ago.”

“Fine, fine!” I grumble. “You’ve done your part. And now I’ll do mine by fucking off.”

She immediately starts to walk away, her long hair swishing, but my mouth blurts on auto-pilot.

“Von Arx got mad at me for making a blood promise with Alistair.”

“What happened to ‘super forever’?” Trevino quips.

“Von Arx seems to think blood promises are real,” I press. “At least, real enough to have consequences. Like, bad ones.”

“And? She’s entitled to her belief. It’s no business of mine, or yours.”

“It is if she flips out at me for them! A-And what if they actually do? Have consequences?”

There’s a hefty silence woven between the spear-shafts of sunlight in the hall. Trevino’s eyes dart to my bandaged hand.

“You think fairies will come down from their glittery mushroom realm to punish you for pricking your thumb and making a promise?”

Mushroom realm. There are mushrooms here, on campus, in a perfect circle. A fairy ring, Alistair said. But that’s - no. C’mon Lilith. It’s impossible. I go red at the gills.

“Just…what if there’s a kernel of truth? That’s where folklore comes from a lot of the time; bits of actual truth. Right?”

Trevino slows down, and then stops. She’s quiet for a long moment. At first I think she’s blowing me off, and then; “Bianca.”

“Wha - who?”

“Bianca,” She says, turning to me. “That’s my first name.”

“Oh. Okay. I’m Lilith -”

“I know who you are,” she mutters, looking me up and down. “Or at least I thought I did. You’re not the flighty clown I originally surmised.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“I’m very good at pinning people down,” she says, her ballerina neck held long and proud. “I know how to categorize people; their motivations, their personalities, their weaknesses. I’ve managed sixteen years by doing it. It’s rare when someone comes along and defies my initial expectations.”

Her words are just words, but they sound so calculated. So cold, in a way that’s different from ferocious claw Alistair or lingering acid Maria. Her loneliness yawns like a canyon, a void in space, a force of nature all its own. Nothingness, where feeling should be. She looks back at me.

“Von Arx isn’t an irrational woman by any means. There could be a kernel of truth in the blood promise story. I’ll look in the old records in the library.”

“Wouldn’t that, like, cut into your studying-for-Cambridge-Law time?”

She sniffs. “I’ve read the textbooks already.”

“Wha -” I look down at the five-hundred page monster in my hands. “This…this whole thing?”

“And the other four.”

I gape. “How?! This is only, like, the second month of the school year -”

“I have a knack,” She says softly. “For remembering. Besides, I can’t trust you to efficiently search for a topic like blood promises, let alone know how to handle old texts with a modicum of respect. So I’ll do it.”

My chest glows. After the scare in Von Arx’s office, after Lionel and Alistair being less than helpful…it feels so nice to have someone offer to actually help me. Joy bubbles up.

“If I was the touchy type I’d grab your hand or hug you or something.”

“That’s alright.” She sniffs. “I’m not the touchy type, either.”

“What type are you, then?” I tilt my head.

“The type that wants to finish school, and be left alone.”

“By me.”

“By everyone,” She corrects. She starts to walk away, and I scrounge up something, anything, as thanks.

“Los Angeles, California.” I blurt. “My mom’s a nurse.”

Her footsteps pause on the polished floor. “Your father?”

“Gone.”

The word rings hollow in the high ceilings. Trevi - I mean, Bianca - takes it in for a beat. And then;

“Livorno. Italy,” She says. “Orphan.”

There’s a silence, and all I have is that damp feeling of sadness on my tongue where words should be as I watch her walk away. Did Bianca have anyone growing up? Did Alistair have anyone who was kind to him when he was young? Did Ciel have anyone there for him, at all?

Or have these Silvere kids always just been on their own?

FRIDAY IS American day at lunch. Which apparently means burgers and French fries. I feel less homesick already. And a bit actually-sick from all the grease.

“As William Shakespeare once said; where the hell art my French fries?” I ask.

Ana looks up from my empty tray with a half-smile and a mouth brimming with potato. “Sowwy.”

I sigh and flop into the seat next to her. “I forgive you. There’s something about fries that scream to be stolen. It’s all those crispy little buttcheeks.”

Ana nearly chokes on her juice, and I pat her back with a happy gusto.

“Was it the buttcheeks or the crispy part that got you?”

“My money’s on the buttcheeks.” A new voice interrupts, and I look up to see Chunhua slide into the seat next to Ana, her black pigtails bobbing. She wiggles her fingers at me. “Hi Pierce.”

“Aloha,” I say. “How’re the rankings going?”

“You’ve moved up ten spaces in one day!” Chunhua beams. “You should’ve told me you were friends with Ciel!”

“Hemi-friends. Full-on ‘friends’ is presumptuous. I’ve only been here, like, 72 hours - ”

“Still!” Chunhua scoots in and takes the very last fry in the bottom of my tray, munching on it. “He walked up and talked to you after the longsword duel. And he barely ever tries to talk to someone first. It’s always people trying to talk to him. Oh wow, these are soooo good.”

“You saw that?”

“No,” She waves the fry like a wand. “But Kiko saw it and told Greta, and Greta told the laundry lady, and the laundry lady’s cousin is Sadeen’s driver, and Sadeen’s driver told her, and she told me.”

Ana frowns. “You’re the girl who rates everyone on that horrible list.”

Chunhua brightens. “That’s me. And you’re the governor’s daughter -”

“U.N. Representative for Brazil.” Ana corrects, and it’s the very first time I’ve ever heard her voice get thorny.

“Yeah,” Chunhua chirps, unfazed. “That. Whatever.”

There’s a weird quiet where the two girls stare at each other, Chunhua munching on the fry and smiling around it, and Ana frowning hard. I inhale to break the awkward with more awkward when someone else walks up to the table and does it for me. With a picnic basket in his hand.

“New girl.” Alistair deadpans, blazer completely missing and his tie more like a loose suggestion around his neck. “Come with me.”

Chunhua smiles brilliantly at him. “Strickland! Just the guy I wanted to see. I was wondering if I could -”

“No.” He shoots instantly.

“But it’s just one little favor!” Chunhua blinks at him. “Pleeaasee? I’ll give you Dad’s personal cell -”

“Do you like being pinned with cleaning toilets for attempted bribery, Zhao?”

Chunhua deflates, leaning back in her chair and vibrating with mega-pout energy. “Everybody else does it.”

“Everybody else gets my gist after one fuck up, not three.” Alistair’s pine gaze cuts over to me. “Come on. Now. Or you won’t get your date.”

My heart rockets up to my throat. Shit shit shit shit shit -

“Date?” Chunhua leans in, all pout-traces gone and her eyes sparkling with rabid interest. “What date?”

“My thoughts exactly.” Ana cocks her head. “What date?”

“P-Palm date!” I stand up so fast I almost knock my chair over. “I just love those sweet little palm dates! Jewels of the desert! And dessert! I asked Strickland to find me some is all, because I’ve been craving them. Stress-craving, you know?”

“Um -”

“Cool, yeah, great talking to you!” I dart away with a smile. “Bye!”

Alistair thankfully trails behind me. Only once we’re in the hallway and away from the prying eyes of the cafe do I flash a satisfied grin back at him.

“I’m pretty smooth, huh?”

“You are perhaps the exact opposite of smooth,” He drones. “The antithesis. The antonym. Gravel, sandpaper, broken glass -”

“Okay! You can stop!” I shrill.

“So soon?” He cracks a yawn. “I was only just getting started.”

“What’s with the picnic basket, anyway?”

Through his yawn-watery eyes he opens the lid and tilts it at me. I can see little jams and fancy cheeses, fresh bread, tiny sandwiches, fruit arranged in mini cups, a bottle of Italian soda, and all of it done up with adorable blue ribbons tied around everything. Blue ribbons that look very, very familiar - I’m pretty sure this is the exact same color as the ribbon Alistair was wearing during the duel.

“Did you…” I trail off. “Did you put this together yourself?”

“I didn’t do shit,” he grunts. “All the ingredients were in the kitchen. I just threw whatever I saw in the basket.”

“Who tied the cute little bows on stuff, then?”

He turns his head, hiding his long frown in his disheveled collar. “The cook, obviously.”

“Obviously.” I agree. There’s a weird silence where there would normally be a glaring match between us. I decide to skip merrily ahead instead. Personal growth.

“It’s for your date,” He finally concedes. “You and I are going to find Ciel, and I’ll propose we have a picnic or something airheaded like that. When it’s all set up, I’ll make some excuse and leave.”

I gulp. “So I’ll…”

“Be alone with him. That’s what a date is, right? Good food, two people. Alone.”

My nerves wiggle their fingers in my stomach and my airway goes tight as I squeak out a half-laugh. “Y-Yeah. Alone.”

“Winning over Ciel isn’t going to happen instantaneously. It’ll take time. In the future, you will not approach my breakfast table with any more of your very loud and very public complaints -”

Alistair’s nagging fades in one ear and out the other and I feel lighter than the bubbles in champagne look, lighter than clouds and air and soft spring wind. But then something dark and sharp collides with my happiness and sends it skidding.

“It’s stupid to feel this happy,” I murmur. “Isn’t it?”

Alistair heaves a sigh. “What?”

“I’ve only known Ciel for, like, four days. So why am I so ridiculously happy? It doesn’t make sense.”

For a long while the only sound is our shoes tapping down the polished corridor together. When we hit the main doors and the stairs and the warm fall sunshine, Alistair speaks.

“Feelings rarely make sense.”

I look over at him, his stone-cut profile stark against the blue sky. He’s always a spot of darkness in any crowd, like black velvet. His eyes barely peek out from his thicket of dark bangs.

“Even if you know you shouldn’t, even if you know they don’t love you back, you can’t help the way you feel,” He says softly. “That’s just how feelings are. Nonsensical. Unfair.”

He sounds almost serious again. Not as serious as when he talked about his sister. But nearly.

“It doesn’t matter,” I suck in a breath. “Somebody like me…I’m not cut out for love, anyway.”

“Awfully confident in that, aren’t you?”

I blink. “Confident? Nothing to do with confidence. It’s a fact.”

“You talk a big game, but you won’t know until you give it a try. Or are you afraid of trying, too?” He shakes his head. “Your list of fears is longer than my list of people who hate me. And that’s well and truly saying something.”

I’m afraid of trying, but only because I’m afraid of failing. It’s the fall back down to Earth that hurts most. It’s the chance someone could hurt me again. Let me down again.

Betray me again.

Inside my hard thousand-layer shell with venom-tipped spikes is the softest nougat center of the world’s biggest baby. But he’s not supposed to know that. No one is.

“Why do you talk like you’re forty?” I fire back.

“You’ll have to excuse me,” He drawls. “It tends to happen when English is your third language.”

“You think you know everything but you don’t, actually. And you definitely don’t know the particulars of my life.”

“We don’t know anything about each other, and yet somehow we’ve ended up making a blood promise.”

“I’m trying to forget that part.”

“Don’t forget it too soon. You’ve still got a whole date to get through.” He starts off down the stairs, the picnic basket swinging on his arm, and I stumble after him.

“What do I, like, say?”

“Words, hopefully,” Alistair offers.

“Yeah but what words, and in what order?”

“All of them. The interesting ones,” He corrects himself. “Are you using me to fish for ways to make him like you?”

“Was it that obvious?” I bat my non-existent eyelashes. “C’mon. Just one teensy little hint. I’ll take anything at this point. It’s my first date.”

Alistair’s heavy brow quirks. “Ever?”

“Ever ever.” I push past him. “So offer some pointers, maybe.”

“You’re just assuming I’ve been on dates before, then?”

“With that side profile, yes.”

Alistair lets out a long sigh and sidesteps a planter of violets. “Ciel is the one who…dabbles. Not me.”

“Ciel dabbles. You, on the other hand, dribble. On yourself. With your own spit.”

“Are all your jokes designed to fail like this?” He inquires lightly. I do a chill 180 off the base of a lion statue.

“All my jokes are a cry for help.”

“Well, they’ve worked.” He motions at his entire presence walking next to me. I squint up at him.

“Are you implying you’re the helpful sort?”

“I got you this date, didn’t I?”

“By making me cut my hand open and exchanging cooties with you!” I trill. “Look! Look at this hand! You didn’t help shit! You just made holding a pencil harder! And it made your grandma piss-drunk mad at -”

I stop myself at the ridges of deathly seriousness that move over his face.

“What about my grandmother? Finish the sentence, Pierce.”

“I’d…uh. Rather not.”

“And I’d rather the universe implode, but you don’t see that happening anytime soon.”

He stops walking, runs an easy hand through his hair (I wish he wouldn’t do that, makes it harder to ignore the fact he’s okay to look at), and then locks his eyes on me expectantly. Twin spears of pine. All-important, all-crushing. Like nothing else matters. I sneak a peek at my phone to escape it.

“U-Um, according to Wikipedia, if the Big Bang is real, the universe is imploding.” I look up, but his eyes still haven’t stopped scalding my face off. “Just very, very slowly.”

He doesn’t blink, or breathe too deep. Nothing. Just pure unrelenting pressure directed in a laser beam at me. I snap.

“Can you stop?”

“Stop what?” He asks lightly.

“Staring like you wanna flay me alive, maybe?”

“If it’d get you to talk, I’d consider it. Messy work, but someone’s got to do it.”

“Von Arx just got mad, okay? When she saw the cut on my hand. Maybe she was having a bad day. Maybe one of her flowers wilted or something. I dunno what it was - she just flipped out on me.”

Alistair mercifully breaks sight and looks down at his bandaged palm. “She probably thought -”

“That we did a blood promise? I mean, she’s right.”

He hefts the basket higher on his arm. “She can be…reactive when it comes to me -”

“You don’t fucking say.”

“- because she raised me, more or less. She means well.”

I blink. “Wait, she - so you -”

“Grew up here.” He shrugs. “Or something like that. Silvere is more home than the home I was born in, anyway.”

It’s annoying that one sentence can make so many puzzle pieces fall into place. That’s why he’s so protective of this place. Alistair’s mom must’ve done some bad shit. To him. It’s hard to merge the beautiful wedding picture I saw of her on the internet with the idea that she might’ve dripped boiling oil on her son, or poisoned him, also? But evil comes in all shapes and sizes. And sometimes, from people you love. I know that best of all. So Von Arx took him in, and he grew up here. On campus. It also explains what Lionel meant when he said Alistair ran around in diapers whilst he was in school. I try to imagine it - four hundred way-older-than-you strangers roaming around, everything beautiful but austere and rigid and…I feel really small in these huge halls, and I’m almost seventeen. A kid would feel even smaller, probably. It’s just a flash in the pan of my brain, but the image of a little Alistair, standing alone in a polished hall, only the eyes of the unfeeling paintings watching. Tiny. By himself.

Seven months. Seven months and then I never see any of these messed-up rich kids again.

I breathe in and skip to catch up with him.

“So you took it on yourself to be this place’s protector or some shit? And here I thought you were just a lawful evil snitch with a stick up your ass.” The picnic basket yawns open as he walks, offering a chance to escape all the heavy, and I peer in. “Pita bread, but no hummus?”

“Not a fan of it, personally,” He says.

“Hummiss you with that bullshit,” I nod sagely. “I understand.”

There’s a beat, and I watch his eyebrow wrinkle like Dorian Grey post-painting-destruction. “I want you to know if I could throw you in jail for word-crimes, I would.”

I’m about to blurt a retort when, finally, I see him. Him. In the near distance Ciel leans against a tree trunk, a flash of gold sunlight on gold hair, smoke spiraling around his hand from a cigarette. And that’s, I mean, bad. Smoking is fucking grody, and bonus, it kills you, but he’s one of those people who makes it look infuriatingly good - all casual elegance. Just by picking out his silhouette from the crowd, some stress-knot I didn’t know I had loosens in my chest.

Alistair leans in over my shoulder and murmurs as we approach; “He likes fish.”

“Like, sushi?” I squeak.

“Alive fish. The ones that swim around.”

“Don’t ever mention fish fingers.” I wipe sweat off my eyebrows. “Got it.”

“He hates cowards. So do your best to look him in the eye when you talk.”

“I can’t even look normal people in the eye when I talk.” I forget how to breathe and start gasping. Alistair moves to helpfully thump me on the back, but I sidestep it. “Stop.”

“What?” He feigns innocence. “Can’t have you dying before you go on this date. The last thing I need is a ghost with a grating American accent yelling in my ear for the rest of my foreseeable life.”

“I would be a very polite ghost. I’d do all kinds of nice things while I haunted you. Like add more spices to your chicken. And I’d turn the lights off for you when you’re too tired to get up from bed.”

“A veritable saint.”

Ciel’s head snaps up as we approach, and he lowers his cigarette with a dazzling smile.

“Hey, you two. What’s the occasion?”

“I told you to quit those things,” Alistair grumbles, pulling the cigarette from his hand and crunching it in the grass under his boot. “Or at least get a vape like everyone else.”

“It’s all smoke,” Ciel laughs softly. “And a vape just looks marginally sillier.”

“It’s also marginally better at controlling the nicotine ratios,” Alistair drawls. “Die if you want to. But before you do, come on a picnic with me.”

Ciel looks between me and Alistair. “The three of us?”

“Grandmother is making me be nice to her.” Alistair jerks his head at me. “So she’s tagging along.”

“But you’re not eating. Right?” Ciel’s silver eyes pierce Alistair. It’s a too-serious glance, heavy with the unsaid things that move between people who’ve known each other for a long time. Ciel knows. He knows like I know. Of course Prickland won’t eat in front of us. Von Arx made it clear that ain’t something he does. Ever.

“I might sip at the basil cooler,” Alistair admits.

I blink. He’s joking. Has to be. I look over at Ciel and his fine golden brows are in his hairline, shock clear on his face. Alistair cuts both of us off at the pass with a gesture towards the forest.

“Let’s go.”

24

THE PICNIC (OR, HOW BEING A PERSON IS THE HARDEST THING YOU’LL EVER DO)

Prickland takes off through the woods, a streak of blue bookended by black hair and black boots, and we follow. These woods are the opposite direction of Durand, and aren’t nearly as scary. The trees are much younger and let in way more sky and sunlight. Picture-perfect little meadows nestle like peridot jewels between the trunks, painted with wispy swathes of orange and purple wildflowers. The trees here are less evergreen - most of them beginning to immolate into glorious fiery oranges and golds.

“Wow,” I marvel. “It’s actually changing. Like in postcards.”

Next to me, Ciel laughs. “Never seen a proper autumn before?”

“No,” I blurt a half-laugh too. “Things only get slightly cool in LA. And hot again. Ad nauseam. The land stays the same. Things get a bit greener, sure, but nothing changes, really. Not like this. It’s like…” I swallow. “A fairytale.”

Ciel’s smile fades, and for a sec I think I’ve said something wrong. But not that wrong, obvs - he still walks with me at my plodding pace.

“Like magic,” He finally murmurs.

“Magic,” I agree. “Yeah.”

I’m so nervous I can barely breathe, until Alistair breaks through a bush and a whole horde of cabbage butterflies explodes into our faces. My shriek is some combo of ‘fucking hell’ and ‘jesus save me’ and comes out as ‘fucking save me hell-jesus!!!’, which is both a very brave and very cool thing to shout in front of your crush. Ciel doesn’t seem to mind me making an ass of myself, though. He just has his hands out, graceful milk-white fingers laced with a hundred beating butterfly wings. They linger around him like he’s a flower or a pool of sugar-water. He looks utterly enchanted, his face lighting up from the inside as the butterflies play around his palms, his elegant neck, scattering over his white shirt and into the pure blue sky above.

I was wrong. He’s not the sun.

The sun’s got nothing on him.

If I had one artistic ligament in my body…if I could paint, if I could write poetry, I’d make and remake this dreamy moment for the rest of my life. I’d chase after this moment, this feeling, forever.

“Mon dieu!” Ciel laughs, and it sounds like bells.

“Planned that,” Alistair calls back. “Completely planned. You all right, new girl?”

“They ate me,” I manage. “The butterflies ate me and now I’m nothing but a skeleton.”

“A skeleton with a tragically well-working voicebox.” Alistair laments, and keeps cutting a path forward. Ciel flashes me a smile, following Alistair’s wake nimbly through the long grass. With the two of them trailing behind each other, it’s easy to see the difference in their outlines - Ciel longer in the limbs and slender-er, Alistair taller and broader.

“It’s nice to have someone else on our outings.” Ciel starts.

“You guys do this a lot?” I puff, trying not to look exhausted already.

“Occasionally. To get away.” He picks a passing flower and waves it in the air. “The people at school tend to…crowd me. I have to smile and pretend I’m interested in what they say.” He grins at me. “It can get tiresome.”

“Yeah, I bet.” I try not to look at him, because I am one of those people. Was, starting now.

“And they all either hate Alistair, or want some favor from him.”

Me. Again. I watch Alistair’s back in the distance. “Sounds rough.”

“We’re used to it.” He smiles gently. “But you’re right. It’s rough enough that we’ve had to carve out this place for ourselves. Out here, there’s no one but the plants and animals, and they hardly care who we are. To be honest, I’m surprised Alistair’s bringing you along at all.”

“I don’t - I don’t mean to intrude on your guys’ -”

“It’s alright,” He assures, handing me the flower. “But it is a sanctuary. So please be careful who you talk about it with.”

I reach out for the flower, my fingers moving in slow motion as they come thisclose to touching his. He’s practically glowing with the sunshine, scented with fresh grass and pollen - nature swaddling him in her gold and perfume. He’s way beyond me. Beyond anyone. For a split second, I believe it. In this sun-drenched moment in the middle of the woods, I suddenly believe fairies are real.

If anyone here at Silvere is a fairy, it’s Ciel Lautrec.

“I’ll be careful,” I whisper. “I promise. Your secret dies with me.”

He laughs. “Let’s hope that’s less soon than soon, then.”

The rest of our hike is pretty uneventful - if ‘stunning beauty at every turn’ can be considered uneventful. These mountains are practically untouched, and I don’t mean LA untouched, with the odd candy wrapper and discarded hiker’s water bottle. These woods are pris-fuckin’-stine - not even a bottlecap in the dirt - and the creeks that feed it run crystal-clear. So much water, everywhere. Lakes, creeks. Living in LA, you almost forget bodies of water exist for more than a few days at a time. Everything is green. I’m used to scrub brush and rocky dirt and scraggly desert trees. This is the complete opposite - green bursts playfully from every corner, unbridled by cement or buildings, carpets of sweet short grass and fragrant snow-blooming blackberry thickets racing each other to the horizon.

It’s wild. It’s perfect. It feels so untouchable, so huge and old - like humanity has never - and will never - be able to subdue it.

“Here,” Alistair calls. “It’s just over the hill.”

Ciel strides easily over the last rise, and I struggle like a bug on its back until I crest the grass and finally see it - heaven.

“Oh.” I suck in at the view. “Oh shit.”

A round plateau of green juts out from the slope of a hill as it goes down. It’s like a chair for a giant, almost, carved by hand out of the earth. Lucious grass waves every which way on it, a half-moon of pink wildflowers rimming the very edge. You can see the whole other side of the valley from this plateau - an infinite v-shaped grassland of picturesque little barns, herds of fluffy sheep and goats, and a single country road winding like a lazy copper snake through it all. A chubby red truck piled high with sheep’s wool putters down the lane. There’s a lake in the distance, a slab of pure lapis twinkling out between emerald peaks. A real lake.

“Welcome,” Ciel makes an exaggerated bow. “To the sanctuary.”

“It’s incredible,” I breathe. “How did you guys find this?”

“The usual; running around like brats.” Alistair says, shaking out the picnic blanket and laying it on the grass. “We were thirteen and thought we were invincible.”

“How is that any different from now?” Ciel smirks, laying on the blanket on his side like a lazy cat. He looks up at me and I do my best to meet his eyes, but it’s like looking directly into a silver sun. “It was initiation day for the fourth-years. Alistair and I made a bet on who could run the farthest away from campus the fastest.”

“I won,” Alistair grunts. “By a mile.”

“You tripped and fell down the hill,” Ciel corrects, laughing. He takes the Italian soda bottle Alistair hands him, and I sit next to him. Not close enough to imply anything, of course.

“And I landed right in this spot,” Alistair says. “Must’ve been that whole fate thing you like to talk about so much.”

Ciel chuckles and shakes his head. “What about you, Lilith? Do you believe in fate? Or are you like Alistair here, who doesn’t believe in anything?”

“Hey,” Alistair protests. “I believe in things.”

“Like what?” I ask. He glowers almost childishly and it’s weird to see - I’ve been here all of five days and I already know he’d never make a face like that inside the four walls of Silvere where people can see him.

“Justice,” He grumbles. “Those jelly insect candies they sell at gas stations.”

“You mean gummy worms?”

“Yeah.” Alistair won’t meet my eyes, arms over his chest. “Those.”

I start to laugh, but then I notice Ciel waiting for my answer, and I glance at the grass nervously. To be honest or not to be honest? That is the eternal teenage question. I decide on ‘honest’ today.

“Um. I think fate is kind of shitty, actually.”

“Hah!” Alistair jerks his finger at Ciel triumphantly, but Ciel keeps his intent stare on me as he asks;

“Can you elaborate?”

Mom. All I can think about is Mom.

“It makes people meet,” I say slowly. “And fall in love. And the closer people get, the worse they end up hurting each other. So I think fate is cruel. Not really worth believing in.”

Alistair’s triumph melts off his face all at once, and Ciel’s serious gaze falters. There’s a beat, the grass and wildflowers waving, both of the boys looking at me with something like pity. Pity’s itchy, but I sit there and take it because I don’t know what else to do. Where else to go. And then Ciel slides his milk-white hand over the blanket and puts it on top of mine, squeezing gently.

“I’m sorry,” He smiles at me, cotton-soft. “I’m sorry the world’s been so cruel to someone as lovely as you.”

I wheeze. Or, I try to wheeze, but nothing actually comes out. Some smarter part of me reigns it all in to look normal. Normal. Calm. Fine. Unaffected by the fact the first guy I’ve ever had a legitimate crush on called me lovely right here in front of everyone - the bugs and the sheep and Alistair. But even the smarter part of me can’t get a handle on my out-of-control cheek flares. Ciel just keeps smiling at me, so bright and warm I can barely stand it -

“Shit,” Alistair stands up, phone in one hand. “Grandmother wants me back. Make sure you clean up after yourselves.”

“Or you’ll detain us for littering?” Ciel asks him with a smile.

“Without hesitation,” Alistair agrees. His heavy boots tromping away through the grass gives me five milliseconds to figure out what to say next. But it’s like ripping my nerves up from the roots - what if I say the wrong thing? I’ve already told Ciel I don’t like his whole fate shtick! I love to dig myself into word-holes, which are like wormholes but with more vocabulary and the same amount of crushing gravity.

“I can’t believe he put his duel ribbon on everything,” Ciel chuckles suddenly, picking up a jar of jam and eyeing the blue silk ribbon there.

“He said the cook did that,” I start.

“Of course he did.” He turns the jam jar up to the sun, the clear apricot inside glinting amber as he inspects it with a wistful smile. “He’s so transparent.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, that’s right.” Ciel looks down at me. “You’re new, so you wouldn’t know. It’s a silly Silvere superstition, spread by hormonal teenagers over the centuries.”

“What is?”

He laughs again. “A duel ribbon is a sign of affection. You don’t give it to just anyone.”

“Oh.”

“Oh indeed.”

Did Alistair - did he put his ribbons on all this shit to get us in the mood? To get Ciel thinking about, like, love? He knew I wouldn’t know the significance, but Ciel would. That sneaky little shit! He’s cleverer than I gave him credit for.

I’m distracted by the sun playing shining havoc on Ciel’s hair.

His face makes me feel like maybe, just maybe there’s a chance. Maybe he’s kind enough, gentle enough. Maybe it’s okay to be close to someone. To trust. Maybe a towering, thorny, unladylike loudmouth with no manners…maybe even I can be soft enough, trusting enough -

“Is there something on my face?” Ciel asks, and it jolts me.

“N-No.” Say something funny. Anything. As my brain stutters in slow-motion I dart my hand into the picnic basket and pull out something and offer it to him. “Food?”

He looks down at it with a faint smile. “I’ll take one slice.”

I quickly realize it’s cheese, and rummage awkwardly around the basket for a knife. Every second of silence feels like torture, like I’m doing something wrong. I should be making him laugh. I make everybody else do it! Humor, why the fuck have thou art abandoned me when I need thee most? Suddenly, there’s the faint smell of tobacco and mint, and two strong arms curl around me, cool hands settling over the knife and the cheese.

“Here. Let me help.”

Oh shit. Ohhhh shit he’s warm. He’s behind me. He’s real. It’s just like Mom’s romance books and I wish it wasn’t but they’re right, they were right all along; a touch can make you forget everything. My mind goes fresh-whiteboard blank and all I can do is watch as his hand moves the knife over mine, cutting the -

I snort.

“Is something funny?” Ciel asks, mildly confused just in my ear.

No!!! Be serious for once in your life, Lilith! This is the guy! THE guy! This is a date! Your first ever! This is actually a pretty romantic moment! He’s touching you and you aren’t flipping your lid about it! Five outta five stars so far! So don’t say the stupid thing. For the love of god, don’t say the stupid thing!

“We’re…” I gulp. “Cutting the cheese. Together.”

Ciel freezes, the knife stuck in the chunk of dairy. Hearing it out loud is like feeling that one itch you could ignore up till now get hyper-bad all of a sudden. My brain yells don’t!!! and my body yells do!!! and my soul is too weak to resist both of them at once and the laughter explodes out, scaring birds from the trees nearby. I practically keel over on the picnic blanket, his arms the only thing stopping me.

“I-I’m sorry,” I wheeze. “I-It’s not funny. I swear it’s n-not funny, I just -”

Ciel uncurls himself from around me, and the reality starts to set in.

“Sorry,” I say, this time a little more seriously as the giggles fade. “I’m…really sorry. I’ve got this tic where I have to say the dumbest thing possible at any given moment.”

“It’s fine,” He assures me, handing me the cheese slice with a faint smile. “If anything, it’s my fault. I don’t know how to react. I’m very unused to it.”

“Unused to what?” I take the slice curiously.

He smiles brighter. “Hanging out with childish girls like you.”

And that’s it.

It feels like Ms. Soyon herself’s shot an arrow straight through my heart. My own skull feels like a solitary confinement echo chamber that bounces ‘childish’ back at me louder and louder, so loud I can’t hear my own heartbeat anymore -

Ciel doesn’t notice. He just pulls a loaf out of the basket. “Do you want some bread with that?”

I jump to my feet, but I don’t feel them. I don’t feel my own skin on my face move as I blurt a hurried; “I have to go.” I don’t even remember walking through the flowers, the woods, the lawn, the halls, or crawling into my bed. But the next thing I’m aware of is the smell of my pillow - sleep and mango - and the sound of a soccer game happening outside the window.

Childish.

I knew that.

I pull the pillow over my head tighter.

I knew that, but he didn’t have to say it.

25

THE WONDERING (OR, HOW A LAUGH CAN CHEW YOU UP AND SPIT YOU OUT AGAIN)

Do I recommend making fart jokes in front of your crush? No. Did I have to make a fart joke in front of my crush? Also no. But also yes. I couldn’t stop myself no matter how hard I tried. It’s who I am. It’s in my blood. Is this just who I am? I’ve looked it all up before; I’m a Taurus sun, a Leo moon, and a Pisces rising. Maybe the stars have answers. I peruse my horoscope in my astrology app for any helping wisdom.

“Today dear Taurus,” I mutter around a mouthful of pillow. “You will encounter some difficulties in communication.” I chuck my phone across the room with a mild scream. “‘Difficulties in communication’?! I think you mean ‘get possessed at birth by a ghost who just loved fart jokes’!”

It’s not like I’m pouting, or anything. Why would I pout? Ciel was right. When I manage to extricate mine own head from the pillow after an hour of straight crying, I realize he was right. So right it hurts. Childish pretty much fits me to a tee. But he’s the last guy in the universe I wanted to say that. To know that.

I wash my swollen face and throw on jeans and do what any heartbroken girl possessed at birth by a ghost who loved fart jokes would do - I calmly reflect on my mistakes.

“FUCCCCCCCCK OFFFFFFF!!!”

My scream gets instantly swallowed up by the soundproofed practice booth in the music classroom. The little stuffed bear Will got me as a going-away present doesn’t stand a chance. The ear, the nose, the solar plexus - and he’s down for the count! I pin the bear to the floor with all my weight, slapping the plush carpet as I count him out.

“One! Two! Three! Sir Ursine isn’t moving - is this it for our adorably chubby champion?”

Sir Ursine’s eyes gaze up at me, all black and all artificially smiling. Cheeky bastard! He knows what Ciel said to me! I can see it in his beady eyes - he knows he’s lost the battle, but he’s won the war!

