by Ella Fields
She’d been quiet, not even so much as a smile when she’d accepted her diploma.
And then she was gone.
I think I love him.
I wouldn’t feel bad. No matter how many times I’d reopened that diary of hers to reread some of the inner workings of her mind.
She wasn’t only delusional and weird as fuck, but she was downright crazy. Ted Bundy crazy.
Besides, Marnie and I were finally official once more. Better late than never.
After prom, she’d said I’d proven myself. Whatever the fuck that meant. She’d also asked that I try to be honest with her, or that I at least try to open up a little more, explaining that we could be even better than before if I did.
I didn’t plan on doing that, but I needed something, and she’d been something I’d needed for months, regardless of how conflicted I sometimes felt.
So the start of summer had been spent getting to know someone I already fucking knew. Her request, not mine, and she wouldn’t let me bang her until we’d reconnected properly.
Sex just muddles everything up, she’d said.
But it makes arguing a lot more fun, I’d retaliated.
To which she’d called me a pig and slapped me across the chest, her eyes laughing.
Maybe if she could quit smacking me, I’d feel a little more secure myself in this discomfort that used to be the most comfortable thing on earth.
So much so, I’d destroyed something in order to get it back.
Butcher.
I drew in a shaken breath, dragging my fingers through my mussed hair.
Marnie’s arm clung to mine. “Is it bad that I can’t even remember what movie we watched?”
We skirted people waiting in line and headed for the doors.
Lowering my head, I whispered, “All I remember is wanting to stick…” My words trailed away from me, my thoughts emptying at the sight of my dad standing next to my car by the curb.
His arms were crossed, his long black jacket fluttering in the breeze to reveal his usual attire of suit pants and a crisp gray shirt. If the blank look upon his face wasn’t bad enough, then the fact that January Denane was standing beside him sealed the deal.
My stomach turned to cement.
“Jude?” Marnie questioned. “Why’s your dad here?”
“I’ve, uh…” I stopped and glanced around. Spying a cab waiting up the street, I walked her there. “I’ve gotta go.”
“What do you even mean you have to go? Jude.” She grabbed my arm when I opened the cab door. “Jude,” she growled. “You said you’d be as honest as possible from here on out, so tell me what the hell is going on.”
Ice rolled over my body, freezing every breath as I stared at her, knowing I never should’ve said that. That maybe, I never should’ve thought this could work out in the first place. “I lied. Please, Marns, just go home.” I walked off before she could ask me anything else, my hands tucked inside the pockets of my hoodie.
The breeze carried my name along it, and eventually erased it as I neared my father and his second. I kept my expression neutral. Not the easiest feat under the reproachful sneer of January. I could see Fern in the slender curve of her neck and jaw, that petite nose and her hair. But the rest of her must have belonged to her father. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
January stared me dead in the eye. “Get in the car before I shove my foot so far up your ass, you’ll be shitting out your snide attitude via your nostrils for months.”
My father coughed to hide a shocked bark of laughter, and I gaped at him, incredulous.
He wiped his expression clean, then gestured to the awaiting Town Car. “Get in, Jude.”
Sighing, I looked at January once more.
A mistake. Again, she sneered. Her red upper lip curled, brown eyes filled with malice.
“Okay.” I raised my hands, then slid into the leather interior. “Chill.”
“Chill?” she screeched.
My father climbed inside, sitting on the same seat as me. “Just get in, Jan.”
Seated opposite us, January plucked a cigarette from her beige blouse pocket and lit it.
I licked my teeth, tempted to ask for one. “I didn’t realize you smoked.”
“Only when I’m extremely pissed off.”
“So at least eight times a day then,” my dad said.
She finally got the cigarette burning and tucked her tiny lighter away. “Eat a fat dick, Elijah.”
“Not my preferred choice—”
Jesus Christ.
“What’s happened?” I cut my dad off.
Silence arrived, suffocating as it mingled with cigarette smoke.
Eyes on me, two golden brown pools of fire, January stabbed a finger at the button to lower the window. It was only opened enough to flick her ash outside. “What’s happened?” she said, so calmly, I almost didn’t catch it. “What’s happened, he says.” Laughing silently, she stuffed the cigarette between her lips and closed her eyes, inhaling nearly half of it.
Lungs of steel.
“You.” January exhaled smoke across the car. Her voice rose in venom and volume with each word she spat. “You humiliated her. You hurt her. You used her. You tricked her. You tarnished her. You broke her. You completely fucked her up.”
Oh.
Shit.
A wave of trepidation poured from my head to my toes, turning everything numb.
“Now,” January said, inhaling and exhaling with a rough laugh that made my skin crawl with fear. “You’re going to fucking pay.”
I didn’t dare look at my dad. It would be a show of weakness. But the way he was sitting silently beside me told me all I needed to know.
January was running this show, and for reasons I’d yet to discover, it seemed he had to allow it.
“January…”
“Shut your putrid little mouth,” she hissed, stubbing the cigarette out on the leather seat. “You thought to ruin her in such a way and get away with it? Really?” Her eyes swirled with rage. “My fucking daughter?”
