Chapter Ten
“I never thought I’d be invited to a monarch party.” Greg’s voice wobbled as he rubbed product on his hands and slid them through his hair. “If only I wasn’t too terrified to enjoy it.”
“At least the one good thing about these costumes you chose is that I can wear comfortable shoes,” I muttered, tugging on my battered boots. I was wearing a pair of school uniform stockings that I’d ruined earlier in the year with an enormous run beneath the short black velvet dress with its white lace cuffs and collar. Greg and Andre looked straight out of Providence in their black shirts and wide pilgrim hats, even though Greg seemed a little listless and not his usual flamboyant self. He’d gotten creative with our costumes though, making us individual nooses to slip around our necks. We used theatre makeup to make our eyes wide and dramatic. It was pretty cool. I just wished we weren’t wasting these costumes for the Miskatonic Prep crowd, but for an actual fun party with actual cool people.
Although I couldn’t help but wonder what Trey, Quinn, and Ayaz would think when they saw my outfit. A sliver of heat sliced through my chest at the thought.
I straightened up and struck a pose. Greg grinned at me and made a clicking motion with his hand. “Honey, you look fierce.”
Inside the walls, the rats scritch-scritched their assent.
Andre handed me a note. “Greg knows what he’s talking about,” it read. I laughed and hugged him. My arm brushed against the survival pack he had strapped underneath his shoulder. The other good feature of these outfits was that they allowed us to conceal all sorts of things that might help us survive the initiation.
“Are you guys sure you want to do this?” I asked. “I’m not backing out, but you don’t have to get dragged along—”
“And miss the chance to join a secret club and stick it to Courtney?” Greg grinned, but his smile wobbled at the corners. “Not on your life. The Eldritch Club doesn’t know what it’s got itself in for.”
Please let everything go okay tonight. I hadn’t been told what would happen to us if we failed, but judging from what Courtney had planned for me so far this year, it would be brutal.
There was a knock on Greg’s door. I flung it open to find the corridor full of monarchs, dressed in white sheets edged with purple. Trey had a bloodstain in the middle of his, and Quinn carried a comically large knife. Julius Caesar, killed by his loyal friend Brutus and Cassius.
“You’re supposed to wear tunics underneath those,” I said. Although I had to admit, I liked the amount of naked, tattooed (in Ayaz and Quinn’s case) and muscled shoulders and pecs on display.
“It’s a Halloween party, not a parade of historical accuracy,” Trey snapped.
“You look hot, Hazy.” Quinn swept me into his arms. He tried to kiss me, but I turned my head away so his lips brushed my cheek instead. I needed to be careful tonight. This was their territory, not mine. Even after everything they’d done to help me this quarter, I still wasn’t convinced they weren’t about to turn on me again. Their cruel smiles still haunted my memories.
I was starting to worry that after discovering their secret and the god beneath the school, I’d leaned into the Kings more than I should, accepting their help and their attention while I dealt with all the shit. I was starting to let my guard down, to give in to the fire inside me that told me to trust them.
But that wasn’t right. It wasn’t me. I’d thought about leaving them out of my revenge plans, but I realized that was impossible. They had to pay for what they did, otherwise things would always be this way between us – I’d always be walking on eggshells, waiting for them to betray me. So even though it felt wrong, they were back on the revenge list – just as soon as Greg, Andre and I were part of their secret club.
Trey grabbed Quinn’s arm and yanked him off me. “Tonight isn’t about looking good. It’s about survival. You sure you’re ready for this?”
I nodded, lifting the hem of my skirt just high enough – okay, way too high – to reveal the supplies strapped to my thigh. A candle and lighter, a short length of rope, a compass, some first aid stuff. My shard of glass rubbed against the inside of my wrist.
“Ayaz has grilled so much information about path-finding and surviving in caves into my head I think I’ve forgotten everything else I’ve ever learned.”
“Geek.” Quinn jabbed Ayaz in the arm.