“ - eight, nine, TEN! That’s it!” I bolt to my feet and accept the imaginary cheers of the crowd with my arms up. “Sir Ursine’s out - which means Lilith wins! Raaah! RAAH!! Lil-ith! Lil-ith! Lil-ith! Lilith! Look this way! Lilith! You’re amazing! I wanna marry you! Even if you are childish!”

My extremely sane chanting is interrupted as the door’s yanked open by a very displeased-looking professor with an equally displeasing mustache.

“Aw shit.”

“Miss Pierce, why aren’t you wearing your uniform?” He asks. “It is classroom hours.”

“Sauce,” I whisper.

“Pardon?”

“Got sauce on it.”

The professor’s probably heard it all before. He could slap me with detention. Pretty sure Von Arx is waiting till I hit three to tell Mom about my bad behavior. I squirrel my hands in each other nervously, but he takes one look at my pathetic pizza-sweater-swollen-eyes self and lets me off the hook. Mildly.

“Are you in my next class?” He asks. I scrabble to pick up Sir Ursine from the floor and hide him behind my back.

“No?”

“Are you in any of my classes?”

“Um. Also no.”

He sighs. “Then please, leave the facilities open for those who are.”

“Right-o.” I slip past the professor with the agility of a tortoise. “Cheers.”

I leave his less-than-enthused ass behind and meander out of the empty music room. Even with the whole getting-busted thing, I feel a little better after shouting it all out. And crying. And then shouting again. It’s been a long day.

It’s sixth period right now - archery. I’ve only missed half of it. I can still make an appearance. Tardiness is a mortal sin to Von Arx, but Ms. Soyon likes me. I think. Not sure why. But maybe I could convince her not to mark me down as late? I trudge out of Knight Roux and head outside for the lawn. It’s pretty quiet, considering everyone’s in class. The groundskeepers are the only movement - carefully picking at bushes and kneeling by flowerbeds. I don’t see Gabe - why would I? Creepo’s been sacked.

But I do see a writhing mass of action, of emotion, bunched up in a corner between a hedge and a sun-kissed bannister of Knight Roux. It’s at least five dudes, and they’re all circled around one person.

Big uh oh.

I creep closer on the stairs, clinging to the bannister and listening. Angry French punctures the air, murmurs and growls underlying it. Only one guy’s talking, the rest of them scoffing along. The guy in the middle is too tall to be mistaken for anyone else - Prickland. Unlike the five dudes circling him with all the body language of tigers chomping at the bit, he’s utterly relaxed. Every part of him is held lazily, save for his eyes. He darts them from face to face, appraising each guy with laser precision.

I should mind my own business. This is Prickland’s business, not mine. He’s the one who’s got the list of people who hate him. He’s the disciplinary committee, not me. I can’t understand shit-all of what they’re saying, or what’s going on. But even Alistair can’t take on five people at once. It’s just not realistic. And I might not like the asshole, but I like assholes who gang up on other people way less.

The tallest guy in the circle suddenly snaps something in French, and in one smooth move pulls his fist back, aiming it right at the back of Alistair’s skull.

“Strickland - !” I yelp. Alistair’s eyes cut up to me, and he holds up one finger.

“Hold on a second.”

And in that one second, he fluidly dodges the punch coming for him. The guy who threw it stumbles forward, fist smacking empty air. He looks back up at me.

“What’s up?”

“Uh. Nothing.” I rock on my heels. “What are you…up to?”

“Exercise.” He dodges another punch, this time from the left. He grabs the guy’s arm and twists it behind his back. The guy yelps, and Alistair throws him forward into his friends, and they nearly all go tumbling down like bowling pins. He hasn’t looked away from me once. “You?”

“Oh, you know,” I lean on the bannister. He’s got it handled, clearly. “Running errands. For professors. Very important people.”

“Looking like that?” He raises one brow at my sweater. “Where’s your uniform?”

“Eaten. By piranhas.”

“Must’ve been one hell of an errand. To South America. The only place piranhas live.”

“You know -” I start, but the five guys have finally clambered back to their feet, and they all come for Alistair at once. He’s ready. I wince at every smack of flesh, every throw. There’s less blood than I expected - and by that I mean no blood at all. Prickland could go for the noses, the lips - easy targets that bleed a lot and hurt a lot - but he doesn’t. Puffs of hot breath in the chilly air, the sound of jackets slithering against each other. When it’s over, he stands in the middle of a groaning circle of bodies on the grass.

“You know,” I continue as nonchalantly as I can muster. “I was looking at Wikipedia last night.”

“Interesting.” He brushes his cuffs off and drones in a way that indicates he absolutely does not find it interesting.

“Apparently, koalas get chlamydia and I was like; ‘that’s so sad, but also so relatable!’ you know?”

“Do you…” He pauses diplomatically. “…get chlamydia a lot?”

“No. But just imagine.”

“I’ll pass, thank you.” He presses his sleeve to his lip and winces.

There’s a long pause, me looking down at him and him looking up the stairs at me. They really do come after him. I thought he was exaggerating about the whole ‘I only fight to defend myself’ thing. Because of course anyone would say that to make themselves look good. But this time, this one time, it’s actually true. His chest heaves from the effort, and he didn’t come out of it unscathed - there’s a bruise rapidly forming on his cheekbone, and a nasty split in his lip. But he keeps his sleeve there, hiding the blood. And he keeps his hands tucked up in his sleeves.

“Did you hurt your hands?”

“No.”

“Then why are you -”

“Ten seconds,” He says, half-muffled. I start.

“For what?”

“I’m giving you ten seconds to get out of here before I give you detention.”

“For what?”

“Breaking dress code.”

“Little hypocritical, don’t you think? Considering you never wear your tie right or tuck your damn shirt in.”

“Nine, eight, seven -”

“What was it this time?” I blurt. “Why’d they come after you?”

“Breaking up their gambling ring. Six, five, four -”

“You’re kidding.”

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out the thickest wad of foreign money I’ve ever seen in my life, waving it a little. My eyes go wide, my whisper half-choked.

“You weren’t kidding.”

“Three, two -”

“Alright! Fine! I’m gone!”

I only dare to look back when I’m halfway across the lawn. Strickland’s sitting on the stairs, rolling medical tape around his bloody knuckles and wincing.

Knuckles he kept out of sight while I was near.

C’mon, Lili. Seven months.

These people are only real for seven months.

26

THE WHISPER (OR, HOW IMPOSSIBLE IS A WORD WE INVENTED TO SPARE OURSELVES)

At seventeen years and two months old, Alistair Strickland hates eavesdropping.

He hates the act of doing it, not the information it brings. He hates lingering, listening to other people’s mind-numbing problems. Everyone has the worst life ever. Or so they think. He hates it, but it’s a necessary evil in a school fueled by rumors - by the good faces everyone puts on to hide the secrets and lies beneath. Sharmila Ganguly can’t start her day without smoking a joint - or her afternoon. Henry Yang is cheating on his girlfriend with three other girlfriends. Bernice Comtois sleeps with her father’s older friends. Hyeri Choi uses the occasional Tiffany piece to bribe professors for better grades. It’s all incredibly boring to Alistair, but he has to keep tabs. If they slip up, if they start taking their drama out on other people…he has to keep the blade hanging high over their heads. Their secrets are his, thanks to Maria’s attentiveness and Rafe’s ability to get anyone to admit to anything with enough friendly camaraderie.

These people are used to getting their way. Getting away with anything.

Alistair Strickland is the only blade that’s ever hung over their heads.

He knows that’s only partly true. The price of a family with fame and fortune is usually crushing expectation. Do better. Do best. Prove your worth. He’s no different from them, in that regard.

It’s a good thing he stopped caring about all that precisely seven years ago, when Grandmother won the - well. Families like Alistair’s don’t use words like ‘custody battles’. Those are dirty, unclean words. Unfit for nobility, for a family that can trace its roots back to the formation of the Holy Roman Empire. They are ‘better’ than petty things like ‘courts’ and the details of childcare - or at least that’s what that woman likes to think.

How long has it been, since he’s thought of her as ‘mother’? Ten years? Twelve?

‘As long as I breathe, you will never disgrace this family.’

The cold fear licks at his heart, but Alistair has practiced. He’s had seven years to practice, and he has one more to perfect. His eighteenth birthday next September is a deadline, but it has always been a deadline. He’s always dreaded his next birthday, and the next, each of them drawing the bars of his cage closer. But fear does nothing but cloud the truth. He can’t afford to be afraid when that woman gets to see Rose half of the year. When there’s only ten months left until he inherits the crushing mantle. Ten months left of freedom - correction; of training. He has to plan. To calculate. To build his armor higher. To become strong enough to keep Rose safe. To fight her. Her, with all her money and connections and unnatural sway over the biggest players in the world.

Because once he turns eighteen and graduates Silvere, the real battle begins. The one with politics, backstabbing, money, sex, blackmail. The ruthless game. The terrible game the pinnacle of luxury brings. Every trick in the book will be used against him to force him to do what that woman wants, what the family wants. He’ll be told where to go, what to do, how to spend his money, who to marry. He’ll be expected to perform like a puppet on a stage, and punished when the act is less than perfect. He saw it happen to his father. He saw it break him. But Alistair will not make the same mistake.

He will not give them the benefit of love.

For every other student, Silvere is an escape.

For him, it’s a training ground for the real, sordid world waiting for him beyond the clean windows and rolling lawn.

He leans against the wall, focusing on listening to the snippets of conversation that float past as people shuffle to fourth period. His fingers move in his pockets, finding the square of gold foil and the pointlessly sentimental note folded within.

It helps. I promise.

Terrible handwriting, he thinks, and scoffs. Like a drunk monkey with no concept of space. He, of course, has perfect handwriting. Everyone in the family does. Why calligraphy is prized as some sort of sign of good breeding, he’ll never understand. And neither will Pierce, by the looks of it.

He’s not entirely sure why he’s kept the note this long. The foil, too. It’s all trash. It was just a chocolate. She offered it out of pity after seeing his darkest moment. It shouldn’t be this hard to throw away.

It shouldn’t be this hard to remember no one actually cares.

He’s still not sure why he ate it. His defenses constantly scream he shouldn’t eat anything from anyone, least of all people like her. Unknown factors. Mystery motivations. But the look on her face when he stormed towards her - pure fear. The burning in his heart when she opened the door and locked eyes with him - pure fear.

The same fear.

Voices cut through his thoughts, just then.

“No, yeah, actually. That tracks.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Alistair freezes on the wall. That first voice, quick and smooth and turned up at the ends, like it’s sharing a secret joke with itself all the time. Unmistakable. Pierce.

“Nothing,” Pierce laughs with her friend. “It just means he seems right up your alley. All science-y and shit.”

“Well excuse me!” Her friend (Ana Sequeira, Brazilian UN representative’s daughter, a weakness for pink and being the good girl) huffs. There’s a pause as their footsteps stop at the water fountain. “What’s yours, then? Let me guess; dark and mysterious.”

“Ugh, no. What do you think I am - unoriginal?”

“Then what is your type?”

Alistair hates eavesdropping. He hates the fact he leans in to hear better even more.

Pierce starts strong with a cough. “Y-You know.”

“I don’t, actually.” Ana insists.

“I mean, um. Gentle. Blonde. Prettier than me, I guess, but none of that appearance shit means anything if he’s not friendly and open and just…nice. You know? Smiles a lot, really kind. Understanding? Just someone who’s really friendly and refined and gentle.”

His fingers freeze around the foil note.

“So…Ciel.” Ana teases. He can practically hear the red in Pierce’s face.

“I never said that!”

Their footsteps fade, the brewing indignation fades.

He stares at the bandages on his knuckles and wonders - quietly, impossibly - if someone like him could ever afford to be gentle, and friendly, and kind.

27

THE CHURCH (OR, HOW THEY LOVE TO BLESS YOU WITH THEIR SCORN)

It’s weird how on the first day of school every minute oozed by like cold honey. But then something happens on the fifth day, and God starts jamming the fast-forward button with nigh-kiddish glee. Friday comes and goes without Von Arx calling me in to test me on the rulebook, which means I’m off the rulehook, but which also means she’s still pissed. I could gather that much by the way she stoically stares at me during dinner - looking through me like I’m a pane of glass instead of a person, something she can’t be bothered to acknowledge. Something dead to her.

They don’t celebrate Halloween here - not like we do in the U.S. But the chef makes little orange and black meringues in the shape of pumpkins, and that’s the best I can hope for, really. I put a bedsheets over my head and try to scare Ana when she comes out of her room to get into the spirit of things, but she giggles and points out the sock static-attached to it and my plan fails spectacularly. I try and fail not to Facetime Mom three times a day, but she only answers once. Texts work better, and she won’t stop sending me pictures of amazing-looking seafood and old-as-hell architecture and pictures of her and Will, smiling together.

It’s a moment. There’s always that moment when I look into Will’s eyes, Will’s face so close to hers.

He won’t, right?

(you won’t, or I’ll kill you)

Friday comes and goes and finally it’s the first November weekend. No classes. No waking up at six-am like an eyebooger zombie. Just sleeping in, gloriously, and eating breakfast slow and also gloriously.

Or, it would be glorious. If Ana didn’t insist on going into the village.

Saint-Verde is maybe the tiniest town I’ve ever seen. It’s a town built around one stoplight and a single two-lane winding road in and out, one end leaking up into the misty morning Alps, the other snaking down into a greenest-green valley dotted with creaky old barns and twisted juniper trees. There’s one train station with a sleepy ticketmaster slouched over on a bench, a stone box Ana explains is a medieval church, and a smattering of red-roofed houses with sprouting eaves where people chose to use the packed-earth method of ye olden days of building. There’s just one tourist shop - crowded with intricate little clocks and crystal wind chimes and 80’s-bowling-alley-carpet-patterned sheep’s wool shawls. Older Swiss women stacked high with no-nonsense layers totter around, sweeping their doorsteps free of leaves with bleary gusto. A man packs fresh roll after fresh roll onto a display outside his bread shop, his ragged dog snoozing beneath it. Sprawling concrete car-jungle city, Saint-Verde is not. And I kind of love it. It’s like Hogsmeade’s cuter, colder cousin.

“Thanks, Lionel,” I lean into the driver’s window and smile at him.

“Anytime, Lilith.” He grins back. “Have fun.”

“Always.”

There’s a moment of tension, my hand on the doorframe as Ana’s friends from breakfast pour out of the other side of the car, tittering in French. The crisp Saturday-morning-sun pours over every nook and cranny of the world, Lionel’s faintly worried crow’s-feet included. Ana figured we’d all go to the village together, so I called him. Everyone else in school was going, too - a flotilla of fancy cars lined up around Silvere’s driveway. I can see them now parked behind a building in a field. Some of them still mosey around, puttering heat into the cold air as they drop off and pick up students. A bus would be way more logical and cost-effective, my poor-person brain cries. But I guess a single bus driver can’t effectively spy on four hundred rich kids, huh?

Lionel and I don’t look at each other, not straight-on, anyway. Out of the corner of our eyes. Like cats.

“I’m glad your hand’s better,” He finally tries, fingers tapping the steering wheel.

“Yeah,” I stroke my palm absently.

“The people here are all decent,” He continues, jerking his chin around at the village. “Just try not to pry too much.”

“Or make promises with them. Right?” I tease. It falls on flat ears, though, because Lionel doesn’t smile a bit. He looks a little strained - his face pale ever since the blood promise, now that I think about it.

“They’re very private people. Close-knit. It’s hard to explain.”

“It’s okay, my French is terrible. Couldn’t explain if I wanted to.”

“What time do you want a pick-up?” He asks, and I look back at Ana.

“It’s fine,” She chimes into the window. “I’ll have my driver take us back.”

“As you wish,” He smiles, finally, at the both of us, and slides the car up the road again. When he’s gone, I sigh.

“He’s nice,” Ana says.

“Yeah. And then sometimes he’s…” I trail off.

“He’s what?”

Ominous.

“Nothing.” I shake my head and grin at her. “Let’s go.”

“There’s the inn,” Ana points to the very-Europe looking building with the criss-cross dark wood on white paint and shutters over window boxes. “The drivers stay there, usually. There’s the bakery - super cute. There aren’t many pastries, but the actual bread is to die for. Oh, and over there -” She points at the barns, and a distant building on the edge of town. “- That’s where they dry herbs for the absinthe.”

“Absinthe?” I wrinkle a brow.

“You know, the green liquor. It’s their biggest export. Only export, really. Besides wool. All the villages around here say they were the ones who invented it. It’s a weird point of pride.” She laughs and motions up the hill. “The art shop’s up there, and the cafe’s got amazing mochas. It’s where most of the students hang out. Let’s get some bread and head over. Come on!”

With an excited little shriek she bounces up the hill, trailing behind her friends who are already way ahead of us. The tiny bakery is full to the seams with chattering Silvere students, the smell of butter and yeast heavy and golden in the air. A ruddy-faced, flour-dusted woman shouts over the chaos and passes out orders over the crowd’s head.

“They must make a killing on Saturdays,” I yell to Ana, who nods and leans in.

“Silvere’s a big source of money. But you wouldn’t know it, with the way they act.”

“I mean, newsflash; people act however they wanna. Money or no money.”

“This is different, is all.”

“Different, uh, how?” But my question’s lost in the kerfluffle of fluffy bread.

After ten minutes of being sweatily crushed to death, we finally get our baguette and abscond from the bakery, trudging up the hill together. I’m kind of flattered by the way Ana waves off her pack of friends when they ask her to join them. My French isn’t any better after a week, but I catch a few words in Ana’s sentence; ‘walk with…friend’. She tears apart the steaming baguette and hands a piece to me.

“You can go with ‘em,” I say. “Seriously. I’ll be okay on my own.”

“No no.” She waves me off. “It’s your first time in the village. I’m your guide.”

I mash the warm bread in my mouth, gratitude and deliciousness flooding me. “Holy shit. This is the best bread I’ve ever had.”

“I know, right?” Ana beams.

“It makes…wow. Every other bread I’ve had since birth has been wet cement, actually.” I take another piece she offers.

“Just wait till you have it with a fresh cup of chocolat. It’s divine.”

The cafe’s a decent walk away from the bakery, up the winding hill. The sidewalk’s tiny and run-down. My lungs burn with the clear air, like it’s sanitizing my smoggy LA pipes from the inside out. I’m panting by step two, but Ana’s still going strong. I wore my warming brace under my jeans, so my knee takes a little longer than usual to start being a whiny shithead. I’m determined to stay level with Ana, so when she stops, I stop too, gulping air and secretly grateful.

“What’s up?” I pant. I look where she’s looking - gaze locked across the street. A handful of villagers congregate around a doorstep, four of them in plaid and wool and farming wrinkles, staring at the passing Silvere students like nesting hawks. Watching us. Whispering. I only catch singular words of French, and even then they’re so fast I don’t understand them. But there’s one word they keep muttering, and it sounds almost-English.

Ana finally sniffs, and starts walking up the hill again. I stagger after her.

“Were they…” I pause. “Was I hearing things, or were they saying ‘Satan’?”

“Satané,” She corrects.

“What, like the devil? Or does it mean something else?”

Ana’s black doe eyes flicker, eyelashes quivering. But she doesn’t say a word. It’s weird, to see her so stony. That’s Alistair territory, Maria territory, Bianca territory. Not her. And she’s booking it up the hill now. I’d pry, but it takes all my energy just to keep up with her, all my energy not to outwardly wince at the stabbing pain in my knee. She finally slows at the mouth of the cafe, where a cheery orange-leafed tree and a crystal chime over the door beckon us into the seething throng of tabled students.

“Cursed,” She says. “Satané means cursed.”

“Who?” I manage between vicious pants. “Me? Cursed with good looks, obviously.”

“No,” She shoves her hands in her pockets. “Us. All of us. The Silvere students.”

“Ah,” I clap mine. “Cursed with the uniformity of uniforms. I get it.”

“You don’t,” Ana insists softly. “But that’s okay. You shouldn’t have to.”

It’s only when we’re inside the cafe, squeezed into a corner table overlooking the window and cupping two mugs of chocolat, do I notice it. The way the barista stares at us - all of us - over the coffee machine. The way he rubs a rosary necklace over his sweater almost habitually, like a twitch, a compulsion, the iron cross worn thin. The way a woman across the street sweeping shouts at her child when they wave at a passing group of students, the way she ushers the kid inside the house as fast as she can with the slam of a door. The way the tourist-shop owner won’t take the franc from my hand - motioning for me to put the bill on the counter instead. Small things. Things that mean nothing on their own, but together, form a palette and start to paint a bizarre picture.

Something’s off.

It’s off the same way Knight Durand is off. A chateau being refurbished, but no machines, no tracks in the path. A perfect door, but broken everything else. A village suddenly full of life and extra spending money, and yet the villagers happy about none of it.

What is it with Silvere and this weird feeling? And why does it feel like it seeps out from Durand most of all, like it’s the source?

But I can’t worry about everything all the time. I don’t even really have to worry. I’m just here for seven months.

I have fun. Of course I do - Ana shows me everything. Every quaint little flowerbox, every wind-up antique, every funny-looking sheep standing at the barbed wire fence waiting for a treat. We take pictures, we laugh. I send some to Ruby, some to Mom. And then it starts to get dark, the smells of roasting dinner wafting out of the tightly-shuttered houses. I look up at the blackening sky for the auroras, but there are none. The elevation of the village must be too low to see them.

Ana and her friends and I all wait for her driver on the corner, across the road from the stone-cut medieval church. Ana looks way happier than before, chatting away merrily. We’re just a pack of teenage girls, talking. Minding our own business.

So why, then, does the priest watch us from the church’s only window with steel anger in his eyes?

“I’ll be right back,” I say. Ana sees where I’m looking, at the church, and pulls at my jacket sleeve.

“Lilith, don’t.”

“It’s fine.” I smile at her. “I’ll be out in a second.”

I can feel her and her friends watching me as I cross the cobblestone street and push into the heavy door of the church. I might be ten-thousand miles from home, but churches are the same everywhere. The same unmoving air around them, the same sense of foreboding. I don’t get instantly smote by a bolt of lightning when I walk in, which is a plus. The smell of mothballs and incense is a fragrant punch to the face, and the only light inside are candles. Hundreds of them, maybe thousands, wax dripping over the wood of windowsills and shelves and bannisters, dripping from ancient silver candelabras and singular brass candlesticks. The stone walls feels so heavy - pressing on me with unrelenting granite blankness.

And there’s no one inside. No one in the pews, no one at the golden-lit altar at the very front. No one but a marble statue of the Virgin Mary cradling Jesus, her eyes heavy-lidded and looking down on me with infinite patience. Bundles of dried flowers lay at her feet, punctuated by old gleaming coins and a string of brittle pearls.

The priest moves like a cat - almost soundless. Almost. But he has cloth shoes, and I hear the whisper across the floor because you can hear everything in here - your own heartbeat most of all.

“She’s beautiful,” I say without turning around. The shoes stop.

“Oui.”

I know I won’t get very far conversation-wise, probably. If my French was better, I could ask him all sorts of things; how old this place is, what its made of, why the villagers are afraid of the students. Why he hates them. Us. I get it, to an extent. Rich kids treating their home like a playground. Choking their fields with fancy cars. Entitled and ultra-modern, when the villagers are just trying to scrape by in these valleys with absinthe and wool and religion.

I wish I could say all that. To let him know I understand, a little.

But I only know a few words.

I turn and face him - a man exactly my height with bloodshot hazel eyes and a clean face. His black priest robes are immaculate, the starched white collar like snow, and his face is carved in opposition of the Virgin Mary - no patience, just anger. He tries to hide it, though. Wouldn’t do to be open about his personal feelings, not when I’ve entered his church seeking God.

I spot a corkboard by the front doors - the only modern thing on the walls. Posters of all sorts, tacked up. Makes sense. Churches are usually the heart of neighborhoods. Post about your missing cat here, and someone’s bound to call you. Except it’s not missing cats. It’s religious flyers and event flyers, by the looks of it. Can’t read French. But I don’t need to know how to read French to understand the smiling black and white photos of kids with bright red letters above them.

Missing posters.

This priest guy hates me, probably. Hates everyone from decadent, hedonistic Silvere. But I have to try.

“Julien?” I ask softly, pointing to the corkboard with the missing posters. “Julien Strickland?”

The candles shudder. It’s all I have. It’s all I can do to try to relate. I expect him to run me out, hissing satané. I expect him to scoff, to go tight-lipped like Von Arx. But instead he motions for me to sit in a pew. It’s creaky and worn with age. He leaves me there, walking up to the altar and tending to the candles for a moment before walking back. His bloodshot eyes never meet mine, staring instead at his hands. His English comes out near-perfect.

“Are you related to him? You seem like him.”

“N-No,” I start. “I just heard about it.”

The priest doesn’t betray any emotion. The church gloams quietly around us.

“She comes to pray, still,” He says.

“Who?” I ask.

“Cecilia Von Arx. Your headmistress. His mother.”

“Did you…” I pause. “But did you know him?”

The priest looks out at the altar over his shoulder. Slowly. “We were friends. He, at the school. And myself, in the village.”

I swallow incense and dust. “I’m sorry.”

“The school is not,” The priest cuts in. “Still they remain open, when they know that land is not of God’s domain. Still they bring their children, and still they vanish. Year after year. So it has been, and so it will be.”

“Vanish? Into, like, thin air?”

“Dozens, over the years. All from that cursed place.”

“But - the school didn’t make him go missing,” I insist. “Kidnappers do. Ransomers and stuff. Right? Or maybe they wandered into the mountains and got lost -”

The priest scoffs, and pivots like he’s gonna leave. I bolt up.

“Wait, do you - what happened? To Julien? Do you know -”

A whirl of black, of gray and bloodshot hazel and then the priest is in front of me again, snarling out a whisper from the back of his throat.

“I know he was here one day, and gone the next. I know the man he saw before he vanished. The man with eyes of Satan.”

A prickle runs down my spine. “Eyes of -”

“Diable,” He repeats, hard and defiant. “Julien said there was a man following him, with eyes like hellfire. And I know now that was the devil - the great devil Silvere has inflicted on itself.”

With eyes like hellfire.

Red.

The priest crosses himself, but I can’t move at all. “The devil took him. As he will take another. I tell you this as God’s shepherd; you must leave Silvere while you can. It is a condemned place, not fit for humankind. They have made deals with the devil there, and the curse will follow their blood forevermore.”

The priest turns, hands clutching his rosary as he walks up to the altar again, this time with less energy. Less strength. He kneels, praying, and I collapse into the pew, fear like poison burning me from the inside.

It can’t be.

I sit there for minutes, but it feels like slow, agonizing, gear-grinding years. Finally, I lace my shaking hands together and bow my head. Praying.

Hey. Me again. I know we don’t talk much anymore. Been, uh, busy. Not as busy as you, but. You know.

The dead-air tranquility of the church is almost enough to quell the terror screaming through me.

Please let Mom be okay. You can kill me early, if you want. Kidnap me, like you did Julien. You can give my soul to the devil - if that’s what you really want, fine. Just, please. Let Mom be safe. Keep her safe.

I hear wood creak ahead of me - someone else sitting down - and open my eyes. A man. Broad shoulders, a gray jacket. He sits in the pew in front of me, near me. Close, but enough to the left that I don’t have to adjust. He doesn’t pray, just sits there. Staring ahead.

It can’t be.

I crane my neck slightly to see his face just as he turns to look at me. High cheekbones. A perilously sharp nose. Dark hair, dark eyes.

The man from the restaurant.

Inhaling to sing.

No bible can help me. No bible can stop his dark eyes from flashing pure red.

Legs, arms, move, move, MOVE. Bruises from my limbs scrambling over the pews, into the aisle, pounding through the door and exploding into cold air. Clutch Ana’s hand the whole way home in the car, curled up in the backseat and watching the trees pass with every second - searing, dripping, reeking of dread.

28

THE DEER (OR, HOW MANY TIMES YOU CAN TOLERATE BEING CALLED PREY)

I was seeing things. I know I was seeing things because all I could apparently mutter after my flight from the church was ‘a man’, and one of Ana’s friends poked her head inside the stone building. She came back frowning - there was no one in there. No one but the priest. It could be a brain tumor, my fatalistic mind offers. Ana assures me stress does wild things to the human body - including hallucinations.

“You moved seven thousands miles to a brand new school,” she says. “Of course you’re stressed.”

When I calm down enough to think straight, I realize every one of Ana’s friends in the car is looking at me with thinly-veiled disgust. How dare I lose it? And in front of them, on their nice day out?

My whole life I’ve played it cool. I’ve stuffed my fears so deep down below my stupid jokes and puns they’ve never gotten the chance to show through. People think I’m stupid. People think I’m funny. But they never think I’m afraid. Weak.

Except Alistair-fuckin’-Prickland.

I’ve kept this shit on lock for Mom’s sake. For mine. So I could try to live a semi-normal life. Dreams were the only place my fears surfaced, the only place I let them surface. Nothing in reality was strong enough to make me lose my grip - seeing blood only softened it, and I could fight tooth and nail to get away from someone coming too physically close.

But this man.

The man with red eyes is strong enough.

And I hate him for it.

When we get back, Ana tries to walk me up to my dorm room, but I rip away and tell her it’s fine with a smile. Go back downstairs. To your friends. The ones who don’t hallucinate things.

I don't say the last part, but it hangs there anyway.

“You can tell me if something’s wrong, Lilith,” Ana says, flashing her own grim grin.

Can I?

Can I tell you everything, Ana? Everything? Or would you just not understand? Like you can’t understand college worries? Money worries?

Could you understand the color red like I do?

Seven months. That’s all.

It’s easy to pretend something didn’t happen if you have enough distractions. Example A; food. Example B; school. Example C; trying not to fail out of a school that’s way too smart for you.

“I am, mayhap, a big-assed fool,” I mutter during Economics. My quiz has been returned to me with an encouraging 22/100 on the top. In American terms, that’s an F. A high F, but an F nonetheless.

“You forgot the Mongol horde pressure,” Bianca points to my very shoddy notes in my notebook. “It’ll definitely be on the mid-term.”

“Huge of ass,” I whisper, scribbling MONGOL HORDE!!! :0 in the margins. “Small of brain.”

“What are you muttering about?” She wrinkles her nose. I lean in a little, like I’m sharing a secret.

“Massive of stomach.” I point my glitter-pen at my blazer’d chest. “That’s me. All three parts of me.”

“Scientifically, there are more parts to you than just three,” Bianca says. This is, I’m starting to learn, her way of being nice.

“What if there aren’t,” I counter. “And I’m special?”

“You’re not.”

“Damn.” I snap my fingers softly, suddenly noticing the glitter-ink smear on my blazer. “Damn times two.”

“Pierce,” Professor Guillard calls. I leap out of my skin.

“Yes!”

“Which Byzantine emperor sent spies to China to retrieve silkworm eggs?”

“Uh,” I start eloquently. “Um.”

My eyes dart around for any answer, any hint, but the circle of students just stares dead-eyed at me, offering nothing. Faces empty, expecting something. Some of them smirk, waiting for me to say the ridiculous thing. They’re finally looking up from their phones, their doodling - with that one Destiny’s Child joke, I’ve established myself as the latest entertainment for the circle of lions.

Next to me, Bianca’s manicured nail taps out rhythmic boredom on her textbook. Even she’s fed up waiting for me to invent something. It’s gotta be mind-bending for someone as smart as her, sitting next to the only person in class who doesn’t know jackshit -

My eyes catch on her nail. On the word where her nail’s stopped. Just. Just. An emperor’s name. Just…in? It was something like that, wasn’t it? It sounded almost modern, I remember that. Something tries to claw out through my deep brain-fog.

Justin. No, fancier. Justinian.

“Emperor…Justinian?” I whisper. I know I’m right because the waiting circle sags into their chairs again, the potential for excitement over. A smirk pull at Bianca’s glossed lips. Professor Guillard gives me a beaming smile - one of the ones he usually aims at her.

“Very good, Miss Pierce. This theft of eggs resulted in silk production in northern Greece and other parts of the Byzantine empire, thereby reducing demand from the west, though the quality left something to be desired - ”

Oh shit. Oh shitting shit, I did it. I actually answered a question right! What is this feeling in my chest? Is it smartness? Is this what smartness feels like? Damn. No wonder people go to school. It’s a totally different experience when you do what the oldies want instead of what they specifically don’t want.

When the bell rings, Bianca packs up her bag instantly.

“Hey,” I start. “Thanks for the assist.”

She shrugs one shoulder. “I didn’t do anything. You knew it.”

“Yeah, but you pretty much gave me the answer.”

“You gave it to yourself.” She argues, indigo eyes darting up to Guillard’s back at the window. “Now stop talking. I have a headache.”

