Mayhem at Prescott High

by Stunich, C. M.

  All that matters is finding Aaron.

  “Hael, you and Oscar head out next,” Vic says on the end of a long sigh. “Cal and I will stay with Bernie and the girls.”

  Hael nods and moves over next to me, crouching down so he can push some hair back from my sweaty forehead. He tries to smile, but it doesn’t go anywhere near his eyes.

  “Try to get some sleep, okay? You can’t do anything for Aaron if you’re a zombie.” I nod at Hael’s words, closing my eyes when he leans in to press his lips against mine. I know he’s right, but I’m not sure that I could sleep if I wanted to. How can I, when I don’t know where Aaron is or what’s happening to him? What if he’s being tortured? Burned? Buried alive?

  I choke on the thought as Hael helps me to my feet, encouraging me to sit down on the sofa, so he can tuck a blanket around my shoulders.

  Oscar stands up next, but instead of simply walking away, he moves over to me for a minute and puts a hand on my head. I look up at him, but I don’t have any energy left in me for quips or repartee.

  “It might not mean much coming from me right now, but I’m sorry, Bernadette,” he says, stroking my scalp with his long fingers. “I’m sorry.” Oscar bends down and presses a kiss to my forehead before straightening up and moving away with Hael in tow.

  I have no idea what, exactly, he’s apologizing for, but it means a lot regardless.

  “I don’t know what to do with myself,” I tell Vic and Cal, already feeling this strange emptiness inside of me where it feels like Aaron should be. “How did this happen? How?”

  “We play dangerous games, Bernadette,” Victor says softly, clearly exhausted. He runs his fingers through his hair and looks me over as Cal finds his way into the living room and takes a seat on the sofa opposite me. “Sometimes, in dangerous games, there are high prices.”

  He stands up suddenly and leaves the room, but I have no idea where he’s going. He’s been up for two days straight at this point, so I hope like hell it’s to get some sleep. Speaking of … my lids feel heavy, and I curse my body for being a traitor. I’m not allowed to feel tired or need sleep, not when Aaron is missing.

  Not when he could be hurt.

  Not when he could be …

  I refuse to let my mind go to dark places. The world is already dark enough as it is.

  “It’s the winter formal tomorrow,” Callum muses, and I look up at him like he’s insane. There’s no way I’m going to a fucking school dance when Aaron is missing. “We should probably check in there, see who shows up from the Charter Crew. We still have no idea if Hael’s work has yielded any results.”

  “You’re kidding me, right?” I scoff, feeling stabby. Seems silly I felt that way over Aaron’s tight jeans just yesterday. Seems so stupid now, getting bitchy over the possibility of some girl hitting on him. All I want is to see his face again, kiss his sweet mouth, feel him hold me in his arms. This fucking blows.

  “If someone in the Charter Crew has him, I’ll know,” Callum tells me, blue eyes dark and depthless. He looks terrifying right now. “Trust me, just one look, and I will know.”

  I’m not sure how to respond to that. I believe him, but I’m not putting on a pink dress and going to some stupid ass dance. It isn’t happening.

  I wrap the blanket around my shoulders and stand up, moving over to the big sofa where Cal is sitting, and curl up in his arms. He wraps me in his hoodie and covers my head with his own, protecting me, watching over me. Like always.

  “Sleep, Bernie. I’ll wake you up if anything happens.”

  I mean to protest Cal’s request, but instead, my heavy lids get the best of me and I conk out. When I wake up, it’s to a knock on the front door. My heart soars as I scramble up and out of Cal’s lap, but not before Victor sweeps across the living room and checks the peephole.

  He frowns, slipping a pistol from his waistband before he cracks the door with caution.

  “Yeah?” he quips, giving whoever it is on the other side a once-over.

  There’s a man there, but he’s just a delivery guy. He looks freaked all the way out over Victor, and practically tosses a shimmery cream-colored envelope at him before booking it the fuck out of there.

  “What the fuck is that?” I ask as Vic uses his shoulder to shut the door, slipping the flap on the envelope open with a fingernail. Purple petals fall to the floor with a sweet scent, and he scowls, like he already knows what’s going on. “Is this a wedding invitation?” I ask, supremely confused and slightly sick feeling. If there was any news about Aaron, any at all, one of the boys would’ve told me about it already.