“Then let’s go.” Trey held open the door. Greg, Andre and I marched out to join them. At the top of the staircase, we met the other monarchs, all dressed in similar romanesque costumes. Nancy whistled as her eyes swept over my outfit. She was dressed as Medusa in a floaty empire dress that hugged her in all the right places, her wavy red hair piled high on her head and entwined with realistic plastic snakes.
“Girl, you look wild. We are going to own the dance floor tonight.” Nancy gave my noose a tug. “Love this touch. Historically accurate, you know. Most people think the Salem witches were burned at the stake, but they were all hanged except for Giles Corey, who was pressed to death beneath heavy stones.”
“Delightful.” I straightened my noose. “You don’t think it’s going to cause trouble with the alumni, given the history of the school?”
Nancy laughed as she passed me her lipstick. “Hell yeah I do. And I love it. It’s about time someone shook things up around here. This place has been the same for decades.”
Oh, Nance. She didn’t know that I knew just how accurate that was.
“We ready?” Trey glanced around the group. He was met with shouts and cheers. Ayaz and Quinn linked arms with me. Greg and Andre took their places on the ends. The monarchs of Derleth Academy, united.
We marched through the dining hall doors as one. Strings of fairy lights hung from the rafters, making the whole room glow with twinkling light. Rock music that was twenty years out-of-date pumped from an expensive audio-visual setup on the raised platform where the teachers normally ate. Now that I knew the school’s secret, so many of its weird quirks made sense. Of course their music taste was stuck in the past; they hadn’t listened to new tunes since the fire.
Heads turned as we stalked across the room – students, teachers, and alumni followed our movements with awe, with trepidation, with barely-concealed rage. Faces of alumni flashed around me, and now that I knew the secret of this school I couldn’t help but wonder how they all remained so young, so vibrant. Their children had been teenagers twenty years ago, but nearly everyone in this room still looked barely middle-age.
Of course, the god is giving them youth as well as power.
I noticed Vincent Bloomberg standing with the Deadmistress at the front of the room. His wine glass froze at his lips. I noticed a pair of fake horns sticking out of his dark hair.
The devil. Of course.
Heat flared through my chest, a fire stoked by rage and fed with fear of tonight’s ordeal. The two of them presided like a royal couple over a room of dead teenagers frozen in time, all so they could wield a power from beyond our universe. How could Vincent Bloomberg leave the campus at the end of the day, knowing his son was trapped here for eternity? How did he sleep at night?
Like a baby on fucking four-hundred-count Egyptian cotton sheets, I bet.
The students were going to get theirs for what they’d done, and Courtney would be a quivering amorphous mess by the time I finished with her. But I reminded myself to save the majority of my hate for the orchestrators of this horror – not the Great Old God itself but the humans who were willing to do anything for its power. The parents like Vincent who hadn’t fought for their children’s lives but had instead robbed them of a future in order to feed their own vanity and lust.
You think you’re the devil, Vincent Bloomberg? I’m about to get Dante’s Inferno on your ass.
Quinn swiped drinks off the table and handed them around our group. As we toasted each other, my shoulders tensed from the burden of so many eyes on me. I raised the drink to my lips, then caught Courtney – wearing a slutty cat costume complete
with glittery ears and cat-face pasties over her otherwise bare breasts – staring me down from over the rim of the cup. I set mine down without taking a sip. It would be just like her to try and poison me tonight.
Trey took my hand. “We’re having the first dance,” he said, loud enough for everyone to hear.
All around us, conversations stopped. Trey’s jaw set. He took my hand, escorting me to the center of the room. People stepped aside to make room for us, until there was a wide circle around us. The music swelled – some gothic rock band sang with dark, crunchy guitars and a violin keening for forgotten souls.
Trey’s fingers laced in mine. His other hand gripped my hip with fierce possession. I had no idea how to dance like this – you’d get beaten at a Badlands party for waltzing or whatever the fuck this was – but he led me in a circle like a pro, his body sweeping me across the floor like I was a Disney princess and he was the Prince Charming. Prince of Darkness more like, with the fairy lights catching crimson strands in his hair and his fresh cypress and wildflower scent pulling me under his spell.