I watch her go, smiling. Alistair hiding his bleeding knuckles behind his sleeve, her giving me the answer just now. These Silvere kids sure have bizarre, twisted ways of being nice.

I close my notebook, the pages catching where the seam is jagged. Where Rose’s picture used to be. I noticed it the first day I got it back, after I’d calmed down from Von Arx scream-fest. All the pages were still there, except for the one picture of that shadow thing. She must’ve torn it out. But it doesn’t matter.

Because even if the picture isn’t there anymore, the shadow of it always is.

The nights are getting easier. And by that I mean the groan of million-year-old wood doesn’t bother me as much, anymore. I know the auroras fade at midnightish, their ethereal light waning timidly from behind the white lace curtains. I sleep with Mr. Ursine tucked under my arm like a particularly fuzzy boyfriend and wake up with him on the floor, staunchly protecting me from the monsters under my bed.

Or the monsters in the forest.

Because that’s what it feels like every time I look out any window ever. The jagged, dark trees yawn open like teeth, rising and falling on the ridges of mountain and chewing the sky apart. Knight Durand broods between the teeth, skimming the tops with its fanged towers. I can’t shake the feeling it’s all just…waiting. For someone. For something. And as soon as they find it, they’ll rise up and swallow the school whole. But that’s just me. I’m just full of fear. It’s just one more fear on top of another, on a pile of them, and the camel has plenty of room still. The final straw’ll probably never come. It’s probably not even possible. My whole body has room for fear, shelves and spaces carved out on my rib bones, gouged inside my very organs.

If Julien saw the man with red eyes before he disappeared…then what’s gonna happen to me?

I try not to think about it. I try so hard not to think about it it’s all I can think about.

Which is why I see the deer at all.

It’s a dream - some horrible stress-dream jolting me awake, soaked in sweat. Mr. Ursine’s half-off the bed and my head rings and I’m convinced in that unreal-way the dream really happened. Dunno what it was - it slides away from me grain-by-grain like sand. Mom. I know Mom was in it. I check my phone, her texts unmoving from her last ‘goodnight’ to me. It’s too late - we’re on the same time zone. It’s three in the morning. I’ll worry her if I text ‘are you safe?’. Besides, she’s fine. She has to be. Real life is real life. Dreams are just dreams.

“Dreams are just dreams,” I whisper, yanking on my bedside lamp and pulling Mr. Ursine close. Slowly, slowly, his stupid button-nose chases the lingering awful away, and my heartbeat stops being painful. My breathing stops being loud.

But another rhythmic noise replaces it.

At first I think I’m still dreaming. Because the sound I hear is out in the hall, and no one should be up at this time. Especially not in high heels. A calm, steady clip-clop, sharp and precise. Someone dressed up, at this time of night? The professors aren’t even allowed in the dorm buildings.

I grab my sweater and tip-toe to the door. It’s so thick you can barely hear, but the footsteps are so loud it doesn’t matter. Wait. Four. There’s four clip-clops in close succession. Four footsteps. So two people in high-heels?

The leftover dream-tar in my veins slows logic down. If I was clear-headed, I would’ve known what those steps were before I ever opened the door. But I crack the wood and peer blearily out into the moonlit hall. It’s a weak moon, the sort that washes the marble floors in diluted gray light. I can’t see much without my glasses, but I can tell the gilded windowsills and embroidered curtains have no power here. Gold has no power here. Silver is queen. Silver is silent empress, braiding the edges of statue-thrown shadows and portrait-painted eye sockets of people long dead. The hall seems like it goes on forever, the darkness of night infecting space and time, stretching it out, distorting it.

And it’s then I notice the noise has stopped.

The source, the two people it must be, have stopped moving. I see them down the hall - both dressed in pure white. Both of them…connected. As one thing, one white shape, thin in the legs and large in the waist - four legs. Spires of horn on one end.

Not people.

A deer.

A perfectly white deer stands in the hall.

I squint just in time to see it swing its head around to look at me. Two black lines of ink surrounded by yellow - sideways deer-pupils, deer eyes. Long lashes. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. And the weirdest.

“What are you doing here?” I whisper.

The deer should bolt. It should, right? When I edge out of my doorway, it should panic and scrabble away. Deer aren’t a thing in the heart of LA, really. Coyotes, sure. Rats, cats. Skunks, sometimes. But I’ve seen enough movies, enough footage in nature shows on TV and shit. Deer are scared things. Sound-based, fear-based. Shy. They run.

But this deer just watches me with its huge yellow eyes, patiently, limpidly. And then it swings its head back around, and starts to walk again one slow hoofstep at a time, the sound precise and clear against the wood as it steps a perfect line down the middle of the hallway like it…belongs here.

Like it’s been here before.

For a split-second I think about chasing it out, but then I realize it’s taller than me, and it’s all muscle. It’s basically a horse, and those things can kill you with a hoof if you so much as look at them wrong.

And then it stops.

It stops in front of a window, and faces it like a person. Like it knows the windows show you outside. Are deer that smart? Maybe. Gotta be, right, to avoid getting eaten all the time?

What is it looking at?

The question burns me up, and basically-a-horse or not, I edge into the hallway, the wood bone-chilling cold against my feet. But I could give a shit. I walk slowly closer, ready for the white thing to skitter and turn on me at any second. But it just stands there, unblinking yellow eyes gazing out. It should have a smell, right? It should radiate heat, right? But it doesn’t. Or maybe I’m not close enough. I lean slowly into the massive window, looking where it’s looking, and what’s left of a fancy-salmon dinner roils in my stomach.

The forest.

No - not the forest. The deer’s staring right at the derelict spires of Knight Durand. Spires that aren’t dark, aren’t abandoned, but lit up, bright and blazing. With candlelight.

With the silhouettes of people.

And you can hear it.

The chanting.

Low and dull, like the kind you hear in churches. Musical, but just barely. Something about it feels wrong in that off-key way, but it’s not off-key. It just feels…wrong. Weird and wobbly and nonsensical. Like it wasn’t made for human ears at all. I can’t tear my eyes or my ears away. Knight Durand is abandoned. This has to be a dream. But realizing that doesn’t give me a sense of ease like it usually does. It just puts me more on edge.

And then, from the darkness of the forest, from where the overgrown path to Knight Durand empties out onto the lawn steps a figure clad in gold.

Pure, shimmering gold.

A waterfall of it, a robe of it, draped around the person. No distinguishable features - I can’t tell who it is, or how old they are, or if they’re a man or woman. Just gold like water. And a mask. A gold mask, beaked like a plague doctor, staring with its dark eyeholes up at us. Right at us.

The mask from Von Arx’s office.

The deer looks at me, and I look at it, and its eyeballs rotate in its socket like a fucked-up clockhand, black horizontal pupil going completely vertical. From deer to snake. And the obvious dream ends, goes black, the feeling of my whole body falling back and a fear of hitting the ground jolting me awake.

Sunshine through the curtains. Autumn leaves outside. I’m in my own bed. Not splayed out in the sheets like I usually am upon awaking, but tucked in too-tight. Too-perfect.

Like a mother.

Like someone was in my room with me.

In only my pajamas, I check and double check my lock, running the card on it over and over again. Everyone else is already showered, uniforms pressed, watching me like I’m crazy.

Because I am.

There’s no way - I look around the floor for any sign of it. Any pile of poop, any hoofprints. But the shining woodfloor is clean. Zip-zero-nothing.

Nothing, except for the tuft of pure white fur in front of my door.

I pick it up, spinning it into one fiber and putting it in an old lipbalm case as proof. Proof it wasn’t a dream, or a hallucination. Proof, in case I need to reach into my backpack and remind myself I’m not going crazy all the time. Just mostly. Because if this fur is real…then the deer was too. Knight Durand lit up. The chanting, the silhouettes, the gold mask person.

All of it, real.

Real like the red-eyed man.

Cursed, like the red-eyed man.

“Did you see it last night?” I greet Ana in the morning with this very specific and not-confusing question.

“See what?” She cocks her braids.

“The white deer.”

Ana’s cherubic face instantly lightens. “Oh! You saw the deer?”

I try to hide my terror at her confirmation it’s real. Half-terror, half-relief.

“Hard not to, when it’s walking around like it owns the place in the middle of the night.”

“Wait, it was inside?” She gapes.

“Just waltzing down the hall at like, three am.”

“Weird,” She whispers. “I mean, not the deer. The white deer has been here forever.”

“Oh yeah?” I push through the crowd, and feel Ana latch onto my backpack to trail in my empty wake. At five feet flat she’s learned real quick that my giantess stature comes in handy.

“Yeah. If you see it before midterms, it’s supposed to be good luck. You’ll score really well. Or, that’s what people say. But we usually see it in the forest - I’ve never heard of it coming into the chateaus.” She gnaws her lip. “You think someone left a door open?”

“Maybe,” I start. “But why would a deer come in?”

“Food? The cold?”

I shake my head. “You’re the expert, not me.”

“This may surprise you, but there aren’t many deer in São Paulo.” She grins.

“Then we’re at an impasse, my deer.”

Her groan follows me into the cafe, and I snicker. It’s a joy that gets murdered pretty quick when I see a flash of that gold mask on the back of my eyelids, and remember. That mask….on Von Arx’s office wall.

It wasn’t a dream, because I’ve seen that mask before.

It wasn’t a dream, because the white deer is real.

But it was just a dream.

It was just a dream because I look at Knight Durand every night from then on and it’s dark. Even at three a.m when I get up for water - it’s completely silent and covered in night. Just an empty, ruined building, no matter how much I stare at it during archery practice.

‘Do we call a meeting in Durand?’

Lionel said that. I overheard it, the first day I got here. Von Arx and him, talking. Was that what I saw? A ‘meeting’? What kind of fuckin’ meeting do you chant in the dead of night at?

A cult.

That one word makes the weirder-shaped puzzle pieces fit - why Lionel knows Von Arx so well, why there’s so much fuckin’ money here, royalty and CEO-kids aside. The weirdo security guys, the disdain the villagers have for Silvere. I don’t need to be smart to know this could be some straight-up Illuminati shit. And Mom’s marriage has dumped me right in the middle of the stinking pile. But I sound like a kid when I say it out-loud. I sound like Nic Cage in National Treasure having a fever dream. I sound guano-ass nutcracker-ass crazy. But that’s what they want you to think, right? If the Illuminati is real, they’d want you to think it was fake. Right?

What would I even say to Mom? Hey, no big, but your new husband sent me to an maybe-cursed Illumanti school. I know, wild. Ticket back, plz kthnx?

She wouldn’t believe me. I don’t fuckin’ believe me. She would get so worried that I was finally losing it. Unravelling. Because cursed shit doesn’t exist. Curses don’t exist. No matter how science-y Ana made future-seeing sound, no matter how much I touch the white fur in the lip balm case, no matter how much I prayed for it when I was eleven, Harry-Potty-ass magic doesn’t exist. The world is just the world. People are just people.

But sometimes, they’re cultists.

Does Alistair know? Does any student in this school know? Do the parents know? They have to. Do the professors…

I watch Guillard point something out on the instructional hologram, and my stomach churns butter.

Seven months.

Life-goal update; play it cool for seven months, and get out of this cult-school alive.

I figure out lightning-fast I can bury my looming fear in the soul-crushing stress that is academic achievement. Not that I’m deluded - no fuckin’ way am I gonna stand out here at Silvere for excellence or anything. Just keeping up with everyone else’s leisurely jog is like running a marathon for me, but then again, it always has been. Easy intelligence isn’t my thing. Swearing lots and getting attention, on the other hand? Hell yeah. I practically invented that shit. It doesn’t get easier to ask Ana for help translating worksheets. There’s still a lot of teeth-gritting involved and me shouting down the voice in my head that insists her smiles are going to sour to snarls any second now, that’s she’s gonna leave because I’m a nuisance, but we manage through a combination of Ana’s cheery persistence and Bianca’s calm influence.

Yeah. You heard that right. Bi-of-the-big-brain-anca. Ana saw us talking - well, sniping at each other, really - one day after class, and invited her to eat with us at breakfast. And defying all odds, Bianca agreed. She’s been at our table ever since. We make an odd trio; me shoving as many pastries as I can into my mouth, Bianca delicately sipping pure black coffee and only pure black coffee, and Ana gracefully consuming little spoonfuls of eggs whilst asking us our plans for the day. I do most of the talking, as always. Bianca doesn’t say much, unless its about the old books she’s poring through. Books for me maybe? For blood promises? But she never says those exact words - we share a look and decide in that instant to keep it quiet from Ana. From everybody else who isn’t us.

Because who else would even care? They’re just fairytales.

Because who else would even care that I’m dreaming about cultists and white deer?

Ruby keeps asking if they’re my friends, but I can never answer straight. Maybe? I haven’t made friends in so long - not since her. I settle on ‘it’s too early to tell’. We haven’t hit critical mass yet, where people start figuring out what I’m really like and decide I’m not worth the hassle. That’s how it went with Shae, and Brittney, and Vanessa. Third, sixth, and eighth grade, respectively.

That’s how it went with Dad.

So. We’ll see. We’ll wait, in this impenetrable little mind-maze, and see.

Speaking of mind-mazes, I catch Alistair in the halls sometimes. ‘Catch’ isn’t really the right word, I guess. I never see him first. It’s always his flanks, Maria and Rafe. Glimpses of a platinum bob, and I know he’s around. If I hear Rafe’s boisterous laugh, I know Prickland’s in the vicinity. They’re his alarms and his torchbearers - people scatter when they see Maria, or duck into their proper classrooms when Rafe swaggers by. ‘They’ve got the whole school Pavlovian-responsed', says Ana, and Bianca counters with ‘I think you mean Stockholm-syndromed’. I have to agree. I mean, I don’t, because I don’t have a single freakin’ clue what they’re talking about, but I get the gist. The disciplinary committee’s trimmed Silvere into ship-shape. Most of the fourth years are too scared to look Alistair in the eye, let alone do anything off-book.

But I’m learning there are always exceptions.

On Monday, this one fourth-year guy follows a girl in the hall with his buddies and then stupidly decides to reach out and snap her bra strap beneath her uniformed back. The ‘smack’ resounds, and the girl’s face goes red down to her roots, and the fourth-year guys start to howl with laughter. I’m halfway into revving up my hell-fucking-no-voice when someone else does the honors - by grabbing the offending kid by the back of the neck and shoving his face over a very full trash can. The guy swears vividly in French, but the iron grip of Alistair Strickland doesn’t loosen that easily. He looks down at the flailing kid with flat eyes - two copper-green shards of irritation stabbing out as he speaks, slow and calm. I can’t understand his French, but Maria does me a favor by reiterating in her usual monotone.

“Un gaffe.”

Alistair presses the kid’s head down further. The whole hall’s watching by now, watching the guy’s nose inch ever closer towards a half-molding banana peel. Prickland leans in and for a second I think he’s trying to sniff the banana peel too, but instead he murmurs in the kid’s ear. Can’t hear what it is - the hall’s buzzing with the show - but the effect is instant. The flailing kid goes white, then a little green on the edges, and then he unceremoniously vomits right into the trash can. The entire hall bursts into cheers at it. Alistair leaves him there, hanging on the edge of the can, his friends angling awkwardly around him and trying to figure out what to do. The cheers follow Alistair and Maria and Rafe as they cut through the crowd like a hot knife through I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-butter. Rafe raises his hands and gladly takes the applause. Maria gives little nods here and there, quietly pleased. Alistair’s face never changes. Not once. The girl reaches out for his sleeve as he passes, and she says something in French. Maybe ‘thank you’. Maybe ‘you didn’t have to do that’. Whatever it is, Alistair just gives her a curt nod and a single unsmiling word.

“L’obligation.”

English borrowed that word. I know it. Obligation. An entrusted duty. Duty, period. Always the fucking duty, huh Prickland? First Borbeau, now this girl, and a handful of others I hear about in passing rumor but don’t see happen myself; a guy bullied for his lisp, a girl with an ex who refuses to get the message. Sometimes I get the aftermath, though; Prickland slouched in a fancy chair or sitting on the stairs somewhere - on the warm polished wood inside or the cold stone outside - wrapping his wounds with the first aid shit he carries around. Knuckles scraped raw. Bruises on his forearms. No fuckin’ wonder he has so many little scars.

Does he know?

Does he know his Grandmother maybe runs a gold-mask cult at this fuckin’ school? He has to know. Right?

Ana waves it off later when I ask her what Alistair could’ve possibly said to make the fourth-year vomit.

“It’s blackmail.”

“Blackmail?” I raise a brow. “The kid’s like, fourteen. No way he’s done something serious enough to make him yartz like that.”

“It doesn’t have to be serious,” Ana insists. “To parents who expect perfection, who spend millions of dollars on perfection, the smallest thing is an unforgivable sin.”

“But Strickland -”

“Strickland knows that. And he uses it to its full advantage to keep us in line.” She sighs. “Mikael definitely deserved it, though. He’s been harassing girls like that since initiation day.”

The trash can incident is the day I get it - the day I realize that besides the blood-promise, Alistair and I have maybe-possibly-regrettably one other thing in common; we hate seeing abuses of power. Abuse, period. A power imbalance leveraged, used for someone else’s selfish gain. Neither of us can stand it. The difference is I just yell, and he has the permission to act on it from Von Arx. But something tells me even without that permission he’d still be out here doing the exact same thing he is now - beating the shit outta creepy pedos and tilting assholes into trash cans. And it’s almost - almost - admirable. But you’d have to kill me and resurrect my rotting corpse with black magic before I’d ever admit that out loud.

Because God loves me, he made it so that Ciel and I don’t have a single class together. But that doesn’t mean I don’t see him at all in the next few weeks, mostly in the hands of other girls - in the form of a magazine. He’s modeling some watch, dressed in a perfectly tailored navy suit, his blonde hair gleaming like real gold. He’s laying on these really uncomfortable-looking geometric blocks because ~fashion~, but he makes it look like the comfiest couch in the world. His legs are long, his fingers longer. The makeup, the clothes, the lighting - it catches his perfect angles. Which is every angle. Fine. You win this time, capitalism. Hell yeah I wanna buy whatever stupid overpriced watch he’s selling. No questions asked. Except one, which is; how can a human being look that good? They can’t. The girls squeal about it, the guys marvel at it, the same magazine repeating itself in nearly every class I have. It’s always accompanied by that weird disconnect between reality and celebrity - hazing a thin, translucent layer over the idea of Ciel.

He doesn’t feel real, not the same way everyone else does. He feels larger than the mundane, the domestic shit of eating and sleeping and, well, shitting. He feels bigger than life, somehow. When the bell rings there’s always a knot in the foot traffic wherever he is, a slow-down of the whole world. You’d think everyone would get used to him, bored of him after years of him being at Silvere, but no - everyone’s still hyped, even after all this time, even in a school filled with Saudi princesses and prime ministers’ sons. He’s the Biggest Deal in a sea of Big Deals.

I start to get it. I get why everyone’s dying to talk to him, why he can’t leave a room or walk to class without getting mobbed and giggled on. They’ve got trust funds and status, but he’s got je ne sais quoi, and that’s something you can’t buy. I get why he’s number one on Chunhua’s ranking. Sure, it’s his looks. But it’s the idea of him, too. He has a sway like the wind over a forest of trees - a tide, like an ocean perpetually at full moon. He has his own powerful gravity. Powerful enough to have the whole school buying the magazine he’s in without a second thought.

But the difference is we get to see him in real life, too.

Ciel’s always passing by after I leave Economics, but I can’t even pack slow to try and avoid him - I’ve got a class across the building to get to. So I just keep my eyes glued to the floor, squeezing past the chittering ring of people around him until I’m firmly settled in my next class’s chair, but even that doesn’t help - sometimes I spot immaculate brown-leather shoes near me, pause, and then stride past me. Wordlessly. If I was as brave as I pretend to be, I’d just look him in the eye and say sorry. Sorry for running away, sorry for being childish. If I was braver, I’d apologize for acting like a fuckin’ weirdo. I wanna act normal around him, like a regular-ass girl. Less shouting. Less swearing. Less inappropriate jokes.

I want him to like me.

That’s gonna be my downfall, isn’t it? Usually is, in books and movies. Girl falls for the wrong guy, girl tries to make him like her, girl fails and learns she has to be herself. I know how this goes. I’m young, not an idiot. Of course I want to be myself. I don’t wanna be fake with anyone. I want him to like me as I am. But.

But.

This is my one in a million chance.

Everyone else is hard. Everyone else is the same. Except him. I can’t fuck this up. But I did. Every day I don’t talk to Ciel, the gap between us yawns wider. A gap I’ll never be able to cross. I pretended, that night cutting my palm - I pretended to be brave. That’s all it was. Make-believe. I’m not getting better. I’m just staying the same.

It’s a Thursday when Ciel talks to me again.

I’m sitting outside fourth period a little early. Too early, because I hoofed it from Economics so I wouldn’t have to see him. Even the professor isn’t here yet. The hall is practically empty, the coming student storm still miles away. I sit, and I think badly. All the chateau halls look pretty much the same. Big windows, big ceilings. And that’s when it gets me, hooks me like a fishing worm -if the deer was real in the hall that night, how did it get up the stairs? Regular stairs I could buy, but the only stairs leading up to the dorm level are spiral. Not easy. Not even for me, a human. So how the fuck would a deer get up all those?

It wouldn’t.

For the twelfth time this week I pull out the lipbalm case, opening it in my lap and staring at the white tuft of fur. It’s coming apart from the strand I first twirled it into. I pick it up and re-twirl it, holding its fraying end up into the sun. Gold on white.

There’s a shuffle of footsteps, too quick for me to avoid. Brown dress shoes. I swallow frayed nerves.

“Hi Lilith,” Ciel starts, smiling and standing right in front of me like it’s the easiest thing in the world for him. “What is that?”

His silver eyes fixate on the fur in my fingers. I shuffle it away into the lipbalm case quickly, his gaze following it the whole time before he flickers up to me.

“You look sick. Is something wrong?”

“Yes? No.” I pause. “Were you, uh, watching me?”

“I just happened to spot you,” He assures me. “I guess I should apologize for our picnic before we start talking again, shouldn’t I?”

“N-No,” I blurt. “I mean, apologize for what? I goofed, not you. It wasn’t your fault.”

He laughs uneasily. “I said some pretty cruel things.”

“It was the truth,” I insist, the sunlight slanting in from the window doing nothing to cool my glowing face. “The truth is cruel, usually.”

“Still,” He frowns. “I’m sorry if it hurt you.”

If it hurt me? A tiny part of me screams ‘no ifs, it obviously hurt me!’. Something in me slices open again, a wound on top of a wound, but I ignore it (this is him, the one in a million) and grin.

“And I’m sorry for ruining a perfectly good picnic. I left you alone with a ton of cheese, huh?”

“And I will be cutting none of it,” Ciel makes a little smirk, and there’s a beat before we both snicker. I watch his profile - embossed in the sunlight his sleek hair looks like molten gold, his silver eyes two full moons, two gleaming coins as they stare down at me with a light-hearted ease. And I feel a little bit more at ease. Things aren’t great right now, but they can’t stay bad forever.

A misunderstanding. That’s all it was.

“I saw your magazine ad,” I say.

“Did you.”

“Yeah. It was really sick. You’re a…model? Is that the right term?”

“Right enough.” He nods. “But it’s not something to be proud of.”

“Oh. Um. Why not?”

The silver coins of his eyes narrow almost imperceptibly, and I backtrack.

“W-We don’t have to talk about this if you don’t -”

“My parents,” Ciel sighs explosively up into the ceiling. “The world’s most famous photographers. Rock stars, pop stars, media stars - every famous name you can think of, my parents have probably shot.”

“That’s -”

“Amazing? Impressive? I know. And it’s the only reason I enjoy any success in my career.”

“That’s - that’s not true.”

“Isn’t it? Yes, I might have nice hair. But there are a hundred guys out there with nice hair. My parents just have the connections. They’re friends with every photographer, every designer, every runway. They already have their fingers in everyone I want to prove myself to. The compliments, the praise, my accomplishments - I never know if any of it is real…” He aims his smile right at me. “Sorry. I must sound like such a killjoy.”

“No, you’re not, seriously! If you want, I can listen - ”

“Let’s change the subject,” He cuts in smoothly, and points at my lap. “Was I seeing incorrectly, or was that thing in your hand fur?”

“White fur,” I nod, opening the lipbalm case again. “I found it off this deer.”

Ciel goes still. “A deer?”

“Apparently there’s this white deer on campus -”

“Where did you see it?”

“Uh, the hallways. Outside my room. But I’m not even sure if it was a dream or -”

“Inside? When?”

Why is his voice so sharp? I’ve never heard it like this before. Not with anyone. Not even when he seems his most exasperated, surrounded by dozens of people all chiming his name. He’s always light, smiling, but his expression right now - it’s the darkest I’ve ever seen. He looks hungry. No. Starving.

“Last, uh, Wednesday. Wednesday night - well, I guess this morning.”

“And it was just outside your room? Standing there?”

“No, it was like, walking down the hall. Totally unbothered.” I laugh nervously. “Kinda weird, huh? Someone must’ve left a door open, and I guess it just wandered in.”

“Can I -” Ciel’s tongue darts out to wet his lips, eyes still on the tuft. “Can I have it?”

I look down at it in my hands. Why would he want this thing? It was a deer. A freaky deer, but still just a deer. I try a laugh.

“Do you resort to collecting dust bunnies all the time, or just on the really boring days?”

His hungry look collapses, mouth crinkling into a wry smile. “I like interesting things. And this seems pretty interesting. Would you mind?”

He holds out his long hand just above mine. Above the white fur. He’s so close now I can see each of his blonde eyelashes, each strand of silver thread woven in his pale irises. My heart thunders, drums beating in my ears, my chest. But not out of fear. There’s no fear. For once in the last couple weeks, the fear melts away. It’s just a warm humming. He leans in more, even more, mint and gold and silver, his hand snaking over mine and if I so much as breathe too deep our lips will -

“N-No,” I pull away, clutching the lipbalm case close. “Sorry. I kinda need it.”

Ciel looks half-surprised, but keeps his smile. “For what?”

“Just…things.”

“I can pay you for it,” He offers, reaching into his bag. The corner of a thick-ass wad of francs peeks out from between his fingers.

“No - ” I hold out my hand. “No money.”

He chuckles. “You need it, right? Your step-dad probably hasn’t given you any real spending money to play with.”

I freeze. “How did you -”

“Being friends with Alistair has its surly downsides. But there are perks, too. Like access to his freakish brain that keeps everyone’s records, more or less. Your mom married your step-dad recently, right? Cunningham, in a pre-nup. What if he divorces her?” Ciel’s smile never slips, as he taps the wad of money with one long, milk-white finger idly. “You’ll wish you’d’ve taken this while you could.”

I fight back sick in my throat. He’s not doing it on purpose. He’s not toying with one of my biggest fear on purpose. He couldn’t know he’s talking about Mom’s utter emotional destruction. My biggest fear. He wouldn’t.

“I’m really sorry.” I make a cracked smile. “Seriously. Je suis, uh, desole. But I need it around. It’s hard to explain.”

There’s a beat, the breath both of us share still so close. So close my brain should be screaming red alert like it does with everyone else. But there’s only silence, soft and sweet and lingering. Is this - is he trying to…his silver eyes flicker over my face, down to my lips, and then he finally pulls away.

“You’ll tell me if you change your mind?”

“Y-Yeah.” I start. “Sure.”

His grin grows, bright enough to have me holding my breath. “See you later then, Lilith.”

I spend fourth period thinking less about math and more about why in the fuckin’ world Ciel Lautrec - the most popular guy in our school, a popular model in the real world, handsome and smart and kind, a guy who has everything - would want a tiny bit of fur from a deer so bad. Bad enough to pay.

My fingers skim over my lips.

Bad enough to try to kiss me.

29

THE POOL (OR, HOW THE PAIN WILL ALWAYS BE READY FOR YOU TO COME HOME)

When I look up from my Calc-homework-induced headache, two whole weeks have gone by. I get used to the rhythm of things at Silvere the way a frog gets used to swimming in boiling water. There’s a pattern as the school breathes around us - the flow of footsteps, the mouth-watering sauce smells coming from the kitchen, the sigh of the old wood of the chateaus at night, the chocolate breaks we get halfway through second period. They serve it before lunch - Swiss tradition, Ana explains. The bittersweet taste follows me everywhere - in my nose, my throat, my hair. Can’t even wash my bras and get rid of it.

And then Saturday comes around again.

“You sure you don’t wanna come, Lilith?” Ana motions to her sleek car puttering hot air into the cold. “There’s room for one more.”

The backseat’s crowded with waiting girls - a flurry of French and perfume and long stares from under hundred-dollar mascara. I shake my head and smile.

“It’s okay. You have fun.”

“I’ll try,” She grins. “But without you there, it’ll be hard.”

My laugh follows her as she minces down the steps in pink sneakers and piles into the back with her friends. She waves out the window until the trees framing the long driveway threaten her arm, and I wave until I get cold. And embarrassed. Which takes all of four seconds.

It’s wild how Silvere empties out on Saturday. A good chunk of the professors and staff take off, too, heading down to the lakes or taking their own cars into Geneva for the day. Sans private drivers, of course. Sunday…not so much. Even in uber-rich European boarding school territory, Sunday’s still the day to get all the homework you’ve been putting off done. Sure, Socrates - math’s a universal language. But so is procrastination.

My footsteps echo down the empty halls, the eyes of the paintings and statues watching me. The only thing scarier than school is a quiet school. And the only thing scarier than an old, beautiful building is an old, beautiful, ghost-town-fuckin’-empty building. Every shadow feels huge, every wood-creak feels like a threat.

“Okay. So.” I back up. “This was a mistake.”

Being outside is better than being the last person left on Earth, so I shuffle out to the lawn, meandering aimlessly towards the pool. It’s also mega-abandoned, the surface calm as glass and the eternally-heated water radiating curls of steam into the cold air. We’re technically not allowed near it unless there’s a lifeguard present, but technical things've always put me to sleep. There’s no cameras around here, so I hop the fence with little effort and get kinda disappointed - not even barbed wire at the top? You can’t spit in LA without hitting a fence with barbed wire. Unless you’re in the rich people zones. And then the barbed wire magically transmogrifies into cops.

I peel my shoes and socks off and sink into the clear water - the warmth spreading up from my soles and into my actual soul. The walk here wasn’t too bad, but my knee makes painful pangs of protestation anyway. I get up and walk over to the shallower end of the pool, hiking my jeans up as far as they’ll go. The water comes up to my mid-thigh, and I almost black out with how good the warmth feels on my knee.

“Ohhh yeah,” I sigh. “That’s the chlorinated stuff.”

If I face away from Knight Durand and ignore the woods, it’s all kinda…peaceful. Standing here in clear blue water, looking up at a clear blue sky. There’s not a cloud out today, the mountain peaks sharp and crisp and brilliant with snow. A single jetline cuts the sky in two - pale and long and fading rapidly with the wind. I look down at my palm. The blood-promise wound across my hand is gone now; the faintest lace-white line where it was. A scar. My first. Well, second, if you count the scar tissue in my knee. But you can’t see that stuff. Silvere’s nurse was nice - too nice like Mom - and when she took the bandage off my hand for the last time she apologized for the scar, but I told her not to. Kinda glad it left one. A reminder. A lesson not to demand things before I’m really ready for them.

Because I’ll ruin everything.

I run my hand through the silky water, Von Arx’s furious glare, and then her furious glare behind the gold beaked mask. Maybe.

“I don’t get it,” I mutter at the pool pump. “If she hates me so much, why didn’t she just expel me? Call my mom and have her come pick me up? Nothing’s stopping her; she’s the freakin’ headmistress. She can do anything she wants…right?”

The pool pump gurgles a little, but says nothing. Maybe she can’t refund the money Will’s given her, or some fine print shit like that. She’s not even around enough to wonder after anymore - four days after her screaming fit, she went on an ‘emergency business trip’, and I haven’t seen her office window with the lettuce growing in it open ever since. Which means the gold beaked mask person couldn’t’ve been her.

‘Course it wasn’t her, Lilith. You saw the camera footage. It was a dream.

The pool shudders just then - ripples hitting me. Ripples that aren’t mine.

I’ve panicked enough by now to pinpoint every sudden change as fear takes hold; heartbeat slows, lungs get heavy, hot magma and ice slush battle in my veins, seeds of nausea sprout sickly. I see it - something dark, deep beneath the surface of the water, waiting. Moving up. No way. No fuckin’ way. The red-eyed guy can’t be - he can’t -

I pinch my leg hard, trying to cut the nightmare off at the pass this time, but all there is is the pain. All there is is me diving for the shallow end, for the stairs out, away from him, from the song I never want to hear, from a song that, if he sings it, means the end of the world -

The water explodes, a shape exploding up with it. Human. Dark hair. Green eyes.

