“Don’t tell me you’re breaking up with me. I couldn’t stand it. Who knows what I’d do?” Gideon’s gray eyes blazed with mischief. Smart-ass.
“How can I break up with you when you only have eyes for everyone’s favorite barista, Damien?”
“He does make the best lattes,” he said with a dramatic sigh. Gideon brushed a jet-black lock of hair, courtesy of his Korean heritage, from his face. I was envious of the way it seemed to obey his every styling command. Sometimes it was slicked back or combed to the side, but today he wore it tousled, which he managed to make look effortless and cool. My hair had a permanent ponytail crease. Le sigh.
“Really, though. Don’t flip out at me.” I pulled the card from my back pocket and slid it across the table.
He paused to read it and then picked it up and examined both sides. “What the hell is this? Because I know it’s not what I think it is.”
“Keep your voice down. It’s my invitation.” This was not the kind of news you broadcasted in a library with the acoustics of an amphitheater. The Red Court hadn’t survived for years because they invited girls who didn’t value discretion.
“Your invitation?! This isn’t a dinner party, Ember. This is the actual Red Court. I wasn’t even sure they were real. I always figured it was just a bunch of kids using the rumors to cover up their pranks.” His eyes scanned my face, seemingly checking my features to make sure I wasn’t a well-devised impostor who kept things from her best friend. “I didn’t know you wanted in!”
The last part sounded like an accusation. It probably was; I didn’t normally keep secrets from Gideon. The rest of the school typically existed outside our sphere of notice, but we were all each other had. This part of me, the one who knew the Red Court was real and needed to join, was secreted away from my best friend. It was born in the darkness of my anger, and that’s where I’d left it. It felt too big to talk about or even acknowledge to myself in the presence of others. It was easier for me to let it own a small corner of my life. But if my plan was finally working, it couldn’t remain that way anymore.
“I’m sorry. It’s complicated.”
He shifted back in his seat to a slouch, like an experienced interrogator waiting for me to break. “What’s going on? No bull.”
I took a deep breath. It was time to pull the Band-Aid off the truth. One, two, three. “I’m not joining because I want to.”
“Oh, I see. They abducted you and forced you to swear an oath to the Red Court. Cool, cool, cool.”
“Are you done?” I was feeling defensive and exasperated. This already wasn’t going well.
Gideon paused to let a gaggle of chattering girls pass. I recognized Gigi, Mrs. Martin’s daughter and the newest member of the debate team, in the group. She gave me a small wave and I waved back, fighting to smile against the strain of the conversation.
“I don’t know. I feel like I’m learning a lot about you right now. Why don’t we continue this sharing session with you telling me exactly why you’re getting involved with a clandestine group dead set on the destruction of others?”
Even with our conversation at an aggressive hiss, it was enough to make me reconsider our location. “Follow me.”
I rose from my chair and moved to the back of the library, where a few lonely chairs sat without a table. No one ever came back here unless they wanted to balance their work on their knees, which was no student ever. I sat and gestured for Gideon to join me. He threw himself down into the overstuffed chair with such dramatic flair that I wanted to applaud the performance. His expression was set to fiercely irritated.
“I’ve known the Red Court was real for almost two years, ever since April told me that they were the ones who caused her accident. They’re the reason she may never walk again.”
“So, you’re doing this for what? Like revenge or something?”
“Or something. I’m not becoming one of them. Not really. I’m joining so I can destroy the Red Court.”
I pulled out my battered journal, the one I’d been using since the beginning of the year, and flipped to the first page. “Here. This should help.”
Gideon took it, staring at me with a dark, questioning look. I didn’t let him look at my journal. Ever.
He mouthed the words I’d written to myself, ones I knew by heart.
1. Join the Red Court.
2. Find out the Queen of Hearts’s identity.
3. Take down the Queen.
4. Dismantle the court.
“How long have you been planning this?”
“A while,” I whispered. “In every journal I’ve kept since April’s accident, that’s what’s been on the first page. I’m going to find the Queen of Hearts and cut the head off the snake.”
Gideon’s expression turned thoughtful, with a level of intensity reserved for the things he truly cared about. It was something I saw only in flashes when he was talking about photography or his family. And me.
“How do you plan to accomplish this?” he asked.
“By doing to her what she does to everyone else.”
We all had secrets, things we’d rather not shine a spotlight on, but that’s exactly what the Red Court did. They found the one thing with the power to wreck your life and paraded it out in front of everyone. Just like the car outside, they made shows of the destruction they wrought, and that’s why someone had to stop them. Someone prepared to see it to the end. Whatever end that was.
Gideon chewed on his thoughts before speaking. “Be careful, Ember. We’ve all heard the stories, and you saw yourself what happened outside this morning. Remember Tessa, my lab partner from last year? She moved to live with her grandma in Phoenix after the Red Court revealed she cheated her way through Algebra—”
“Really? I didn’t hear that.”
