Wicked (26 page)

A bitter breeze slices through the room.

I let my eyes linger over her as I rise to my feet. I want to remember her this way, feeble and bleeding.

I walk out the door with Gage and Logan on either side of me. Chloe’s incision looked disappointingly superficial. With my luck she’ll be sealed and healed by morning.

We come upon Brielle leaning over the rail yakking into the bushes while Drake stands beside her rubbing her back.

We head down the porch, and I turn to get a look at the house.

“Well done, Ms. Messenger.” Marshall speeds me away from Logan and Gage over near the edge of the property.

“So, does Holden get his,” I stop short of saying body, “you know…”

“Yes, he gets his, you know. I plan on collecting on that kiss momentarily, so give yourself a pep talk, psych yourself out, whatever it is you do to prepare for a touch of my resplendence.”

At least his ego doesn’t suffer.

“I can’t give you that kiss.” I glance back at both Logan and Gage openly glaring in our direction. “You forgot Nat and Pierce.”

“Abject humiliation is hard to come by.” He gives my hand a squeeze and looks up towards the roofline of Brielle’s house.

“Oh wow.” My mouth falls open.

Nat and Pierce are both straddling the rain gutter strangulation style.

“They’re naked,” Marshall is quick to point out in the event I hadn’t noticed.

“Rutting on rooftops is sort of their thing.” It’s a reprisal of what they did at West a few weeks back—got Nat suspended for a couple days. Come to think of it, she’s sort of suspended now.

The entire population of East and West watch as Nat and Pierce writhe in their discomfort. The fire department shines a spotlight in their direction, and everyone stares transfixed as though we were unexpectedly being treated to some X-rated movie.

“Good work, Marshall,” I pat him on the back. “And Holden the not so friendly ghost?”

“Already resurrected.”

“Really?” I bounce on the balls of my feet.

“Really,” he mocks my enthusiasm. “I’ll be by later tonight to collect your debt. The price of revenge is rather mouthwatering, wouldn’t you say?” He looks past my shoulder into the crowd and gives a wicked grin. “Or shall we do it now?”

“Tonight,” I breathe out in defeat.

Chapter Fifty-Three

The Chase

I see Chloe hedging around the corner of the house and not a sign of Ellis anywhere to be found.

What’s she doing?

I step away from the commotion, circling around the crowd until I hit the abandoned side yard. The voices of the mob and rescue crews are quickly doused with the solitude of the forest on this narrow strip of land that leads to the open backfields of Paragon.

“Chloe?” I finger the spirit sword tucked in my jeans when I say her name.

I cut her once tonight and watched her bleed with pleasure. I’d love to repeat the effort.

Something shifts in the distance—a hand pushes out, then the shimmer of hair in the moonlight.

I pull the dagger out and take off after her.

Her footsteps quicken, she knows someone’s back here. I can practically hear the self-doubt resonating in her erratic panting. She knows it’s me—she must.

Chloe laughs as she runs.

“Catch me if you can,” her voice echoes in the dark.

She wants this.

She’s been waiting an entire year to lure me back into the forest—just Chloe and me, and the spirit sword—poetry in motion.

“Skyla?” It’s Gage. His husky baritone echoes in the night. I hear my name again, overlapping—it’s both of them.

I head deeper into the forest, away from the comfortable stream of moonlight to create a border of blackness between me and those willing to stop me from attempting to deliver one fatal blow.

So this is the big reprisal—the do-over ending that attempts to change everything. One of us needs to die tonight, and according to Gage, the odds are in Chloe odds favor.

I can see her racing ahead of me, traversing branches, extending her legs over tree stumps like a track star. Chloe is exhausting all of her physical resources. I hope she’s perfectly depleted when I knock her to the ground.

My side starts to cramp up. My shins are on fire. The night air cuts sharp icy jags into my lungs. I’m not up for this marathon sprint. Pierce and his thirst for my iron-rich blood has sapped my strength.

“Have to catch Chloe,” I mutter.

We continue on, eclipsing the forest in its entirety, out to the embankment over Narrows’ beach.

“Skyla!” The voice is distinctly Logan’s—he’s too close.