Wait.

I blink. “Prickland?”

He wipes away the hair sticking in his surprised face. “Pierce?”

The relief is almost enough to have me ignoring his very wet and very bare chest. “Holy shit. I thought you were Jaws, dude!”

His eyes go flat. “How would a shark even get in a pool?”

“Uh, the drain, connected to the ocean? Duh?”

“Pool drains are not directly connected to the ocean.”

“Fine, ghost shark, then!”

“This place is off limits.” He swims over to the side of the pool and effortlessly hefts himself out.

“Y-You’re not supposed to be here either!” I splutter, motioning at the empty lifeguard seat.

“I have permission,” He argues, toweling his sopping hair.

“From who? Your grandma? FYI: she’s been AFK for like a week, my guy.” I pause. “Wait - you weren’t even swimming. You were just…sitting down there. Doing what?”

“Practicing.”

“For what?” I sniff. “Little Mermaid auditions?”

“Why are you here?” He turns the tables on me and holds up a finger. “If I don’t like your answer, you’ve got detention for the rest of the week.”

“Whatever happened to democracy?” I mumble, clambering out of the pool and tugging my jean cuffs back down. I flop on a pool chair to pull my converse back on.

“Why are you here?” He presses heartlessly.

“Because!” I throw my arms out. “Everybody else went to the village. I tried to stay inside and do regular things with my life but it got real haunted mansion on me real fast. So I came out here. To nature.”

Alistair’s quiet as he pulls his shirt on, much to the dismay of the two hundred squealing girls who aren’t here right now, and for a flicker of an unimaginable second I get it - the guy’s shoulderblades are like fuckin’ sawblades. His eyebrows suddenly knot up in the middle.

“Are you doing that thinking thing again?” I ask.

“About how long and terrible your detention’s going to be this time?” He inquires lightly. “Yes.”

“I love nature.” I change the subject. “Don’t you? Dudes are always like, ‘You should smile more!’ to me, and I’m like, ‘Sorry random man, but I only smile at nature and babies’. You know?”

He slips into a pair of the standard issue pool sandals they give us, and I watch his glare flicker to my knee. Don’t.

“But not toddlers,” I correct. “Those things are way too sticky.”

“You visited the village your first week,” He suddenly says. “And you were excited about it.”

“How do you know I was excited?” I sniff. “Maybe I had to shit. The expressions are very similar.”

“Lionel said you wouldn’t stop wiggling in your seat.”

“Again, maybe I had to -”

“What happened?” Alistair interrupts. “In the village that day?”

I glower and shrug. “Just get Lionel to tell you. He tells you everything else, apparently.”

“I’d rather hear it from you.”

“And I’d rather have an In-n-Out strawberry milkshake, but here we are.”

Alistair looks at me for a second, eyelashes heavy with water, and then he turns and disappears into the changing room. I fold my arms grumpily. How fuckin’ dare Lionel. First he doesn’t tell me he’s in a cult, now this. I’m his client, right? Will’s his employer! Isn’t he supposed to, like, keep my secrets? I get that him and Alistair are tight, but seriously? C’mon! A little voice nags that he only told Alistair because he was worried about me, but what-the-fuck-ever. Alistair Strickland, of all people in this tax-evasion-scheme of a school, doesn’t need to be informed of where or when I freak out.

Oh, shit. If Lionel told Alistair, he definitely told Will and Mom, right? Oh shit shit shit shit -

Something warm and metallic bonks lightly against my forehead. I wince back and look up to see Alistair standing over me, properly dressed now in sweats and a windbreaker, a can of some drink in his hand.

“It’s no milkshake,” He starts. “But it’s the best I could do.”

He’s close. Bergamot and chlorine and freckle-on-his-neck close.

“I don’t want it.”

“I already paid for it. And I hate milk. Take it.”

If it’ll make him back up, I’ll do anything.

“What even -” I take it, careful not to touch our fingers together. I tilt the can around in my hand - it’s weirdly warm. “What even is this? All the writing’s in…uh…”

“Japanese,” He says. “There’s a vending machine in the boy’s changing rooms.”

“Why only the boy’s?”

He sighs. “I liked them when I was younger. Grandmother had it installed as a present.”

“Wow. Spoiled, much?” I pop the can open, the smell of sweet milk and fake strawberry. He pops his own can open - the adorable cartoon coffee bean on the front the only clue as to what it is. I take a hesitant sip. Yup - pure sugar. But not in a bad way.

“This is good, actually,” I marvel. Alistair looks up, and for a second I don’t think it’s him. Because it can’t be him. The Alistair Strickland I know doesn’t smile. Like that. Or at all. I mean yeah, he smiles at his grandma. But not like this; his jaw and his eyebrows and his sad, dour mouth pulled up, all the way up, in a full blown smile. It’s not bright. Not like Ciel. It’s not cheery like Ana’s, or boisterous like Rafe’s. It’s his own, a little crooked and a little blunt and all him.

“Yeah,” He agrees softly.

“You -” I cough milk. “You’re smiling.”

His lips straight-lace themselves down again. “No I’m not.”

“Were too! Who knew, Prickland’s face can move-”

“Drop it.”

“Gonna throw me in detention if I tell people you aren’t lumpy-grumpy all the time?”

“Pierce.”

“Finnnne. Your secret’s safe with me. But conditional, wherein you continue to feed me these milk thingies.” I sip and watch as Alistair stares into his canned coffee. Doesn’t drink it. Just stares. “Not even coffee, huh?”

His eyes flash up at me. “What?”

“You don’t even drink in front of people. Unless it’s water.”

There’s a quiet, the wind emptily clinking the lock on the pool’s gate against the chainlink. He’s not going to answer me. This shit is private -

“Water’s easy to see. Easy to taste.” His voice is so unexpected I jump a little. “It’s clear, so you can see powder in it, unless someone’s taken the time to dissolve it all thoroughly. And there are very few poisons tasteless enough to disguise themselves in water.”

I try to scrounge up something to say. How do you even live like that, thinking about poison all the time -

“She told you, didn’t she?” Alistair asks. “Von Arx.”

I nod, stiff. “But I noticed before that.”

“Of course you did,” He scoffs, but for once the sound doesn’t burn going down. The wind picks up, howling, every flower in the distant rose maze shivering their petals. I clutch the warm milk closer.

“Listen,” Alistair finally starts. “You tell me what happened in the village. And I tell you what I was doing in the pool. Deal?”

“You won’t believe me,” I shoot.

“I can’t believe what you won’t tell me.” He fires back.

“Why is talking to you like talking to a pincushion with all the pins facing out?”

Alistair graces me with the staring-too-hard bit, but I head him off at the pass.

“There’s a man who’s been following me. I saw him in a restaurant in LA before I came here, and again in Saint-Verde’s church. Dark hair, dark eyes, except sometimes they turn red - ”

“Bloodshot?” Alistair asks, without missing a beat. He’s supposed to scoff. Tell me I’m crazy. Not act like it could be maybe-real.

“No. The irises, I guess. They turn bright red.”

“He sings, doesn’t he? Or tries to.”

Ice crawls up my spine. “How do you know -”

He looks up from his coffee can. Slowly. “I’ve seen him too.”

“When?”

“Just once. Yesterday,” he says. “Standing under a tree, on the edge of the forest.”

He points, and I follow his finger.

“That’s -”

“Knight Durand.” Alistair finishes. And it goes unsaid - the exact trees where Rose drew the monster in my notebook. Where the circle of mushrooms are. Fairy ring. I can’t move. I can’t feel my body enough to move, anymore.

“This is crazy,” I laugh, but Alistair just nurses his coffee.

“I told you, I’ve heard singing before this. Rose’s drawings, where the shadow creatures would be.”

“You’re not - You’re not saying they’re the same thing?”

“Thing. No. Person? Maybe.”

“You swear you heard the red-eyed man sing?”

“He opened his mouth like he was about to. I don’t know how I knew he was going to sing, instead of just saying something. Maybe it was because he inhaled so large. But I ran before he could get the notes out. I was…” He pauses, knuckles subtly white around the can, and then his eyes flicker up to me. “He had an effect on me. Somehow.”

“You’ve gotta be more specific, Prickland.”

“I can’t. Not with you.”

I blink. “What does that even mean?”

“You’re not -“ He inhales, and inhales again. “You and I -”

A pause, the coffee can spiraling steam over his face.

“You can say whatever you want,” I insist. “I don’t care.”

“You don’t exactly strike me as the type to keep secrets without payment.”

“I can. I do. All the fuckin’ time. I’m deeper than I look.”

“Still not very deep, then,” He sighs.

“I haven’t blabbed about your family poisoning you, or whatever. And I’m not gonna blab about this. You wanna blood promise on it?”

He leans against the chainlink fence. “No.”

The pool laps against the concrete. Neither of us move, or breathe too deep.

“I’m just…” I trail off and mutter-laugh. “I’m just glad. That someone else’s seen him, too. I thought it was just me - I thought I was going crazy, alone. So. Thanks. For telling me this. Or, you know. Anything at all.”

The cold air throbs around us, the wind whistling back and forth. He believes me. It’s happening to someone else. I’m not alone. It’s weird - I can practically see his armor come off. Not all the way off. That’ll maybe never happen in his whole lifetime. But the way his shoulders sag a little, the way his chest deflates from staying high and strong -

“That red-eyed man…he did something to me. It was like…” Alistair pauses, sucking in. “It was like my whole body was being compelled to be afraid, whether or not I wanted to be. It was like I had no choice - like I wasn’t in control of my own emotions. Like he was putting fear directly into my brain.”

“He did that to me, too! I panic like a fuckin’ rabbit in a cage every time I see him -“

“It’s different for me.” He interrupts. “I’m always in control of my emotions. Always.”

“I mean…not always,” I half-laugh nervously, because he obviously must be joking. He looks up from the coffee can, eyes like a wrought iron gate.

“Always.”

“But, uh, nobody’s like that. Nobody can be -”

“I have to be. Or else bad things happen to the people I care about.”

“Like who?” I stop. “Rose?”

He doesn’t say anything, and I get the feeling it’s the closest I’ll come to a ‘yes’. Something in my chest twists, hard, but I force my brain to stay on topic.

“There’s no way. But. When he was about to sing, did you get this feeling…a feeling like the world was going to end if you heard it?”

A beat. He frowns. And then; “Exactly. A feeling like everything was going to end.”

Crazy. Crazy crazy crazy. This can’t be happening. Alistair presses on, fearless. Or at least less fear than me.

“If I hadn’t run away from the song, if I’d heard it, I’m positive it’d be the same song I’ve heard before, from the shadows in Rose’s drawings. She drew those shadows with red eyes. That man had red eyes, too.”

“They can’t be the same thing. It’s a hallucination.” I hear myself like I’m far away, out of my body, riding high and ramping up to hysterical.

“Strange, then,” Alistair muses. “That both of us are hallucinating the exact same thing. The exact same feeling.”

“People’s eyes don’t turn red.”

“I know.” Alistair agrees calmly.

“Then what is he?” My voice cracks. Alistair’s throat bobs.

“I don’t know.”

“Why are we the only ones who can see him?”

“I don’t know, Pierce.”

I weave my fingers together around the milk can like it’ll save me. Stop me from spinning off the edge.

“Do you think…do you think it had something to do with the blood promise?”

He’s silent. The wind shudders over the pool’s surface, turning glass to skin.

“Whoever he is,” Alistair starts quietly. “I’ll stop him. He won’t touch you here - you’re safe.”

“Your uncle saw him, too. He wasn’t safe.”

Alistair’s brow shoots up. “What?”

“Before he disappeared. Your uncle, Julien. There’s a priest in the village who knew him. He told me Julien saw ‘a man with eyes like hellfire’ before he went missing. Sound familiar?”

“My uncle didn’t disappear. He was kidnapped,” He insists. “You’re not going to disappear, Pierce. And no one is going to kidnap you on my watch.”

“What about you?” I press. “Who’s gonna watch you?”

“I can watch myself.”

Pride wades through the fear, and I lift my chin. “So can I.”

He doesn’t say anything. With shaking hands, I drink. Strawberry and milk and blood from the inside of my bitten mouth. Breathe, Lilith. Cold chlorine air, in and out. He’s right. There’s security in Silvere. The village didn’t have security. Neither did the restaurant. Red-eye can get on campus, maybe, but he can’t come into the buildings. He can’t. Not like the deer did. He’s not a harmless deer. He’s not a dream. He’s a person. There are cameras, disguised like gold orbs. Dozens of them, maybe hundreds. Someone will see him. Stop him. I breathe until I’m calm enough to make words again.

“So? Your turn. Why were you down there in the deep end?”

“I told you,” He murmurs. “Practicing.”

“For what?”

“Drowning.”

“Planning on doing that anytime soon?”

“Not on my own. But someone might try to help me.” He moves for the gate, and calls over his shoulder; “Put the can in the recycling when you’re done. If I catch it in the trash, it’s detention-town again, population you.”

He walks back first, unlocking the gate and striding over the lawn. Not even a hand wave, or a ‘later’. Because what else is there to say? Nothing. It’s unimaginable, to practice dying. To practice being killed. Hurt.

But we do it anyway.

We, the two of us. It feels so weird, to clump together him and me. To have us standing side-by-side, in my brain.

We both see the red-eyed man.

I trudge through the chilly grass, wrestling with the urge to be sad for Prickland. He’s Prickland. At 18 he’ll inherit the title of Marquess doodoo-Lawrence, or whatever. He’ll be fine. He doesn’t need my sympathy. He has Rafe and Maria and Ciel. Rose. He has his duties he loves so much. Loves? L’obligation. It’s all obligation, to him.

The shadow of Knight Augustin crawls over me, and I lean into its walls to rest the knee. Von Arx’s window is closed. I won’t hear anything. She’s gone. But the window’s open.

Just a crack, just enough for something to ooze over the sill, down the brick wall, and into the grass at my feet. Gold.

Liquid gold.

A tiny trickle of liquid sun, spilling out from the planter with the perfect lettuce in it. Like someone tried to water it with gold.

All I can see is the gold robe, waterfalling.

And I run.

30

THE CAMERA (OR, HOW MANY MEDALS YOU SHOULD HAVE BY NOW FOR STILL BEING HERE)

Contrary to popular belief, I’m not going crazy. I’m not. I’m not and I know that because the tuft of white deer hair is still in my underwear drawer, still in its lip balm case, still here after everything. Even if I looked back at Von Arx’s window and the gold dripping shit was gone, the white hair is still here. Which means I’m okay. My brain’s fine.

Maybe.

The worst cure for a bout of existential dread is to stare at yourself in the mirror. I remember one time in Northview, back when I was still the proletariat, Brent Pacheco and I got lumped together for a partner project and he wouldn’t shut up about how he did mushrooms and stared in a mirror and saw himself from the other side peeling back the glass and bleeding all over it. Guy loved Metallica and Rammstein a little too much, imo, but who am I to judge? I still bop to the Dora the Explorer theme song.

The point being, I’m not on mushrooms, so staring into mirrors should be safe. And it is. For the most part. My hair’s still shoulder-length, maybe a little longer. Eyebrows thin like they’ve always been. Less zits, but I chalk that up to the fact I’m forced to walk around in fresh air way more than back home. I’ve maybe-probably put on another three pounds from all the pastries, but I’ve heard way too many stories from Mom about awfully sick people in hospitals to give a shit about something like weight. As long as my body’s still working, still healthy, it’s perfect.

I’m fine.

Julien went missing after seeing red-eyed Larry. Which means I might too. Which means I should probably do a better job of letting people know I’m alive and kicking.

I start a group chat with Ana and Bianca; ‘Hi, remember me? :)’

‘Lilith! :D’ Ana enthusiastically replies.

‘Never text me again’ Bianca proposes.

‘Saint-Verde was soooo boring without you,” Ana pouts with a half-dozen pink flower emojis.

‘If you’ll excuse me,’ Bianca snipes. ‘I have Plato’s Symposium to get through’.

‘Listen,’ My fingers fly. ‘I kno caring isn’t sexy these days or w/e, but I care about u Bianca’.

‘If you truly cared, you’d use proper grammar’.

‘What did you do on saturday?’ Ana asks.

My fingers pause in typing to them about Alistair, how I saw him in the pool. Training to be drowned. It’s not my place to talk about it, is it? He practices it. Expects it, sometime in the future. The poison, the oil-burn scar on his chest. It makes my fear of people getting physically close feel almost immature.

Childish.

It takes me a few days to realize that they’re the same thing. The same fear. He’s just more prepared than I am. Instead of sitting around and doing nothing about it, fearing it, he makes his own safeguards. His mind maze isn’t a maze at all. It’s a weapons rack, and he’s constantly polishing blades.

I’m scared. Waiting for something bad to happen. Like always. This ain’t a saying I’m planning on overusing, but WWAD? What Would Alistair Do? He’d get some fucking answers, probably.

I know just enough French to ask a couple people in the common room where the dorm matron is, and they point me to the laundry room. She’s folding extra sheets there, her blonde hair tied back in a braid and her freckled face lighting up when she sees me.

“Bonjour. You’re Lilith Pierce, are you not?”

I stutter for a half-second. “Uh, I stand out that much?”

Her smile is the soft, quiet sort. “Oh yes.”

“Um, Miss -”

“Please, call me Evelyn.”

“Evelyn,” I say. “This might sound weird, but I think someone came into my room while I was sleeping.”

Her eyes go wide. “Oh no. When?”

“Last week Wednesday. Way early in the morning.”

“And you haven’t lost your room card?” I hold it up for her, and she inspects it, nodding. “The security hasn’t mentioned seeing any unusual activity, but I’m sure they’d let us check the tapes.”

“Tapes?” I start.

“Of the hallway in your dorm that night. If anyone came in, we could see them on there. Come, follow me.”

Good sign, if they’re willing to show me evidence. There’s a 50% chance not everyone here at Silvere is a cultist - just most of them. Or none of them. I still haven’t decided. I follow Evelyn down the utility halls behind the common room we aren’t usually allowed in. It suddenly strikes me how many nooks and crannies these old buildings have.

“Uh, there aren’t any, like, secret passages, right?” I ask. Evelyn makes a little laugh.

“Goodness no. Those were all sealed up during the refitting.”

“All of them?”

She smiles patiently over her shoulder. “We’ve taken every precaution to ensure your safety here at Silvere, we assure you. And we’ve assured your parents.”

“It’s not that I don’t believe you -” I start. “It’s just -”

“You don’t have to believe me. The cameras will show you. This way, please.”

She waves me into a room with SÉCURITÉ engraved on the door. It’s weird to be on the other side of the security camera, for once. The room is bigger than it looks from the outside, with a massive newsroom-esque desk and two security men sitting at it in their usual dark suits and gargantuan outlines. There’s a panel in front of the desk entirely made up of monitors, and not the cheap kinds. Half of me was expecting tiny, black-and-white CCTV monitors - the kind you see in heist movies and shit - all crammed together in a tiny, sweaty room. But, like the rest of Silvere, even this tiny room is decked out to the nines in money - big screens, fancy keyboards, air-conditioning, and programming that seems to automatically flip the screens between different views of the hallways. The common room, the back doors, even the laundry room - everything’s monitored. The individual dorm rooms seem to be the only exception.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” Evelyn chimes as she steps into the room. “Forgive the intrusion - Lilith here had a few concerns about the security of her room, and I wanted to address them.”

One of the security guards swivels in his chair to look me up and down - with sunglasses on. Indoors. On a Friday morning. Riiiight. The other security guard doesn’t even look at me, but he has sunglasses too. Fighting off the screen glare, maybe? But that’s a fuckin’ stretch.

“Lilith?”

I look up at the voice to see Ciel standing at the desk on the opposite end. His smile’s bright, a little faltering as he sees Evelyn.

“Eve,” He starts.

“Ciel!” Her eyes widen. “What are you doing here?”

“Ah, Alistair asked me to look through some footage,” He says smoothly. “And you? Here to help Lilith, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Evelyn’s giggle is more flirty than I’m comfortable with. She’s at least ten years our senior. But I guess Ciel just has that effect on everyone, even older women who have no business looking at him like that. Not jealous, I swear, it’s just straight-up creepy.

“How can we help?” The guard asks. Evelyn turns to me.

“What’s your room number again, dear?”

I give it to her, and she tells the guard what night to bring up, and for a moment there’s only the low, dull hum of the monitors and the rhythmic tapping of two keyboards. Ciel flashes another smile my way, a ‘sorry this is so awkward’ smile.

“That footage is the same one you asked us to pull up, Lautrec,” The guard finally says. Evelyn looks surprised, and I dart my eyes over to Ciel.

“Is that so?” He marvels. “Interesting.”

“Were you -” I swallow. “You were looking for the deer, weren’t you?”

“Deer?” Evelyn blinks. “What deer is this?”

“The white one,” Ciel says. “The good-luck deer. I told her about it, earlier.”

“That’s so sweet of you, filling her in on Silvere customs.”

“Not at all.”

I open my mouth to argue it, but Ciel’s brilliant smile aimed at me stops me cold. Okay, so he spun the truth a bit. So what? We all do that for the adults when they won’t get off our backs.

The room isn’t small, but it’s smaller than the forest at least, and the smell of roses wafts at me, around me. Strong this time. It doesn’t make any sense - why do all the security guards have that same smell following them? Why would…do these guys even patrol the rose garden? They’re in this little room. Maybe they switch out at noon or some shit. Honestly, at this point I’ve got bigger shit to concern myself with than rose-stink.

The guard brings up a perfect - albeit greenish night-visiony - view of the hallway outside my dorm room. Evelyn points with a finger.

“There! That’s your room. Let’s see…”

We watch the footage unfold in green fast-motion, and Evelyn chirps to rewind and slow it down. The guard makes a few deft key-presses, and the footage resumes at normal speed. My door, closed. Still closed. No white deer. Not even a hoofprint or a jut of antler. Just…nothing.

Something in me deflates, something with sharp edges and old thorns. So it was a dream. This confirms it. Of course there’s no deer, because it’s a fuckin’ dream. Which means the white fur in my underwear drawer is a dust bunny, or a shedding off someone’s faux-fur jacket, or something. Something else. Coincidence - the only one I’ve been able to prove thus far. I turn to look at Ciel, jumping a little when I see his gray eyes laser-locked on me already. Watching me. For what - my reaction?

“Oh,” Evelyn’s soft voice brings me back. “There’s you.”

She’s right. On the monitor, I see myself poke my head out of my doorway.

“It looks like you’re following something,” Ciel insists. And he’s right, too - my face swivels down the hall slowly, like I’m watching something walk down it.

The deer.

“I was sleepwalking,” I start. “I guess? I don’t do that, like, ever, but -”

The surreal-me in the footage walks over to the window tentatively and on tenterhooks. That was the moment I got scared of the deer. Except there is no deer. It’s just me, crossing the marble floor and latching my hands to the cold windowsill, looking out of it. My heart starts thumping, the exact fear of the dream still lingering in my marrow, but the camera doesn’t point outside. I can’t see the forest, or Knight Durand, at all. After a while I turn and go back into my room, waving the keycard to get in.

“Well,” Evelyn puts her hands together. “That solves that. I’m so glad. Considering you’re our newest student, I wouldn’t want you to feel unsafe in your own home. If you have any further concerns you can come to me.”

“You can come to me too, Lilith,” Ciel assures me. Evelyn practically squeals.

“Oh, isn’t that nice? You’ve made a friend!”

Her voice fades in increments, and then all at once as my eyes focus on the monitor. Not the screen. The bottom of it, where the black plastic frame and the pixels meet. Just above the sleek logo, something moves. Something not on the screen, but overflowing into real life. At first I think it’s water, because it oozes like water, leisurely. But the monitor’s still working, so it can’t be waterlogged. I squint - electronic-juice, maybe? That stuff that you see when a screen cracks, all black and liquidy? No, this isn’t black at all.

It glimmers.

Gold.

Just like Von Arx’s window, the barest trickle of gold liquid oozes over the monitor frame, dripping down it and onto the keyboard next to the guard’s finger.

“Are you -” I look at him, but his sunglasses are fixed ahead on the footage. Ciel’s staring at the footage too, at the freeze-frame of me going back into my room, but his gaze doesn’t flicker down to the gold at all, either. I whip my head around to Evelyn but she’s just smiling at me, looking between me and the monitor.

“Is something wrong, Lilith?”

She can’t see it. None of them can see it. No one in this room can see it but me.

“You’re joking, right?” I ask. “This is a joke.”

“What?” Evelyn’s face goes slack. “No, I’m quite serious. If you have any questions or concerns you can always come to me. That’s a Silvere guarantee.”

She smiles, but I can’t bring myself to smile back. She had to have seen it. She was looking right at it. Why are they acting like it’s not there?

“I’ll walk her back,” Ciel offers me his arm, and Evelyn beams.

“Very well. Have a good day, Lilith.”

I can barely croak out a; “Yeah. Thanks.”

They’re acting like nothing’s wrong. Like it’s all normal peas and carrots on a plate when it’s actually a whole pig’s head - still alive and blinking. My elbow’s laced in Ciel’s but his warm presence can’t cut through the foggy disbelief swirling around in my brain. He didn’t see it, either.

Someone forgot to switch off the hallucinate-vividly oven upstairs, and now the house is burning down.

The liquid gold. The same stuff I saw for a second leaking out of Von Arx’s lettuce plants.

“I normally try not to say this to girls, for obvious reasons,” Ciel says suddenly. “But you look a bit…terrible. Are you okay?”

I’ve avoided Ciel’s face so much in the past few weeks, I don’t know what normal is for him, anymore. I know he smiles a lot. I know he looks pleasant like it’s his job. I know looking light and mildly amused at all times is the easiest way to chase off unwanted attention for him. Which is why the way he’s looking at me now is weird. More than weird. Unsettling. He’s staring, but not like Alistair does, in one suffocating laser beam until you break. This is a softer drilling, the sort that has a hundred pins and needles, all of them looking for a way in. The weakest part. The point of entry of least resistance.

And that look screams to me that I can’t tell him the truth. I want to. I so desperately want to tell someone I’m hallucinating gold liquid apropos of literally nothing - no head injury, nothing - but I can’t. Not now. Ciel is - Ciel’s not the person to tell. I can feel it. But this isn’t how it’s supposed to go. He’s the one in a million chance. He’s the winning lottery ticket. He’s the one. The one who makes my fears quiet, and my body comfortable. So why won’t the rest of me just trust him, too?

“No, it’s cool.” I force a smile. “I’m cool. Thanks.”

“There you go again,” He sighs.

“What?”

“Putting on a strong face.”

“I’m not -”

“Please, Lilith, don’t insult me. I’ve spent thirteen years with Alistair. I know what acting tough looks like.”

This cotton-candy-spins a little laugh from me, pulls it out thread by sweet thread.

“Fair enough,” I say.

“You saw something in there, didn’t you?” He presses suddenly. “Something that scared you.”

His hand weaves down and to mine, fingers in fingers for a split second and it’s everything I’ve wanted but it doesn’t feel right and I pull away like a red-hot fire poker’s insinuated itself into my hand. Ciel’s face falls, but he covers it expertly with a grin.

“Sorry.”

“No, I’m - I’m the one who should be sorry. Sometimes I can’t tell people things, and it’s not like I don’t trust you, it’s just -”

“It would feel odd,” He finishes kindly for me. “Right?”

“Y-Yeah.”

“Then,” He releases my elbow, the common room bustling around us again. “I’ll just have to wait. For whenever you’re ready.”

He waves, and for a second my stomach churns watching his gold hair float over a sea of brown and black and less bright blonde - floating away from me.

Dripping away.

IF WEIRD THINGS are going down, I need weirder answers.

WWAD?

Bother the shit out of people, probably.

And in my case, I need to bother the shit outta people who know more than I do.

Bianca always heads towards the east side when our Econ class is over, and I swivel my head furiously over the lunch crowd looking for her elegant posture, a sheet of ash-brown hair. There! Going into the bathroom.

I squeeze between the bedazzled and be-Gucci’d crowd and bottleneck into the bathroom. Fancy school, fancy bathrooms, which means there’s only three stalls max, all of them perfectly clean and perfectly picturesque and perfectly not-out-of-toilet-paper at all times.

“Bonjour,” I start. There’s a pause as her recognition of my voice goes through, and then Bianca sighs.

“It’s afternoon.”

“Time is an illusion,” I chime, bending down a little to see where her feet are. Middle stall. I situate myself on the wall opposite it. “I’m here to listen to you pee.”

“No.” Bianca says.

“Yes.” I assert. “And, ask you a very important life-or-death question.”

A tinny classical orchestra swells as Bianca immediately turns a song up on her phone.

“Life-or-death!” I insist, appalled. She heartlessly turns the volume to max, violins screeching around the enamel walls. I decide to perch on the plush waiting chair by the door. Bianca takes a good ten minutes, but I stubbornly refuse to give up, perusing a nice little webcomic on my phone to the tune of ten million clarinets and French horns. Finally the music stops, and I hear the toilet flush and the door unlock. Bianca comes over to the sink without looking in the mirror or anywhere near my reflection.

“Was it a big one?” I ask, nonchalantly. Bianca has at least two ballerinas worth of poise, so the way she jumps out of her skin just looks like her twitching slightly.

“Do you ever leave?” She hisses, indigo-velvet eyes glaring up at me in the mirror.

“My body? Great question. And the answer is; not if I can help it.”

She washes her hands and dries them slowly, finger-by-finger, all while piercing through me with her stare. We might be eating breakfast together everyday, and we might’ve texted once, and I might look at her Snapchat every morning of whatever boring-ass highlight out of whatever boring-ass book she stayed up until two to read, but I’m learning in Silvere that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re friends.

“What do you want?” She asks.

“From you? Friendship. And any information about fairies you have thus far.”

“Fairies,” She deadpans. “I thought you wanted to know about blood promises?”

“They’re basically the same thing, right?”

“Not at all,” She wrinkles her nose. “The reference materials are completely different, the monastic coptic is much harder to read in one than the other, and -”

“Okay, well.” I heave a sigh. “Have you found anything about anything?”

“Of course I have.” Bianca fires back, leaning on the immaculate tile wall and folding her arms over her perfect chest. “This part of Switzerland is rife with old druidic superstitions.”

“And?”

“And.” She starts. “The superstition goes, if you share the same blood as the person who breaks the blood promise, you’re all punished by the fairies equally.”

“Wait - the whole family? Even if you did nothing wrong?”

She nods. My legs bolt up from the chair. The blood promise me and Alistair made -

“Oh, shit. That’s why! That’s why Von Arx - it’s gotta be real, then.”

“‘Gotta be real’?” Bianca raises one thin eyebrow. “It’s a five hundred year old superstition, Pierce. Not fact.”

If Von Arx is actually afraid of blood promises…then that means she thinks fairies are real.

Fairies. Right. Because when I think about allllll the possible explanations for the weird shit going on, fairies is the first thing I think of. Not clones. Not aliens. Wait, shit. Aliens are more plausible than fairies, actually. Fairies. The image brings up kids’ books with butterfly-winged little sprites, jumping on amanita and drinking dewdrops from upside down flowers. It’s LSD, the 60’s, and/or the toy section for four-year-old girls who love sparkly things. It’s not reality. And it’s definitely not high-rolling, high-society, Maserati-and-Moschino Silvere reality. I’m way more ready to yank on my tinfoil hat and shout ‘FAR REACHING INTER-GOVERNMENTAL CONSPIRACY!’ than to even whisper ‘fairies’ with any sort of seriousness.

So, not great. It’s impossible. But we’ll roll with it. We’ll roll with anything if it means we figure out who our ugly-ass red-eyed stalker is.

“Have you found anything specifically about fairies?” I press, opening my notes app. “Anything at all?”

Bianca looks thoroughly weirded-out, but she’s an expert at not showing it. The only indication she thinks I’m crazy is the slightest twist of her glossed lip.

“There are…passing references. Something about their names being very important. You can attract a fairy by using their real name, or repel them by brandishing raw iron at them. They hate ash wood, jet, and goat’s milk. If you have a brown cat it will drive them off because they think it’s dirt, but a yellow cat will attract them because they think it’s made of gold.”

“Gold.” I repeat, hard. “Do they like gold?”

Bianca gives me a withering look. “Everyone likes gold.”

One is silver and the other’s gold.

I shake the creepy song off. “Okay. But what about liquid gold?”

“Liquid - ” She stops. “You mean molten gold?”

“No, I mean the liquid stuff. Not hot. Just…watery.”

“Gold doesn’t liquify without being heated, Pierce.”

“Fine, yeah. What else do you got?”

“Too much. There are books upon books of what to do to keep fairies away, all of it pseudo-religious nonsense fueled by fear.”

