to kill me today. Instead, I’m with the guy I tried to have killed. The guy who spells disaster for hundreds of girls like me. The guy whose voice is kind and whose gentle face I will forever be able to see.
An arm comes around my shoulder and I jump.
“It’s okay,” a woman says. “You’re safe.”
“Where’s Fia?” Adam asks.
“How do you all not know?” I ask. “I thought she had a plan. You are the plan. Right?”
“She didn’t tell us anything,” the woman says. “Do you have any idea what she’ll do next?”
I shake my head. Fia’s future is always a mystery to me.
“MISS FIA, YOUR SHOULDER—” THE SECURITY GUARD says, eyes wide.
Ignoring him, I skip inside, the opulent, open lobby of the school swallowing me whole. James turns a corner, his suit all well-tailored lines of professionalism, sleek and slippery and mature. I hate it when he wears a suit. When he wears a suit he is Mr. Keane. His easy smile freezes before it can touch his eyes. He’s scared for me.
It’s adorable.
“What happened?” he asks. Ms. Robertson (I hate her I hate her I hate her I hate her) is behind him, a sheaf of papers clutched to her starched chest.
I shrug—it hurts—then flop onto one of the leather couches. I’ll get blood on it. I’ve poured a lot of blood into this school, but it’s still thirsty, it’s always thirsty.
“Ran into an old friend. And his knife. Why do so many of my old friends have knives?”
Ms. Robertson stomps toward me, glaring at my arm like it’s personally offensive. “My office. We’ll see if we can patch you up without stitches. Who did this?”
I smile at her. Hello, Doris! Hello, Doris! Hello, Doris! Hello, Doris! Hello, Doris! Hello, Doris! Hello, Doris! Hello, Doris! Hello, Doris! Hello, Doris! Hello, Doris! Hello, Doris! Hello, Doris! Hello, Doris! Hello, Doris! Hello, Doris! Hello, Doris!
She glares at James. “Make her stop.”
James raises an eyebrow at me. “Fia?”
“What? All I said was hello. It’s polite to say hello. Hello, Doris.”
Huffing, she leaves and I stand, slightly woozy, to follow her. “Who was it?” James whispers.
“Dmitri. Russian mobster? He was mad that I stole millions of dollars from him. Silly man, doesn’t he know money is imaginary?” It’s paper that turns into numbers on screens. It’s there, then it’s gone. I put it places, I take it out, I move it somewhere else. Imaginary. Most things are imaginary, when you think about it.
Sometimes I think I’m imaginary.
“Dmitri,” he growls, nodding. “If I had been there …”
“I still would have fought him and won, but then I would have had to worry about you, too.”
James gives me a wry half smile. “At least let me pretend I can defend you sometimes.”
I pat his cheek. “You’re so cute when you’re delusional.”
“And you’re sexy when you’re on a post-fight high.” His eyes search mine, more serious than his tone would indicate, and I know he’s looking to see whether or not I’m falling apart. He doesn’t need to.
I’m better than I was a month ago. A week ago, even. It was bad, but James held me together. He whispered dark, secret things to me and helped me escape myself with promises of flames and freedom. I narrow my eyes but smile, to let him know I know what he’s looking for and that he won’t find it.
“Don’t tell Doris about Dmitri. I’ll be there in a minute.” James brushes a kiss along the top of my head. I lean into him, breathing in, wanting to lose myself there, needing to lose myself there. “Where were Johnson and Davis?” he asks.
I take a step back. “How am I supposed to know? It’s not my fault if my shadows can’t stay attached to me. Call Wendy Darling. Maybe she can sew them to the bottoms of my feet.”
He swears, pulling out his phone. “They’re there to protect you.”
“Do I look like I need protection?” I hold out my hands, one with streaks of blood on it, and give him my best crazy crazy crazy crazy grin. “You know, I like Dmitri. I crippled him, but I like him.”
Whoever he’s calling picks up and he starts yelling about doing a job and consequences and cleaning up messes. I wonder if the Russian guy is the mess or if I am. There’s a smear of blood on James’s suit jacket from where I hugged him, and I think it looks nice there, like it belongs.
I leave him and make my way to Ms. Robertson’s office. She’s already got a massive medical kit out on her desk and I sit, peeling off my shirt. It’s hot in here, the heater in the corner working too hard, drying out the air and making everything feel small and scratchy.
“What did you do this time?” she asks through gritted teeth, fingers surprisingly gentle as she cleans the wound on my shoulder.
“Someone took my parking space.”
“You don’t have a car.”
“That doesn’t mean I should let someone take my parking space now, does it?”
She tears off strips of medical tape, lining them up to pull the edges of the cut closed. “Why don’t you tell me who did this?”
Do you really want to get into my head? I think. It’s not a friendly place. You’ll regret it.
She sneers. “Are you going to kill me?”
I twist away from her, ripping open a package of gauze and slapping it over my arm. “Is there a reason I should?”
“I don’t know. Was there a reason you killed Eden?”
I tap tap tap tap against the table, then use my teeth to tear off enough tape to keep the gauze in place. I hated Eden. I hated her. I can’t think about it, can’t think about what happened, won’t think about what happened. “She deserved it.” I look at Ms. Robertson with the full force of my baby-blue eyes. “Do you deserve it?” They’ll let me, I think at her. They’ll let me do whatever I want, and we both know it.
“And your sister? She deserved it, too?”
I explode out of my chair, inches away from Ms. Robertson’s face, which is no longer sneering. “She was in my way.” Ms. Robertson is standing between me and the door, and I look pointedly at it. “You are in my way.”
She moves.
As I walk past, her voice shakes with anger or fear (I can’t tell, I’m not Eden, Eden Eden why’d she bring up Eden?) as she says, “And Clarice?”
I pause, my hand on the doorway. “I just didn’t like her.” Letting my mind go blank, not thinking anything at all, I turn and smile pleasantly at Ms. Robertson.
In the hall I nearly bump into a girl. She does a double take. “Fia? What happened? Where’s your shirt?”
I glance down, my black bra in stark contrast to my pale torso, then laugh. “I knew I was forgetting something!” I try so hard not to remember their names, so very very hard, but I can’t sleep because I see their faces.