Principal Vaughn doesn't look quite so smug, eyes darting from the front door to the back, like he expects trouble. No, no, like he expects Havoc.
“Sit down,” Neil repeats, eyes hardening as he looks at me. “And say yes, sir.”
“Bernadette,” Aaron says, panting as he looks over at me. “Don't do it. We have Neil by the balls; he can't touch us.”
“How?” I ask as Vaughn makes a small sound of protest, wringing his hands as he paces in front of the fireplace. Aaron just glances my way, meeting my eyes, and shaking his head slightly. Fuck. Whatever it is they've got on Neil, I'm not going to like it.
“You said you'd bring them to heel,” Kali demands, standing up from the couch and turning on Neil with a pouty expression on her pretty little face. Is it Neil's baby that she's carrying? “Well, I'm still waiting.”
Neil rises to his feet at the same time I notice movement in the shadows near the staircase and in the small hall by the master bedroom.
“Last chance, Bernadette,” the Thing says, putting his hand on the radio at his hip. “Say it, or I call you and your friend Aaron here in.” He pulls the radio out and pauses as a clicking sound comes from behind his head; it’s the distinct sound of a gun’s hammer being pulled back.
“Don't make your final mistake here, Neil. I'd hate to have to scrub your brains off the walls of Aaron's living room.”
Vic's voice is ice-cold, his full mouth twisted in a dark frown. His purple-black hair is slicked back from his face, still wet from a shower, his makeup wiped clean, clothes fresh and blood-free. As soon as I see him, a dark thrill travels through me, one that tastes like sweet, heavy poison.
“And if you think I'm bluffing, go ahead and test me.”
The fury that lights my stepfather's face scares the crap out of me. He has friends; he has connections.
And he came here for a reason.
“I knew I shouldn't have followed you here,” Vaughn murmurs, still wringing his hands.
“Excellent observation,” Oscar says, suddenly standing behind the principal. A chill traces over my skin. How the fuck did he get in here without me noticing? His gray eyes are focused on the back of Vaughn’s head, his revolver held rock steady in a single hand. He pulls the hammer back and keeps smiling.
Hael swaggers in from the kitchen (I figure he, at least, must've used the exterior door that leads into the laundry room), while Callum slides open the patio door. He has the bat in his hand still and while he’s cleaned up, the weapon’s still stained red.
The energy in that room suffocates me, climbing down my throat like smoke. I find it suddenly hard to breathe.
“Don’t worry, Bernie. Neil’s just a dickless, neutered dog,” Vic reassures me, stone-cold, immovable. But he strikes that chord deep within me, shaking away the ice crystals that cling to my soul. He eats away the numb and leaves me bleeding. Who can staunch that bleeding? Me? Am I supposed to bandage my own emotional wounds? “His hands are tied; we have dirt on him.”
“And why don’t you tell my lovely stepdaughter what, exactly, that is?” Neil asks, turning around to face Victor, not at all concerned about the gun in his face. The way that man smiles, it cuts to the marrow in my bones and rots me from the inside out. Right here, this is the type of person who only gets pleasure from watching others suffer. “You can’t though, can you? Because you’re afraid to.”
The thing about Neil though, is that he’s underestimated Victor Channing.
“We have a video of him,” Vic says, nodding his chin in Neil’s direction. “With your sister Penelope.”
On the outside, I do nothing. I’m still standing there, trying to help Aaron keep his feet, blood smearing across my hands. On the inside, I’m shattering into a mosaic of hurt and pain and rage. It’s leaded glass, that mosaic, and my anger is the iron that holds all the pretty pieces together. One day, I’m going to pick up one of those pieces and I’m going to stab Neil Pence through the empty cavity where his heart should be.
“Neil, what the hell is going on?” Kali asks, crossing an arm over her still-flat stomach and looking between Victor and the Thing with a particularly vacuous facial expression. Nobody ever said the lying little twit had any working brain cells. Principal Vaughn looks like he might shit his pants. “You said we were going to come over here and put a stop to all this.”
“A stop to what?” Oscar asks innocently, pushing his glasses up his nose with an inked middle finger while at the same time keeping his revolver trained on Scott. “A raucous Halloween night? I see Kali came in costume. It’s quite popular for girls to dress up like whores on All Hallows’ Eve, isn’t it?”
“Fuck you, Montauk,” she snarls, smoothing her hands down her pale pink skirt. Despite Oscar’s quip, she didn’t dress up, she didn’t come to Stacey’s party. She abandoned Mitch’s pathetic clown crew, but why? What is she doing here? What is Vaughn doing here? And why are three of the seven people on my list standing in this room?