There’s a silence in the bathroom, the rushing of the pipes next door a quiet slither that might as well be deafening. My fingers click wildly on the keyboard. Yellow cats, goat’s milk, real name attracts them, raw iron. Bianca narrows her eyes at me.

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on right now, or are you going to ask me to look that up, too?”

“So,” I ignore her. “Blood promises. Can a person get out of them?”

“No.” Bianca’s word is automatic.

“What if they run away? Like, far away?”

“You can’t escape; you can only condemn someone else to it. And according to the superstitions around here, that would mean condemning your next of kin - those who share your blood. You’d have to live with that for the rest of your life.”

The air presses out of my lungs like they’ve been punctured. Alistair and I shared blood. Von Arx is worried about the blood promise backfiring onto him, somehow. Because of a fairy curse? Those aren’t real. Fairies aren’t - but the red-eyed man, and the deer, and the gold-beaked mask person -

“You realize this is all conjecture, right?” Bianca frowns. “These are superstitions. Rumors. Myths. Things that aren’t real.”

“I know,” I start. “I know that.”

“Then why do you have this look on your face like you’re taking it seriously?”

I close my phone and heft my backpack on my shoulders again. When I turn to leave, I feel a tug on my sleeve and look down to see perfect manicured nails leading up to Bianca’s heart-shaped, worried face. Clearly worried. Not hidden anymore.

“I’ve spent hours in the library looking things up for you,” She says. “The least you could do is tell me what’s going on.”

The shadow’s red eyes. The man’s mouth, beginning to sing. The gold dripping, and the gold mask. Durand lit up. The fear. All of it, dangerous. A reality that has to stay unreal for everyone else. I make a smile.

“Oh, you know. Just girly things.”

31

THE FAMILY (OR, HOW TO BE SATISFIED WITH JUST THE TREES, WITH JUST THE RAIN)

At seventeen and two months old, Alistair Strickland makes sure to call his sister every day.

He tries to, anyway. She’s eleven, now, and that means she’s started to get annoyed. But he tries. Texts work better - him in full sentences and her in just emojis. Six years isn’t a huge generational gap, but it isn’t small, either. A thumbs up from her means a good day, a fish means an okay day, and a Christmas tree means a bad day. She’s never liked Christmas. It was a Christmas Eve when Grandmother’s car came to get him and he left the Brussels house for good. Left Rose alone, in that cold mansion, with that cold woman, on the coldest day of the year. He still remembers the sound of his own crying in the car, the driver rolling up the window to drown him out. It was only much later, years later, that he realized it might’ve been to give him privacy, but with some chagrin he’d wondered what good leaving a crying child alone ever did.

Today, Alistair calls her from the relative peace of the rose maze. On a Sunday, with everyone else last-minute scrambling inside to finish the homework they put off in favor of weekend dabbling, the maze is deader than an old grave. The roman fountains situated in every open juncture tinkle water merrily, the sound quickly swallowed up by the lush hedges. He kicks aside a stray cigarette butt, reminded of Ciel keenly, and sits on a stone bench. A rose so red it looks black bobs back at him, eye-level, as he dials Rose’s number. The irony isn’t lost on him.

It rarely is.

He remembers running through the maze when he was barely taller than the bench he sits on. He liked to play a game with himself, alone as he was on campus while the students studied and Von Arx made important conference calls to important people. He liked to pretend there was a monster deep in the maze - strong and fast and chaotically full of claws and teeth in that cartoon-villain way. An obvious villain. One who wasn’t kind to him sometimes, sweet to him sometimes. One who didn’t know he liked cherry danishes and sleeping on his stomach and the color sky blue.

He liked to pretend the monster was chasing after him. It was faster than him, and so he pushed himself to his little limit, legs pumping and lungs searing, darting around groundskeepers and pretending they were on the monster’s side.

Training, in a childish way. The beginnings of it.

The phone rings empty in his ear and brings him back to the present.

Today, Rose doesn’t pick up. If she really is in Chamonix with Father, then she’s safe, and she isn’t answering because she’s busy sledding down some snowy slope and inhaling as much baked brie as humanly possible. It’s a comforting thought, but Alistair knows better than to hold onto it for too long. When Father’s done in Chamonix, Rose’ll be going back to Brussels. And Father’s lawyers have only been half-succeeding against that woman’s for over three years, now. She doesn’t hit Rose, after all. For some twisted reason that woman’s decided the bruises are to be more emotional than physical for her daughter, which makes extraction more difficult than it was in Alistair’s case.

So, today, Alistair leaves a voicemail for his sister. He knows she never listens to them, and never will. But they’re not really for her, and they both know that.

“Hey, it’s me. Don’t ask how, but I know you’re in Chamonix. With Father, right?”

He pauses, watching the wind brisk fingers through the dark rose’s petals for a moment.

“There’s a new girl at my school. You’ve met her. The airplane girl - the one you drew the picture for. And that’s…” He massages his brow. “That’s fine. But I told you to be careful. You can’t go around giving random people those things. I know you don’t think it’s a problem, or dangerous, but it is, okay? I need you to trust me on that.”

The fountain of a stone deer to his left laughs an especially loud, bubbling laugh. Like mockery. Like joy. He leans back.

“Is your new academy interesting, at least? Are you eating well? Knowing you, you’ve made a crowd of friends already. Silvere’s the same as ever - Ciel says hi, by the way. And to stay out of trouble.” His chuckle is more of a soft sigh. “Yeah, okay. I made that last one up.”

There’s more he wants to say. There always is. But right now, he wants to say everything. To tell her - tell someone - about what he’s feeling, about the irritating whirlwind of thoughts and sensations Pierce has brought to this school. To his life.

To him.

She’s brought the red-eyed man with her. But, when he stops to think about it - really and truly think about it - the red-eyed man and his empty song are far less terrifying than what lurks below every trenchant little interaction he has with her. Her. Lilith. That’s her real name. If they were anywhere else - anywhere but Silvere and its entrenched generational traditions - he’d call her by her real name, wouldn’t he?

Lilith. It rolls off his mind-tongue and the syllables are simple and clean, like fresh cotton. Like flowers.

It would be easy, to say her name.

He brushes himself off and remembers where he is. Who he is. What his duty is - what blood runs in his veins, and who he shares it with.

He reminds himself of what awaits him beyond this last year of his life.

“If there’s something you need, Rose, you call me. I don’t care if it’s a splinter, or a headache, or if you lost your charger again for the billionth time. Call me. Whenever.”

He hangs up, the wind ruffling his thoughts.

32

THE FAIRY RING (OR, HOW NONE OF IT FEELS REAL WHEN IT’S HAPPENING, BECAUSE ONLY IN THE QUIET DARK DOES REALITY HURT)

At sixteen years and five months old, Ciel Lautrec now knows magic is real.

It isn’t wishful thinking anymore. It’s real.

The white deer and the black shadow. He’s survived on rumor, on baseless conjuncture by the faculty and the students, chasing the tail end of invisible winds for years and feeding on the exhausting exhaust.

Now, he has evidence.

Well, he doesn’t have it. Lilith has it, in an empty makeup case tucked away in her backpack. But he’s seen it with his own two eyes - each strand bright white. She’s seen it, too, alive; roaming the halls of the chateaus as no wild thing ever would. It didn’t show on the footage, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. It was close. Closer than he’s ever seen it.

She calls it weird. He calls it magical.

The difference between them, he supposes.

Ciel idly skips a stone on the surface of the school’s Monet-inspired lily pond. Why her? It couldn’t have been coincidence. Why did the deer choose to appear before her? As far as girls go, she’s unremarkable - no striking features, no real hint of beauty. Ciel's seen beauty in all it’s forms, dressed to the nines and undressed to the tens, and Lilith doesn’t fit a single category. She’s lengthy, he’ll give her that, but it does nothing for her composure - always a little hunched, a little too round in the face. Tragically, her hair hangs in such a way that it looks oily no matter how often she washes it. Her eyes are an interesting color of washed-out-blue, to be sure, but a little too small to have any impact.

Always just a little off. A bit not enough. That’s Lilith Pierce.

Her grades are miserable, according to Alistair. And if the way she acts around him is any indication, Ciel knows she can’t be all that sharp, either. Her mother married into money, and not quite legally - she had her missing first husband declared dead only three years ago. He only knows that because the world of William Cunningham is extremely small - and also Ciel’s. Technically, if her husband showed up again alive she’d be committing bigamy, and Ciel’d be surprised if anyone stayed around for that, let alone strictly-by-the-book Cunningham.

By all accounts, Lilith Pierce shouldn’t be at Silvere.

A fluke.

So, why? Why would a beautiful, magical creature choose to appear before someone like her?

He doesn’t know. Maybe he’ll never know. Maybe the knowing doesn’t matter. What matters is the white fur in Lilith’s hands. Proof. His one connection, one piece of evidence that all of this is real. That all of that, so many years ago in the forest with Alistair, was real.

That he’s been holding out for something real, all this time.

It takes him barely any effort to pull the starstruck girl who lives next to Lilith into a forbidden moment in her room. When it’s done he feigns surprise at the time - is it really almost fourth period? - and she bolts up from the bed, buttoning her shirt and wildly pulling on her skirt again. He makes a show of pulling his pants on, too.

“I -” She looks back at him with a fiercely red face. “Can I text you? Later?”

“Sure.” He smiles, handing over his number easily. Why not? A small price to pay. And if she leaks it to the internet for bragging rights as they usually do, he has two other numbers for just such an occasion.

Ciel assures her he’s right behind her, just needs a minute to lace his shoes. When she’s gone out the door, he waits. Thirty seconds, forty. Two minutes. He can practically hear the cogs churning in her head; she wants to wait for him, but her parents will find out if she’s late. She weighs it all - impatient to tell her friends what just happened, and then he hears her shoes clip down the hall at a half-run.

Finally.

But he can’t leave just yet. He’s waiting for the sound of wheels - the cleaning cart. He knows Silvere. Not as well as Alistair, but well enough. The cleaning ladies always come to Knight Lyon halfway through the second period of the day. He hears them laughing, sponging, clattering. Slowly, they make their way down the hall, until he hears them right next door. Lilith’s room.

He slips out when the lady’s footsteps pass, moving to empty the trash at the other end of the hall.

Lilith Pierce isn’t a total fool. But people who aren’t total fools are usually the easiest to read. The most predictable. She wouldn’t take the fur with her. She wouldn’t hand it over to him, even for a generous sum. It’s too important to her to carry around everywhere she goes - what if someone goes through her backpack when she isn’t looking? Or at exercise in the lockers? No. She’d keep it somewhere safe. Somewhere only she can, presumably, get in.

He sidles up to her doorframe, the cleaning cart lodged halfway out of it. His eyes dart around her room - the same arrangement as all the others. Bed in the same place, dresser in the same place.

Bedside table in the same place.

He kneels, rustling through her hairbrush, her hair ties, her bottle of lotion, her horde of tampons. It’s not here. Where else would she -

He can hear the cleaning lady coming back.

Ciel whips his head around. Somewhere close, somewhere only she’d think to look.

He plunges his hand into the smallest drawer - underwear, laughably drab and threadbare - and his fingers catch on cool metal. Footsteps near. He pulls the lipbalm case out and dives for the closet and waits until the roar of the vacuum dies down, until the cleaning lady has to leave to empty it, and darts out of the door.

They see him, the cameras and the security sees him, but he doesn’t care; a bright blonde streak striding down the hall, placid from the back and vibrating with a triumphant smile in the front.

He cares little for anything, anymore, save for the thing now clutched in his palm.

The thing that should’ve been his, all along.

33

THE DREAM (OR, HOW ‘PROBABLY’ HAS NEVER BEEN GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU)

I breathe, over and over, until the nights flip into days and I can navigate Silvere by the marble statues alone - there’s the Hall of Half-Naked Lady, and the Hall of Man With Olive Leaf Ding Dong, and the Hall of Just Big-Ass Paintings. Some things never stop itching - like the prime minister’s son who arrives via helicopter once every week because he has to go to some ‘PR event’. Like the way people talk about ‘family homes on the Med’(iterranean Ocean, I figured that out later) like it means nothing to them, like it’s a nuisance. Like the gold-foil everywhere; in the ceilings, on the books, on the fuckin’ curtains and blankets and vases and fancy ice creams. But mostly, mostly, I learn to be okay at Silvere. Physically, at least. The same way you learn to be okay anywhere, with enough food and enough time. And there’s nothing like a little restrictive, precisely-scheduled day to keep your mind off impossible things like white dream deer and gold-masked cultists and red-eyed men.

And then it happens.

Red, coming to ruin my life again.

I start seeing it in the bathroom next to Economics - a wad of crimson-splotched toilet paper in the trash can. At first I think it’s a nosebleed, or period blood, but no - the red is always in perfect, thin, uniform little lines. Not splotched. Which means a cut. Maybe someone’s hurt. But methodically hurt, day after day? It nibbles at the back of my brain, but I’ve got so much else going on I just write it off. Like an idiot. If I just cared a little more, I could’ve seen it coming. If I just paid more attention to anyone else, instead of worrying only about myself.

Ana’s with me when we stumble into that bathroom at lunch on Wednesday.

“Why’d you send a picture of you with a banana on your head that says ‘Happy Friday’ to the sixth-year snapchat?” She asks, flashing the snap in question at me.

“To let ‘em know what’s up,” I chime.

“What is up?”

“My totally sick-nasty personality.”

We stare at each other for a second, and then burst into laughter. Bianca comes out of the stall almost instantly, adjusting her skirt and throwing us a look.

“Oh. It’s just you two,” She mutters.

“Just us?” I act offended. “You wound me, madame.”

“It’s mademoiselle, technically,” Ana offers around a giggle. Bianca says nothing, walking up to the counter and washing her hands quietly. She’s usually quiet, so it’s not weird. I go in to pee, and I’m halfway through when I hear Ana gasp mid-conversation.

“Oh my god! Bianca! You’re hurt!”

My head snaps up, and I hurriedly wipe. Bianca’s stuttering (stuttering? From her of all people?) echoes.

“I-It’s just my period -”

“Deus!” Ana gasps again. “Did you do this to yourself?”

Fuck.

I slam out of the stall to see Ana holding the hem of Bianca’s skirt up just enough to see a bright red line there. Fuck fuck fuck fuck -

“Ana,” I lunge for her hand, pulling it away. “Calm down -”

“Calm? How can I -” Her eyes flash up to Bianca. “Did you do this? On purpose?”

I expect Bianca to freak. I would if I was her. I’d run, or hide. I’d stammer and make excuses, anything to get the attention off me, anything to explain it away like something normal. The secondhand shame burns me alive. But I’m a coward. And Bianca’s braver than me.

“It’s none of your concern,” She says, raising her pointed chin.

“None of our concern?” Ana presses. “You’re hurting yourself!”

Ana doesn’t get it. I mean, neither do I, but I at least know these things aren’t so straightforward. Pain is pain. People cut for a lot of different reasons. It’s not great, or ideal, but sometimes it’s all people have. You want them to stop, especially if it’s someone you care about. But sometimes the only way to make something hurt less is to make it hurt more elsewhere. The only people who can really help Bianca are shrinks. Trained professionals. All we can do is be supportive, non-judgmental. And something tells me Ana’s skipped over that last one.

“Hey,” I move between them and look at Ana. “No judgement, okay? This shit is…it’s delicate.”

“I don’t understand -”

“I don’t expect you to,” Bianca cuts Ana off coldly. Ana shrinks back like she’s been slapped.

“I thought - I thought you, the three of us…why wouldn’t you tell us about something like this?”

“Because I couldn’t.” Bianca says, her lip trembling. This is the first time I’ve ever seen her anything less than completely, utterly cool and composed. Her ballerina poise is gone, her whole body shaking and vibrating like a leaf caught in a spiderweb. What do I do? I want to comfort her, reach out and touch her shoulder or something, but the red is right there. I can still see it and it makes all the flesh on my arms curdle.

Weak. Coward.

How long has Bianca been carrying around this struggle, alone? Does anyone other than us know? Or are we the first?

“Ana,” I say. “It’s not that simple. Please. C’mon. Just leave it.”

“Leave it?” Ana twists away. “She’s hurting herself, and we’re her friends -” Tears start to well up in her black eyes as she bolts around me and grabs Bianca’s hands. “Please, Bianca. I don’t understand, and that’s…that’s fine. But please. Don’t keep doing this.”

Bianca’s indigo eyes blur too. She looks up at the ceiling, as if begging her tear ducts to stop. She doesn’t pull her hands away from Ana’s for a long time, and I stare at them half-awkwardly, wanting to help but not knowing how. I watch their clasped hands and jealousy clings to every inch of me like water. Jealous they can touch people that easily. So easily. So trusting. Just like that.

“You…people care about you,” Ana finally sobs. It hurts real bad to watch her cry. “I care. Please, promise me. Promise me you won’t do it anymore.”

“Ana, it doesn’t - ” I step up, but freeze at the look on Bianca’s face. The flawless, matte-perfect, matte-neutral Bianca is gone. I’ve never seen her smile - not once. But now she does. It’s not big - big, goofy smiling wouldn’t suit her. It’s a very ‘her’ smile; small, refined, in the corners of her lips. A single tear rolls down her high cheekbones, and she nods.

“I promise.”

The words ring against the tile, and Ana squeezes Bianca’s hands before letting go.

After the storm comes a calm.

The bathroom was the eye of the tornado, and we walk out of it together in silence, down the hall in silence. It’s too dramatic to say we’re new people, but I can’t help but notice something’s changed. The air’s different. It’s a nice silence, but it feels too heavy to bear for long. My turn. Ana helped her, and now it’s my turn.

“So, I was looking koalas up on Wikipedia the other day, and get this - rampant chlamydia.”

“Ew!” Ana wrinkles her nose. “What?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Bianca smile again, small.

Maybe things will change, maybe they won’t. Maybe promises will be kept. Maybe this is friendship. Maybe it isn’t. But maybe none of that matters.

Maybe all that matters is that smile, right now.

We don’t talk about the bathroom incident, after that.

Because what would we even say? What would we even talk about? Blood? Pain? Things nobody wants to touch with a twenty-foot gilded pole, especially not in the sober light of day. It doesn’t need to be talked about, maybe. Not immediately, anyway. I explained to Ana the next morning that, honestly, the only one who can bring it up is Bianca, and that’s only if she wants to. We can’t force anything. Ana agrees, but I catch her at breakfast reading through her phone - an article on how to support someone going through self-harm. She closes it quickly when Bianca arrives, though, covering it with the cheery chirp of ‘I had the craziest dream about elephants last night!’.

We eat, we talk.

Life keeps going on, no matter how much red there was.

I, Lilith Pierce, happen to hate rating people. But I happen to hate free cucumber-and-mayo tea sandwiches way less.

Not mayo, Chunhua corrects me. Clotted~ cream~.

“Whab does thab eveb meab?” I mutter through a cheekful of bread and a lip-smear of cream. “Did it get clotted up in the cow’s titty, or something?” I swallow and look at her with utter horror. “Am I eating tit clots right now?”

“No, no,” Chunhua waves her hand. “It’s like, milk that’s been baked in the oven. Or something.”

“Oh. Phew. Dodged a bullet then.” I pick up a fresh sandwich in each fist. “But like hell I’m gonna dodge these next two.”

I smash them elegantly into my mouth and look around Room 239. Instead of old paintings on the walls, this room’s decided to decorate with mounted animal horns. Moose, goat, ram, and lots of deer, all nailed to velvet-backed boards and hung on the wall like grisly warnings. I try and fail not to think about the white deer. All its ancestors are here for sure.

Chunhua and Sadeen, her friend, have pushed back all the massive claw-foot chairs to form a circle in the middle of the room. They’ve set up a fold-out table that’s so fancy it doesn’t even look like a fold-out table, and one of the sous chefs came in shortly after with a cart of sandwiches and cookies and pots of fragrant tea. The cookie spread includes not only my personal lord and savior the choco chip, but also the flowery bougie shit - literally. Cookies with real candied flowers pressed on them, the petals frozen in clear sugar, cookies with glittering leaf patterns sprayed in gold, cookies piled delicately with sunset-colored frosting peaked so precise it looks just like the autumn tree line outside.

“These aren’t cookies,” I say around a fourth sandwich. “These are art.”

“Super pretty, aren’t they?” Chunhua takes snaps of her plate piled high with them. “Jia’s gonna be so jealous. She’s, like, cramming exams and eating boring truffle macaroni for the fourth day in a row.”

‘Boring?’ I mouth incredulously.

“You have cream on your mouth,” Sadeen drones to me as she walks up, her hijab a pastel lavender flower print and matching perfectly with her bejeweled flower earrings. She sees me staring and sighs; “Purple sapphires.”

“Whoa.” Slack-jawed, I wipe my lip off. “Real ones?”

Sadeen shoots a look to Chunhua, who shrugs lightly. “What? Pierce is new. Give her a break.”

Sadeen rolls her onyx doe-eyes and flounces away wordlessly to greet the other girls walking into the room. I turn to Chunhua.

“Did I say something wrong?”

“You’re not supposed to ask if things are real,” She whispers. “It’s rude.”

“I was just curious!”

“Being curious is pointless. It’s always real.” Chunhua motions around at the room - the gilded wallpaper, the clocks that look older than time itself, and the painted-angel ceiling. “Duh.”

“Duh,” I repeat to myself, quietly, as the girls start to shuffle in. Ten of them - no, like, twenty. Thirty? They keep coming, filling up the whole room, clinking plates and silverware and laughing as they take their seats, some of them sitting on couches and footstools and be-tasseled cushions on the floor.

Chunhua finally stands up, clapping her hands. “Are we all here? Awesome. Sadeen, can you roll out the list?”

Sadeen gets up and clears her throat, reading off her phone. “We have ten complaints this week, and fourteen praises. I’ll start alphabetically.”

She inhales primly, and I expect something even and calm from her, but her exhale comes out livid, her whole face curdling in a second. It goes red on the edges, her broad nose and pretty mouth carving in righteous anger. She shouts something in French, the words echoing off the horned walls like a battle cry.

There’s a pause, and I think everyone’s just as stunned as me to hear such venom coming from pastel-coated, proper Sadeen, but I’m dead-ass wrong, because the room suddenly erupts in giggles and cheers. Sadeen brims with brimstone, terrifying and inspiring all at once as she nods at Chunhua. Chunhua crosses off something on the pad on her lap, and I lean in.

“Uh, what did she say?”

“Mikael Baumann needs to be strung up from a very high spot by his testicles. More or less.”

“That was the guy who snapped that girl’s bra strap, right?”

“Yup.” Chunhua nods, and with extra gleeful flourish writes a -10 next to Mikael’s name on the pad. Sadeen continues yelling out perpetrators and their crimes, the crowd of girls cheering every time. And every time, Chunhua tells me it’s some dude who’s done some slimy thing. And I get it, about the third time Sadeen yells ferociously. This ranking…it isn’t just a ranking of who’s prettiest and hottest and coolest. It’s a warning system. It keeps everyone - especially girls - aware of which dudes are shitty. Which ones don’t hesitate to do shitty things. Which girls too; which ones steal stuff and lie and cheat off papers.

“I’m surprised you guys get mad about cheating,” I whisper.

“Oh, we usually don’t.” Chunhua says lightly, crossing off another person and putting a -5 to their name. “Not all of us have, like, the time or patience to do things for real. We all cheat sometimes to get past super hard tests we just don’t get, or whatever.”

“Then why -”

“But if you get lazy about it - ” She interrupts me. “ - then you get docked. Cheat away. Just don’t make it obvious, or the professors will start to suspect all of us. You know?”

“Aha.” I pluck another sandwich. “Now I get it. The best classes, the best teachers, the best cover-ups.”

“Exactly.” Chunhua smiles.

At some point my name comes up and the whole room pivots their heads at me as Chunhua grins. Sadeen sniffs out something in French, and a polite clap goes around the room.

“Ten points up!” Chunhua leans in. “Which means you’re now…187th! You’re actually moving around! Most just sit where they are on the list until they die. Or graduate. Whichever comes first.”

I try not to openly shudder at the image of the red-eyed man that drifts through my brain. “People die at Silvere?”

“Noooo!” She flaps her hand. “I was kidding. It’s just sometimes, they go missing, you know?”

“Like Julien.”

“Yeah, he’s the most famous one.” She nods. “Mostly because of Von Arx. She got the whole valley to look for him for ages, or something. There was a girl five years ago - uh, Candace? - but people think she just ran off with her boyfriend because her parents were dickholes. And there was a girl before that, in the eighties. Then Julien. And then the guy before that in the fifties. It’s like, one every couple years. Like a curse.”

“Satané,” I whisper.

“Yeah.” She sighs. “That’s what the villagers say. If people like us go missing, it usually means ransom. But you never see anything about it in the newspapers, or on TV. Pretty sure Von Arx pays off everybody to keep quiet.”

“Everybody?”

She nods. “The media, the family of the missing. Everybody.”

“But what about the police?”

“Yeah, you’d think the police would be interested in systemic kidnappings at a place like Silvere.”

“Aren’t they?” I ask.

Chunhua shakes her head, stylish fan-bun bobbing. “Nope. They just leave it all to the school’s private security. Apparently they’ve been around since the place was founded as like, knight templars. But it’s like, if you can’t stop people from being kidnapped, then what kind of private security are you, you know?”

“And your parents still send you here?” I frown around at the gathered flock of girls. She looks at me like I’ve sprouted an extra seventeen ears.

“Duh. It’s Silvere.”

“Duh,” I echo begrudgingly.

Silvere’s sterling reputation aside, she’s got a chilling point. Those security guard guys I saw in the forest, with their suits and rose-cologne, were huge. They could stop anybody doing anything, I’m pretty sure. So why don’t they? If it’s a pattern of kidnapping, they should be more than ready for it.

Unless.

I swallow lead.

Unless they’re letting students get kidnapped.

I can’t stop seeing the gold-beak mask, hanging on the wall.

But why would cultists kidnap rich kids? For money? Kinda fuckin’ pointless in a place already chock full of money. Or maybe that’s how they got the money in the first place! Ransom them back to their parents! I’m deep up my own Sherlock ass when the next girl Chunhua announces gets more than just Sadeen’s impressive fury - this time the whole room vibrates with the booing, the jeering.

“Uh,” I start. “What’s this one about?”

“It’s a girl who, you know.” She looks at me like I should understand completely unspoken words. Which, fair. “Ciel. Helene slept with him this summer. On her family’s yacht. And filmed it and like, passed it around her friends as, you know. Proof. Or bragging, I guess.”

A pang runs through my chest. “Seriously? Revenge porn?”

“I mean, kind of. It usually happens to girls and it’s super shitty. But this is, like, the fourth girl who’s done it to him.”

I gape. “Why?”

She leans in to whisper. “Their Insta followers skyrocket right after they leak the video. One girl got a million followers and got scouted by an acting agency like, overnight. Ciel only sleeps with super gorgeous girls. Everybody knows that. So everybody wants to know who’s next.”

“What -” I wrinkle my nose. “ - like he’s some calculator for their hotness?”

“Pretty much.” Chunhua nods seriously. “Anyway, we’ve decided the whole fame-grab isn’t gonna fly, anymore. We’re docking people for it starting like, last month.”

The heaviness in my chest plummets into my stomach. How fucking dare they? How dare they use him like that? Does he know about it? He has to. He has to. What would that even do to someone? Any affection, any relationship - all of it just to use you as a stepping stone to fame? I feel sick. And tired. On his behalf.

The kiss he almost gave me, to get the fur he wanted so bad. His perfect lips near mine, radiating heat and mint. Using affection to get what he wants. Is that all he knows? All he’s been around?

“-ey! Pierce!” Chunhua’s elbowing gets me out of my head. She points at the doorway. “Isn’t that your driver?”

There, in the massive oak doorway, stands Lionel. He’s wearing his driver uniform - white shirt, black pants, black coat. He smiles at me and tips his hat, and I trot over, pulling him away from the noise of the room.

“I know you’re old,” I start. “But not old enough to forget how to send a text.”

“I thought you’d appreciate a surprise burrito,” Lionel laughs, holding up the foil-wrapped tube of cheesy salvation. I beam.

“Ah. I see you now know the way to my cold, dead heart.” I peel back the foil and chomp it down, and he watches me. “Wow. Lots of nice lettuce in this one,” I muse. “Trying to get me to be healthy, huh?”

His smile is small, almost grim. And he doesn’t stop staring.

“Is this you offering yourself as dinner conversation?” I gulp down beans to talk.

He tries to keep it plastered on, but his smile fades slowly. “I’m sorry, Lilith.”

“The burrito isn’t that bad, buddy.”

“You’ll -” His throat bobs, copper hair glinting in the hallway lights. “You’ll forgive me, right?”

“What -” I swallow down another huge bite. “What are you talking about?”

Lionel staggers, then, like he’s tired, like he’s drunk, his shoes clicking as he steadies himself on the wall, his hands covering his face.

“I’m sorry, Lilith. So, so sorry. If I’d known He was after you - if I had known you were the one He chose, I never would’ve brought you here. You have to know that. If I knew, I’d never have brought you here. I swear.”

“Whoa, hey,” I put the burrito down and reach warily for him - he looks like he’s about to. “Slow down. You’re talking like an alien again.”

“Again?” He looks up through his fingers, shards of tortured ice-blue through skin.

“I, uh, heard you -” I admit. “ - talking to Von Arx when I first got here. And then later, when you guys were talking about Julien. The Archrose, ash. Stuff like that. You kept saying shit that sounded like alien-talk so I - ” I breathe in. “You can tell me what’s going on, okay?”

The ice-blue retreats, his head shaking. “I can’t. I promised Will. I owe him so much. He’s my father, too, Lilith, and I said I’d watch over you. Help you. Keep you safe. But Von Arx - I knew. I knew all along.”

“Hey, chill. One thing at a time. Knew what?”

His words are half-muttered, hard to hear through his hands clutching his face. “Silvere isn’t safe. For you least of all.”

A wave of light-headedness overtakes me. My skull suddenly feels full of feathers, floaty. All wrong. My vision swings back and forth, seasick, and I have to fight it to stay in one place, on Lionel. He’s straightened, hands at his side, standing in the middle of the hall. Totally calm now in the face, but bits of hair frazzling from his curly copper ponytail. I know this feeling. This bone-deep tiredness - sleeping pills. Mom used to take them. And because she was taking them, I tried them, too. Out of curiosity. Worry.

“What did you -” I swing around to look at the half-finished burrito and then back at him. “You didn’t -”

I try to blink it away, breathe it away, but it’s stronger than my experiments with the sleeping pills ever were - a heavy cloud of cotton, of wool, puffy and gentle and everywhere, and the more I inhale the more it gets in my lungs, my eyelids, my muscles. Cobwebs of sleep. The burrito on the hall table is leaking gold, gold liquid dripping where my teeth tore into the lettuce, but that’s impossible -

“I’m sorry, Lilith,” Lionel’s voice is like hearing it from the other side of a canyon. “This is the only way I can make it up to Von Arx. I made a mistake. You have to understand - I didn’t think it would matter. There are so many of you here. Four hundred of you. It could’ve been anyone, least of all you. You were new. Brand new.”

“What -” I flail for the wobbling desk, for the vase, something to hold onto.

“I should’ve stopped your blood promise with Alistair. I never should’ve brought you here in the first place. I can’t let her lose a family member. Not again.”

“Lion - ” I sputter, hard gravity shocking my knees to the ground. I look blearily up to see his eyes watering. Tears. He staggers towards me, a blur of colors, copper and black.

“Why?” I hear his whisper, close and broken. “Why did it have to be you, Lilith?”

I can’t answer him. I can’t see anything, the world fading. The giggling and the booing from the room down the hall fades into nothingness, an audience blithely crying encore for my demise.

THINGS COME, and things go. My mind most of all.

Glimpses, like a shitty film pieced together with too many pitch-dark intermissions in-between. More than just seeing, though - snapshots of sensation. Arms on my back, carrying, the rest of me hanging. Wet grass seeping into my jeans, then wet pine needles. Forest trees above me, piercing the dark sky. My cheek pressed against the cold ground. Little round white things in a perfect circle. Mushrooms. The fairy ring. Knight Durand, empty and jagged and right next to me, above me with broken spires broken windows.

My stomach would clench, if it could.

“You.” A voice - stressed and sharp, but made of iron. I know that voice. I’ve heard it whispering, I’ve heard it shouting, and I’ve heard it crying. Von Arx.

Glasses gone, I squint - she’s here. I thought she left for urgent business? Her pantsuit is a gentle, pale green but her posture’s hard and unforgiving and cross-armed. Not looking at me, though - I move my eyes with every last scrap of energy to see who she’s talking to.

A deer.

No one else here, no else across from her but an eye-searingly white deer. The same one I saw. The same one in my dream.

Is this…another dream?