“January,” my dad finally said.
“You shut the fuck up, too.”
“Enough,” Dad said. “Let us wait until we’ve reached our destination, shall we?”
After a moment of looking as though she were not only going to ignore him but throw herself at me to claw my eyes out, January collected herself and sat back in the seat, crossing her legs.
Her eyes didn’t leave me, though. No, they drilled holes she longed to fill with poison the entire journey to Nightingale headquarters—January’s hotel down by the harbor.
The three top floors were never made available to those outside of the society.
They served as our initiation rooms, meeting rooms, ballrooms, and the immoral list goes on.
I would’ve thought whatever was about to happen would be better suited to the warehouse. I was certain I was going to arrive home with a missing limb, a missing finger at the very least.
The Town Car pulled up at the rear of The Ribbon. The entry point for members of Nightingale disguised as a loading zone and staff exit. Those were around the other side, and I watched the Town Car head that way, wishing I could follow.
“Jude,” Dad said, jerking his head to the door he was propped against, keeping it open. “Best to get it over with.”
January was already gone, likely to ready the torture weapons or forewarn whoever it was that would be using them.
Bloody fucking hell.
I cleared my mind of everything and anything as I nodded and breezed past him into the dimly lit foyer. Geraniums sat upon a gleaming wooden perch in the center, much like the ones Fern had knocked over and crushed after I’d crushed her at prom.
I shook my shoulders and rolled my neck, stepping into the elevator that would take us so high, we could hardly see Peridot Island from the windows, only the crystalline sea beyond.
“Fern Denane?” Dad said through his teeth. “What the fuck were you thinking, Jude?”
>
It felt like I hadn’t been thinking for months. I didn’t answer.
Old Isle crept into the corner of my eye, and I shook my shoulders again.
“It’ll be fine,” Dad murmured, checking the time on his Rolex. “You fucked up, but it’ll be fine. You just need to accept the consequences of your actions and be done with it.”
I didn’t get a chance to ask him what those consequences might be. The elevator pinged, and the doors rolled open, exposing a foyer grand enough for royalty.
Cherubs were swimming amongst clouds in the ceiling between diamond skylights. The sun sprayed light over the brown slate floor, my dad’s loafers clipping over it to the same thudding beat of my heart.
We passed the conference rooms, rounding the long corridor to another at the back that led to the room of servitude and the den of integrity. Upon every wall, inside filigreed gold frames and painted in code, were the names of all the initiated. If they were deceased, then their name was wiped over with a damp cloth, turning the black ink gold.
For once a name entered those frames, there was no way to remove it.
Every limb was coiled tight with tension as we neared the room of servitude, usually used for fucked-up rituals or sacrifices all in the name of allegiance.
We kept going, and surprise had my head snapping around.
We’d basically walked in a giant U to a door hidden in the wall. January was there, and she pressed her hand into it as we neared. “My office.”
I’d known she likely had one here, being that it was her hotel, but I hadn’t realized it would be inside the society’s headquarters.
I crossed the room to a tub chair, waiting until January had entered and taken a seat behind her oversized concrete desk. “Sit, filth.”
I did. My dad was already seated and crossing one knee over the other.
He was too calm, resigned, as though this was a deal already brokered, and that was that.
“A month ago, I found my daughter in bed, crying her eyes out about something she refused to tell me.”
I sat stone-still, my cold hands linked inside my sweatshirt and my eyes upon the photo frame facing January. I knew Fern’s face would be inside it. The fucked-up feelings Red evoked and that bone-deep resentment resurfaced tenfold.
“A week went by, but she still wouldn’t get out of bed. So I called her friend, who told me the whole nauseating story.”
Fucking hell, Cory.
Though I couldn’t exactly blame her. She hadn’t known, and as far as I was aware, she still didn’t know anything about this soul-stealing empire.
I couldn’t hate her, either. Not after what’d happened with her and Silas.
“Nothing to say for yourself?”
I knew anything I said would just make it worse. It was done, and there was no taking any of it back. “What do you need?” I said instead, not recognizing the blandness to my tone.
I felt her eyes on me, trying to murder me where I sat. “Oh, you’ll soon find out.” Her chair creaked as she sat back. “But that’s not the only issue that’s been brought to my attention.”
She had me then, and she knew it, smiling in a way that brightened some of that hellfire in her eyes. “Sandra went to visit her friend on Old Isle.”
I tried, but I couldn’t stop my teeth from gritting. Sandra Rydell and my mom had never been friends. More like polite frenemies. I waited because there was obviously more to this stupid tale and because I couldn’t separate my teeth if I wanted to.
The fact that Sandra had gone there and had likely just put her in a state… I nuked the image.
There was a reason, aside from guilt, that I didn’t visit her myself.
“You’ll never guess who she happened to run into as she was heading to the wharf to catch the ferry back.”
I didn’t need to look at my father to know he’d wrestled every emotion into carefully controlled disinterest. I could feel the storm that still resided inside him vibrating in the air.
If January noticed, then she didn’t care. “Park Kelsey.”