“No one can confirm it was them, of course. But she was expelled, Ember.” Gideon paused and his face softened with a rare expression of remorse. “I’m sorry for what they did to April, but they mean serious business. What if the same thing happens to you? Don’t think you can swim with sharks and not get bitten.”
I gave him my best vicious smile. “What if I’m one of the sharks?”
He scoffed. “Sharks eat their siblings in the womb, you know.”
“Too much Shark Week for you.” I hauled my messenger bag onto my lap to unpack my geometry homework. It would look weird if we didn’t have something in front of us. Probably best not to attract any attention right now.
“I’m sure you think a plan and your stubborn streak will be enough, but have you thought about what you’ll need to do? Could you write slurs on someone’s car in blood?”
I swallowed down my revulsion. There would be things I didn’t want to do, but I couldn’t borrow any trouble. One step at a time. “For someone with a pronounced vain streak, you’re surprising me with how much you care about others.”
“Em, you know I don’t care about most of the people here. I care about you and what being a part of the—” He caught himself. “What all of this will do to you in the long run. What happens when they ask you to do something like what happened to Tessa? You don’t have a grandma in Phoenix to run to when things take a nosedive. I need you to be ok.”
Leave it to Gideon to mask his concern in selfishness. What was that in his eyes? Worry? Anger? Frustration? Probably all three. And all three unnecessary. Joining the Red Court was phase one of my plan. I clenched my fists tight to stop them from shaking as I said, “I can take it.”
* * *
At two thirty on the dot, a student aid came into my final class of the day and handed my French teacher a note. My palms were itching so badly that conjugating verbs was impossible. Before every track meet and debate tournament, nerves tickled my palms with an invisible feather. It took my entire freshman year to learn to control the impulse to rub them along the tops of my thighs.
The messenger scampered out of the classroom with a concerned look on her face as Madame Anderson summoned me to her desk. Who knew what the girl had done to be in the Red Court’s pocket, but the look in her eyes was a warning I didn’t need.
Rather than going to the attendance office as written on my pass, I made my way toward the theater room. Stress weighted my steps as I walked, so I pulled out my journal to expel some of my worry.
October 1
How can I feel so lost when things are going exactly to plan?
As I descended the steep staircase that led to the theater room and the rest of the performing arts classrooms, I reflected on the steps I had taken to get to this moment. My careful planning, cultivated over years of hard work, had paid off. From my straight As and teacher’s pet status to my position as a leader on the debate team and underclassman on the varsity track team, I was undeniably well positioned to be an asset to the Red Court. April had helped me cultivate the traits the Red Court were rumored to be looking for. They only recruited girls who were the most influential members of the student body, girls who’d shown they could handle leadership among their peers and the ability to win the trust of their teachers. You couldn’t just gather a bunch of nobodies to break up the star football player and cheer captain.
Red Court jobs took finesse and the best of the best at Heller High to execute them. Regardless of how I felt about them personally, I couldn’t deny the allure of their organization to my inquisitive mind. How were prom queens elected and failing grades made passing ones? What was the strange Machiavellian mix of brutal efficiency and cunning that made it work? A sick feeling settled in my stomach at the wave of grudging admiration that hit me.
Since starting at Heller, every move I made was part of a choreographed dance, bringing me ever closer to the Queen of Hearts and retribution for what the Red Court did to April. This was the moment I’d worked for—the culmination of my sweat and tears and all the blood staining the Red Court crimson. I kept my attention focused on that thought to edge out any doubt that might have been lingering in the back of my mind. Getting involved with the group that hurt my sister and countless others was as dangerous as Gideon said, but this was the way. This was the only way. This plan may have started with my sister, but it’d become more than that. My need to take them down was an obsession.
The theater room was wide and open, flanked by thick red curtains on either side that also lined the back wall. It was large enough to hold some of the school’s smaller performances in, but not so large that I would miss my...whoever I was meeting. I glanced around and saw only an arts student crashed out and snoring softly on a weathered couch in the far corner. I’d seen her around, but she was two grades ahead of me; we didn’t exactly travel in the same circles. Poking around the room, I checked behind the curtains and in the costume closet so I could discreetly pull the playing card from my pocket to check the time and location again, even though I knew I had it right.
“September Marie Williams.”
My full name startled me like a thunderclap, and I shot out from the costume closet to see who it was. I couldn’t hide my shock when the girl from the couch sat up and looked expectantly at me.
“September Marie Williams,” she repeated. “Daughter of Steven and Jo Williams. Resident of 1328 Belleview Street. 4.0 GPA. Track prodigy. Youngest captain of the debate team in Hell High history, yet you’re only able to convince your friend Gideon to get coffee with you once a week.”
The girl rambled these facts off as disinterestedly as if they were a particularly boring weather forecast. From the sound of it, I was sunny with a high of seventy-five. Her face was familiar and pretty in an unruly way; she had a lot of her paintings and drawings displayed in the halls for art shows, that much I knew. Her curly blond hair was long and floated around her face in corkscrew tendrils. Black fitted pants and a long dark tunic sweater hugged generous curves. The whole look was very art house, which I could only guess was the desired effect.