I muster every last stitch of energy to keep going—think of my father—how helpless he was when he burned. How Chloe used him to fuel the drive for her narcissistic urge for self-preservation. She barreled ahead at all costs, and now it propels me at super human speeds. Chloe looks like a thimble in the distance, but in less than a minute, I’m upon her, running in the fog-laden trail from the fumes of her undeserving breath.

The unthinkable happens.

Chloe stumbles. Her arms flail wild as she does a massive face plant into Paragon’s fertile soil. I land on her back, pinning her down completely. I clutch at the knife with a stranglehold so tight, my fingers impress into the metal.

Chloe reaches back and knocks me in the side of the face with the force of a tractor. A searing trail of fire shoots through my jaw and up towards my temple.

She’s going to crush me. She’ll kill me if I let her.

It’s a brawl of apocalyptic proportions as I try to control her wild limbs. The effort proves futile, so I swipe at her with the knife in earnest.

I slice through her sweater—her jeans, I get one clean cut into the left of her chin. Welcome to the club, I want to say as the thick seam of blood rises on her cheek. We wrestle and grunt, rolling over one another in turn.

Chloe overpowers me, rolls me on my back and sits hard on my stomach with a thud. It is an all out struggle for the sword, she won’t quit, and I won’t let go.

The handle of the knife inverts in my hand from perspiration, pointing the blade right down over my chest.

“Shit.” I try and buck her off, but she grabs me by the wrist, holds the spirit sword over my heart and ignites it like a flame.

My elbows lock, my muscles tremble as I try to regain control.

“You’re going to kill yourself, Skyla,” she spurts it out with laughter. “Did you know this weapon has the power to kill? That even you could die by its blade?”

It’s not true. I shake my head just barely. She’s trying to scare me, throw me enough to land me in the hospital on a permanent basis.

“It’s true.” She bites down and studies me. “Shall we count to three?”

It takes all of my being to hold up that metal spear, but really I’m looking past it, past Chloe—up at the paper lantern sky, wonder ing if I could in fact be on my way to meet my father, my mother—leave this body right here on Paragon tonight.

Chloe lets out a magnificent roar, buckles my arms and sends the sword plunging towards me.

A shoe intercepts—Chloe is tackled from above.

Logan retrieves the knife from several yards away as Gage binds up Chloe with his body.

I get up on my knees and slap the dirt off my thighs.

“Enjoy it while you can,” I chide. “That is the only bodily contact you’ll get from him. And you know what? He hates touching you.”

She looks up at him with heartbreak pouring out of those dark bitter eyes.

“You can hear him, can’t you?” I ask. “He can’t hide his true feelings when you touch him.”

Logan steps over to her, unhooks the necklace from the back of her neck and holds it up for me to see.

I can’t breathe. I’m so stunned I can’t move. In truth, I had forgotten all about his grandmother’s protective hedge.

It has its own magical charm. A large silver medallion hangs from it. The blue stone in the center shimmers with zeal as though it were celebrating the fact it was no longer around Chloe’s neck.

Logan comes over, and I pull back my hair, bow into him. The pendant pats gently against my chest as he secures the latch, still warm from Chloe’s body.

“Thank you,” I say looking up at him.

It’s done.

He taps his fingers over the pendant and I place my hand over his.

I’m safe.

Chapter Fifty-Four

Mia and Me

Logan takes Chloe to the convenience store down the street to clean up. I was outvoted when I suggested we butcher her into twelve different pieces, bury her flesh in the four corners of the island. I guess Logan and Gage are a bunch of bleeding hearts after all—that, and they’re entirely not sold on the idea of spending the remainder of their time behind bars.

Gage walks me home through a blanket of darkness, dusted in luminescent fog. I love it like this with Gage—holding hands, safe.

I pause and fondle the pendant around my neck.

Gage presses out a smile that sends a hot bite of lust ripping through my insides.

“I love you,” I say, dazed by his beauty.

He reaches over and removes the necklace with his class ring from around my neck.

“What are you doing?”

“I don’t want it to catch, or anything. I want that pendant secure on you. I like the idea of no more exploding Fems.” His dimples dart in and out. He places his ring in the palm of my hand and moves it close to my chest.

“Can I keep it?” I love his class ring. It’s like having a piece of Gage wherever I go.

