eleven #2
“To your first college party,” he says, clinking his glass against mine. “What do you think?”
“Fancier than I expected,” I say, nervously wiping my free hand on my dress, which is really Ronique’s dress.
Annabel Lee forced me to try on several of her high-necked gothic style dresses before she realized I do not have her effortless elegance.
Finally she admitted defeat when Manson told her I looked like “a creepy Victorian ghost” in her clothes.
So, now I’m squeezed into a simple little black dress, though it clings to me in ways that I’m not entirely comfortable with.
“Really?” Manson asks, assessing the party. “Seems pretty tame to me. We’ll have to get you to a frat party.”
“I wish I hadn’t let Annabel Lee steal my cardigan,” I mutter, tucking one arm across my middle, already regretting my decision to come.
“Don’t even start with that shit,” Manson says. “You have a bomb-ass figure. Show it off a little. It’s not a crime to be hot.”
“Obviously,” I say, cracking a little smile. “Otherwise, you’d be arrested.”
“Why, Mercy Soules,” he says, making an old-fashioned Southern lady voice. “That is the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
We both laugh, and then I’m a little more relaxed.
That lasts about ten minutes, until some guys from the hockey team find us, tell me they’re kidnapping Manson, and drag him away before I can protest. He’s not objecting, and I don’t want him to have to babysit me all night, so I let him go.
Besides, I need to find a Sinner. Trouble is, I haven’t seen a single one since we arrived.
I make my way out back, where a live band is playing on the lawn under trees wound with fairy lights that blink like fireflies.
A small crowd is gathered in front of the stage, dancing on the raised dance floor that looks like it’s made of sleek black ice.
I wedge myself into a corner of the porch and search the crowd.
“I thought you didn’t like parties.”
I turn and find myself face to face with Nate Swift. “Oh, hey,” I say, letting out a startled laugh. “I haven’t changed my mind about parties yet. I’m here, though.”
“Here, but not enjoying yourself,” he muses. “That sounds familiar.”
“Well, I admit, this is the first one I’ve been to, so I’m not sure I’m the best judge.”
“You’ve never been to a party?” he asks incredulously, brows rising.
“Not everyone can be an international man of mystery who’s welcome anywhere,” I point out.
“So far, I haven’t gone abroad with operations, so technically, I’d be a national man of mystery.”
“Point still stands.”
“I guess so,” he says. “How’s your security holding up? No more cameras?”
“Not so far,” I tell him. “Though they did seem to know exactly where I was when I left campus.”
“Is that so?” he asks, sipping his drink, something blood-red but translucent.
“Nate?” I say, narrowing my eyes.
“Mercy.”
“What did you do?”
He blinks at me with those big doe eyes, the picture of innocence. “Discretion is my profession.”
“I’m going to kill them.”
“You’re too pretty to be a killer,” says a voice beside me. “But then, a hot girl assassin could be just what the world needs.”
I look up to see the man who entered the house the day I met Nate.
He towers over us, tall and handsome, his dark, wavy hair combed into place with a few strands having escaped already, like they couldn’t be contained.
Instead of looking slightly unkempt, like Nate’s loose ends, they give him a rakish, untamed air that’s more dangerously sexy than adorably endearing.
When I don’t answer, he throws an arm over Nate’s shoulders. “Why didn’t you tell me you had such beautiful friends, squirt?” he asks, his galaxy eyes never leaving mine.
“Who said she’s a friend?” Nate asks.
“Well, I know she’s not a girlfriend,” the man answers.
Poor Nate looks humiliated, which finally breaks me out of my anxious silence.
“I’m also not an assassin,” I say. “Though I was talking about murdering my boyfriends. I think there’s a different name for that.”
“Boyfriends?” he asks, quirking a brow. “I guess I could buy it, from a girl who looks like you. Can’t buy the fact that none of them are with you, if they exist.”
He sips his drink, a smile playing over his lips while he watches me squirm.
“They exist,” I grit out. I consider telling him it’s the Hellhounds, but I don’t want to encourage him by making him think I’m easy and that I’m sleeping with twelve guys already.