  Which means … nothing has happened in the last several hours that I’ve been asleep.

  “This is from Ophelia, I’m sure of it,” Vic says, looking inside the envelope at what appears to be an invitation. He reads it over and then tosses it to me.

  “How do you know that?” I ask, frowning at the small piece of cardstock. It’s lightly scented with perfume, a single purple petal still stuck to it. It reminds me of the ridiculous bridal shower invitations on the movie Bridesmaids, the ones with the live butterfly that flitters out. So over the top. “This is an invitation to an art show at a gallery in Oak Park.”

  “And violets were my grandmother’s favorite flowers,” Vic says, crushing the petals with his boots. He points at the invitation, eyes blazing with dark fury. “This is from Ophelia. And it’s for Sunday evening. I don’t like that. I don’t like the timing of this shit at all.” Victor clenches his teeth and then flicks his attention over to Callum. “Call Hael and Oscar and tell them to get their asses back here.”

  “Why?” I ask, looking up from the invitation in a panic. “We can’t stop the search.”

  “We’re not,” Vic reassures me, putting a hand on my shoulder and looking me in the eyes. “We’re redirecting it. My mother never does anything on a whim. If she sent this invite, it’s for a reason.” He releases me and takes off down the hall to get dressed while I stand there in a sea of purple petals and the sweet scent of violets, missing Aaron and wishing Ophelia a nest of murder hornets in her perfect fucking hair.

  If she has Aaron, Victor won’t get a chance to kill his mother.

  Because I’ll do it. And I’ll do it with a smile on my motherfucking face.

  Aaron Fadler

  The next time I open my eyes, I’m in a large bedroom with soaring ceilings and log walls. The bed I’m lying on has a buffalo plaid canopy to go with the over-the-top rustic décor that seems to permeate the rest of the place. It’s very clearly an expensive house with expensive things, but I have a very hard time imagining that it belongs to Ophelia. More likely, it’s Tom’s.

  Kali is sitting on the edge of the bed next to me, staring at the door like she’s expecting company. She doesn’t know I’m awake until I try to move, and the handcuffs on my wrists jangle. Her gaze flicks back to me, and she smiles. It’s not a tight smile either, or one full of hate. Instead, it’s almost disturbingly genuine. Of course, it looks grotesque with her swollen lips. I only wish we’d thought to sew her mouth shut before Stacy Langford did.

  I remember Bernadette’s concern about Kali, about how she stared at us in the hallway that day. She told me that she thought Kali was obsessed with me. At the time, I thought it sounded fairly ridiculous. But sitting here now? I’m not so sure that Bernie wasn’t right.

  “You’re awake,” she says, as if she was hoping that might be the case. “I was wondering how long you’d be out for.” Kali leans forward and strokes some of the hair from my forehead, frowning when I wince and try to turn my head away. “I can’t believe Tom hit you like that. There was no need for it.”

  “Kali,” I start, my throat dry, my words husky. I would love a drink of water right about now, but I’m not about to ask this crazy bitch for anything. “What am I doing here?” She shrugs and turns away from me, still focused on the bedroom door.

  “Ophelia can use you as a pawn to get Victor to do whatever she wants. I think she’s
planning on asking him to commit a crime in plain sight, like so he can be charged for it and lose out on the trust that way.” Kali glances back at me, tucking green and black hair behind one of her ears. Her diamond-studded hoop earring sways with the motion. I’ve seen her wear those particular earrings before, but I just always assumed they were fake. Now I’m starting to wonder if they weren’t a gift from Ophelia. “Personally, I think we should just kill Bernadette.”

  My jaw clenches, but I resist the urge to freak out on her. That’s not going to get me what I want. Instead, I wonder if I can’t play to her eccentricities? I mean, she clearly likes me; she wants to be a part of Havoc. I can see all of that written into her face. There must be some way to manipulate her into letting me go.

