Chapter 23 Nicole
Nicole
The asphalt digs into my knees. My hair falls over my face like a veil, trying to shield me from humiliation. But there’s nothing to stop the jeers from drilling into my ears. Each word strikes a nail deep into my skull.
Teacher’s pet.
What a freak!
You’ll never get a boyfriend.
Dumb as a head of lettuce.
Someone grabs my chin. I don’t need to look to know who it is. I remember the girl’s face.
But when I lift my head, it’s my father standing there. His face contorts with disgust. “This is what I get after everything I’ve done for you?”
I open my mouth to explain that they ambushed me. That I’m one and they’re many.
My voice is gone.
His upper lip curls. “You’re embarrassing me, Nicole! Stop acting like a pathetic prey!”
Tears sting my eyes, but I refuse to let them fall. If I cry, the invisible ghosts around me will laugh again, and that will only deepen my father’s disgust.
He watches me with pursed lips, waiting for me to make a move.
My muscles are too weak. I can’t get up.
“You’ll never be worthy of being my daughter!” he hisses and turns his back on me.
He walks away, and I open my mouth to shout after him but the sound never escapes. Despair spreads over my skin, seeping into my chest and shrouding my heart in a shadow so deep no one can break through.
Then, at the edge of the schoolyard, I see Gaetano. His gaze locks onto mine, trapping me there. I don’t try to break free. I simply fall into those dark depths and drown, drown, drown…
The nightmare is still haunting me, when—
Knock-knock.
I freeze in the chair in front of my vanity. I can’t deal with my dad today, not right now.
“Miss Nicole? You have a visitor!” Katya’s voice, our senior housekeeper, floats through the closed door.
“Not a good time…” I reach for my spare cap and pull it low over my forehead.
“She insists! Says it’s urgent!”
It must be Boyana. Probably hooked up with someone last night and needs to give me the blow-by-blow.
I part my lips to send her away as the door flies open with a bang, and Daria storms in. Her hair’s yanked into a messy ponytail, and she’s clutching a giant tub of ice cream. Her eyes dart around the room, landing on me. “Jesus, Nicole! Are you okay?!”
Katya plants her fists on her hips. “I told her to wait downstairs!”
“It’s fine.” I stand, gesturing for Katya to leave us, and close the door again. Then I face Daria. “What the hell are you doing here? Why are you yelling? Do you want the entire house to know something’s wrong?”
“You haven’t told your family about the Black Joker?”
I snort, pressing the brim of the cap tighter against my forehead. “Yeah, let them think I’ve lost it, right?”
Daria’s gaze lingers on the visor of my cap. Don’t ask. Don’t ask… “Don’t be ridiculous! They’re your family. Of course they’d believe you…” At least she’s stopped gawking at my cap.
I wave her off and settle back on my stool, creating some space between us. “So, why are you here? I texted you I’m okay.”
Daria perches on the edge of my bed. “I figured you could use some support.” She waves the tub of ice cream in front of her face. “Seriously, Nicole, how can you be so stingy with details in those messages? This is the Black Joker we’re talking about!”
Our last encounter replays in my mind. What does she expect me to say? That I spiraled from terror to desire in a heartbeat when he pressed himself against me? That I melted into the touch of the very man I should have run from?
The thought alone ignites a fresh wave of fury—at him, at myself, at this whole twisted game I never asked to play.
“I guess you’re freaking out because your turn’s coming up at the end of the year,” I snap at her. Even though she doesn’t deserve the harsh words, meanness is my favorite weapon when I need to hide.
A crease appears between Daria’s eyebrows. “I’m freaking out for you, Nicole. I can’t even imagine what you’re going through…”
The sympathy in her expression makes me want to pull the cap down over my entire face. I’m used to commanding respect, not pity. Trusting her with the information about the Black Joker was a mistake. I can’t help but say, “Yeah, because you’re always such a saint.”
Daria clutches the ice cream tub to her chest. “I wouldn’t say that. I’ve done things I’m not proud of. Once, I promised our neighbor I’d water her plants while she was away, and I forgot—”
“Oh, spare me! You always care. Always see people as saints.”
Her face twists into a scowl. “Right now, I see you as a bitter bitch who could disappear from this world in days. But you were the one who taught me not to be afraid of the dark when we were kids. You taught me not to fear the unknown, and I’ve never stopped being grateful for that.
That’s why I’m here. Because I care about the girl you were, not the one you’ve become.
” She presses her lips together, her gaze sweeping my room.
I don’t know what she sees, but then she shakes her head. “This was a mistake.”
She stands and heads for the door. The grinning Cheshire Cat on the back of her T-shirt fades in a slow-motion shot. A forgotten detail from my past—those days when Daria and I played that weird video game where Alice was a bloodthirsty zombie, and the cat was a demonic hound.
The quiet days, before I grew up. Before I became the “Baroness.”
