“That was last year, when we were idiot juniors,” he counters without pulling away, obviously enjoying her attention but not willing to give up the fight. “What about the puncture marks on people’s wrists and ankles?” He traces the freckles on her face. “Are you so curious, you’re willing to break our promise to Audrey about steering clear of drugs?”
“Aw, come on. There isn’t any proof that those are needle tracks,” Sunny answers with a pout. “If there even are puncture marks. Other than a few flaky pictures online, there’s nothing legit, like police or doctor reports. I get the feeling all of it’s nut-buck. But if it makes you feel better, I brought bottled water and granola bars in my bag. We won’t eat or drink nothing there. I’ve got this covered.”
The nervous kinks in my neck spread to my shoulders, my concern metastasizing by the second. I attempt to focus on Sunny’s face instead of her wig’s fiber-optic acrobatics. “Look, what makes you think the driver will take all of us? He probably has a passenger manifest or something . . . some way to know how many people he’s supposed to pick up. As good as you are at snooping, I doubt you’re the first one to ever come up with this trick.”
“She’s got ya there, Sunspot.” Quan steps back and takes out his phone, punching the keypad on his screen. “Let’s call another taxi and get the heck out of Dodge.”
Sunny grabs his phone and drops it in her purse next to her stolen e-cig atomizer. “No. It’s time we get to the bottom of this. Someone’s been creeping on Rune. And they want her at that party so much they got her a dress. If they want her that bad, they’ll take us, too. We’re a package deal. I’m gonna make that real clear.”
“Well, I guess we’re about to find out how convincing you can be,” Jax murmurs, a car’s approaching headlights brightening his worried face.
With a trembling finger, I activate my phone’s screen: 6:30 . . . on the dot.
My companions and I share a collective gasp as a charcoal-gray hearse coasts to a stop at the curb next to us. Long, black-tinted windows reflect our astonished expressions like mirrors.
The driver—a pudgy man with gopher-like features and a red velvet suit that belongs on a circus ringmaster—steps out and asks to see our wristbands in a nasally voice. He studies my friends’ fake invites longer than I like, spurring a hammering sensation at my pulse points. Trying to look nonchalant, I concentrate on our reflections in the window. An amber ring glints inside my green irises and my cheeks are flushed—like when music is burbling inside me. But that’s impossible. I don’t feel the need to sing. I do, however, feel hungry.
The auras around Quan’s and Jax’s heads draw my attention—that same grayish-yellow glow Ben had before I nearly sucked the life from him. I stifle a moan. Is it possible? Is my appetite triggered by their anxiety? Repulsed, I break the connection by shifting my gaze to the ground.
Whipping out a cell phone, the driver walks to the other side of the hearse and makes a call, mumbling in French.
I can only translate snippets:
“Yes, she’s here . . . unquestionably ours . . . three others—all underage . . . no, not any indication of . . . sure, sure . . . more for everyone. Understood . . . I’ll keep them together. Yes, sir . . . will do.”
The driver tucks his phone away, and without another word, indicates a shoe box of blindfolds and terry cloth headbands in the passenger seat. Instead of running like any sane person would, we meet one another’s gazes as the driver has us turn our backs to him so he can secure our wrists with the headbands, winding them around until we’re handcuffed.
“So you don’t get the bright idea of peeking while I’m driving,” he explains in English frothed by a thick French accent.
Next, he ties a blindfold in place on each of us, then rests a gloved palm atop our heads so we don’t graze our scalps on the doorframe as we tumble like a line of dominoes into the backseat. After a chain reaction of car doors closing, the motor shudders to life, humming through our bones. The car freshener—a stale mix of pine and cinnamon—chokes me as I sit, hands tied behind my back and sandwiched between Sunny and Jax, headed to a party that will either be the beginning . . . or the end—of everything.
16
AN EXQUISITE NIGHTMARE
“There is no exquisite beauty without some strangeness in the proportion.”
Edgar Allan Poe
Thorn had spent many years in this sitting room, one story above the club’s main floor, but he’d never felt so alien here.