Chapter 26
Nina opened her eyes to the bright obscenity of midmorning, a metallic, coppery taste filling her mouth. So this was rebirth.
She lay very still for as long as felt reasonable, retracing the evening’s events in her mind.
The funny, unfocused look in Dalil’s eyes.
The feel of Tessa’s pressure on her shoulder.
It was day two of her period, typically a slaughterhouse, and yet the odd absence of cramps—how could she put it into words, the sudden relief, the glorious nothingness?
That erstwhile dinner prophecy, spun now from silver in her mind: Doubt you’ll have that problem anymore.
Fawn’s lips beside her ear, the blood in Fawn’s gums, the stains on her teeth.
The way the row had looked from the roof in the dark of the wee hours, the sound of laughter from the chapter room—a plain, unremarkable room that Nina would have guessed from the outside was just a closet—echoing at their backs.
Her own breath and Tessa’s making ghosts in the chilly autumn air.
Tessa taking a long drag of midnight, neither of them suggesting they go back inside, where it was warm.
At around three in the morning, Nina and the rest of her pledge sisters were left alone in the chapter room to process everything they’d seen.
To adjust to the new frequency of reality, the hum that had fallen away, unheard, unnoticeable—inseverable—because they had been welcomed inside it.
Because, as Nina had so consumptively craved, they now belonged.
But had they really never questioned what belonging might entail?
Nina waited for Maud to lead the group in rebellion, for Dalil to storm out, for Fran or Ryoko or Ella to rant and protest that this was unnatural, disgusting—but then nothing, not a word.
It seemed everyone had had a conversation that night; one that had rewritten them, or at least temporarily silenced them.
One by one, the girls had fallen asleep, strewn across each other like puppies, until Nina had slid out from under Ryoko and caught Dalil’s eye, the two of them tiptoeing out of the chapter room and through the bone-quiet house to the front door.
When Dalil finally spoke, her voice was hoarse with disuse, as if the other, less informed side of initiation had been years, even centuries in the past.
“We should be repulsed,” Dalil said. “Right? We should … tell.”
Nina said nothing. They slid out the front door, both glancing around to see if anyone would stop them.
The grass was dewy and wet, the air laden with something.
Change.
“What did Tessa say to you?” asked Dalil. “When you two were outside.”
It’s still on my tongue. Nina’s absent-minded, intoxicated musing.
Tessa’s reply, her breath warm on Nina’s cheek. Doesn’t it feel good? she said. Knowing that for once, you don’t have to be the one to bleed.
Nina pressed a fist into her abdomen again, massaging the pain that wasn’t there. She had taken her tampon out hours ago to find the answer she’d suspected. That the bleeding had already stopped, as if The House had cauterized the wounds.
But Tessa told her it was more than that.
As if Nina’s painlessness alone was nothing.
For the old guard, Alex’s pledge class and the other alums, it’s so different.
They push this wellness bullshit, Orientalism like you wouldn’t believe.
But for us, ever since Fawn and I rushed—or maybe even since Caroline, I don’t know—it’s not about some fucking whitewashed beauty standard, it’s not pay gaps or presidential office or barking like a big dog so some dude named Harold will finally give you the time of day.
That’s what Alex doesn’t get. It’s not just about what we get from the dinner. It’s what we can take from the hunt.
Tessa had looked at Nina closely then. Every fucking day, the world takes a bite out of us. So now, we bite back.
Nina and Dalil both paused before reaching the sidewalk. Nina turned first, looking at The House. Then at Dalil.
“I don’t want to go to my apartment,” Nina admitted. Her voice wasn’t a whisper, exactly. It felt different, though. Like how everything is different once you tell a lover how you feel.
“Yeah,” said Dalil, as if Nina had answered the question.
Without further conversation, they made their way back inside the house. Dalil headed straight for the chapter room while Nina paused, making the excuse of needing water, to tiptoe through the darkness of the dining room.
Nina stopped to cradle newness like a superpower, a sixth sense. She remembered being outside of it, naming it insidious, thinking it uncanny, and it was. But was it ugly?
From elsewhere in the house, Nina could feel Tessa breathing deeply, sleeping soundly. She could sense Maud stirring, turning quietly, resettling. Fran snored, a steady buzz.
Eventually Nina poured herself a glass, her hand steady, and leaned back onto the counter, waiting for something. Punishment? She was an eldritch thing now herself, a mistress of the hunt. Would there be a price now for her malfeasance? A sign, a bolt of lightning, in answer to her sins?
