Chapter Seven - Good Boys Don't Bite

Etienne’s office is a cold war. Rowdy’s extra sense has been turned on for the entire hour she’s been alone with him, but his defenses have improved. There’s only a void of nothingness between the two of them, in which she swears she starts to go a little crazy because for some reason she has the strangest feeling that Etienne’s chair might be sentient to some degree, the leather hissing for a good conditioner.

Part of her wishes she had an older sibling to call on for some kind of support the way Jackie does, but the thought of having to wait in the cabin until said sibling arrives doesn’t seem much better. Even just thinking of being stuck inside there makes Rowdy’s skin itch.

Her eyes never leave Etienne’s. He wants her to break first, wants her to fight him enough that he’ll be justified in whatever is making smug satisfaction curl up the corners of his lips; he’s not even trying to hide it.

After what feels like an entire lifetime, Etienne breaks to roll his eyes and release a gentle, drawn-out sigh. “I suppose you will not be telling me how you found a dead young woman in the lake this evening?”

Rowdy’s jaw clicks as her teeth clack together behind her lips.

“I assumed as much. You know Abraham will beat you for this, don’t you? Starve you longer than usual, perhaps?”

The want rips through her as if it’s her own. Etienne wants her to speak so badly that he’s willing to do anything to force her. He’ll hurt her in as many ways as it takes to get her to unglue her tongue from the roof of her mouth.

Still, she stays silent.

Her brain blackens. She wants to feel Etienne’s throat between her teeth, his bones snapping in her hands. Despite how it clings to her, sticky and seductive, she shoves it away.

That’s not what I want, she snaps at herself.

“You wish.”

“You wish, Miss Dawes. Abraham is tame compared to me, to my sire. Do you believe I was entrusted with you all as a favor? No. Only the strongest are chosen to protect the weakest.”

Heat ripples across the surface of Rowdy’s skin, and she feels the version of Leena that still lives in her chest waking up again.

Leena appears in her mind’s eye, a bright ball of stormy energy with her hands fisted and her jaw set.

Rowdy lets her take over her body. “I think you put yourself in front of the right people to have access to what you want most. There’s nothing strong about that.”

“And I suppose you are the authority on what people want, yes?”

The taunt doesn’t shake her. With Leena so close to the surface she feels indestructible.

“Nobody can hide what they want from me. Especially not anyone as obvious as you. You’re so bad at hiding it, I don’t even need my gift to know what you want.”

His thin lips stretch into a tense smile. The darkness in his eyes deepens. Rowdy watches as his usual mask of benevolence slowly strips itself away.

“We could have been allies, the two of us. Instead, you followed the absurd story of a little girl with a big imagination and an even bigger ego.”

Rowdy is on her feet before she can think to get up. “Everyone knows what you did to her and the others.”

“And yet, you are no closer to proving it than you were last year. Nor the year before. So, tell me, why keep waiting to accuse me? Was her suicide not part of your little plan for justice, Rowdy?”

Reality splinters. Everything happens around Rowdy in strobe light flashes.

She sees Etienne under her as her fist connects with the side of his face and they fall backward together.

The office wall as Etienne throws her.

A smear of her own blood on the corner of the desk where her head rebounds off of it.

Little tufts of the gray rug as she stares sideways at a spot on the baseboard where a black spider no larger than her fingernail spins an equally tiny web.

Her ears ring. As she blinks, her vision goes pink and then red. Leena’s in the back of her mind crying. All she can hear is crying.

Get up, Rowdy, Leena wails at her. Get up.

Her voice mixes in with Rowdy’s as pain explodes where her neck meets her shoulder. Something pierces through her, and then she’s ablaze.

When Rowdy limps out of Etienne’s office, the lobby’s empty and the darkest shade of morning purple. Comforting heat flashes across her palm and between her fingers, and she clings to that feeling. Leena’s hand is almost real enough for her to squeeze. She walks with Leena until her legs give out somewhere between the office and Locke House.

Rowdy blinks at the sky, tears leaking into her hair. Her hand is as cold as the rest of her. As she starts to wonder if she’s going to die in the sun, Benny’s there with her in a pool of warm lamplight. Their scents mingle—blood on fresh meadow grass.

The world spins slower as Benny helps her to her feet. Rowdy’s mouth sags open and she thinks that maybe words come out but only because Benny starts cooing to her.

“—you’re okay, I’ve got you. I’ll make it stop hurting, babe, it’s okay to cry about it. You don’t need to keep apologizing.”

Her head lolls as Benny takes her back to Locke House. The lights inside are on, but it’s silent as Benny brings her in.

“Over here.” Jackie’s voice is sweet honey.

For a while after she’s laid down in Leena’s bunk, it’s completely silent. Rowdy thinks maybe the cabin is empty and everyone else has fucked off to avoid the fallout of her getting the shit beat out of her. As she starts to relax though, she hears more sets of breath.

Jen Rose steps into view, her long, black braid pulled over one shoulder. She’s two years younger, and about eight times as shy, but Rowdy can feel how badly she wants to speak up—the button in her mind is stuck in a halfway-on position.

Just behind her, Rowdy catches sight of her sister Hannah. In the low light, the two of them look more identical than Justice and Muse despite them being so far apart in age and not actually being genetic siblings.

“Hi, Rowdy.” She stays several feet from the foot of what will always be Leena’s bunk, regardless of who sleeps in it, but Rowdy doesn’t mind the space or her caution. The wants are less intense this way.

“Jen.”

“Uh, so, well, everyone’s saying you killed that girl.”

“Right.”