I finished examining her and answered coolly, “You could have found most of that online.”
“True, but you don’t have Facebook or an Instagram account or any other kind of online existence. You—” she emphasized the word with a point of her finger “—are a ghost.”
I smiled. All true. I deleted my accounts over a year ago. It was a risk to be one of the only ones at school without a place to upload snaps and videos of my life, but there was a level of vulnerability in it I couldn’t afford. “You know all about me. Who are you?”
“I’m Haley. I’m the one who invited you here.”
This girl was part of the Red Court. I hadn’t realized until I saw her that I had a preconceived notion about the kind of people who made up the secret group. At first blush, she was everything I wasn’t—artistic and laid-back. What would the Red Court do with a painter? How could someone so left-brained run such calculated operations?
“How do I know that this isn’t some prank?” I asked and scolded myself for not questioning the invite before this moment. Could someone have found out about my plan?
“You don’t, not really. Guess you’ll just have to trust me. Well, this, too.”
She tossed me a folder, which thwacked against my chest when I grabbed it. Inside were my transcripts, detailed notes on my freshman year, what I’d been up to the first few months of my sophomore year, and copies of graded tests I hadn’t even received back from my teachers yet. No one person could have collected this information, but the Red Court had resources.
I looked back up at Haley with new eyes; she was the real deal.
CHAPTER 3
I CLEARED MY THROAT and gathered my scattered thoughts back together. “What now?”
Her face shifted to a professional smile—a magnanimous Don Corleone with an offer I couldn’t refuse. “Now we talk. If you don’t like what you hear, you walk. No harm, no foul.” To my surprise, she raised her hands in a supplicating gesture.
“You would just let me leave? But I’ve seen you. I know who you are and what you do.”
“Of course. We wouldn’t hold you against your will. Joining has always been a choice. Even after you agree, you can change your mind whenever you want. As for seeing me, you’ve seen your dossier. You know what we’re capable of. I doubt you’ll be talking.” Her eyes twinkled like she knew the punch line to a joke I missed.
She waited a beat before continuing. “Here’s how it works. We’re a team. Everything we do, we do together. There are other teams of two, but we don’t know them and they don’t know us. We get assigned jobs from one central contact—”
“The Queen of Hearts,” I interjected. The Queen of Hearts. The ultimate prize. I hoped my excitement at saying her name was masked by the anxiety rolling off me.
“Yes, she accepts all the requests and hands out assignments. Sometimes they are our own projects, sometimes we run support for other teams.”
“What kinds of jobs do we do?”
“Everything. The Queen of Hearts makes all the decisions. She knows us and our strengths, but my personal specialty is election rigging.”
I felt a jolt of excitement at the idea of rigging a student body election. All those hours spent designing posters, campaigning, and making promises could mean nothing in the end. What would it be like to be the one in control?
“So, tell me what you know about us and I’ll let you know what’s real.” She took a seat on the slouchy couch and tucked her long legs under her.
I pulled a chair over and sat in front of her like we were conducting a bizarre job interview. “Requests don’t cost any money, and any student can make a request of the Red Court in exchange for favors later on.”
“True. We don’t need money. We work on favors. We can call in our markers at any time, as often as we want. Those favors can be supplies for an assignment, which can cost money, but we only ask when the Favored can
easily acquire what we need.”
Favored? Interesting term. Ironic. “If you don’t pay up, you’re ruined.”
Haley cut me a sharp look. “Ruined is a strong term. Kids know the rules. There’s a cost, and they agree to pay.”
“Ok,” I said, thinking of the girl from the parking lot. Ruined was exactly the way I’d describe her reputation. Only, she didn’t make a deal with the Devils of Hell High; she was just their victim.
“What else?”
“All communication is done by locker.” I held up my playing card to demonstrate my point. “But if you want to make a request or would like to join, you slip a note into locker 1067.” A nervous laugh bubbled out of my mouth. This was the part that had made me the most anxious, dropping my name through the slot. I could only go off theories and rumors I’d heard and April’s educated guesses. No one spoke openly about requests they’ve made. “But no one has ever seen anyone opening that locker before,” I continued.
“And you never will.”
I waited to see if Haley would share any other details, but she remained tight-lipped.
“You must have access to every locker, though, right?”
“Yes, we have skeleton keys that get us into every locker in the school.”
“Handy,” I replied. “What about the Whisper Wire? Is that real or myth?”
In addition to the unassigned locker acting as the mailbox for requests, there were rumors that students slipped notes through its slot for the Red Court to use as leverage.
“Real. We get anonymous tips and secrets constantly. A lot of it is nonsense or things we already know, but we keep track of what we hear. You never know what might be useful later.”
I nodded. Sifting through fact and fiction when it came to the Red Court was hard. No one ever talked about it, but it was always there, roiling just under the surface.
“That’s kind of it for what I know. Can I ask some questions?”
These Vengeful Hearts Page 2