I knew this couldn’t be real. The way Trey looked at me, his eyes burning into mine. The tug of his haughty lips, the way his body molded into mine. This was all a production for the man in the devil horns – a song-and-dance routine for an audience of one. As Trey swung me around the room, Vincent Bloomberg’s eyes burned into the back of my skull.
I didn’t want to be a pawn in Trey’s teenage rebellion. Even if we did have this crazy, messed-up chemistry. But the violin swelled and a mournful voice cried of lost love, and Trey held me on my feet and I almost, for a moment, believed.
“Who’s this band?” I asked, trying to break the spell and bring me back to center. My voice came out breathless.
“They’re called Blood Lust,” Trey replied.
“They’re good.” I never paid much attention to music, but tonight the pounding bass and that damn violin were waking dark and hidden parts of me.
“Mmmmhm.” Trey leaned in close, his cheek resting against mine. My heart pattered in my chest. “Every girl in this room wants to be you right now. What do you think of that?”
“I think they’re all fucking idiots,” I replied. Trey chuckled, his laugh reverberating down my spine. “Why bother with this farce? Why do you all put on this show for your parents – is it so they feel better about trapping you here in this nightmare?”
“These parties are all we have to look forward to.” His breath caressed my earlobe. “Apart from torturing scholarship students.”
“If you’re trying to make me feel pity for you, you’ve failed miserably. If you’d exerted half as much effort trying to undo this curse or whatever it is as you’ve spent tormenting people, you’d be free by now.”
Trey’s fingers tightened in mine. “Don’t you think we tried? They have all the power – I’m nothing but a soulless void walking the earth, trapped out of time. If we don’t obey them, they undo the magic that binds us here, casting our spirits adrift. That’s worse than what I am now – at least here, I have some control, some agency.”
“Your father wouldn’t do that to you.”
“You think so?” Trey smirked, but there was no humor in his eyes. “We’ve saved who we could, but we can’t openly defy them. We’re powerless against them.”
We saved who we could. Did that mean they had helped others before me? I held on to that nugget, not wanting to ask more right now, to find out it was untrue. “Poor little rich boy. So you discovered what it feels like to be powerless. I’m weeping for you.”
“I don’t need your pity. You can’t run away this time,” he whispered, his voice edged with danger. “Tell me about the fire.”
My back stiffened. “Not happening.”
“I don’t—”
“Surprise.” Quinn’s head popped up between us. Trey frowned and dropped my hands, slinking away. Quinn grabbed me and spun me in a wide circle until the room lurched and the faces and lights blurred together. Other bodies moved in around us. Nancy grabbed Trey and swung him around. The music changed to something modern and upbeat, and Quinn grinded against me. I tried to let loose and enjoy this farce of a teenage party put on by people who’d trapped their own children as revenants. I was a pretty good actor, and it helped to have Quinn’s hands sliding over my hips.
The rest of the party was pretty lame. Tables of fancy food I didn’t dare eat, a playlist of out-of-date music, and boring conversations I’d never be allowed to take part in. Most of the kids filtered out around nine, leaving the faculty and alumni behind to discuss their secrets.
Students mingled in the quad, whispering about tonight’s afterparty and pulling hip flasks filled with booze from the folds of their costumes. I couldn’t see Courtney, Tillie, John, or any of their other friends anywhere. They must have already made their way down to our meeting place. We waited for our whole group to gather.
“Where’s Quinn?” Trey demanded.
“The party can start now. I have arrived.” Quinn jogged up and struck a pose, his toga flapping around his bare legs. “I was just saying goodbye to my mom.”
I glanced up at the dining hall entrance, and noticed Quinn’s parents standing together under the arch. Damon Delacorte held court amongst a group of alumni, telling some elaborate story with lots of gestures and facial expressions. Quinn’s mother clutched her husband’s arm, tossing her head back and laughing at one of his wild tales. They looked like the perfect couple, if you didn’t notice the dead look in the woman’s eyes or the faint shadows of bruising on her neck and wrists.