Instead, she caught the presence of someone in the threshold of the dining room.
“I was horrified, too,” said Fawn softly. “Until I wasn’t.”
Fawn was wearing a matching pointelle set, a thin tank top with a pair of cropped white pants, her hair down and loose where it skimmed her waistline.
It looked undone and unkempt but thick and long and glossy, even in the dark.
Nina felt the urge to wrap some of it around her knuckles, pulling savagely taut.
She’d thought the hunger would fade, that blood would sate it. Too many vampire novels. Instead the tension remained throughout The House, their appetites only whetted. Upstairs, someone was panting through dreams of carnage, legs twitching like a dog’s.
Nina took a long drink of water, then set the glass down empty.
“I’m not horrified,” she finally said. “That’s the problem. That’s the part I’m not sure about.”
She felt Fawn come closer, treading softly over creaking beams.
The rest felt like a dream until Nina awoke to the gentle sound of slumber carrying on restfully beside her, beams of sunlight streaking over their bare waists.
She kept her eyes closed, replaying the night like choreography, like narration.
Fawn had taken her hand and pulled her wordlessly up the stairs.
“You should be with your pledge sisters, I know,” Fawn said, a half-hearted apology, a set of words in random order with a meaning she so obviously didn’t believe.
So Nina didn’t answer. Instead, Nina pulled Fawn back to pause beside the composites of their sisterhood, holding her still to run a finger lightly over the thin pointelle fabric.
Easing it down until her thumb brushed over the bead of Fawn’s bare nipple.
“Stop me if this isn’t what you want,” Nina breathed.
“Don’t you understand? We chose The House. Now we only do what we want,” said Fawn, and caught Nina’s lips with hers.
Fawn’s mouth on hers was hot, her motions still slow and pliant.
Too slow. Too pliant. Nina pressed against her harder, then hard.
Fawn laughed, pulling Nina’s hand again.
“Be quiet,” she warned, tiptoeing up the stairs to the highest room; to what Nina had learned that evening was The House’s only single.
Fawn slipped inside the president’s suite and tugged Nina after her, shutting the door as Nina fell heavily onto the bed.
The sheets were cold to the touch, unmade but unslept in.
Fawn paused to lean back against the door, grinning at Nina like a fox.
Like the groom in a bodice ripper. Nina, however, wanted nothing coquettish, nothing so coy.
She wanted to grind on Fawn’s leg like a fucking dog.
Her dignity was an unbearable weight, nothing cool about her longing.
She pulled her white dress over her head and let it fall to the floor, shivering a little where she sat at the edge of Fawn’s bed in nothing but her bra and underwear.
Nina hadn’t dressed for sex, but for baptism. She waited for the benediction to fall.
Fawn crept forward from the door, taking hold of Nina’s shoulders and climbing onto her lap, making a low soothing sound as she drew a finger over the dip of Nina’s clavicle. “Don’t rush this,” whispered Fawn.
But all Nina wanted to do was rush. She tugged Fawn’s tank top lower, burying her face between Fawn’s breasts and inhaling deeply, like taking a line of cocaine.
Fawn gave a shuddering groan, tightening her fingers in Nina’s ponytail.
Nina slipped her tongue out, tasting the skin of Fawn’s decolletage.
How sweet the words seemed for sex when it was two women. Decolletage. Neck. Throat. Lips.
To her embarrassment, Nina moaned into Fawn’s mouth, an unhinged, unexpected sound that tore from her throat.
Fawn laughed and tugged Nina’s hair, deepening the kiss.
Fawn’s lips were soft—cosmetic soft, perfection you couldn’t achieve, maybe it’s Maybelline.
Her tongue danced, sweet and uncommitted.
Nina still tasted blood in her mouth, but now it was rich and inviting, closer to flame.
She made another humiliating noise when Fawn reached down, taking Nina’s hand and placing it between her legs.
Nina lifted a hesitant thumb and stroked, electrified when Fawn inhaled audibly, sharply, at her touch.
Nina shifted until she was flattening Fawn down against the mattress, drawing her deeper into the sheets.
She pressed her mouth to Fawn’s crotch, lingering hungrily over the fabric, saturating it with the broad flat of her tongue.
Fawn jutted her hips up, mewling expectantly for more.
Nina let one hand fall, slipping her fingers beneath her own underwear.