“I know the Nightrose wants her,” Von Arx says. To no one. To the forest. To the…deer? “Call Him. Have Him take her, now.”

Another voice comes, I don’t know from where. It’s weird, thin, filtered through stardust, through whatever wavy knockout juice is doing laps through my veins. At the same time the weird voice reverbs off the trees, the deer lifts its horned head, furred chest proud.

“HE DOES NOT COME WHEN CALLED. YOU KNOW THIS, KEEPER, BEST OF ALL.”

“You mock my pain,” Von Arx snarls.

“WE MOCK NOTHING BUT YOUR ARROGANCE IN THINKING OUR WAYS MIGHT BE BENT TO YOUR WHIM.”

“Your ‘ways’ stole my son from me.”

The deer tilts its head, its eyes rotating eerily in its skull, slit pupil going vertical and settling back to horizontal again. Again. Like in my dream.

“OUR WAYS GAVE YOU - AND EVERY OTHER HUMAN BENEFICIARY - YOUR POWER. YOUR STATUS. YOU EXIST IN THIS HIGH PLACE ON EARTH BECAUSE OF US.”

Von Arx has no comeback for this. Nausea grips my stomach, pinching and sickly. The deer turns it’s back on her. On me.

“A PROMISE MADE IS A PROMISE KEPT, UNTIL THE VERY END OF ALL DEATH.”

Von Arx suddenly stabs an accusatory finger at it. “We live a hundred years, and you live thousands. Your promises force our children’s children into pointless sacrifice with no end in sight. Where is the equality in that?”

At first I think the deer didn’t hear her. Then it inclines its horns - points sharper in the moonlight - and looks over its shoulder.

Like a human would.

“THESE ARE, PERHAPS, QUESTIONS YOU SHOULD HAVE ASKED BEFORE BECOMING KEEPER.”

I’m half-asleep, still, because Von Arx’s incredible eyes flash an even brighter spring green, like jade with floodlight behind it. I’m dreaming, because the roots of the trees around my head shift, hiss against the pine needles as they pull out from the ground and slither under my body - around it - like great bark-armored snakes. Towards the deer.

“Bring Him!” Von Arx bellows. “Bring Him here, now! Make Him take this girl, and be done with it!”

A ring, like the clearest bell, and the deer bucks, back hooves snapping together like it’s trying to throw an invisible rider. The roots freeze under me, around me, glistening all over with something like diamond frost. Frozen in their tracks. The deer snorts, warm breath coming out as a pale cloud in the suddenly-frigid air.

“HE WILL TAKE HIS SUCCESSOR WHEN HE IS READY. NO SOONER. NO LATER. BE IT THIS GIRL, OR YOUR GRANDSON WHO SHARES HER BLOOD; HE WILL DECIDE THE WHO, AND THE WHEN. NOT YOU.”

Someone pulls the plug, and all the colors - white fur, jade green, black night - get sucked down into my whirlpool of sleep again.

A WISE MAN once said waking up is the worst part of sleeping. And if you were wondering - yes, that wise man was me. After experiencing vast existential angst in a Walmart at 4 in the afternoon.

They don’t even know what Walmart is here, do they?

That’s my first thought as my throbbing head makes all the morning sun in the room pulse like a strobe light. My room. Pretty sure this is my room; the many bottles of half-empty water on the bedside table (RIP, environment), the period-scrubbed underwear hanging from the shower rod, the messy bouquets of flowers I’ve picked on the way back to class and left to dry in the windowsill. I’m in bed, but when did I get here? The last thing I remember is…

I can’t remember. There’s a blank. Lionel is there, and Chunhua, and the taste of cheese and lettuce. I remember the ranking meeting, the cheering and booing, and then…nothing. A smear of darkness where memory should be. What the fuck was I doing up until now? Phone says it’s Friday morning. Which means I lost all of Thursday night. I start to panic, and then I get a text. Chunhua.

tell me next time before u leave the ranking meeting!

Did I leave with anybody? I text her back. I can't remember.

It takes Chunhua .04 seconds to respond. ur driver came to pick you up

Lionel. That explains why he’s a copper flash where my memory should be. Why can’t I fuckin’ remember him? Or what we did? Or how I got here?

Drugs?

I choke down an inhale. Was I drugged? Is this what being drugged is?

I frantically google it - memory loss drugs. There’s a few of them. GHB, rohypnol, ketamine. The usual date-rape drugs. And all the symptoms point to headaches when you wake up, dry throat, gaps in memory. I swallow, sandpaper in my windpipe.

Fuck.

I’ve been listening in class, for once. Occam’s razor, the professor’s voice echoes. A theory wherein the solution that requires you to make the fewest assumptions is usually the correct one.

Occam’s razor; Lionel drugged me.

I get up and move to the sink to wash my face. Don’t panic, Lilith. Think. Why? Why would he drug me? What’s in it for him? Will asked him to protect me, not -

A flash. It blinks across the back of my eyelids like a freeze-frame - Lionel’s handsome face, aquiline nose, all of it distorted with pain and regret. Tears.

‘I’m sorry, Lilith.’

I don’t get the memory back, but I get the feeling of it, a ghost impressed on a silhouette. He said sorry. He didn’t want to do what he was doing - I remember that much. Good ol’ feelings - always sticking around when you least want them to.

I’m too calm. I should be freaking, right? This is a definite freak-out situation, right?

I wash my face, my hands. Dirt. Suddenly, a crystal-clear memory of the smell of wet dirt in my nose. I tear off my pajamas, looking for any sign of grime, but there’s nothing but my own skin. Did someone change me into pjs? Lionel? Did he see me naked? What clothes was I even wearing yesterday?

One thing at a time, Lilith.

Did I dream it all up? Was it even real?

I walk over to my dresser, fishing around in the underwear drawer for the lipbalm case. Real, unreal. The fur inside will decide.

But…there’s nothing.

It’s gone.

I mildly hyperventilate. Maybe I left it in my backpack? Nah, I keep it in the drawer precisely so I don’t fuckin’ lose it like this. I tear apart the dresser - behind it, below it, stuck in the cracks behind the drawer runners? Nothing. Butt-ass naked-ass nothing.

Did somebody…take it?

Did Lionel drug me so he could take a piece of deer fur?

He’s part of the cult. He has to be, right? My fingers hover over my phone, over the string of earlier texts between him and I. Even if I asked, he wouldn’t tell me the truth. Who’d tell the truth to the person they drugged? Who can I even tell about this? Von Arx is AWOL and also she hates me. Mom would think I was crazy if I started blabbing about deer fur and gold cultists and red-eyed stalkers and it’d ruin everything. Can’t tell Ana, or Bianca - I’d be making too much trouble for them. We’re still brand-new friends; the last thing in the world I wanna do is scare them off. Definitely can’t tell Will. He could’ve been the one who ordered Lionel to do it. He could be a cultist.

Mom could be in trouble.

No - as far as I can tell, the cult shit has something to do with the grounds of Silvere. Mom’s not here. So she’s safe. For now. Whatever this cult wants, it concerns the school. The students.

Someone ordered Lionel to drug me against his will - that’s why he was so torn up about it. That’s the feeling I get, anyway. But who has that power over him? Power enough to have him ignore Will’s - his adoptive dad’s - request to protect me?

Will himself, maybe. Von Arx, maybe. Everything is a maybe, at this point.

Another text vibrates - Chunhua. I flip over to it.

btw, Ciel’s asked for u, so ur officially invited to Gen’s exam ;) congrats

Genevieve’s exam. Fantastic. Because what a girl needs after getting drugged is another dozen chances to get drugged. Part of me wishes my brain didn’t go to that immediately, but the other part of me knows that’s just the reality of being a lady under the patriarchy. Parties just mean you gotta be careful, full stop.

Being alive means you gotta be careful, full stop.

I spot a cute little beijinho, unwrapped and dusted white, still sitting on my desk. Ana. I told her she deserved a chance to be herself. To be free. To fuck up, for one whole night.

Parties aren’t my thing. Everything is definitely not alright.

But for one night, for Ana, I could pretend they are.

34

THE EXAM (OR, HOW THEY LIKE TO SAY GETTING OVER YOURSELF IS EASIER WITH BOOZE)

“I don’t think this is a good idea!” Ana calls as I politely drag her by the hand through the woods. Skin-on-skin, and I only mildly feel like throwing up. I’m calling it a win.

“It is a perfectly good idea!” I assert. “There’ll be no security, and I’ll keep a hawk-eye out for anybody filming. You just have fun, okay?”

“It’s not that easy.” She dodges a branch I shoved out of my way. I puff my chest out.

“Well, it should be. And when I rule the world, it will be.”

“But -”

“Never fear, Lilith Pierce is here. She’ll show you how American girls used to letting down their parents party, preferably before she gets arrested.” I let go of her hand and whirl in my tracks to face her. “Speaking of arrests - Strickland doesn’t come to these, does he? I’m kind of in the middle of being mad at him.”

“Why?” Ana asks slowly, picking a leaf out of her hair.

“Because he was right. About things not turning out like I wanted them to. And I can’t stand people who aren’t me being right. Especially ones who use words like ‘undoubtedly’ and ‘hardly’.” I put on his snooty accent. Just then, my eyes catch a flicker of firelight through the thick trees. “There’s partytown! C’mon!”

The first thing to greet us is something Ana rolls her eyes at and calls ‘gabber’ - but it just sounds like hardcore rave music to me. And honestly it’s not so bad, if you consider the sound of trash cans beating each other up alright. Which I do. It’s blasting out through someone’s tinny portable speakers, the playlist fluctuating wildly into a trap remix and then back into gabber again. The party’s musical theme might be undecided, but the decor is supremely confident; some intrepid soul braved the heights of the trees and strung white Christmas lights and holographic streamers around the trunks. The bonfire is the only real light source, stretching the shadows of the throbbing crowd long and dark over the pine needles. I can’t believe how many people are actually here - so many you can barely see the forest floor. Half of them are sitting around the fire, the other half milling around a keg someone’s managed to roll through the woods.

“Okay, confession time,” I whisper to Ana. “I’ve never actually been to a party.”

“Ever?” She quirks a brow.

“Ever.” I assert. I don’t tell her that the idea of being there for Mom when she came home at three in the morning to cook her something always just seemed more important to me. Ana’s smile is all coy and self-satisfied.

“Well. Allow me to show Lilith Pierce the ropes, then.”

It’s her turn to lead me by the hand towards the bonfire. There’s that paralyzing half-second where we walk into the space and everybody turns to look at the intruders, but they go back to their respective business of merrymaking pretty quick. It hits me, then. How loud they are. How close. People are sprawled in each other’s laps and on their sweaters, some screeching with laughter. Clothes messy - covered in dirt and booze and who knows what else. Two boys in the corner are mock-fighting, shadowboxing with one hand and spilling their drinks with the other. There’s shouting, shrieking, swearing. It’s nothing like the polite corporate office-silence of the cafeteria, or the classrooms. There’s life. It’s loud. It’s messy.

This is more like it. More like real life.

Ana leads me over to the keg - not the metal ones I usually see on the backs of trucks heading over the border to party, but a massive wooden thing that looks old as sin. She says something in French to a guy I recognize from my Economics class, and he pours us two red plastic cups (those are universal, at least) of -

“Wine?” I sniff at it. “Isn’t shitty beer like, de facto at these sorts of things?”

“It would be,” Ana agrees around her first sip. “If Silvere didn’t have a sterling collection of vintages. There’s absinthe too, if you want. But that always makes me see weird colors.”

“What?”

“Hallucinate. Just a little, though. Wine’s safer, anyway. I think this is a…” She swirls a sip around in her mouth. “An ’08 Saint Michel?”

Is that it? My brain goes Alistair-mode; has someone been spiking my shit with absinthe this whole time? No. My hallucinations of the red-eyed man started in LA. And that wouldn’t explain why Alistair can see him, too. Finally, I wrinkle my nose.

“You sound like a rich old dude with a mid-life crisis.”

“Shhhh,” She whispers. “Don’t give my secret identity away.”

I scan the crowd. “Didn’t you invite Bianca?”

“Yeah,” She bobs on her feet. “Can you see her?”

“Nope. She wasn’t at breakfast, either.” I pause. “Or Econ, now that I think about it.”

Ana frowns a little, then brightens. “Maybe she’s sick. Or she’ll come later. And if she doesn’t, we’ll try to tempt her out with a first-edition Proust, or something.”

Her playful tone vanishes as she sees something over my shoulder. I spot the glint of a camera - a group of people taking selfies - and Ana’s face goes green at the edges.

“Hey,” I breathe in and touch her wrist. Comfort, like everyone else does. “It’s okay. They’re facing the camera the other way.”

She stares for a second longer, and then exhales mightily. “You’re right.”

“Here,” I carefully tip our cups together and pour my wine into hers. “You drink. I’ll watch.”

“But -”

“No buts. Don’t get drunk enough to show off your butt. Or do. It’s totally up to you. I’m watching and slapping down cameras, and you’re having fun out there, and that’s final.”

Ana knits her lips, and I smile.

“Just for once, okay? One night, and then you can go back to being scared of fucking up all the time.”

“Okay. Yeah. Okay.”

She whirls around and drifts out into the crowd where people are dancing, her mane of braids gleaming in the firelight as she goes.

It’s those beautiful braids that make her easy to spot in the crowd - easy to keep an eye on. She’s only really interested in dancing, and the dancing all happens in a certain corner. A couple people angle selfies in the direction of the dancefloor, and the gabber music wishes it was loud enough to cover up my owl-screech of ‘hold it!’. They’re so stunned at my audacity to walk right up to them and demand the selfie be taken with a different angle they just comply woodenly. I thank them with a bright smile and go back to sentineling. I might seem like a nosy piece of shit for shoving my way into people’s snapchat-insta-whatever-lives, but I’d rather a dozen people hate me than Ana get in trouble with her parents. She’s been great to me since day one. This is my way of making it up to her. For doubting her with my broken brain.

For a wine-absinthe kegger in the woods, Genevieve’s exam isn’t nearly as snooty as I thought it’d be. I thought it’d be gold-plated and name-brand and pretentious like everything else in Silvere, but I was wrong. Save for the couture sweatshirts and real diamond earrings and vintage wine, it’s a pretty fuckin’ normal party. Or, what I think normal parties look like, anyway. There’s shitty beer someone’s snuck in. There’s the usual cool ranch (they’re called ‘Cool American’ flavor in Europe for some hilarious-ass reason) Doritos and cans of awful energy drinks next to the not-so-usual prosciutto and grapes and gold-foil chocolates. People make out, people argue, people drink too much and pass out under the trees, tangled up in the massive roots and patches of wildflowers. I’m used to seeing them spotless, beautiful, not dribbling vomit and arguing and doodling fake-tattoos on each other’s arms with metallic sharpies.

I spot Chunhua dancing with a guy, her and Ana very clearly avoiding each other’s personal space. I’m still not sure why they don’t like each other. Maybe it’s a fundamental personality thing. Maybe they’re just diametrically opposed on the alignment chart, like me and Prickland. Who knows. Bianca’s nowhere to be seen. I get the feeling she prefers quiet reading over parties, but it’s weird she wasn’t in Econ today. She’d never, ever miss a class. She lives for that shit.

My stomach churns the one sip of wine I took as I boxing-match the paranoia in my brain. She didn’t get drugged by her driver. She didn’t go missing - missing doesn’t happen often. Once every few decades, Chunhua said, and the last one was a few years ago. So, do the math. She’s fine. She’s somewhere on campus, and she’s fine.

The smell of pine is super strong out here, mixed with the woodsy scent of bonfire smoke. It’s not a bad smell; way better than the rotting dumpster whiffs or the hot, dry asphalt reek you get in LA. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the two boys mock-fighting have been invaded by a third; a guy so broad and beefy and clearly drunk he’s like a walking disaster waiting to happen. His crew cut’s low and buzzed on the sides, with a zig-zag above his ear. He swings off-center and guffaws as his fist almost carries right into an onlooker’s face. The sheer amount of muscles, that hearty laugh, that cut - Rafe. Definitely Rafe. Which means -

“New girl.”

“Fucké.” I hiss under my breath. I turn slowly and come face-to-face with Alistair Strickland. He’s in that leather jacket again, plain jeans, and unlike most people here wearing just one accessory - his usual impenetrably long scowl.

“What are you doing here?” He narrows his eyes. I play it cool.

“Running defense. You?”

“Running offense. But the game is slow, tonight.” He looks over my head, and I make a mental note to get good at science and figure out how to shrink-ray him until he’s shorter than me like every other dude. My glares would be so much more effective if I didn’t have to squint up a skyscraper every time.

“I finally heard the news from Ciel,” He says.

My breath in splinters out like ice. “What news?”

“You ran away not long after I left the picnic.” He pauses. “Does he kiss that bad?”

I squeak in the back of my throat. “Here’s the thing; I don’t want to talk about it, actually.”

I brace myself for prying, for sneering, for an ‘I told you so’. But he just exhales.

“Fine. I’ve got bigger knobs to nail to the wall than you, tonight.”

“Uh, ‘knobs’?”

“I believe in the States you call them ‘dicks’.”

“Wow. Brings a whole new mental image to the word doorknob.”

“Truly.”

“Knobby knees,” I add.

“Stop,” He requests, but I swear I see his long frown twitch.

There’s a weird moment of complete silence between us that the party fills with tinny music and boisterous laughter that isn’t ours. Everybody’s happy to see each other but us. The air feels like we’re standing - suspended - in electrically-charged hate jello. The urge to tell him about my drugging lingers on my tongue, like a skateboarder hovering on the pipe’s edge. He’s disciplinary committee. Solving maybe-crimes is his whole shtick.

What’s the point? Until I remember what happened, there is no real point. Nobody can do anything with half-memories. He wouldn’t even believe me, probably, doubly so considering Lionel’s his sort-of friend. He only believed me about the red-eyed man because he saw it, too. I’m actually alone. I can’t forget that.

Can’t forget that I’m alone in this place.

“I can’t believe they let you in here.” I squint up at Alistair. “You’re like, the opposite of a good time.”

He folds his arms over his chest. “Rules and regulations. Von Arx only lets this party happen so long as I’m here. Everyone knows that.”

“And what do you do here, other than take a hot dump on everyone’s fun?”

“Mental inventory. Make sure things don’t get too crazy. People tend to do every drug under the sun at these little get-togethers.”

“Uh…like, weed?”

“Weed, and coke,” He leads. “MDMA. General low-risk hallucinogens. Those are the traditional ones. Grandmother draws the line at anything harder.”

“Isn’t she worried people will OD?”

“You -” He shoots me a patronizing sneer. “You really have no idea what you’re talking about, do you?”

“I know some things,” I scowl. He shakes his head and motions around at the crowd.

“Look at these people. Every last one of them is loaded to the gills -”

“You included,” I snipe.

“- and they get the best stuff money can buy.” He ignores me. “The best stuff is rarely tainted with something dangerous. They know how to use this shit. They’ve watched their parents do it.”

I wince. “Christ.”

“The point is, there’s no stopping them from doing it,” He continues. “Grandmother knows that. If they don’t do it at Genevieve’s exam, they’ll do it somewhere else. And she’d rather have it here, where she can keep an eye on it.”

“But? There’s gotta be a but, or you wouldn’t be skulking around.”

“But,” He presses. “That doesn’t stop the occasional worm from trying to roofie a girl’s cup. Last year it was Percy Hauss. The year before that it was the Allegro twins.”

“So you’re -”

“I’m here to flush the hard stuff if it shows up, and flush whatever idiot tries something next. Because there’s always some idiot who simultaneously thinks they’re too clever for the rest of us and overtly entitled to a girl’s body.”

His words get me thinking. Lionel wouldn’t - he didn’t. I was fine. I woke up fine. Nothing hurt, especially in the crotch region. I hate doubting him, and I’m not because he wouldn’t. He regretted doing it, I could tell. He’s not that kind of person.

So if it wasn’t for that, why did he drug me? I don’t remember. Any of it. And it’s starting to piss me off.

It hurts my brain to think. So instead, I watch Alistair’s profile lit by the firelight. Always the wild hair, always the double-dagger eyes. He puts on a facade of tiredness but underneath it he’s always watching, like a gargoyle built into a church steeple. He’s vigilant like a sleepy dog, a still cyborg, taught to always be on alert. Where did he learn it? Because I know you sure as hell ain’t born with it. I had to work for my own vigilance, my own mind-maze. And here I am, talking to the only person who’s ever dared to stand at the entrance of it.

Would he believe me, about Lionel?

“Why are you like this?” I frown.

“You’ll have to be more specific,” He drawls.

“Overprotective,” I say. “Of the school. Of everyone. People can protect themselves, you know.”

He’s quiet, and I’m quiet. He shifts from one foot to the other. Off-balance. Alistair Prickland, uncomfortable? Thrown-off? No way. Not in a million fuckin’ years. This is his element. His school. His people.

“No,” He finally says. “They can’t. Not without help.”

The shadows of the trees carve around his throat, into the collar of his shirt and the tendrils of scar tissue there. He learned all this vigilance from his family. His mom.

“Did…” I swallow. “Did anybody help you?”

There’s a half-second of music and the smell of wine and pine. There’s a half-second as the world tilts and the stars gleam and the universe expands, and then he scoffs, his spine melting back into comfortable. Back to center.

“That’s really none of your business.”

“Doesn’t she give you days off from guard-dogging?” I press. “Your grandma.”

“It’s called summer break,” He says.

“But you’re human. You need breaks in-between that, too.”

“Silvere is a breeding ground for entitlement. Entitled people don’t take breaks from doing terrible things. So why should I?”

I laugh. “You’re the most entitled one of them all.”

His mouth flattens. “My entitlement comes with a price.”

I motion around at the crowd. “And theirs doesn’t?”

“Not as much of one.”

“Oh yeah,” I agree. “There can only be one tragic hero, after all. Everybody else in the world is just background fodder.”

“You talk an awful lot about things you don’t know,” His voice lashes, but it’s a quiet lash, the sort that infects and festers weeks later.

“It’s my specialty,” I say lightly.

The brewing argument sits heavy on our chests and we stand there, watching the firelight flash over the dancers, the fighters, the making-outers, the whisperers and laughers and shriekers and vomiters. Everything in orange and black. The kids getting to be kids, finally.

Except for the two kids leaning against a tree on the edges of the party, talking about things too big for them.

“Have you seen Trevino today?” He finally breaks the quiet with his all-business tone.

“Nope.” A seed of concern sprouts, pushing away the ticked-off dirt. “Why? Did something happen?”

Alistair heaves a sigh. “I’m getting reports from the staff that they haven’t seen her all day. Anywhere.”

“What about the nurse’s? She could be -”

“She’s not sick.”

I scroll through my snapchat. Nothing from Bianca. Still. She’s sent one everyday, a snap of whatever book she’s finished or whatever documentary she’s watching. And Ana and I are the only ones she sends it to.

“She could be, um. Hiding?” I offer.

“She’s got the top marks in the most selective boarding school in Europe,” He deadpans. “I sincerely doubt she’s suddenly decided hide-and-seek is more important than going to class.”

“I know, but - ” My gut starts twisting. “Will she be - do you need my -”

“She’s probably gone into the village. They do that, sometimes. The stress of being the best at Silvere can be crushing, and it’s the only real place to get away.”

I gnaw my lip. “But -”

“The faculty’s already searching for her. And so is the disciplinary committee.” He cuts me off. “You don’t need to get involved.”

“But, people,” I lean in. Not close. “People disappear at Silvere.”

He glowers straight ahead. “Not on my watch. Not in the three years I’ve been here.”

I can’t shake the feeling something’s gone wrong. The fear grips me, tight and high, and I try to breathe out. This is a party, Lilith. Your first party ever. Try not to be a paranoid mess, okay? My eyes flicker around, catching other eyes that flicker away. Are people…staring at us? Nah, can’t be. Too dark for that. Not important enough for that.

“Ignore them,” Alistair says suddenly.

“Ignore who?”

“Come on, new girl,” He sighs. “You noticed it just like I did.”

“I notice a lot of things. About everyone. All the time.” I point at the riotous trio. “Rafe’s having a good time, at least.”

“He always has a good time, no matter where he goes.” Alistair snorts. The sound is derisive, but the way his gaze softens when he finds Rafe’s enormous bulk in the crowd says something entirely different.

“Is Maria here too?” I swivel my head around.

“Present.” The single word jumps me out of my converse as Maria appears from the shadowy trees behind us, dressed in a practical gray sweatpants/sweatshirt combo.

“H-Holy -” I look to Alistair. “How does she do that?”

“Not entirely sure,” Alistair drawls without looking at her, eyes still lazily slicing around the crowd. “I’ve settled on teleporters, recently.”

“Training.” Maria defends herself monosyllabically. I gape at her.

“For what? Assassinations?”

“Now that you mention it, her family does military contracts occasionally,” Alistair says thoughtfully. Without elaborating in the slightest. I inch away from Maria’s approximate location. There’s a longer quiet, this time, my curiosity quietly burning a hole through it.

“Remember when you said friendship is pointless and all that other inspiring stuff?” I start.

“I try not to,” Alistair deadpans.

“Well, you’re wrong. You have a friend. Ciel. You’ve known each other since you were little. You hang out. He looks happy around you.”

Nothing. Alistair’s long mouth just rests in that dour frown. I pick up a stick off the ground and poke him in the arm with it.

“Hey, buddy - that’s friendship.”

“Hardly.” He swats the stick away. “It’s more of a waiting game.”

“Waiting for what?”

“The moment he finally takes what he wants from me and leaves.”

That sorry-feeling again. Not for him. Anybody but him, brain.

I glance back at Maria ever-so-slightly over my shoulder, and I’m surprised to see her usual icy demeanor gone. Her severe bob frames a downcast face, but when she catches me staring she quickly rearranges her features opaque again. She feels sorry for him. She cares about him. These rich kids are hiding behind ten walls they don’t need to.

“Someone needs to put you guys in a room and give you a crash course on how to be honest with yourselves,” I sigh.

“Don’t.” Alistair crinkles one brow.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t act like you don’t need that crash course just as much as us, new girl.”

Me? No. I’m better. I’m getting better.

I’m trying.

Before I can muster words Alistair walks into the crowd, and Maria trails behind him like a platinum bloodhound, very pointedly knocking into me with her shoulder as she passes.

“H-Hey! Fuck you! And your henchman!” I regain myself and yell after him. “Henchlady! Sorry; fuck you and your henchlady, actually!”

Alistair raises one hand in mild recognition and disappears into the trees with Maria, but not before she looks me up and down.

“He or she. Both are fine for me.”

And with that rare multi-worded assertion, she walks into the forest. Alone. Finally alone. He distracted me! He distracted me with worrying about Bianca and about far-less-important bullshit! Who knows how many people took pictures of Ana while he was blabbing my ear off? I frantically grab the nearest person by the shoulder.

“Hey, hi, I’ve got an emergency. Can I see your very personal phone? And look through your very personal pictures? It’s very important.”

“Uh,” The drunk guy blinks at me in French. “Oui? This is a strange way to flirt with someone.” He pauses. “There are a lot of cat pictures, and I have a very nice collection of fedoras -”

I wrinkle my nose. “Ugh. Never-fucking-mind.”

I waddle into the crowd and find Ana dancing with a tall guy with sandy hair who looks like he plays rugby or the Hunger Games or both. I tug at her elbow.

“Hi,” I say. “Sorry to bother you during the critical part of the mating ritual, but we’ve got a problem.”

She’s clearly been chugging her cup, a darker wine flush on her cheeks as we stagger out of the crowd.

“I saw you!” She giggles. “Talking with Pierre! He seemed nice.”

“Well he did say ‘I collect fedoras’, which are the three sexiest words in the English language.”

“I thought you liked Ciel?” She squints at me. “But then you went on a date with Alistair last week.”

“I!” I screech, then immediately whisper. “I did not.”

“What was that picnic basket all about, then?”

“We had a deal. His end of it was setting me up with Ciel.”

Ana’s face falls. “Oh. Oh no. Chunhua’s been telling the whole school.”

The stares. People were definitely looking at me and Strickland. Together. That’s what he meant by ‘ignore them’.

“Good. Great. Fantastique!” I throw my hands up. “Because what any adolescent girl needs is more problems, not less!”

Ana’s lip begins to wobble. “I’m…I’m sorry, Lilith. I tried to stop her -”

“No no,” I soothe. “I’m not mad at you. Go back to dancing, okay?”

She beams. “Okay. I trust you.”

The words feel like knives going down. In any other situation - in any other school - her fear of having even one picture taken might seem like paranoia, but like Bianca said; Silvere is special.

And, besides.

I know paranoia.

I know the sort of paranoia that helps you survive. Keeps you safe. Unhurt. I know how it feeds, how it demands to be fed. How it feels like no one else can stop it, and you’re at its complete mercy as it steers you off a cliff’s edge and into an endless pit. I know what it feels like, to desperately want someone else to step in and stop it. Someone to hit the brakes when it feels like you can’t.

I need to see everyone at this party’s phone, and fast. But like hot cheddar hell that’s going to happen. Our phones are our diaries, our best non-judgmental friends. I might as well be asking people to donate their organs.

“Lilith?”

That silky-smooth voice. My stomach evacuates through my nose and I want to dive headfirst into the nearest blackberry bush, thorns and all, but I’m trying. I’m trying on this annoying new costume called real bravery, and it makes me whirl around to confront things instead.

“H-Hi. Ciel.”

Dressed in all black, he looks like a particularly fashionable shadow. His smile is warm enough, but I can’t be sure because my affliction of not-being-able-to-look-him-in-the-eyes-itis has gotten to the uncurable stage. Apparently when someone tries to maybe-almost kiss you, it’s hard to get it out of your head. Chalk that realization up to Personal Growth™.

“You look nice tonight. And sort of worried.” He smiles, completely oblivious to my internal twisting.

“Pretty much always,” I flush.

“Is it something I can help with?”

“Oh, it’s - it’s mostly impossible.”

“Haven’t you ever seen a Disney movie? Nothing’s impossible.”

I half-laugh. “Okay. Sure. Theoretically, I need to look at everyone’s phone at this party. Like, now.”

“Certainly not an easy thing,” Ciel muses, chin in hand. Then he perks up and flashes that grin. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

I watch him disappear into the crowd and re-appear with someone equally tall. They talk French as they approach, and my lungs decompress.

“No,” I whisper.

“Fuck no,” Alistair blurts when he sees me.

“Come on, Ali,” Ciel puts on a winning smile so bright it dwarfs the bonfire. “It’ll be fun! Think of it like a massive test.”

“And I don’t feel like grading papers right now,” Alistair insists. “There’s no way they’ll agree if it’s me - you know that.”

“Of course they won’t. That’s why I’ll be doing the talking.”

“Uh, what’s going on?” I try.

Alistair ignores me. “You hate talking to them, Ciel. Why are you doing this?”

“To help a friend, obviously.”

Alistair stares at him, hard and pointed. “Is she?”

Ciel doesn’t waver in his smile. “Isn’t she?”

There’s a weird quiet, the heavy kind. Something between them snaps - a rubber band against a wrist, some invisible violin string I can’t see. And then Ciel turns and leaps onto the biggest stump he can find with his gazelle legs.

“Attention! Attention, si vous plais!”

The music dies down, and the seething mass of the party dims to pulsating curiosity as everyone looks to Ciel. He speaks rapidly in French, his smile so incredibly warm and his hands waving animatedly as he talks. The crowd starts nodding, pulling out their phones from every pocket and backpack and purse. Like a miracle, a line starts to form in front of Ciel, people murmuring and laughing as they stand there waiting. Willing. Ciel turns to Alistair and I, grinning as he steps off the stump.

“There, Lilith. Alistair will help you search through the phones.”

“He will?” I ask.

“I will?” Alistair quirks a brow.

“Yes. You heard me - it’s a matter of campus security, after all.”

Alistair’s exhale is so exhausted I swear he’s going to drop dead asleep any second. “Underhanded as always.”

“I like to keep it consistent,” Ciel agrees genially, then motions. “Go on, you two. Get to work.”

As Alistair lumbers towards the head of the line grumbling, I flash a smile at Ciel. “You - you didn’t have to do all this for me.”

“I know,” He teases. “But I did anyway.”

There’s hope.

There’s hope, isn’t there? My chest swells up. It’s creepy of me, but I can smell the heat of his body - faint rain and a hint of sweet mint cologne and warmth. I look at his shoulder. Not his face. Not yet. But close.

“T-Thanks. Seriously. I owe you a lot more than a Snickers.”

“Two Snickers,” He asserts playfully. “And a dance.”

My heart thunders. “D-Dance. Yeah.”

“Or, if you’re really feeling generous, that interesting little piece of fur.”

He still wants it this bad? “Uh, might have to take a raincheck on that one. It’s gone.”

“Gone?” He cocks his head.