  “Why kill her? If Ophelia can get Victor to do what you said, then there’s no point. She’ll get her money the easy way, no murder necessary, no loose ends to worry about.” Of course, neither Ophelia nor Kali know Vic very well. He’s not an idiot; he would know that complying with his mother’s demands would do nothing to actually guarantee that I’d be set free at any point. Likely, she’d kill me as soon as he did what she asked.

  There aren’t a lot of ways for me to win in this game.

  Kali looks back at me with a tight smile on her pink painted lips.

  “Afterward, I want Ophelia to give you to me,” she says, and I have to seriously use every ounce of willpower I have to keep from making a face. Give me to you? I’ve only ever belonged to Bernadette; Ophelia has no power to gift me to you in any way. “I don’t know if she will though. We’ll see, I guess.”

  Kali stops talking as the sound of a door opening and closing echoes through the house. There’s the heavy sound of footsteps and then Mitch Charter is standing in the doorway to the bedroom, dark hair shaved close to his skull, jaw working in frustration. As soon as he sees me, his eyes bulge out of his fucking head.

  “What the hell?” he asks, storming over to stand beside Kali. “Where the fuck did he come from?”

  “I found him in the woods after he tried to escape,” Kali purrs, and my body ripples with goose bumps. Mitch is looking down at me like he’d every much enjoy skinning me alive.

  “You cocksucking piece of shit,” he growls, looking me up and down like he’s trying to decide what to cut first. “That blond psychopath of yours killed four of my boys and blew Timmy to kingdom motherfucking come. Not to mention, my car is trashed. Nice try though. You fuckers messed up.” Mitch starts to smile as he takes a step closer to me, ignoring the way Kali’s body tenses up.

  He pauses at the sound of more footsteps, and Ophelia and Tom enter the room next. The former doesn’t look pleased to see Mitch here.

  “Mitch Charter,” she says, opening a sparkly handbag that matches her blue dress.

  “Yeah?” he asks, turning around to look at Victor’s mother. Guess we were right when we figured Ophelia was responsible for all of the shit with the Charter Crew.

  “I’m sorry to say, but I’m going to have to let you go.” Ophelia rummages around in her bag as Mitch gapes at her.

  “The fuck? I’ve been working my ass off for—” He doesn’t get to finish that sentence because Ophelia pulls a small caliber handgun fitted with a silencer from her bag and shoots Mitch in the forehead. Nobody in that room seems surprised as blood flecks Ophelia’s pale face, and Mitch’s body slumps to the floor.

  There’s no exit wound since the bullet is so small. Some people think that makes a weapon less effective. Not necessarily true. If the bullet is small enough, it just bounces around inside of you and fucks you up good. Looks like that’s what just happened to Mitch.

  Kali doesn’t seem at all bothered to see her boyfriend lying dead on the floor at her feet. Even Tom looks bored by the situation.

  “Get this cleaned up,” Ophelia orders, putting the gun away, and then gesturing at Mitch’s body with her purse. There isn’t a ton of blood, but it is leaking from his head to stain the rustic wood floor planks. “I have a dinner party tonight, so I won’t be here. I assume you’re staying?” She removes a white handkerchief from her bag and then dabs at the blood on her face, wiping it clean.

  “I’d like to attend the dance,” Kali hazards, shrugging her shoulders. “But somebody has to watch Aaron.”

  “You don’t need to go to the dance,” Ophelia corrects, adjusting her attention to me. “If you’re right about Aaron, then we no longer have any use for Bernadette.” She turns to leave, as if the conversation is over, but Kali stands up, following a few steps before Ophelia glances back at her with an annoyed expression on her pretty face. Tom just follows along like the pet dog he so very clearly is.

  “We can still kill her,” Kali argues, gesturing with her pink acrylics. “Double down, make sure you get the money.” Ophelia doesn’t seem convinced, nor does she look like she wants to have an argument with someone she considers an underling.

  “My darling, listen up. When you get older, you’ll understand that the quickest route between two points is a straight line. I don’t need to kill that girl and have my son start hunting me in the dark. I’ll do it, if I have to, but I like your idea of using Aaron instead. Let’s stick with the plan, shall we?” She turns away, ignoring Kali’s protests, and I hear the creaking of stairs shortly after, followed by the front door. Somewhere outside, an engine turns over and the sound of tires on gravel drifts up and over to me.