He grins, obviously enjoying my discomfort. “Okay, darlin’. But since they’re not here, how about you let me get you a drink? A girl like you shouldn’t be hidden away in the corner.”
“I’m not even old enough to drink.”
“And yet, you’re holding a cocktail,” he says, dropping a wink. “Bad girl.”
“Definitely not one of those.”
“Don’t worry, I like it,” he says, lowering his voice to a flirty, conspiratorial tone.
He holds out a hand, and I reluctantly let him take mine, the manners instilled too deeply in me to refuse.
My injury is healed up enough that I could definitely ward him off if I wanted, but so far, he doesn’t strike me as dangerous.
I’m not used to men coming onto me, so it’s a little disconcerting, but he’s also good-looking enough that I’m flattered at the same time.
“Walker Delacroix,” he says, lifting my hand to skim his lips across the back of my knuckles. “Pleased to meet you…?”
“Mercy Soules.”
“Soules?” he asks. “Any relation to Andrew Soules?”
“That’s—was—my dad.”
“I didn’t know he had a daughter,” he says. “Though now that I’ve met you, I can see why he kept you hidden away from scoundrels like me. And you must be Saint’s sister. How’s that kid doing?”
“Fine.”
“I’m surprised to see his sister at a party like this.”
“What’s wrong with this party?”
“Oh, nothing,” he says, grinning and stroking the back of my hand. “It’s the best kind of party, if you ask me. Hosted by a family of ill repute.”
“Ah,” I say, nodding and retracting my hand from his, since apparently he has no intention of releasing it. “Your family. Where are the Sinners, anyway?”
“That’s a clever nickname,” he says. “Fitting, I suppose. We are all sinners, after all. Aren’t we, Mercy Soules?”
“I guess.”
“Last I saw, they were hazing some frat pledges from the team upstairs,” Nate says. He melted back into the shadows on the veranda, so quiet I almost forgot he was there.
“Hazing?” I ask, turning to him. “Isn’t that illegal?”
Behind me, Walker chuckles.
“I’m sorry, is that funny to you?” I ask, wheeling on him. “I guess it would be, considering your family is into making girls disappear.”
“ My family is into no such thing,” he says, his voice going from flirty and teasing to icy cold. “I suggest you don’t go around making that kind of baseless accusation against the Delacroix name, or any other family with a reputation as spotless as ours.”
He sets his drink down on the railing, turns, and storms off.
“Wow,” Nate says. “I’m not sure I’ve ever seen my cousin walk away from a hot girl without even asking her out.”
“Great,” I say, still a little shaken from Walker’s abrupt about-face. “I’m boy repellent. Just what every girl wants to hear.”
“Oh,” Nate says, looking taken aback. “I didn’t know you were interested.”
“I’m not,” I say. “I’m going to go check on Manson. Not sure he’s built for hazing.”
“I heard you’d been hanging around with him,” Nate says, falling into step with me when I walk away. “How’d that happen?”
“That’s a great question,” I say. “It just happened, I guess.”
“If you think he can’t stand up to anyone, you underestimate him.”
I remember Manson talking to me in the hallway the first time we met, how Annabel Lee said he would kill someone in a terrible way if they messed with her.
“Maybe you’re right,” I say. “I still want to talk to the Sinners, though.”
“Which one?”
“I don’t care,” I say, finding the stairs.
“Wait,” Nate says, putting a hand on my arm to stop me. He pulls out his phone and taps on the screen for a minute. At last, he looks up. “Go ahead.”
“Did you just tip them off that I’m coming?”
“I disarmed the security on the stairs.”
“Why?”
He gives me a funny look. “So you can go up?”
“Why would you do that for me?”
“Third floor,” he says. “Go. You have less than sixty seconds.”
I think about pressing for answers, but I can tell by the shuttered look in his eyes that I won’t get them.
He’s giving me an opportunity, though, so I take it.
I race up the stairs, ignoring the slight tenderness in my side at the exertion.
The creaky staircase winds around in a series of sharp corners and angles.
At the top of the stairs, I step out into a hallway dimly lit with wall sconces.
More portraits line the walls, these ones creepy old paintings of Popes past. The floor is carpeted with a thick, handsewn woolen rug that’s been worn down the center from decades of foot traffic.