“Someone broke into my room and took it. Or I misplaced it. Occam’s razor, right?”

Ciel’s smile is as easy as the bonfire eating wood. “Right. Well, when you find it, call me, would you?”

In a blink he touches my wrist, pulling my arm out slightly, and every part of me is blissfully okay with it. My brain rests easy, my fear quiet. With one of the metallic sharpies being passed around the party, he writes gently on my skin. I look down. Numbers. Oh shit. A phone number! His phone number. Ciel Lautrec’s fuckin’ phone number!!!

He finishes, looks up, and winks, and I watch him disappear into the crowd - black on gold. My heart tries to take off through my throat and I barely manage to pull it back down. An almost kiss, and now this. This can’t be happening. This can’t be real. Out of all the girls here, out of all the people he could give his number to…good things don’t happen to me all at once like this -

“Pierce!” Alistair barks. “Get over here!”

Unsteadily, I wobble over to Alistair. He glowers deeper.

“When did you get drunk?”

“When did you get nosy?” I manage, grabbing the first offered phone in the line. “Let’s just get this over with.”

Surprisingly, Alistair doesn’t try to argue. “What are we even looking for?”

“Ana. Anything of Ana in these pictures.”

“Sequeira?”

“The Ana I’m friends with.”

“You don’t use her last name?” Alistair’s brow raises.

“You don’t use her first name?” I shoot back.

We’ve come, for the millionth time, to a frowny impasse. He goes through people’s phones with me, assuring them in French as I assure them in English we’ll only be looking at the most recent pictures taken tonight. That’s not to say people don’t frantically delete their nudes and bad selfies right before handing the phones to us. It’s only when we’re halfway through the line do I realize Alistair and I’ve been standing practically shoulder-to-shoulder. I can feel his heat radiating through his jacket shoulder and into mine. And it’s been okay. The fear’s been quiet.

Except the moment I recognize that it comes clawing back, and I step to the side and make room between us. The next person in line walks up to me.

“Ana!” I glance up as she hands me her phone with faint concern. “I know this looks bad, but I just wanted to be thorough -”

Ana’s arms around my neck stop me, her smell of wine and sweat and vanilla everywhere. The first hug I’ve gotten here. The first hug I’ve gotten from someone new in a long time. My arms freeze against her.

Don’t push. Don’t run. It’s okay. She won’t hurt you. She won’t.

“Thanks,” She mutters into my chest. “No one’s ever…no one’s ever taken it this seriously before. I’m…thank you.”

“H-Hey, it’s no biggie. I promised, didn’t I?”

“It’s big.” Her face is so far buried in my sweater she’s barely intelligible. “It’s a biggie to me.”

I lift my shaking hands to hug her back. Slow. Breathe. She’s warm against my palms. Real. Bones and muscle - all it capable of turning on me. A slap. Pulling my hair out. Pushing me. It doesn’t matter how nice she’s been to me; in this moment she could do anything.

What are you doing, letting all of her this close?

Breathe. In, out.

I pray to God she doesn’t notice I’m stiff as a board. It’s an agonizing eternity. Just hold on for one more second. One more. When Ana finally pulls away, my heartbeat mercifully slows. I hand her back her phone, and she trots over to dance again. Not the worst, but not great. At least I didn’t freak out on her. Getting better. Trying to. In centimeters. Smaller - microscopic centimeters. Er, millimeters. Whatever.

I catch Alistair staring at me out of the corner of my eye.

“Got rigor mortis of the eyeball, Strickland?” I ask lightly.

“No.” He jolts back to business. “I’m just surprised you do something as normal as hug people. That’s all.”

“What did you think I’d do? Strangle them?”

“Yell about the size of their various body parts?” He offers. “Call them a waste of good genes?”

“That was one time,” I wince. He stares. “Okay, two times. And, like, a half. I’m learning.”

“How to annoy me with maximum force?”

“No,” I sniff. “Manners.”

“At the slowest rate humanly possible, it seems.”

“Yeah, well. Good things come to those who wait. Etcetera.”

We finish the last few people in the line, the party already starting to beat out its rhythm again. None of the pictures had Ana in them, and I throw her a reassuring thumbs up over the crowd and she smiles. Someone tosses another ten logs on the bonfire, and the flames lick the diamond stars ever higher. Alistair turns to me.

“Satisfactory enough for you?”

“Yeah. Uh. Thanks for the help. And, you know. The other help.”

“Other help?”

“Setting the, um. Date up. With Ciel.”

He scoffs. “Judging by the sound of what happened, it’s not exactly something to thank me for.”

“No, it’s -” I breathe in. “It’s my fault. I screwed it up. But you still, you know. Held up your end of the bargain. Made it happen. Gave me a chance. So. Thanks.”

“You’re talking like it was a one-time thing. It isn’t. We made a blood promise.”

“I know. Just…thanks.”

Alistair’s quiet, and then his eyes slice back over at me; “You turn awfully meek and polite when he’s mentioned.”

I fight a blush that feels more like a rash. “So?”

I can feel his stare on my face and it sucks. All of it sucks. I’ve been giving him big fiery balls of grief since I got here, and now he knows my biggest weakness, the one thing I’d do anything for.

Just to feel normal.

But I know his, too. Rose.

“Archenemies.” I blurt. He blinks.

“Sorry?”

“Archenemies. Like, super enemies. That’s us.”

“Isn’t ‘enemy’ enough?”

I wave my hand. “You have a ton of those. A whole list. But I’m not like them.”

“No,” He agrees dryly. “You have a distinct sense of superiority.”

“Well, yeah. But that’s not why. It’s because you…you know. Hate me back.”

“Enchante,” He drawls in French. “Without you to tell me what to feel, I’d be lost.”

“I can tell, is all.” I assert, picking at the hem of my sweater nervously. Nervous at how honest I’m being. “You don’t hate the others. Okay, so, maybe you hate Gabe. And that’s legit because he’s a creep. But, like, Chunhua, or Borbeau, or the guy running in the hall before sixth period. Everybody you harp on, you don’t actually hate. You just look tired around them.”

Alistair is unmoving, the bonfire’s amber flickering over the hollows of his cheekbones.

“But you hate me. I can hear it in the way you talk to me. I mean, you talk to me, period. You bother. With me. The more you bother with someone, the more you hate them. So. That means you must hate me more than everyone else. Like, a lot more.”

I blurt a laugh at how rambling I sound.

“Let’s be real; you were right. You were right to put me on your hate-list. I’ve hated you the second I met you and I don’t care if that’s petty. We can hate each other in peace. But I don’t wanna be just another name on that list. I cut my own bangs, I dance good, and I can eat three bags of hot cheetos in under thirty minutes. I’m bonafide dope. I deserve way more. Hence, archenemy.”

There’s a long silence, the party noises fraying at it. Prickland staring at me. Just…staring. Not with the all-consuming laser-eye. With…a normal eye.

“So.” I start nervously. “So, what do you think?”

He musses his hair and exhales. “Archenemy it is, then. A bigger title, for a bigger pain in my ass.”

We have names, now. Names for the barbed-wire thing between us. It feels safer. Standing there, watching him stand there, fills my chest with a little bit of peace. Just a smear, a smidge, a thimbleful. It’s okay to let him stand near me like this. Because if I give him a wide enough berth, a big enough nametag in my head, he won’t be able to push his way inside.

If I give him a label big enough and loud enough, I’ll always hear him coming.

35

THE SHADOWS (OR, HOW EVEN AS YOU SLEEP, YOURS GETS LONGER)

You know what they say - the walk back is always harder than the walk there.

They don’t say that, actually. I just made that up. But it sounds hells cool, and my feet hurt from the countless roots on the trek back to the dorms, so it’s also realistic. And unlike Ana, who’s skipping ahead of me with all the drunk alacrity of a thoroughly-catnipped feline, I have to slog it without the painkilling ease of ethanol-altered brain chemistry.

“What’s it like?” I ask her curiously. “Being drunk?”

“Lovely,” Ana giggles, pulling a vermillion tree leaf to her chest. “Like floating on a cloud.” She staggers to a stop. “Wait. Don’t tell me you’ve never been…?”

“Not technically.” I spider my fingers together. “I mean, unless you count chugging your best friend’s mom’s hidden flask of Irish peat bog whiskey once and then immediately throwing it all back up in her favorite vase and blacking out on her bed.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Middle school was my wild era.”

“Why?”

“I was, like, mad. At my dad for leaving. And at the world for being shitty? I dunno. Just angry all the time. So I tried to make somebody suffer.”

“And that somebody ended up being you,” She says wisely.

It’s my turn to a pick a leaf and hold it close. “Yeah. I guess.”

Ana’s quiet and I’m quiet and the crescent moon is the quietest of all, and the sweetest. It doesn’t say anything, just shines light down on us forever and ever and suddenly I get the feeling sometimes it’s not about what you say, but what you don’t say, because this moment is perfect without words. Even in the middle of struggling through seven months of a snooty European school, even in the middle of the strangest, most isolating part of my life, there are still some perfect moments. Ana hums then, and she starts to skip ahead. I trail after her, watching the way the golden tree leaves filter the white moonlight through them like little sheets of old sepia film.

Von Arx was right. Plants really are the only still things in a busy world.

Something red snags my eye like a fishhook, and I freeze. Whatever it is, it’s deep in the forest. Too deep. Not a red-leafed tree. Not berries. Something darker red than plants. And wetter. I squint. It’s a white mass - forty, maybe fifty feet away from me? I can see hooves, and antlers. Yellow, unblinking eyes as big as saucers.

My heart spasms.

It’s the white deer, lying on its side. So still it has to be dead. I just saw it the other night, alive and moving and majestic…

The white deer bucking, diamond ice freezing moving roots.

It’s just a flash of nonsensical memory, but it means everything, and I know for certain it happened. Last night. I saw the deer bucking last night, when Lionel drugged me.

I lean closer to see it better, and something near it squirms. There are two shapes - the white deer, and something far bigger kneeling next to it. Something with two long arms, two long legs. Collapsed over itself like the ruin of a person, twisted like a blackened yarn. There’s so much forest shadow I can’t see details, but the fingers on the ends of the arms - they’re long. Impossibly long, impossibly sharp-nailed. It digs those nails into the white deer’s stomach, pulling up handfuls of wet red and…eating them.

It’s eating.

I can’t even whisper ‘fuck’. I can’t even swallow. If I make any noise, it’ll hear me, won’t it? I don’t even know what it is. I don’t even know if it’s real.

But I know, with the creeping frostbite of certainty in my chest, that I’ve seen it before.

In a picture, drawn by a little girl.

“Hey Lilith! Lilith!” Ana’s voice. Ana crashing through the trees drunkenly. “Look who I found!”

I whip my head around. Ana, followed by four people. Rafe. Maria. Alistair. And - my heart sinks - Ciel. No, no no. Not now.

“Get back,” I hiss, my stiff arms struggling to signal. “Not here!”

But Ana just marches on, blissfully happy to see me, blissfully ignorant, and they follow, and I whip my head around to the deer and the shadow thing and realize with a subzero terror that it’s standing up on two shadowy legs, now. It’s facing me. Staring right at me - two red-hot coal eyes staring right. At. Me.

No paper. No colored pencils. Just fury. Fury like the man in the restaurant. In the church pew. Fury like a writhing whirlwind that eats everything in its path.

It’s not a hallucination. It can’t be, not with the deer's blood around its mouth. It’s interacting with the world. It’s real. And it sees me.

There’s a beat. Everything moves in molasses, in cold, bitter honey, and then it opens its jaw.

A smile. Its smile taking up the whole world with bloodstained teeth. Sharp. Thin.

Hungry.

I’m too close, it’s too late. It’s too late for me, and I already know that. The thing in the picture Rose drew - this is it. In the flesh. Eating flesh right in front of me.

I’m gone.

Rose knew it, and she drew it, and I’m gone.

The feeling I’ve had for so long - that feeling of looming end - comes crashing down on my head like a brutal iron blade. A guillotine block I’ve spent my life sleeping on. I was right all along, and this is it. I wasn’t meant to live. Broken. But the people behind me -

I spin on my heel, and scream with every last drop of oxygen I have.

“RUN!”

I see their stunned faces, all of them going still, all of them staring at me with wide eyes, (Ana so confused, Rafe and Maria startled, Ciel so handsome even when he’s alarmed, and Alistair always suspicious, always glaring, a little worried?) and then there’s the sound of a song. An uneven but cheery thing.

The song, months after that man in the restaurant pursed his lips. Finally, finally, I hear it from him, the echo long-delayed, and the words hissed and fragmented and cracked, like a smoker’s voice on the edge of death. Like someone who’s been choked and brought back to life, throat torn apart.

The same song Alistair heard.

The same song Julien heard, maybe.

“MAKE NEW FRIENDS, BUT KEEP THE OLD.”

Something ice-cold crawls up my back, finger by finger.

“ONE IS SILVER AND THE OTHER’S…”

Eyes squeezed shut, muscles tensed into stone and waiting to die. Just waiting. Like I’ve always been.

“…GOLD.”

Death smells like roses.

A rose-scent curls around my nose, blossoming through the forest’s pine; overwhelming and sweet and everywhere. I’m too afraid to look, but I hear Ana screaming, something giving a bristling yowl near my ear like a cat, a huge cat. It’s an inhuman sound, an almost-human sound, riddled with anger and fear and indignation, dripping with a ‘how dare you’. How dare who? All I know is something hot and sharp scrapes my shin, the sound of ripping cloth and the rough jolt as my jean’s leg slices open. Off. Cold wind, colder skin. Something’s tugging it. Something’s trying to drag me somewhere. I’m too scared to even shriek, to whimper, to open my damn eyes and run.

Coward.

A grunt, a human one, and then a massive force shatters into my side. Up is down, the trees spiral in the sky, the stars below me, my glasses fly off and instincts I forgot I had kick in - curl into a ball. Wet leaves and wet dirt seeping through my clothes. Just stay in a ball, my spine is harder than my flesh, my bones are harder, they’ll protect me, all of the soft parts that make up me, I have to protect them -

“Behind you!” Ciel’s voice, and there’s another grunt near me and the sound of something - someone - hitting the ground hard. A scuffle? I can’t. I don’t want to look.

One eye. Just one.

You can’t run from what you can’t see but I saw it coming all along.

I force an eye open just a slit. Everything’s a blur without glasses, but I can see movement. Something dark and indecipherable scuttles through the pine needles towards me on all fours - on all fucking fours - faster than anything has the right to move, its body snapping with unnatural jerks. It’s human, human-adjacent, but it moves like a panicked rat. It gets sharper the closer it gets, please don’t get sharper, stay blurry, and then it freezes right in front of me. Glowing ruby eyes bob listlessly up and down, socketed to a distorted face inches away from mine. Centimeters. No nose. That horrible mouth, lined with a thousand blade-sliver-teeth. It’s so close I can smell it - the rose smell and the forest smell and every other smell pushed out by its sickly reek of burnt paper.

Ana’s screaming pivots full-blown hysterical. “Strickland - !”

Rafe’s deep bellow; “Ali, don’t!”

There’s the bone-crack of splintering wood, and the shadow thing looming above me gives a shudder, a stumble. And then it goes still. No more bobbing. No listless movement. A long, freakish hand rests next to mine, so close I can see the texture of its gray skin - hairless and lined with fine compact scales like a snake. It’s so close I can see exactly how its malnourished neck twists in a perfect, impossible 180 degrees to look at Alistair. An Alistair standing behind it, an Alistair I can barely see up through the monster’s tangle of long limbs.

An Alistair holding a thick branch like a bat with shaking hands, and holding the thing’s hot-coal gaze with steady green eyes.

“Fuck with Silvere and you fuck with me, you ugly bastard.” He digs into his stance. The monster moves off me (that’s what it is - not a shadow or a human or an animal, a monster) and towards him, one freakishly long arm lifting and swinging around like a whip, all the centrifugal force tipped with razor claws aimed right for Alistair’s torso, right for his soft organs -

He’ll die.

A heavy thud, and a dark shape comes between Alistair and the arm, two massive human hands pressing back against the sheer force of the monster’s long-fingered palm. A bald head glimmers in the moonlight, lifting slowly. Huge security man from the other night - one of the two who smelled like roses. No, not one of those two. But nearly the same. Same uniform, same smell. He grits his teeth, one lens of his sunglass lenses fractured, the other popped out and missing.

I’m high on adrenaline, on pure terror. There should be an eye. He should have an eye. But there’s only a flesh-colored crater where a white rose blooms from the center of his socket, ivory petals spilling over his eyelids and blinking like eyelashes might blink.

“If you want them, come and get them yourself -” The security grunts and gives a herculean heave, snapping the monster’s arm on itself. “- instead of sending your pathetic echoes!”

Holy fuck. Holy fucking shit he just - why are his eyes made of rose petals? Who cares, Lilith, he’s beating the monster back, just be grateful. Just run.

Run where?

Black blood (not red?) flies as the security guard tears the monster’s arm all the way off as easily as I’ve seen the groundskeepers pull weeds. He holds it up like a javelin. The monster sees it coming, sees his intent, and, injured, it tries to get away through the pine needles with only three limbs, stumbling at top speed. So fast I can barely see it, so fast after two seconds I’ve lost it in the forest undergrowth.

But the security guard hasn’t. The white rose petals that make up his exposed eye move and quiver like they’re alive. Like they’re…seeing. He pulls his massive arm back, the severed demonic limb poised straight, bone tip sticking out like a jagged arrowhead.

I jump, another blur nearing me. But it’s got human skin, human hair. Alistair. He picks up my glasses and hands them to me, and helps my trembling body sit up.

“L-Leave me alone,” I chatter, my teeth clacking and my vision needlessly a thousand times better.

“And let my newly-minted archenemy be defeated by someone who isn’t me?” He pulls his leather jacket off and drapes it over my shoulders. “N-Not a chance in hell.”

It comforts me, to hear the shake in his voice. To know I’m not the only one this crazy shit is happening to, or the only one who can see it. The jacket radiates warmth and the spiced smell of black tea. Not a flowery smell, or a light one, or even a pleasant one, really. But after all the roses and burnt paper, it’s a relief. It smells real, familiar, and that’s all I need right now. We watch as the security pulls his arm back, aims, and heaves the severed armbone like a javelin into the air. It cuts through the forest, never once hitting a single tree or stray branch, splatting black blood in a precise line as it goes. Like one of Soyon’s arrows, it sinks into the underbrush, the only indication it hit its target a miserable, inhuman, crackling wail, and a rustle in the bushes. Something that looks like a curl of thick black smoke rises up out of the foliage, or my glasses are smudged -

“It’s over.” The guard looks down at us. “You will return to your dorm rooms immediately.”

Alistair stands from my side. “Not without an explanation, first.”

The security guard glares down at him and Alistair glares right back, either completely unfazed by the fact the guy has a rose for an eye, or just really good at ignoring it. A blonde streak suddenly cuts between their tension, smiling brightly. Ciel.

“Did you see it, Alistair?” He asks, half-breathless and gesturing wildly at the bleeding deer corpse, pale and drastic on the dark forest floor. “It’s identical to the one we saw, all those years ago! The same horns, the same markings! It’s the same one!”

Why is he so excited? Alistair doesn’t pull his stony glare from the security guard.

“Why are you happy right now?” I manage to Ciel. “That thing was a monster - it almost -”

His brilliant smile crystallizes on his face. “Shhh - quiet now, Lilith. The grown-ups are talking.”

The words are affectionate, but the way he says them are laced with slivers of glass, porcelain, things that dig deep and stab. I feel small all of a sudden. Immature. Childish. He’s right. The time for my babbling was about ten train stops behind us. We have to discuss something as nuts as this like grown-ups - focused, dead serious - or we’ll never get anywhere.

Suddenly, my ears ring and my head wobbles back. I’m gonna faint. Fucking hell, body. There’s not even any red! It’s all black smears of blood, black no matter which way the starlight hits it. What the fuck was that thing? What kind of animal bleeds black?

But Ciel’s here. Gotta look impervious. Strong. I shove my hands in Alistair’s jacket pockets, trying to work warmth back into them, trying to hold on to something. Trying to anchor myself to this world. Like an adult. Bravery. My fingers hit metallic - a wad of foil. I pull it out of the pocket just an inch and squint at it. Focus. Try to breathe.

Gold foil.

Wait, I recognize this. It’s…a wrapper. From the buffet chocolates. But unlike all the foils I crumple up and throw away, this foil is smoothed out perfectly, folded carefully so the edges match and it makes a crisp square. Why is this in Alistair’s pocket? Why would he keep garbage? Who am I kidding, he’s sloppy. He probably just grabbed one from the bowl and forgot.

Unless.

This…this can’t be the chocolate I left outside his door that day, can it?

I shake my head. I’m stuck in a nightmare - a whole-ass nightmare just happened and what I care about is this piece of trash Alistair keeps in his pocket? A shuffling of leaves, Rafe and Maria and Ana coming out of the shadows, and I startle, dropping the wrapper back in.

“It was a bear, right?” Rafe’s nervous question has Ana clutching onto his arm like she’s afraid her knees will give from under her.

“B-Bears are fast. But not that fast,” She whimpers. “Is it - Is it still out there?”

Maria is clearly the bravest of us. While Alistair and the security guard and Ciel stare each other down, while I’m battling a fainting spell like a weak-ass, she walks towards the bushes where the smoke came from, peering into the leaves.

“Report?” Alistair asks without looking at her. She returns, shaking her platinum head.

“Gone.”

He narrows his eyes at the guard. “You know who I am. You know I have security permissions from Von Arx. So tell me exactly what just happened.”

“Ali, c’mon.” Ciel smiles gentler. “You saw it. We all did. That shadow - it wasn’t human. Or animal. It couldn’t have been. It moved too fast. It looked like a puppet. It looked more like someone made a man out of shadow, out of magic -”

“Don’t.” Alistair’s eyes flash to him. “Don’t say that fucking word.”

“Look at his eyes,” Ciel gestures to the security guard’s face. “Look. He has a rose for an eye. Either we’ve all been put under the same specific and impossible illusion at once, or he’s not human, either.”

“Occam’s razor,” My whisper comes from not-me. Not-here. Ana squints, and when she finally sees the rose eye she chokes off a shriek. Rafe makes the cross over his chest, and Maria’s frown only deepens.

“They're moving, they blink.” Ciel presses. “There’s no other explanation. He’s not human.”

“Who cares what he is?” Rafe suddenly grumbles. “We gotta get inside and get a hot cup of coffee before we all keel over.”

“Shock.” Maria agrees. She and Rafe flank Ana and help her limp up the lawn towards the chateaus. Ana looks back at me, frantic.

“Lilith? This is…this is too crazy. Are you coming?”

The splinters in my heart from Ciel’s words push themselves out, imaginary all along. Shock. He’s in shock. We all are. That explains it, explains everything. I breathe a little sigh of relief.

“Yeah. Right behind you.”

I stand on wobbly legs and approach the tense triangle, shrugging Alistair’s jacket off. My skin misses the warmth immediately, but I hold it out to him.

“Here, Prickland. Take it before I abscond covetously away with it.”

“Big words,” The security comments appraisingly. I look at every part of him but his eyes.

“Thanks,” I mutter. “I read a lot when I was twelve and had no friends.”

Is he human? He’s wearing a suit. His shoes are laced. He looks human, except how can a human have a flower for an eye? How can there be anything other than humans, here, on gray-ass concrete-ass Earth-ass? There are only humans. Animals too, duh. But animals don’t talk with words. They don’t have rose eyes or glowing red eyes. That shadow thing had to be human. It had to be the guy from the restaurant, the guy Alistair and Julien saw too.

This security guard’s gotta be human.

So how is that rose-eye moving like it’s alive?

Ciel doesn’t move. Neither does Alistair. The guard heaves a breath, his attempt to lighten the mood clearly a failure.

“You three will return to your dorms. This is not your concern.”

Alistair doesn’t blink, doesn’t even look sideways at his jacket I’m offering, and then chuckles bitterly.

“I’m sure my grandmother pays you well for your job. Would you like to keep it?”

“Alistair,” Ciel puts his hand out on his shoulder. “You can’t blackmail him. He’s magic -”

A vicious slap of flesh singes the air as Alistair smacks his hand away.

“Say it one more time, Ciel, and we’re through.”

It’s the same voice. The deadly-serious voice he used when talking about his sister, making me promise not to talk about her drawings. Ciel looks taken aback, a crack down his beautiful face. The petals of the guard’s eye twitch, fluttering like real eyelashes. The more I look at it, the sicker I feel. The dizzier I feel. But now that the guard’s close up, I can see the dark red in the center of the white petals. It’s distinctive and stunning, like a blood droplet spreading on snow.

Wait. I’ve seen that before. Where the hell have I seen that flower before? Hours of staring out the window in too-hard-to-understand classes, staring at the green lawn and the blue sky and the people moving and the rose maze in the distance, every flower huge and gorgeous and carefully cared for by the groundskeepers -

“You,” I start. “That rose in your - it’s from the rose maze. White, with a red center.”

“Oh.” Ciel blinks. “Our American is right. Lady’s-sewing-finger. A very rare and expensive breed. Four perfect specimens of them exist in the world. One is here, at Silvere. Is that where you came from, sir?” His voice goes reverent, soft. “The rose maze?”

Alistair ignores us all, stabbing his finger in the guard’s huge chest. “What. Was. That. Thing?”

“Prickland - your jacket -” I start, holding it out higher. He bats me away with as much viciousness as he did Ciel. More. I stagger, almost falling, but Ciel catches my elbow. Alistair’s eyes just burn into the guard.

“Tell me. Now.”

We get exactly one second of rest. I get one second to bask in the feel of Ciel’s fingers around my elbow, on Prickland shoving me away like nothing more than trash. One second of stillness, and then there’s a whisper of a song-note. Furious rustling in the underbrush. I go still. Panic. Paranoia. Not again. Not just one. Too loud to be just one.

“You’re leaving, by your own feet or my arms.” The guard barks. “The forest is not safe -”

He doesn’t get the sentence out. Because from the underbrush, behind a retreating Maria and Rafe and Ana, darts four more shadows.

Not one.

Not two.

Four.

Four more pairs of glowing red eyes from the underbrush, four more jaws filled with piranha teeth, four more sets of unnaturally long limbs. Looming like unstuffed scarecrows, like dolls stretched to death on a medieval rack. They’re all around us, pinning us in. No escape. Their eyes burn like hellfire, like blood, like a curse.

Satané.

Ana’s shrill, distant scream scrapes across my bone marrow.

This can’t be real. This is a nightmare. It has to be a fucking nightmare. I bite down hard on the inside of my mouth - wake up. Wake the fuck up, Lilith! The only one who moves fast enough is the guard, putting his battered body between us and the monsters.

“Go!” He bellows.

There’s no time to think. Rafe and Maria bolt the rest of the way up the lawn, dragging a shrieking Ana behind them. They’re free to go. But not us. The shadows are all around us - four corners cornered. Four sets of red eyes, from every angle, and they skitter closer on their twisted limbs. My heart hammers in my ears, and I clutch the jacket closer like it’ll be any help when it won’t. It’s leather, not a weapon. I need a weapon. Alistair’s more ready than I am. Always. He flips his switchblade out and stands with the guard. I know I’m trembling, but I can’t feel it, can’t feel anything below my neck.

Panic flickers my eyes to Ciel. He’s calm. He’s the only one who doesn’t look scared, or ready to fight. He just stands there, staring right at the twisted shadows like they’re fascinating wildlife and he’s at a zoo. Safe. Removed. Every muscle relaxed. A smile pulls his beautiful lips, his silvery eyes crinkling.

“Well now,” Ciel murmurs to the shadow just in front of him. “Aren’t you strange and wonderful?”

The thing just silently tilts its horrible head.

“He’s sent so many tonight. It must be time,” The guard hisses in half-awe. His white-rose eye cuts behind his shoulder to us three, petals quivering. “It’s one of you, isn’t it?”

He’s sent so many tonight. The black deer statue. The man in the restaurant. The thing Alistair saw in the forest. Von Arx, screaming; ‘It’s you He wants, not Alistair!’ A flash of memory, Lionel’s watering eyes.

‘If I had known you were the one He chose, I never would’ve brought you here.’

Every breath in starts hurting, my knee aching. I can feel it. I can feel it invisibly like static, like building lightning, like the dizzying nausea before a vomit. Something horrible is about to happen.

To me.

Something horrible has been following me.

But I knew that all along.

I knew it the moment my knee broke, and my world broke with it. Everything after that has just been biding time. Waiting for the rest of me to break. To death. To oblivion. To nothingness. This is my fate. Right here, right now. I’m not meant to live past this moment.

“What’re you talking about? Who’s ‘He’?” Alistair snaps at the guard. But time doesn’t wait. Fate doesn’t wait. Shadow-monsters don’t wait.

It happens. Again.

It all happens so fucking fast - midnight blurs and the smell of rose and burnt paper mixed as one. Two of the monsters leap unfathomably high. In perfect sync they cling to the trunks of two trees, then kick off the bark as one, rocketing into the guard like missiles, latching into him with their claws and tearing at him with their teeth. Blood. But not red - green. Green and slow and viscous like sap. It pools over the guard’s skin, his mangled face, the white petals of his eye coming lose and bleeding green, too. Alistair doesn’t think, he reacts - lunges to help the guard, stabbing at the shadows with the switchblade, but they don’t even flinch. They absorb the stabs, uncaring about him, ripping determinedly deeper into the guard’s skin. The third shadow looks right at Ciel. And then it rises up. It hefts off its four legs and stands to its full menacing height on two, cocking its head deeper to the side like a bird, a curious cat, but too far. Unnaturally far, the red eyes and horrible mouth now totally upside down.

The fourth - there’s a fourth - and that’s the last thing my brain puts together on its own, because there’s something moving behind me, and I stop working. Lilith.exe bluescreens. She stops breathing, stops blinking, because on the pine-strewn ground she sees her own shadow thrown not by the moonlight, or starlight, or auroralight, but by two points of red glow lingering just behind her head.

A halo of red light.

A crown, for a doomed princess.

Alistair whips around to her, terrified face flecked with green. “Lilith!”

The last thought she has - as the air around her gets snapfrozen cold and her vision gets darker and the soft, childish song echoing louder in her ears - is that it should be harder.

It should be harder to die than this.

And then she’s gone.

36

THE END (OR, HOW MANY TIMES YOU HAVE TO DIE TO MOVE ON)

??????

I do what anybody knowing their time’s come would do. I lie there. Just…lie there.

And then I start to feel things.

And it fuckin’ suuuucks.

Some Forest Giant from the DnD handbook’s taken a club to my entire body and beat it to bruised bits. My mouth won’t work. My eyes won’t even open. I can feel my battered corpse lying on something flat and hard and smooth. Which is weird, because I shouldn’t be feeling anything, really. It should be all ephemeral gooey space-void, right? With like, a light tunnel at the end?

The pain is supposed to end. When you die.

I’m dead, right?

If we follow our limited human knowledge about what happens post-mortem, I shouldn’t be feeling anything. But I extremely am. Which means I’m not dead. Or maybe I am, and God likes to play hurty little tricks on our freshly-dead bods. Except somehow I doubt that. So if I’m not dead, then where the fuck am I? Hell? Purgatory? A ghostly grocery store? Any number of hypothetical-afterlives?

Only one way to find out.

Forcing my eyelids open is like pulling apart two halves of a stone door. And my reward is coming face-to-face with a cosplayer wearing four layers of makeup and…deer horns.

“Oh, shit.” I groan, adjusting my glasses as I sit up. “Is this the part where I’m faced with all the bad things I’ve done in life? Listen, I’m sorry for yelling ‘nerd’ across the street at your convention. I was thirteen and thought making fun of people for caring about things was cool. Also, you were wearing the Naruto headband backwards.”

The cosplayer tilts their head, and the delicate-yet-really-freakin’-weirdly-shaped glass beads hanging in snowy threads from their antlers tinkle with the movement. Their face is pale white, but sallow and off, like there’s no blood beneath. They must’ve really caked the foundation on. But under all that makeup is a beautiful facial structure; high cheekbones, a wide-long nose, evenly-set eyes. My own eyes finally adjust; two petals of blood red lips, so bright it almost hurts to look at. So red it instantly reminds me of the stairs, of Dad reaching out for me, of the eyes of those shadow monsters -

“N-Nice lipstick.” I laugh nervously, but the cosplayer says nothing. They’re so close I can count their lower lashes, black and thick, and their eyes -

Oh. Holy hot cheesesteak fuck.

Blue. The brightest blue I’ve ever seen in my life - like those Bahamas calendars in dentist offices with their overdramatic photoshop oceans. It’s that blue. Unnatural, never-nature blue. But only on the outside. In each eye, around the iris, is a pale ring, and the closest I can think of are those cut-aways you sometimes see of Arctic ice - translucent, glassy turquoise that glows in the sun. It all melds together in the middle, smooth and hypnotizing.