Again, I waited, though I couldn’t keep my shoulders from stiffening.
January hummed. “She couldn’t help but overhear a conversation he was having on the phone about an upcoming show in California.” She paused for effect. “For his paintings.”
Fuck.
“We did ask him to stab someone,” Dad interjected. “He did that.”
“And it turned out to be nothing more than a flesh wound.” January waved her hand, flippant. “In any case, his task was child’s play compared to most. So,” she said, leaning forward to stare at me with a wrathful twinkle in her eyes. “Not only did you mess with the wrong woman’s daughter, but it would seem you failed your initiation. Not only did you fail,” she said, her voice softer but not gentle by any means, “but you planned to keep it a secret.” She shot a hard, narrowed glance at my father. “You and Elijah both.”
My dad didn’t say a word.
But I was guessing it was time I did. “I didn’t think…” I stopped and straightened in the chair. “What do you need me to do?”
“What a good little brat,” January sneered. “So ready to fix your royal mess.”
I had no choice, and we all knew it. Silas’s parents were now aware, so that meant anyone within Nightingale might also be.
They did not take well to traitors. All it took was one or two for our carefully veiled world to collapse and reveal itself.
“And you will fix this,” the woman in control of my every breath said, ice crusting each enunciated word. “You will not only prove your loyalty and remorse to me, but you must also show every member that you are loyal to this cause, and that you deserve to be here.”
I was ready, so I nodded. It couldn’t be worse than anything I’d already done. Nothing seemed all that bad after losing myself to this asinine cause anyway.
“You will marry my daughter.”
I choked instantly. “What?”
“And you will wed her before the entire enclave, so they can see for themselves that you can be trusted.”
Marry.
Wedding.
Fern.
No. Hell fucking no.
I glared at my father, who was staring at me, his chin propped on his hand, fingers rubbing. “Yes, Jude.”
January continued, “Nightingale may be aware of this arrangement, but the rest of the island may not.” She lifted a pile of papers off her desk and smacked them on the concrete before laying them near the edge with a pen. “To them, you are in love. To them, you felt so wretched about what you did to her at prom that you took her out for dinner to apologize, and the rest is history.”
I stared at the paper, knowing it was a contract for both Nightingale and the courthouse.
A marriage application.
“January,” I croaked out. “Anything else, I’ll—”
“Quiet,” my father snapped, returning to his rightful throne, and my eyes closed. “You will fix this. January has been extremely generous. Most would be rotting corpses in the ocean, or worse. Sign the paperwork and say thank you.”
January waited, brows poised high with expectancy.
But I couldn’t move. I looked from her to the papers and back again until my eyes were tugged to that frame. To the picture of Fern.
My heart wasn’t beating. It was roaring, rattling the cage it was trapped in, wanting to be done with all the fucking carnage already.
“Sign,” January said.
I picked up the paperwork, unsure why I bothered reading it. It wasn’t like it mattered what it said, but something had my mouth opening before I could control the urge.
“We,” I started, then swallowed. “We have to live together?”
“But of course,” she said. “A marriage isn’t exactly believable if the husband is running around campus, screwing his side piece and doing god knows what else, now, is it? Of which I’m sure you’ll do regardless, like the swine that you are.” My dad made a noise,
and January sighed. “If you’re not living together, it’ll be plain as day that you’re married on paper only, and I won’t have my daughter embarrassed again.”
“Why have her marry me then?”
She lifted a shoulder. “It’s a means to many ends. Now sign.”
Rising, I crossed the soft rug to the desk and picked up the pen. I stared down at the marked lines, the spaces awaiting Fern’s signature, and wondered how she’d feel once presented with these, when she saw that I’d already signed them.
She’d undoubtedly be far happier than I.
My teeth gritted again. The pen creaked in my fist as I leaned down and stabbed my initials at the bottom of each page.
“When will Fern initiate?” I dared to ask. I may as well, seeing as everything was ruined once again. I’d known the answer before I asked, but I wanted confirmation of how far January was willing to go to protect her daughter.
I was willing to bet Fern still didn’t know about Nightingale, and just how ruthless her mother and some of the occupants of the island really were.
“The moment she marries you and realizes what a waste of air you are,” January said. “I have hope that this endeavor will have her over you in no time.”
I was certain she already was, and if she wasn’t… well, then I wanted some of what she was smoking.
“Jude,” my father said, buttoning his jacket at the door.
Looking from the man to the woman who’d both sent me straight to the gates of hell for the second time, I said between clenched teeth, “Thank you.” Then I followed my father out into the hall, January’s smug smile branded into my back as surely as the tattoo.
I waited until we were once again seated in the Town Car before I exploded. “What in the ever-loving fuck, Dad?” I couldn’t believe this shit. “Marriage? Arranged marriage?”
“They’re far more common in this day and age than you’d believe.” He pulled out his phone, scrolling. “Settle down. The contract states you can divorce after twelve months.”
But we had to live together for a whole year. I had college. I had a girlfriend.
I had a life that I thought no longer included a certain redheaded, desperate girl with gigantic fucking issues. “You’re making me spend twelve months with that whack job?”