“It’s yours.”

“You’re mine,” I lick the smile off his face, and we fall into a timeless kiss. The world warps and melts around us, spins until it’s dizzy with jealousy, until it’s just Gage and me and the universe, breathing like one.

***

Gage and I step into the house still alive with the thumps and vibrations from the middle school event of the century.

Hundreds of baby faced seventh graders float around the house, each one armed with a red plastic cup. I snatch one out of the first hand I see and sniff.

“Are you freaking insane?” I shout over his squared off glasses. “This is beer!” He stares back sporting a full metal jacket in his mouth.

I send the cup sailing into the crowd as I storm through the downstairs in search of Mia.

Gage and I try to break up the party, and for once I feel like a responsible—moral adult, except for the part about having to kiss Marshall later. That will totally ding my morals and it makes me want to hang Marshall instead.

I see Melissa slumped over the counter, barely seated on a barstool, and for a second I think about checking her pulse. The weird thing is, I don’t even panic. With my blood, and Marshall’s know how, I feel strangely removed from the concept of death as I once knew it.

“Wake up!” I jostle her to attention.

She lets out a moan, and I can smell the alcohol on her breath.

Great.

“Where’s Mia?” I slide a stack of paper towels over to her in the event she tries to invert her intestines.

She mumbles and points up.

Up? As in upstairs? Why would she be upstairs when there’s a perfectly good party going on right down here?

Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!

My hands push out in front of me as I speed my way through the crowd and up the stairs.

I trip over bodies rolling around in the dark hall until I stumble into Mia’s bedroom. Empty. Thank God.

I breathe a sigh of relief as I shut the door. A vision of Mia tangled up in some boy sails through my brain, and I whip open the door to Mom and Tad’s room.

A circle of kids sit on the bed, smoking, and judging by the very distinct Ellis-like odor, it’s for sure not legal.

“Out!” I thunder scaring them all onto the floor.

I race over to my bedroom and open the door.

“Mia?” The light is on in my bathroom and the obvious sound of giggles emit from the other side of the door. God, what if she’s getting it on with some guy in my bathroom? What kind lowlife tries to get a girl on the freaking toilet?

I burst through the door fully pissed and ready to castrate.

“Skyla!” Brielle snatches a towel off the counter at a lame attempt to cover up her chest. Drake peers over at me from behind the wall. He’s not wearing a shirt, which instinctively causes me to shut my eyes in the event he’s got flesh colored pants to match.

“Sorry!” I close the door. “So glad you’re back together!”

A hissing noise comes from the closet, and I jump, knocking over the lamp in fear.

“It’s me,” Mia hisses.

“Where are you?” I reach blindly towards my desk.

The closet light flicks on, and I go over. The first thing I glance at is the transom over the butterfly room, making sure it’s securely in place.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m hiding.” She pulls a long strand of hair over her face. “Gabriel Armistead wanted to do it, and I chickened out.”

“Who the hell’s Gabriel Armistead? Never mind, I don’t want to know, and thank you for chickening out.”

She shrugs. “I thought about you, and I didn’t do it.”

“Me?”

“Yeah.” Her eyes glow in this gentle light. She’s so beautiful. She’s worth a thousand Gabriel Armisteads if not a million. “You know,” she continues, “knocked up and stuff. I don’t want to ruin my life like you did.”

I want to correct her, but don’t. “You made the right decision.” Sadly I don’t think it would ruin my life if I slept with Gage or had his baby. But I get what she’s saying, and she’s right. No reason to make life harder than it has to be. Not that I’m ever going to admit to Gage he’s right in waiting for that perfect moment. Especially when it’s tons of fun trying to convince him otherwise.

She walks towards the door. “Oh and Skyla?”

I glance over at her.

“I’m going to tell you had the party.”

“I’ll tell you had the party,” I shoot back.

“They’ll never believe you. No one ever does.”

Chapter Fifty-Five

Lips Like These

Horrifying. Trashed. Decimated.

I don’t know how to even begin to clean this mess, so I don’t. Instead, I convince Gage that I’m totally OK with him going home and wait for Marshall to appear over my bed like a glowworm.

“Hello,” he whispers, leaning against the closet.