I have no idea which room to go into, but my phone buzzes and I pull it from the clutch Annabel Lee gave me, a pewter chain attached to carry it over my shoulder.
SwiftCode001: 3 rd room on the r. Good luck.
Following his directive, I make my way down and find the door closed but unlocked.
I push it open and see a dark bedroom with a balcony beyond, a ghostly white curtain blowing in the open doorway that leads out.
Swallowing hard, I step inside. I can just see the small balcony outside, no more than a few feet in each direction, with a wrought iron railing with stylized spikes running along it.
The scent of smoke wafts into the room, and I take another step, wincing when the old floorboards squeak.
“Who’s there?” calls a male voice from outside.
Since he already knows I’m here, there’s no use pretending.
I cross the room quickly and stop in the doorway when I see the state of the tiny balcony—wooden floorboards rotting through, a few broken, leaving jagged holes gaping into the darkness below.
One of the Sincero boys stands with his back to the railing, a forearm resting along it, gripping one of the spikes.
In his other hand, he holds a cigarette, the cherry glowing orange in the damp, dark night.
“Well, hello, gorgeous,” he says, eyeing me up and down. “Not who I was expecting, but go ahead and join me, sweetheart.”
“I’d rather live,” I say. “Are you sure it’s safe for even one person to stand out there?”
“Your concern for my wellbeing is truly touching,” he drawls, tapping his cigarette with his ring finger.
I decide to just go for it, since I don’t know how much time I have, or why they have security on the stairs in the first place. Obviously they don’t want guests up here, so at best, they’ll throw me out once they find me.
“I’m looking for my friend,” I say. “I was wondering if you knew anything about her.”
“I know lots of things about lots of girls.” He drags on his cigarette, watching me standing in his dark doorway.
“Her name was Eternity Stone,” I say.
He snorts, and smoke puffs out both nostrils, like a dragon in a movie. “I guess Infinity Stone was already taken?”
I swallow hard and go on. “She was our age. She disappeared four years ago. Do you remember her?”
“No,” he says. “Why would I?”
I wrap my fingers around the cross on my necklace, letting it bite into the soft skin between my fingers so I don’t release my fury on this boy who so callously dismisses my concern, as if Eternity never mattered.
“She wasn’t nobody,” I say, a tremor in my voice that makes me flinch. “She mattered. She had friends, family. People who loved her.”
“So does my dog,” he says. “What makes her so special?”
“They said they found her decapitated body in the river later,” I say, determination pushing me onwards. “I heard the Disciples were responsible, and since you’re one of them, maybe you might know something.”
“Wasn’t us,” he says, sounding bored. “We don’t kill girls.”
“So she’s alive?”
“Haven’t you heard?” he asks with a smirk in his voice. “Humans are the new diamonds. You’re more valuable than drugs or guns.”
I shiver and fight the urge to shrink back, behind the curtain, where he can’t see me. I don’t like his mercury eyes on me, even though I can’t see them in the dark. I can feel the assessment in them, like cold beads of poison rolling down my back.
“The body they found wasn’t her,” I say, forcing my voice to remain steady. “She just… Disappeared.”
“We’ve made lots of girls disappear,” he says. “We’re magicians, baby.”
My fist clenches so tight I can feel the ends of the cross breaking the skin, blood oozing between my fingers.
The Sincero boy takes another drag, then tips his head back and blows smoke into the cold, wet night above. I don’t know his name, can barely see his face in the dark, but I will never, ever forget him.
“It was you,” I whisper, cold rage rolling in waves over me.
He shrugs. “Could have been. Could have been someone else. Lots of people take part in the skin trade. Where there’s a demand, someone will step in to provide a supply. If not us, someone else.”
“You’re a monster,” I say, my voice sharp with fury.
“Maybe I am,” he says. “Maybe I’m not. But riddle me this, princess. If there’s a market, who brings the goods? Someone brings the lambs to the slaughter, and it’s not the butcher.”
He flicks his cigarette butt over the railing, then steps forward onto the creaking, rotted wood. “Now, if Nate let you up, he told you the rules. You get what you come for, and you leave when we say so. You got your answers. Time to give the demons your pound of flesh.”