I wonder how she feels about what goes on at the school. Clearly, Quinn was her beloved son. How much of a say did she get over what happened after the fire? Did she like these alumni outings because she could see Quinn again, or was it a painful reminder of what she’d allowed to happen to him in exchange for her perfect life?
I wanted to ask Quinn about it, but he was skipping ahead of the group across the lacrosse field in a jolly mood, quoting lines from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and pretending to stab Trey from behind the rose bushes. We hit the trees and followed Quinn’s bobbing lantern to the narrow steps leading around the back of the grotto and down into the ancient ruins.
“I know you’re going to make it tonight, Hazel.” Nancy grinned as she gathered her gauzy dress in her hands and she descended the steps. Paul followed behind her. One by one, the monarchs disappeared down the side of the cliff while the roar of the ocean raged inside my head. Greg and Andre pulled up the rear until Ayaz and I were the only ones left.
Ayaz cleared his throat. “Remember that the vertical lines on a sigil point to—”
I closed my hand around his shoulder. “You’ve told Greg, Andre and I everything we need. It’s up to us, now.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Ayaz muttered as he followed me down.
“Me too,” I muttered as I clutched the edge of the cliff, grateful for my sturdy boots. “Me too.”
At the bottom, the three Kings flanked me and we walked across the overgrown garden toward the rotunda. My mind cast back to the last time I’d been here, when the guys tried to convince me to get on a rickety boat and sail away from Derleth forever.
Which is exactly why you can’t trust them, because they’re selfish. If the Kings knew me at all, they’d never have asked me to leave Greg and Andre behind.
I told myself that, and I knew it to be true, and yet the idea of including them in my punishment still made my stomach churn with dread.
A group of students gathered between the crumbling columns of the rotunda. I’d expected to see the afterparty in full swing, but the place was mostly deserted. Members of the maintenance staff flitted silently up and down the stone path leading to the woods, carrying trays of food and a sound system. Even for their illicit parties, monarchs didn’t lift a finger themselves.
We marched up to the rotunda, facing off against the monarchs that made up the Eldritch Club, who fanned out in a circl
e around a crackling fire. Courtney stood in the center of the circle, her green eyes shimmering in the pale moonlight. She wore a sexy cat costume that accentuated her feline features and predatory stance.
“These three outsiders have dared to lay claim to our club’s protection,” Courtney lifted a stick out of the fire, and I could see the tip was wrapped with a gas-soaked cloth, making a torch. The fire danced over her face, giving her the appearance of a pagan queen. “We all know they are not worthy. Tonight, we shall be proven right.”
“I’m not making you captain of my cheer team,” I sneered.
I ducked as the tip of the torch sailed through the air, where a moment ago my head had been. “Don’t you dare address me,” Courtney snapped. “You’re not my equal. You’re a gutter whore, and after tonight you’re going to be a dead gutter whore.”
Just like you, I wanted to retort. But Greg moved closer to me, his fingers reaching for mine. I squeezed him back and held my tongue. My agreement wouldn’t allow me to speak and reveal the secret of this school, even if I’d wanted to.
“You know the rules, Courtney,” Quinn stepped forward. “You can’t interfere once they’re inside the caves.”
“Of course.” Courtney flipped her hair over her shoulder and grinned at Quinn. “I wouldn’t dream of breaking our precious traditions. Not that you’ve done us the same honor, allowing that piece of trash to wear our symbol.”
“She’ll earn her place,” Trey said, his voice full of scorn.
“We’ll see about that.” Courtney held out a blindfold. “Turn around,” she commanded.
I snorted. “So you can blindfold me and walk me off a cliff? No thanks.”
“She can’t do that,” Trey said. “It’s against the rules.”
“And Courtney always plays by the rules, does she?” I folded my arms. “I’m going into this with my eyes wide open.”
“Fine.” Courtney trilled, a triumphant grin spreading across her face. “If she refuses the blindfold, she forfeits the initiation. Derek, cut that tattoo out of her arm.”
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