“You have one minute to fuck off out of here before we make all three of you disappear—permanently.” Victor steps back and drops the gun to his side. His eyes are like two dark pools, ready to swallow me up and drown me. But his attention keeps flicking to Aaron. He’s worried, and so am I. My ex-boyfriend doesn’t look so hot right about now. “I’m going to count down from sixty.”
“You don’t want to know why I’m here?” Neil teases, eyes narrowing as his thin lips curl into a smirk. “What Scott’s doing here? He came to me, you know, after you trashed his cabin and made him do all those nasty things on the Internet.”
“Sixty.” Vic nods, and both Callum and Hael step forward to flank him. Nobody’s smiling tonight. Nobody’s reveling in this moment, not like they did before when we went after Don. “Fifty-nine. Fifty-eight.”
“Let’s just go, please,” Vaughn says, shaking, his gaze latching on me like I’m the sole party responsible for this mess. “This was a bad idea in the first place. You didn’t tell me they had a video.”
“Fifty-seven.” Vic barely looks like he’s breathing, he’s standing so damn still. Callum’s hood is pulled up over his blond hair, his face bathed in shadows. He probably needs me as much as Aaron does right now, just in a different way. Did you hear yourself, Bernadette? He needs you? Havoc doesn’t fucking need you. And you don’t owe them your emotional energy or support.
And yet here I am, wanting to give it.
My hand curls around Aaron’s arm as he pants beside me, fighting to maintain at least some semblance of power and control.
“We’re at a crossroads here. You move on me, I bury you,” Neil growls out, never taking his eyes off of Vic. “And leave Kali out of it.”
“What about me?” Principal Vaughn bursts out, putting one hand on the mantle to steady himself. “You said you’d help me out of this mess! I helped you when you asked for it.”
“That confession of yours is gone,” Neil says, sniffling and backing up a few feet. My blood chills because I know my stepfather; he’s only telling us what he wants us to hear. See how powerful I am? See what I can do? Don’t you ever forget that I have fingers in many pies. Kali clings to his arm and then turns a poisonous glare on me, dropping her poor-me act for once. There’s no audience around to lap it up, so she doesn’t bother. “That’s all I’ve got. Scott, you’re on your own now.”
Neil turns and takes off for the front door with Kali in tow. Principal Vaughn scrambles after him, and the boys let them go. I realize then that maybe we’re stretched too thin. I did this. I called Havoc, and I started this mess.
I grit my teeth.
The shittiest part about all of this? I actually feel bad about it, like I’m inconveniencing the Havoc Boys. They ruined my life sophomore year. Does it matter what their twisted reasons were, what price Kali paid? They did it, and I suffered, and now here I am praying to what little good is left in the universe that Aaron Fadler doesn’t fucking die on me.
“They’ve all gotten into the cruiser; it’s pulling out of the driveway,” Oscar says, looking out from between the sheer curtains that line the front window. “Off they go down the street.”
“Fuck,” Aaron says, and then he falls. Hard. So hard that I can’t keep him up even though I try. Hael is there in a split-second, grabbing onto his friend’s arm and helping me push him back onto the couch. I climb onto the cushion next to him and start to undo his sweater, helping Hael remove his clothes so we can assess the damage.
“He’s still bleeding,” I murmur as the other boys move in around us. “The bullet’s still in his arm.” My fingers just lightly skim the bruise on his chest, but it’s nowhere near as important as the wound in his left bicep. Or the dead kid we left at the Halloween party. Damn you, Danny Ensbrook, you piece of shit. He just had to do it, huh? Aim that gun at me … “He needs a hospital.”
“Mm,” Vic says, rubbing at his chin, a sign that he’s deep in thought. “Hospitals are full of mandated reporters. A minor with a gunshot wound is bad news for us. It brings inquiries and questions and police reports.”
My head snaps around to level a glare on Havoc’s boss; I must look pretty scary, too, because he raises his eyebrows at me in mock surprise.
“We’re not letting him die,” I say as Aaron groans, his head leaned back on the cushion, eyes closed. I’m not fully certain that he’s still conscious.
“No, of course not,” Vic scoffs, like I’ve lost my damn mind. “Let’s get him in the van and take him to Whitney’s house.”
“Nurse Yes-Scott?!” I choke out, but it’s the obvious choice. She’ll have heard from Vaughn by now about what happened. She’ll know her ass is on the line. What choice will she have but to help us? Besides, she was hired at Prescott for a reason. Most schools don’t need trauma nurses with gunshot wound experience. In the southside, it’s practically a requirement. “Fuck. Fine. Let’s get him outside.”