There’s a quiet squeak as Jen’s rubber-soled shoe catches the floor. Her wants become a little clearer, but Rowdy’s mind slips sideways and all she can do is smell Jen’s sweet, simple scent. Lightly floral, it reminders her of Leena.

“But, uh, everyone in Curie knows it was Frankie’s girlfriend from the human camp up the road. Some people are saying she cheated on him with you, and you killed her to cover it up.”

Rowdy can’t help the bitter smile that sends an electric shock through the bones in her cheeks. “Very nice of them to come up with all that for me.”

“I don’t believe them. That’s why me and Hannah are here, because we . . .well, we know about what happened to Leena.”

“Oh?”

There’s a shuffling, and then Benny leans over into her view. “There was only one letter left in your bag. I . . .feel free to be angry at me but I let them read it. Just for confirmation since you’ve been in and out.”

The confirmation hurts. Deep in her chest, the betrayal she feels on behalf of Leena rivals her guilt and disappointment in herself. The tears that come feel hot and angry, burning their way down to her neck and the torn collar of her shirt.

Rowdy picks her head up enough to see both Jen and Hannah in the otherwise empty cabin. Timid girls, usually, but standing in the back of Locke House, they both look like they want to set something on fire.

“You read it? Which was it?”

Hannah and Jen glance at each other before Hannah says, “It wasn’t anything explicit. She was talking about how she missed being with all of us but didn’t miss being so easily accessible.”

“I mean, we . . . we all sort of knew, you know?” Jen interrupts. “But the older bloodlines, you know how they are. Seeing everyone in the mess hall turn away from you when... when you were trying to talk about it really pissed us off. I mean, you know, us from the Rose family, we want to support you in, uh, in this.”

Rowdy’s head drops back and even though she’s gentle, stars explode behind her eyes as her hair touches the pillow.

“What are you saying, Jen?” she asks the underside of the bunk.

The collective breathing in the cabin stops for a few seconds. Rowdy can feel the edge of the cliff everyone seems to be clinging to, too afraid to say out loud the thing they want, almost too scared to even admit it to themselves.

One very fleeting want flashes before it disappears into smoke again: Blood.

“We wanna show our support for Leena however we can,” Hannah says carefully. Rowdy pictures her gray eyes full of tears and winces to herself.

“It’s not like I can ask her what we should do,” Rowdy grumbles. “It’s too late for any of us to do anything.”

“Well, yeah, if you keep trying to stand up to him alone,” Hannah argues. Her throat sounds like it’s almost half-way closed, her voice comes out so thick.

“Can somebody please just tell me what the suggestion is here? My head’s fucking killing me.”

“We should make a plan to confront him together.”

The room snaps into sharp relief as the wants start pouring in at last. Rowdy grips the side of the mattress to keep from falling out onto the floor.

A quiet, sick part of her starts to climb back up from the depths of her stomach where she’d banished it in the weeks leading up to camp. Rowdy wanted to behave this year, to do right by Leena and her memory. But the dark, cold thing still creeps higher, her ribs no more than rungs for it pull itself up on.

“What do you mean by confront?”

The same darkness flickers in Hannah’s eyes. “A few of us think an eye for an eye is appropriate. The old way.”

“The old way,” Rowdy echoes.

“It would be easy. When the Guard shows up, they’re probably gonna want to talk to you. While they’re doing that, we could lure Etienne out. Get him alone.” Hannah’s eyes flicker around, and when nobody interjects, she keeps going. “Once we get him alone, we can do whatever needs to be done. Slowly.”

“All you’d have to do is show a little vulnerability. Wear something a little revealing. I bet he’d bite,” Rowdy says with a weak huff of a scoff.

“I’m more than willing to be bait.” Hannah’s smile is anything but pleasant.

Rowdy twists to gauge Benny and Jackie’s reactions, but neither of them are looking at her. Benny’s shaking her head, the end of her ponytail dancing delicately against her shoulders.

“I’m angry too,” Benny says. “But what you all are talking about is . . .”

“What, illegal?” Rowdy asks.

“It won’t bring her back,” Benny whispers.

A knife through her heart would have been less painful. Her hand goes there as if Benny’s actually stabbed her. No amount of grinding the heel of her palm into her sternum dulls the ache of the truth.

“I know,” she says, though she doesn’t believe her own voice.

“Then why?”

“To put a stop to it,” Jackie responds. Her voice wouldn’t have sent a ripple across the surface of the lake, but triumph surged through Rowdy regardless. Their eyes meet and the palm of her hand tingles where there are lingering purplish marks. Her own explicit rage is reflected in Jackie’s face.

“To make an example of him,” Rowdy adds, only able to show her teeth as far as her cheek will allow. “So anyone else who does this knows what will happen to them.”

“And what will that prove? About us?” Benny asks. There’s an edge of desperation in her voice rises up within herself too. Unlike her own frenzied desires, Benny’s wants are softer: caution, justice in its most peaceful form.

“That we won’t let him take anyone else,” Rowdy says. She blinks away the burning in her eyes as she traces the slats in the bunk above her. When nobody else speaks, she glances back at them.

All around the room, the shared rage is an almost physical thing. Burning and hideous, it’s as if they share one singular thought. Even without her additional awareness still buzzing away half-on, Rowdy knows they’re all in agreement. Etienne will pay the old way.

The pain in her body starts to peak, and she must show it because Benny’s leaning over her a second later.

“You should rest. We all should. No more planning assassinations tonight, okay? You two . . .”

Rowdy doesn’t catch the rest of what she says as the darkness overtakes her.