“It’s Halloween. It’s practically tradition,” the past version of Logan says with a laugh.
Gage frowns. “She’s my date tonight, buddy. Hands off.”
“Ah, yes, the original love triangle,” Candace comments dryly as she floats alongside us. “How charmingly complicated you all were.”
“Are,” Logan corrects.
“Will forever be,” I add.
Chloe makes a gagging noise like she might be sick. “Let’s get out of here before I hurl a pound of candy corn. Unless, of course, the two of you were about to entertain us with a duel to the death over Skyla’s dishonor?”
Nat honks a laugh. “More like an orgy.”
“Right,” Lex barks, as her boobs ready themselves to burst from the corset she’s fastened down so tight her waist looks like a telephone pole. “I doubt we’re talking orgy. More like cheating. Skyla is living it up with both of them. How does it feel to be a side-piece, Logan? How does it feel to have someone you care about running around with someone else?”
Suffice it to say, Lexy Bakova had the hots for Logan something awful. A lot of girls did. And all of those girls had to stand in line behind me. A smug smile curves on my lips because of it.
A gust of wind picks up, and the gate to the overside estate creaks before slamming shut as if Demetri himself were locking us in for the night.
“It feels like crap, Lex,” Logan’s younger self belts it out like a reprimand. “Is that what you want me to say? I’m sorry if I hurt you, if I ever let you believe that we were anything more than friends. But that’s all we were. Get over it.”
“That was subtle,” I whisper as if they might hear us.
Logan’s chest rumbles with a quiet laugh. “I was a teenager. I thought if I didn’t use profanity, I was letting her down easy.”
“You choseChloeover me,” Lex howls it out as if Chloe were sewage soup. And well, if the soup fits.
“Oh, I love this,” I whisper as I hug Logan’s arm, never taking my eyes off the carnage.
We watch as Chloe’s expression just fizzled down a notch, and now she’s seconds away from becoming a real, live fire-breathing dragon.
“We were hormonal disasters pretending to be functional humans. No wonder everything exploded,” I say, unable to look away from the delicious scene unfolding before us. “We had no ideawhat was coming. Too busy drowning in heated arguments and bad decisions to notice the apocalypse brewing.”
Chloe yanks Lex by the elbow and forces her to spin. “What the hell are you talking about? I’m anupgradecompared to you.”
Lex snatches her elbow back and hawks a giant wad of spit into Chloe Bishop’s eye.
Nobody moves. Nobody breathes. The party rages on in the background, oblivious to the grand treason that just took place out here.
“You’d better hope I forget this.” Chloe wipes the offense away with the back of her arm. “You’d better pray I look the other way, Alexis.”
I don’t think I’ve ever heard Lexy’s full name before. Things just got serious as shit.
“You know, I never realized how much of our faction war began with high school politics,” I muse. “Spitting in Chloe’s face might be the most consequential loogie in all of Paragon history.”
“Small bodily fluid actions, big ripples,” Logan agrees, his fingers threading through mine once again.
“Screw you.” Lexy pivots and heads into the party.
A dark laugh gurgles in my throat. “I remember thinking that Lexy was going to be a social pariah. That the bitch squad was totally going to abandon her, and it’s only the beginning of senior year.”
Chloe tosses her head back and barrels toward the party as the rest of her cheer peers follow along like a line of lost baby ducks. That was the bitch squad in a nutshell. If it walks like a slutty duck, and quacks like a slutty duck, it’s the bitch squad.
They follow the stream of bodies out onto the expansive backyard that Demetri lit up with orange and black lights, making everyone look as if they’ve already set one foot in the grave. Gone are the gorgeous flower arrangements and rose trellises, replaced with every tacky accessory from the local party supply shop, complete with cardboard cutouts of witches and ghosts staked alongthe yard—all courtesy of my earthly mother, of course. Demetri employed her to do just about everything for him, and judging by my sister Misty’s existence, my mother did just about everything.
A steady fog emits from the fountain, and bodies dangle lifeless from the weeping willows.
“Wow, my mom did a magnificent job of turning the Garden of Eden into a giant pile of gaudy crap,” younger me observes.