These eyes aren’t real. They can’t be. It’s like looking at a dream - slightly impossible, all beautiful. And the kicker is, this ain’t even the first time I’ve seen eyes like this.

“You’re - ” My throat stops up. “Von Arx?”

Blue, not green. Still. Still, those eyes with the pale rings are so distinct I know they can belong to only one person in the world. The cosplayer tilts their head the other way, the accoutrements on their antlers clinking wildly as they lean in closer. Too close.

“WE ARE NOT THE KEEPER. BUT WE KNOW OF HER.” The voice that comes from their too-red lips is musical, lilting, almost as if a harp is being played in another room. “SHE TRIED TO SEND YOU TO US TOO EARLY, TO SUIT HER OWN DESIRES. WE IGNORED THE FIRST SENDING, BUT COULD NOT IGNORE THE SECOND.”

I brace for their breath but it smells sweet and musty, like they’ve eaten old, dried flowers. I wince away and wince again when two piercing pains rake complaints across my shoulder. Backstab? Twice? Is that how I died? I crane my neck and barely catch a glimpse of dark, leaking red. Fuck. Blood. Not great. Except I can’t see it unless I crank back. Which means no panic. Good. Also, it’s not bleeding all that hard. It should be - the holes are fucking huge. It should hurt like hell, I should be screaming bloody murder…but it’s just an annoyance. A dull ache. And then there’s the minor fact the blood seems to have glitter in it.

Yup, nope. It’s not the light. My wounds glitter. Every crimson fragment of broken skin I can see glitters. Who knows? Maybe in heaven blood glitters. That tracks. God turned a woman into a salt statue and covered the whole world in water. Glitter blood’s way easier than that, I bet.

“APOLOGIES, OF COURSE, WILL BE MADE,” The cosplayer’s blue-blue eyes roam over my injured shoulder. “THE ECHOES WERE SO ZEALOUS IN BRINGING YOU HERE THAT THEY HARMED YOU. THAT IS NOT PROTOCOL.”

“It’s, uh,” I struggle. “Echoes. Like - are you saying those shadow monsters did this to me?”

“WE THOUGHT THAT MUCH WAS OBVIOUS,” The cosplayer says, blood-red lips splitting in a smile, and my skin instantly tries to crawl off my own body. Most smiles are inviting, welcoming in their own way. But this one is the opposite. Everything about it is a silent scream to get away, to leave, to run and never look back. To get the hell outta Dodge Charger while I still can. At least they have a normalish amount of teeth. That’s a step up from the last few minutes.

I reboot my brain, refresh the page. Okay. So. So. I died. I must’ve. The double stab wounds (like snake-fang punctures, I realize with a dawning horror) are too huge and deep not to have killed me. But that doesn’t explain where I am. Or how I am. Or why the shadow monsters decided to stab me with the entire Michael’s confetti aisle. Either I’m dead and stuck in a weird purgatory with this creepy-beautiful cosplayer, or I’m alive and stuck in a weird purgatory with this creepy-beautiful cosplayer. At the very least we can upgrade the emergency from ‘possible murder’ to ‘possible murder yet definite kidnappery’.

There’s no blanket covering me - only a leather jacket. Alistair’s. It came with me into death, I guess. Weird. But I’m not complaining. Hell, my clothes are even still on. Dope. Step in the right direction, frankly. Except that means the best pizza sweatshirt on the planet now has bloodstains on it. Balls.

Lilith, please, I beg my brain. Priorities.

I decide to get answers fresh from the source.

“So,” I start. “Where am I, exactly?”

I tear my eyes from the cosplayer’s face for the first time. What I can see beyond their many-layered outfit of messy, stained lace looks like a cabin of some sort. All wood. Not polished wood, like Silvere, but the raw-ish, natural shit. Except the usual straightness of cabin logs, the stolid architecture - none of that’s around. The walls…aren’t really walls. They’re hundreds of thousands of raw branches woven together in a dizzying pattern, letting in what looks like pale winter sun between the lattice. Built for aesthetics, obviously, not to keep the cold out, because it’s fuckin’ freezing in here. It almost feels like we’re baby birds, suspended in a giant, chilly basket of some sort. My knee’s fine though, buried beneath Alistair’s jacket. The roof is made of the same sun-shot lattice, but it’s got spires of brittle, curly moss and emaciated tangles of berry-bush vines and wild bursts of dead, dried flowers hanging from it. All kinds of flowers - but roses seem most common. A dead garden. On the ceiling.

“Holy shit,” I breathe. “This is - this is basically an elf house from Rivendell.”

“YOU SPEAK AMUSINGLY, EVEN IF I DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE WORDS.” The cosplayer leans back from my bedside. They sit in a chair made of the same delicate-spun wood as the cabin is. ‘Sit’ is definitely a word for it, but not the right word. They squat on it with dirty-smeared, bare feet. They shuffle their legs, cock their head this way and that, twist their arm around the back of the chair so far it looks painful. It’s almost like this person doesn’t know how to sit in a chair. Or sit still at all. Like an impatient child, if said impatient child was also a contortionist. The shadows. They did that twisty shit too.

You’re not Bianca, Lilith. Understanding is for smart people. People who aren’t dead.

I grip the bed below me - a thick layer of fur. The real soft stuff. Angora rabbit? Mom loved to make a big stink out of seeing some of that in the craft store.

Mom.

Fuck. If I’m dead, she’s alone. I promised her I wouldn’t leave her alone and here I am, half-awake, half-alive, all gone.

“I’m not, like, forreal dead. Right?” I ask the cosplayer. The glass bells on the bottom of their layered skirts chime as they turn to face me. With their whole neck. Upside down. I almost flinch back but stop myself at the last moment. I may have died a rude little shit, but there’s no better time than eternity to start over a new leaf.

“NOT QUITE.” The cosplayer smiles, white teeth peeking out over red lips as they adjust their neck back to normal. “THOUGH TO SOME HUMANS, WE ARE SURE IT SEEMS LIKE DEATH.”

“Uhh, okay.” I quirk a brow. “Listen, thanks for staying with me until I woke up and all, but if I’m not dead, I gotta get back to Silvere. They’re probably freaking out.”

There’s a silken pause, thin and strong. For a second my brain wanders - which way even is Silvere? - and then the cosplayer stands up from their chair so fast I get a little spooked.

“DO NOT FRET. SILVERE IS IN AGREEMENT WITH US,” They say. “THEY WILL KNOW WHAT HAS OCCURRED. IT HAS HAPPENED BEFORE, AND IT WILL HAPPEN AGAIN.”

“Agreement? Like my school agreed to let you stab me?” I scoff. “Good one.”

They tilt their head, glass beads tinkling. “WE OF FAIR CANNOT LIE. THE AGREEMENT WITH SILVERE WAS MADE MANY CENTURIES AGO.”

“What are you -” I look around suspiciously. “Are you the only one here? Where are the freaky Longhand McShadow things?”

“YOU SPEAK OF THE NIGHTROSE’S ECHOES. FRET NOT. THEY HAVE NO JURISDICTION HERE.”

Nightrose. That was the name of the deer statue in Von Arx’s office. The ‘He’.

“I’m gonna give you two seconds to stop talking like a magic eight-ball,” I offer. “Or I bounce.”

“WE HAVE TRIED,” The cosplayer says. “BUT YOU HUMANS DO NOT BOUNCE WELL.”

I swing my legs off the bed, and swing Alistair’s jacket on my shoulders. “Cool. Bye.”

Or, it would be ‘bye’, if there was a normal thing like an exit in this ethereal basket-building. There’s no door I can see - just woven branches and latticed light and dried-up, dead-ass flowers. On the far side of the room is another bed, and a lumpy shape in it like someone else is sleeping. On the wall to my left there’s a circular window carving through the wood. A way out? I squint (at least God let me keep my glasses) into it. Blue. Nothing but sky blue. Hell is red, traditionally. Wherever I am, at least there’s still sky. No clouds. Can’t see a seam of a horizon either, and no sun. Which is only mildly concerning.

“YOU CANNOT LEAVE.” The cosplayer drifts - ‘walk’ doesn’t do their feather-light footsteps justice - over to me. Just close enough to catch that too-sweet, cloying dried flower smell. Too close.

“I have this weird thing,” I carefully angle around them and make my way to the window. “Where when people tell me what not to do, I’m immediately and viscerally obligated to do it.”

The cosplayer is suddenly at my side again, way too fast (fast like Von Arx around the desk), and this time they look wildly concerned. Unhealthily concerned. Their gorgeous blue eyes look like I just told them I murdered their favorite anime character. Their pale, powdery eyebrows knit, their lips pull into a macabre-colored frown.

“OBLIGATED? HAS ONE OF US MADE A PROMISE WITH YOU ALREADY? NAME THEM.”

Promise. Making a promise. People making promises with them.

Fairy.

Fuck no. Absolutely fucking not. It can’t be.

I inch away from their white-gloved hand reaching slowly for mine - the outline of the nails underneath sharp and deadly-long.

“Nobody puts me under their gas. I usually do it to other people. It’s a friendly dominance thing, you know? There was this one time where I hid under a trampoline at a birthday party to escape a creepy uncle, and the seven-year-olds on top had all eaten copious amounts of cheese whiz -”

The cosplayer looks taken aback as they pull away. Finally. The fart jokes did something useful for once.

“YOU JEST.”

“Yeah. It’s sort of my thing.”

“YOU HAVE MANY ‘THINGS’.”

“Not as many as I’d like, considering we’re smack-dab in the middle of late stage capitalism,” I say. “Whatever. Do you know how to get out of here?”

“YES,” They say. Looking at them straight on, I realize they’re a little taller than me, which, props. Their lacy clothes are haphazard, crooked and a little off but beautiful, like they got dressed in the dark from a closet of the world’s finest offerings. Strips of animal fur - the real stuff, you can tell by the oilshine - peek from corners of their body, wrapped around their torso and draped across their shoulders. It’s like no anime character I’ve ever seen. It seems like bizarre art. Like a high fashion spread Ciel would pose in.

There’s just one tiny problem. The jam stains. Or maybe they made a metric shit-ton of chicken nuggets and spilled the honey mustard walking back to the table. I can relate. Whatever it’s made of, it’s dark yellow. More importantly, it glitters like real gold. It glitters like that one girl’s body spray in the P.E locker rooms. It glitters like my injury glitters - the rich spillage turning the fluttering lace of their outfit into a many-layered apron of ominous.

It glitters like the gold I saw oozing out of Von Arx’s window. Like the gold liquid oozing from the security monitor. But that doesn’t make any sense. Most of the glitter is right where their stomach would be. I can’t tell if they’re a girl or a boy but honestly - who cares? I’m stuck with them in a room in blue oblivion-hell and we’re both maybe-dead. I’ve got a lot of smaller things to worry about.

“Soooo…” I lead. “How do we blow this joint?”

“WE WILL LEAVE. YOU CANNOT,” They say. “THEY WILL COME FOR YOU, SOON.”

“Knew it.” I grunt and valiantly try to pry apart a branch-weave with my bare hands, but it doesn’t budge. “Always knew they would. That’s why I’ve kept all those tinfoil hats under my bed.”

“YOU MUST TELL NO ONE YOU HAVE SEEN US,” The cosplayer says. I turn to start yelling exasperatedly when I spot the deer horns on their head again. They’ve turned their whole neck upside down in that weird way, and their sheet of pale blonde hair is falling and the horns - I can see where the horns begin. In their skull. Not on a headband, but fused to the scalp, coming out of the scalp like they’ve been…

“Growing,” I whisper. “What the fuck -”

“YOU MUST TELL NO ONE,” The cosplayer comes closer. I jolt away, dodging behind a branch-woven table. “WE HAVE NOT BEEN HERE.”

“Yes you have!” I shrill. “You’re right here, right now! And you’re basically Bambi with more style!”

Dressed in white. Deer antlers.

There’s no way -

“WE WERE WORRIED,” they insist, long fingers oozing over the table. “LAST EVE WE SAW MANY THINGS FLUCTUATING, MOVING SIDEWAYS AND BACK AGAIN. THERE WERE THREE OF YOU, ALL BLOOMING FROM THE SOIL OF SILVERE - A FOREST ROSE, A STARLIGHT ROSE, AND A RAINWATER ROSE. FUTURE, PRESENT, AND PAST. SO STRONG. EQUALLY STRONG. WE HAD TO SEE YOU WITH OUR OWN EYES TO MAKE CERTAIN OF WHICH HE CHOSE.”

“He? Who is he? He chose what?” They try to step in but I thrust my hand out. “Whoa there Sailor Moon! Personal space!”

“HIM,” They say, gold-stained-lace chest straining against my palm. No heat. “YOU KNOW HIM.”

“I know a few hims, yeah!”

“YOU KNOW HIM BY NAME. YOU HAVE SAID HIS TRUE NAME ONCE, NOT LONG AGO, AND HE HEARD YOU. WE ALL HEARD THE ECHOES IN THE SOIL AND THE WIND AND THE SHADOWS. YOU GAVE THEM LIFE. THEY BECAME REAL, AND CAME FOR YOU.”

True name? What the hell is this person on? I scry my brain, pan it in a river looking for the ore of any fucking clue as to what they’re talking about. Whose ‘true’ name have I said out loud? What even is a true name? Like, a full name? Bianca. Real name. She said fairies can be attracted with their real names. But that’s - that’s not happening. I’m dead. Not in a fairytale. I’ve stuck to Silvere’s bizarre tradition of last names, mostly. I’ve said Alistair Strickland loads in my head, but I seriously doubt -

It hits me, an unstoppable train of bricks. Not Alistair Strickland. Julien. I said Julien Strickland’s whole name in Von Arx’s office out loud, and then, that was when…

“The statue,” I look up at their too-white face. “The deer statue that broke.”

The cosplayer says nothing, just stares at me, and I stare back at all the white of them, but black starts to creep in on the edges of my mind. The black deer statue. The Nightrose, Von Arx called it. The looming shadow, there in the woods, kneeling over the mangled white deer carcass. He flash of the red-eyed shadow I saw under the aurora. The red eyes - the statue’s ruby eyes, the man in the restaurant’s eyes. His open mouth and full chest about to sing. The song, and then, nothing. Then, I woke up here.

I said his name. And he came for me.

It makes sense like a dream makes sense - perfectly and impossibly and with no facts or reality behind it at all.

“Julien Strickland,” I swallow nails. “Were all those things…him?”

“HIM.” The deer-person corrects me with slow, heavy importance. “Parts of Him. His echoes. You said his name, and called to them.”

I clutch the edge of the basket-woven table for support. It doesn’t make any sense. Julien’s gone. Missing for like, forty years. I thought he was kidnapped. But kidnapped people don’t turn into looming shadows that haunt woods, killing and eating deer. They don’t stalk teenage girls. They don’t have red eyes that glow like unholy embers. Julien is Von Arx’s son, not some specter in the woods who attacks people and drags them to Rivendell-hell.

“THE WAYS ARE CLOSED,” The cosplayer continues, and I freeze. This time, their voice sounds almost mournful. Regretful. “WE SAW HUMAN LOVE AND HUMAN GREED SHATTER THE NIGHTROSE INTO THREE. WE WERE WORRIED. BUT WE ARE RELIEVED TO SEE HE HAS CHOSEN CORRECTLY. HE HAS PLUCKED THE CORRECT ROSE FROM THE SOIL OF SILVERE, AND SO WE WILL THRIVE.”

“Wait,” I start. “Julien chose me? Why? For what? Is he even still alive?”

“YOU CANNOT LEAVE.” The cosplayer moves fast again, all glass-bell sounds and swaying wisps of thread coming in too fast.

“Fuckin’ watch me!” I snatch off my shoe and hold it up. “You know how to get out of here - so tell me!”

Like I’m even threatening at all with a shoe in one hand and nothing in the other. But the cosplayer goes still, vivid blue eyes like glazed saucers. Unblinking.

“YOU CANNOT LEAVE. THE WAYS ARE CLOSED.”

Suddenly, there’s the sound of flapping wings outside the window, like a flock of birds passing by. Dozens of them. And a harp. A real harp, not a melodic voice. But it’s off-tune, or sideways - I can’t decide. A not-right harp making music between the wingbeats, and a strange, shuddering drum accompaniment, and it’s getting closer at the same time the wings are, but that doesn’t make any sense, none of this makes any -

Cosplayer looks to the window, then to me. They look scared now, and if they’re scared I should be scared too, right? I’m high. I’ve never been high and I have no idea what it’s like but I have to be right now, because when they turn to me something slits open on their forehead, pushing out of their bloodless white skin - a yellow eye. Sideways, like a giant fucked-up diamond pasted to their forehead. Thick, dark eyelashes, too big and luxurious to be human.

I really am dead.

Because the eye on the cosplayer’s forehead blinks, and focuses right on me. The black iris is sideways like a goat’s.

Like a deer’s.

The white deer in the woods, lying there in a pool of it’s own blood, dead. It’s big, glassy eyes staring sightlessly at me over the pine needles.

It’s the same eye.

“YOU MUST BECOME THE NIGHTROSE,” They say. “YOU, WITH THE EYES LIKE RAINWATER, AND NO ONE ELSE.”

“Who -” I swallow needles. “Who the fuck are you?”

They ignore me, pressing harder. “IF YOU DO NOT BECOME THE NIGHTROSE, THIS WORLD FALLS APART. YOU MUST. YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE, THE ONLY CHOICE I HAVE SEEN THAT DOES NOT LEAD TO OUR UTTER DESTRUCTION. YOU WILL BE THE NIGHTROSE. YOU MUST BE.”

From the corner of my eye I catch shadows outside the window - growing bigger, darker, closer to the surface of something, to the surface of the infinite sky outside our little room. The shape in the bed across the room groans and shifts at the twisted music, the blanket falling off them and revealing their sleeping face.

Ash-brown sheet of hair. Groomed eyebrows. Ballerina neck.

“Bianca,” I suck in air, cold water filling my heart. “Bianca!”

She doesn’t move. And then a hand - long-nailed, gloved seamlessly white, smelling of dried flowers. It blocks my view of her. It makes specific, dreamy motions right in front of my face, knuckles and fingertips curling in a blur like I don’t have my glasses on when I do, I absolutely do, and suddenly my eyelids feel like lead and the sound of the cosplayer’s voice follows me into a sleep I can’t even begin to fight.

“WE APOLOGIZE FOR WHAT IS ABOUT TO OCCUR. WE APOLOGIZE FOR NOT STOPPING IT WHEN WE HAD THE CHANCE. THIS IS OUR GUILT. OUR MISTAKE. THE OTHERS HAVE SUFFERED FOR IT, AND YOU WILL NOW JOIN THEM.”

37

THE TEETH (OR, HOW WORDS ARE THE CLAWS OF THE MOUTH, AND SOME PEOPLE NEVER BITE)

Okay ref, time-out. Rewind. Red card. Whatever you have to do to put a pause on my life, do it now, because I need a breather or ten.

But life keeps moving, in that inexorable bullshit rhythm it’s always had, and I wake up with a lot of a resentment and just a wee bit of a splitting headache.

And this time, there are even more cosplayers.

And Bianca’s bed is empty.

Where did she go? She was right there. Did these new people take her? My blood goes hot then cold, magma and slush ice in rapid succession. Fear. You fear things without names. I should probably call them something else - they aren’t people. But there’s no other word for them - every inch of their shtick looks like an unbelievable costume, carefully contrived to impress and mindbend all at once. The haphazard magpie way it’s made, though, with silk and lace and bits of fur, is exactly the same as the first cosplayer.

They crowd around me on the bed (how did I get back in bed?), swimming amid their floaty fabrics in all colors of the rainbow, threaded with gold and glass and tin trinkets. Through my groggy haze, I see a cheap rhinestone wristwatch clinking above my head. My eyes focus - a bouquet of rusted Swiss army knives, a bottle of smelling salts, a long thread of detached keys from the back of old wind-up toys. Rows of regular-ass modern house keys are embroidered into one of the cosplayer’s high collar. Another wears earrings made of two columns of tiny gears from some unknown machine strung on gold wire. A third cosplayer wears has a full-size wine opener dangling from a curtain tassel around their neck. One of them has a silk scarf around their head, embroidered on every inch with tiny copper spoons for tea time. Dozens of pieces of pure junk have been woven and pasted and melded to their clothes like they were precious gems. They wear everyday junk in their ears and around their neck like it’s jewelry. Treasure.

Not all of them are white like the deer-person. Black, golden, brown - no matter the color of their skin, they all share that same bloodless look to them; their makeup matte and eerily caked on. No veins to be seen, no scars, no flush, no change at all. And their eyes are nuts; some deep blue, some pale green, some purple like pressed summer violets, some onyx-black with silver streaks, others dramatic shades of gleaming redwood-brown. The only common thread is all of them have that bright, technicolor-unreal ring around their irises. Their eyes don’t look real. That’s what really nails it home that I’m dead; eyes like crystals, like gemstones made deep in the earth and lit up from behind like captured stars. Eyes like fairytales. Eyes that aren’t possible on Earth.

Eyes like Von Arx.

And all of these cosplayers are beautiful - perfectly, eerily symmetrical in the face. Like cutting only one half of a paper snowflake, the other half coming out identical. Like math. Like computer simulations.

If I’m lucky, this is all a computer simulation, and someone will pull the plug.

None of them have deer eyes in their forehead. Yet. The white deer cosplayer’s gone from the room - no antlers anywhere. No white. Everyone wears all colors of the rainbow, but not white. Not gray. And not black.

I start with the important questions this time.

“Where’s my friend?” I croak. “Who the fuck are you people?”

“Unremarkable,” One of the cosplayers dressed in purple puts their chin in their gloved hands and leans on the bed, their voice high and thin like a flute.

“Not a spot of glamor to her,” Another in volcanic crimson sighs, smoothing their sleek black hair with gloved fingers. They all wear gloves. All of them. And all their fingers are sharp-nailed. Long like witches’. Tipped like blades.

No, some deep part of my brain whispers. Like claws.

“Let us hope her blood has some other redeeming features, then,” One in spring-green says.

“It must have,” The purple one lilts. “Or why else would He choose someone as plain as her?”

Some of their voices are low, others high, all of them melodious, and I start to get the feeling they don’t give a shit about what they sound like. Or look like. About being boys or girls. The way they carry themselves, graceful and even and confident…they give off this air like they could be anything they wanted to be. They could be half-deer like the white one was, if they wanted. That’s when it really hits me. It was floating on the surface before, but now it’s finally sunken down into the bedrock of my mind. These aren’t cosplayers at all.

These people aren’t humans.

Best case scenario - angels. Worst-case scenario - demons.

Either way I get the feeling I am - how does one say - mega-fucked.

I sit up slowly, wary of my back-wounds. “If you don’t tell me where Bianca is right now -”

The angel-demon heads snap to me instantly, follow my every movement like a flock of crows locked on a shiny thing, some of their necks twisting in that unnatural way as a dozen jewel-colored eyes rivet on my face. Holy fuckin’ shit. Whatever they are, they’re terrifying.

Breathe, Lili.

“Bianca. My friend.” I gulp, the fear pounding so hard I can barely think. “Where is she?”

“Ah,” The purple one’s smile splits their green-painted lips, showing pure white teeth with too-sharp incisors. “It speaks of the new traitor.”

Musical echoes of ‘traitor’ flutter around the crowd, whispered and passed along like drinkable venom.

“Do not concern yourself with traitors,” The purple one continues. “You are not one of them. You have been chosen - you have been brought to us by Him.”

I swallow. “Real flattered. Lyft costs must’ve been wild. But me and Bianca need to go home. Dinner’s getting cold and there’s a lotta very important people worried about us.”

“Humans do tend to worry,” The one in purple agrees with me, tossing their unreal-looking mane of perfect bronze curls over their shoulders.

“Exactly.” I point at them. “So. We should be getting home.”

“The Nightrose chose a persistent one,” The one in crimson cocks their head, onyx-eyes gleaming hard. “Who seems to love Earth excessively.”

“Oh yeah,” I blurt. “Big fan. Can’t get enough of her. I huff her dirt constantly, give her these huge massages. And messages.” I cup my hands around my mouth and shout down. “Heyyyy! Miss ya, you hot, climate-changing bitch!”

None of the demons move, or blink. I make a shaky laugh. Of course I’m fucking shaking. Still don’t know if I’m dead or not. Still don’t know if this is all a dream, if Bianca really is here and in trouble. Like I am. Like I could be, if this is real.

“I just…” I lower my voice. “I just want to go home.”

“We would oblige this,” The crimson one says (so much crimson it’s hard to look at). “But the ways are closed. The traitor was brought here by the shards of their own broken promise. But the Nightrose brought you. He is the only one with permission to shepherd untraitorous humans here and back again.”

“The cycle begins again,” The demon in green smiles with all their teeth.

“What cycle? Why would Julien -”

Every single demon around my bed shrinks back, a tide before a tidal wave, the faint sound of hissing echoing around the room.

“We do not say His name,” The one in purple glares stunning redwood daggers into me.

“You are human, so you are unknowing,” the crimson one says, reaching a red-gloved hand out to stroke my frozen chin with their long nails. The color’s bad, the dagger-nails are worse. “Ken well; names are precious in Valen, to be given to trusted ones only. They are not to be used unthinkingly. This is why We take other names. His name is Nightrose, as our name is Bloodbucket.”

I’m too scared to even smirk at how stupid it sounds. Like a kid making up a superhero name. The atavistic survivalist part of me is painfully aware they could shove their nails right through my eye socket any second now. Bloodbucket pulls their hand away from my chin, finally, and I breathe for what feels like the first time. The purple-robed demon makes a weird bow, holding their fingers up to shield their face like a slotted mask.

“I am Wiltlaurel,” They say, coming up with a smile.

Names are a good sign. They don’t want to kill me right away - or again.

“I’m Li-”

And that’s the switch.

I stop myself at the hungry look that flashes through the congregation all at once. It’s as if someone threw a breaker in their collective basements - the floaty grace and effortless composure instantly drops away, vanishing and replaced with a ravenous glow. Their perfect skin pulls taught over their perfecter bone structure, making them look too-suddenly malnourished. Their bodies tense, muscles going still under lace. Straight posture turns hunched, waiting. Some of them lick their lips, others click their bottlecap-ringed fingers together expectantly. The hollows of their high cheekbones look deeper, somehow. Darker.

And there’s an edge to the air, like a hundred knives pointed at me. Every hair on my body screams I’m not safe. Tells me to run. To hide, wherever I can. Ciel’s hungry look at the deer hair is nothing compared to this, and yet it is this, all at once. From a dozen different people.

Monsters.

Beneath that polished, eerily perfect surface, they’re starving. For what, I have no idea. But I’m sure as fuck not gonna be the one to feed them.

“N-Newgirl,” I blurt the only pseudonym that comes to mind - Alistair’s name for me. “My name is Newgirl.”

The world softens with a visible tic. The air moves again - a rollover of fractured, watery sunlight on the floor and the dead flowers shuddering minutely in the ceiling. The hunger fades from their faces all at once, the crowd going limp. Their grace returns in trickles as they straighten their posture, sweeten their faces, their trinkets chittering on their clothes - sounding exactly like a flock of birds. Hungry no longer. Only grace. Satisfied elegance.

“Newgirl,” Bloodbucket smiles. “It is our pleasure to meet you. On behalf of the Diamond Circle, allow us to be the first to welcome you to our world of Valen.”

Valen. A world. A whole fuckin’ world. Not Earth. Not Hell. Not Heaven.

Valen.

“What - ” I swallow. “What are you?”

Bloodbucket adjusts their robes mincingly, trinkets tinkling and smile widening with teeth - so many teeth.

“We are called the Fairfolk, and We thank you for your service, human.”

TO BE CONTINUED

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wanna preface this by being completely, blisteringly honest; this is the most scared I’ve ever been writing a book. Maybe ever in my life.

Most of the time, writing means diving into your soul, sure. But I didn’t just dive for this one. I went straight into hell. I dug down into the molten core of me and dredged up every fear, every hope, every insecurity, and spun it tight with every joke and pun and moment of levity I could find. Alistair and Ciel and Lilith sprung up from the primordial soup of me, and I gave them clothes and food and, really, they made a book for you. A whole world. It hurt every inch of the way. It gave me so much joy every inch of the way. The three of them are here to stay, and I hope you enjoy the journey. We’re going to grow together, I think. Reading means growing together with everyone who’s ever read that book. That’s why it’s beautiful. That’s why I keep doing it.

I wrote (am writing) this series to delve into what life meant to me as a teenager. This is my last year as a 20-something, and I wanted a sort of farewell to who I was growing up. I dusted off a lot of old diaries for ‘research’, and even revived my Livejournal (if you know what that is, by god, you’re an old like me)!!! I wanted a book that encapsulated my very specific teenage experience growing up in Hawaii, growing up with creeping self-doubt and keening self-awareness and a slightly-twisted way of looking at love all while trying to process childhood trauma. I wanted to write what it meant to me to be a teenager, in my veins, what I can remember sharply of it; the insecurity, and the security, and the superiority and the hilarity and fear of it all. It was so unfair, wasn’t it?

So. It’s selfish, I know. But this book is for me, mostly.

To my mother for being her witchy self, and to my best friend GW for helping fill in the seemingly unconnected lines of my brain. Thank you to Laini Taylor and her amazing works for constantly reminding me it’s okay to be dreamy and break things like silly little rules. To everyone who’s ever left me a message - on Insta or Goodreads or twitter or email or wherever - telling me what they think of my writing: thank you. Really and truly. Your time and attention are so incredibly valuable to me. A huge thank you to every book blogger who signed up for the ARCs - just seeing so many people excited about reading this really made my heart sing. A very special thank you to a reader (@palaceofwords on Instagram) for helping me with the intricacies of Swiss greetings!

And most of all, a shimmering, warm, bright thanks to you the reader. I don’t know where this book will take me, but it’s given me so much already. I hope it, too, has given you something.

May reading and writing be your armor, your sword, your shield. Always.

Table of Contents

Contents

Disclaimer/Content Warnings

Dedication

Map

1. The Shadow (Or, How two boys discovered magic)

Nine Years Later

2. The Before (Or, How things are never just once upon a time)

3. The Man (Or, How one girl found the devil)

4. The Journey (Or, How life is never fair to you most of all)

5. The School (Or, How you’ve always felt older than everyone, older than time, and in every crowd you look for someone like you)

6. The Beginning (Or, How a boy prepares for a battle he can’t win)

7. The Fight (Or, How dangerous first impressions are in the right hands of the wrong people)

8. The Touch (Or, How each finger is both the arrow and the apple)

9. The Missing (Or, How you sometimes think death is just God sweeping out the bed crumbs so he can sleep)

10. The Bridge (Or, How magic is the only thing that matters anymore)

11. The Dinner (Or, How being evil is easy)

12. The Forest (Or, How many steps you can count between you and the person you want to be)

13. The Drawing (Or, How no one believes you until it’s too late)

14. The Regret (Or, How a moment comes and goes and leaves you behind forever)

15. The Duel (Or, How deeply a sword has to cut for it to be dangerous)

16. The Word (Or, How five letters can ruin it all)

17. The Moonlight (Or, How they’ll try to steal your light, all the good parts of you, and you will not let them.)

18. The Candle (Or, How you want to run like a river, riotously, uncaring whether you’re clean or dirty)

19. The Mother (Or, How you learned to build your armor piece by piece as you were fleeing)

20. The Interrogation (Or, How being young feels like being a ghost)

21. The Blood Promise (Or, How everything means nothing to some people)

22. The Nightrose (Or, How a girl breaks the devil)

23. The Story (Or, How you waited so long, alone, for no one to save you)

24. The Picnic (Or, How being a person is the hardest thing you’ll ever do)

25. The Wondering (Or, How a laugh can chew you up and spit you out again)

26. The Whisper (Or, How impossible is a word we invented to spare ourselves)

27. The Church (Or, How they love to bless you with their scorn)

28. The Deer (Or, How many times you can tolerate being called prey)

29. The Pool (Or, How the pain will always be ready for you to come home)

30. The Camera (Or, How many medals you should have by now for still being here)

31. The Family (Or, how to be satisfied with just the trees, with just the rain)

32. The Fairy Ring (Or, How none of it feels real when it’s happening, because only in the quiet dark does reality hurt)

33. The Dream (Or, How ‘probably’ has never been good enough for you)

34. The Exam (Or, How they like to say getting over yourself is easier with booze)

35. The Shadows (Or, How even as you sleep, yours gets longer)

36. The End (Or, How many times you have to die to move on)

37. The Teeth (Or, How words are the claws of the mouth, and some people never bite)

To Be Continued

Acknowledgments