“Daria, wait! I’m sorry for what I said. I’m just… on edge.” I sigh and pull off the cap.
Daria turns, her eyes widening on the mark. “Oh, my God!”
* * *
We order pizza. Hours slip by as we browse the internet for anything about the Black Joker, bouncing between Google and old occult blogs. By evening, we’ve explored everything remotely connected to Angelina. And still nothing. It’s not as though we expected this would be easy.
The glow from the screen reflects in the glass of my cold coffee. Daria taps on the trackpad, brushes her fingers across her lips, then faces me. “You never did tell me… What does the Black Joker look like?”
Just thinking about his cold, hard face causes a stabbing pain in my gut. “What do you mean?”
“Well…” Daria leans back against the pillow.
“You mentioned he seems about thirty, and nothing specific. His hair? Eyes? Am I supposed to picture some sexy version of Snape, or more like Julieta’s witcher, who was striking?
Or maybe he’s got crooked teeth, a hunchback, and the brooding vibe of the Beast from Beauty and the Beast? ”
I exhale loudly, somewhere between a sigh and a scoff. “No hunchback. No crooked teeth. And nothing like the Beast.”
Daria raises an eyebrow.
I run my thumb along the rim of my coffee cup.
“His skin is… pale, but not sickly. More like stone, but not cold. His eyes… sometimes they seem dark brown, other times pitch black. I don’t know if it’s a beautiful face or just so perfectly symmetrical your brain can’t decide whether to stare or run. ”
“Wow,” Daria whispers. “That sounds disturbingly good.”
“Yeah, exactly. Him not looking like a monster? That’s the problem. It makes you lower your guard. And that… causes more issues.”
I shouldn’t have said that last part out loud. It’s bad enough that I keep ending up humiliated by Gaetano. No need to give him even more power by admitting his physique attracts me.
Daria fiddles with the ring around her index finger. It’s a thin gold band with a dark stone I’ve seen on her mother’s finger in the past. I conclude the conversation is over, but then she straightens in her chair, her focus on me once more. “More issues, Nicole? What’s that supposed to mean?”
A knot forms in my stomach. My first instinct is to ask her why the hell she’s sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong. She’s only in my room because I let her stay. We’re not friends. We’re allies with a common enemy.
I hold back from snapping and pretend I didn’t hear.
My attention drifts back to the screen, and the open article about Angelina—the last time she was spotted near her grandmother’s abandoned house.
“Her grandmother died three years ago. Clearly, she wasn’t stupid enough to summon the Black Joker. Or maybe she did and outsmarted him?”
I scroll to the next article. “‘We had no idea she had any psychological issues,’ claims Angelina’s mother. ‘I swear, she was always incredibly responsible’…”
“Are you scared?”
I lift my head from the screen. “What?”
Daria shifts closer, her gaze unwavering. “Are you scared you might fail, Niki?”
If Boyana or one of the twins asked me that, I’d assume they were probing for weakness. Daria… she’s cut from a different, better cloth. That surreal feeling hits me again. I never thought I’d be in the same room with her again, let alone sharing things.
Suddenly, my defensive walls weaken. I close my eyes for just a second and admit, “I’m terrified.”
Daria stands up and moves closer, wrapping her fingers around my arm. “I believe in you. I trust you’ll handle the rest of the trials with ease.”
Daria doesn’t know everything. That’s why she has so much faith in me.
“You’re still the girl who made life a nightmare for the girls who bullied us in school,” she adds with a faint smile.
“Paying Dana’s boyfriend to take nude pictures of her and leak them online?
Total evil mastermind move. And what did you stash in their backpacks before ratting them out to the principal? Was it weed?”
Memories from high school flood my mind. “Yeah. Weed…”
“Sophie got expelled. And Clementine? She developed bulimia after you started that rumor about her having an STD. No one wanted to be friends with her.”
“I didn’t know Clementine had bulimia.”
“Oh, yeah. We were in the same class in high school. She missed a lot of days because of it.”
With every word falling from her lips, my body tenses more and more. Those stories don’t sound nearly as triumphant now as they did when I replayed them in my head. “From what I remember, you always condemned my methods, calling them cruel. What’s with bringing them up as examples?”
She grimaces and throws her hands up. “I still don’t approve. My point is, you’ve got a talent for destroying your enemies.”
I’ve never felt guilty about what I did. Those girls deserved every bit of it. And yet, something twists in my chest when I think of Clementine.
It was a necessary evil. Part of my transformation from loser to the “Little Baroness.”
My eyes wander to the empty ice cream container and the now-black screen of the laptop.
Daria breaks the silence. “And still no new riddle?”
I shrug. “Not yet. But it’s coming.”
I lean back in my chair, struggling to regain the stability I had before meeting Gaetano. When my future was set, the dark didn’t scare me, and “Little Baroness” felt like a title. Not a mockery.