  Mitch is still lying on the floor, bleeding everywhere, while Kali stares after Ophelia with a deep-set frown on her face. She looks back down at Mitch and sighs.

  “God, this fucking sucks,” she grumbles, bending down to grab his arm. In heels and booty-shorts, Kali starts to drag the dead boy toward the door and into the hallway. A few short minutes later, and I can hear the awful sound of something tumbling down the stairs.

  Son of a bitch.

  This is not looking good for me, not at all.

  I close my eyes and test out the bindings on my arms and legs, but there’s no give, none at all.

  If I’m going to get out of here, I’m going to have to use Kali’s obsession with me to do it.

  Hael Harbin

  Bernadette looks positively miserable as she steps into the living room in the flouncy pink cocktail dress we stole from downtown Fuller. The top part is made of lace, and it’s almost entirely see-through save for some sparkly appliques over the pale mounds of her breasts.

  If circumstances were any different, I’d probably be creaming my pants right about now.

  As things stand … I sort of just want to kill somebody. Preferably Vic’s mom. What a psychopath she’s turning out to be. He’s convinced that she has Aaron, and honestly, at this point, I don’t see who else possibly could.

  If the Charter Crew had him, we would’ve either received his corpse on our doorstep in the morning, or else they’d have called us to, at the very least, gloat, if not just torture us with the sound of his screams.

  So there’s something bigger at play here.

  Ophelia motherfucking Mars.

  “Blackbird,” I whisper, because I can’t stand to see her upset. It kills me. I don’t like seeing women upset, period. After all the horrible things my father’s done to my mother, I just can’t take it. Add in the fact that I am crazy, head-over-heels, stuck in the clouds in love with this chick, and her sadness just consumes me. She sighs, holding her black high heels in one hand and sitting down on the bottom step to put them on. “This is a good thing, right? If Ophelia has Aaron, then he’s still alive.”

  “We don’t know for sure that she has him,” she says, sliding her feet into the strappy black shoes and buckling them on. “And if she does, I don’t see what going to the winter formal is going to do to help with that.”

  I kneel down beside her in the outfit she picked out for me: black slacks, a pair of boots, and a black button-down with white skull and crossbones cufflinks. We all have the same outfit. It’s kinda sad, considering Aaron’s is still lying on his bed u
pstairs, but I can’t start thinking like a nihilist here.

  My hand cups the side of her face, and she closes her eyes, leaning into my touch.

  “We need to go and show everyone we’re still here, that we’re not worried, that nothing bad is happening. You know how Prescott is; they’re like sharks. One drop of blood and they go into a feeding frenzy. Once we’re there, we can look for Kali or Mitch; we can see if I managed to toast anyone with my little car bomb.” I force a grin, but it doesn’t reach my eyes. Doesn’t matter because Bernie’s are still closed. “If one of them has Aaron or knows anything about his disappearance, we’ll find out.”

  Bernadette opens her eyes then to look at me, and I see fury burning deep within her.

  Taking Aaron was a bad idea.

  Ophelia—if it was her—has just royally pissed my little bird off.

  I would hate to be Kali Rose, or Billie Charter, or anyone else that gets in my baby’s way.

  She’s going to fuck them up.

  “I want a knife, and a gun, and a mask,” she says, rising to her feet. I follow her up as Callum comes down the steps to pause beside us. We exchange a look, but neither of us argues. If she wants those things, she’ll get them. “I am done playing it safe. I don’t care if Sara Young is watching me, or if Constantine suspects we hurt Danny. I’m going to find Kali tonight, and I’m going to torture whatever information I can get out of her. That’s how I want it done. She’s a name on my list, and I’m ready for her ass.”

  Bernie storms past me as Vic comes out of his bedroom, watching her as she storms over to the back door and lets herself outside to smoke a joint.

  “She’s dangerous as fuck, Vic,” I tell him, and he nods. He knows that. It’s why he loves her; it’s why we all do.

  “Good thing I really got her that crown,” he says, and I notice he’s got a box under his arm. “It was supposed to be fun, for her to wear this to the party tonight. But I guess it’ll be just as interesting to see her spill blood in it.” He moves away, and I watch him go.