While keeping an eye on Lola and her prey, I did what everyone else around me was doing: getting into the music, bobbing my head with the beat, and every so often pumping a fist in the air. I didn’t feel alone, even though I was. In the crowd, even with my pink and blue hair, I blended in.
I wasn’t Laina Hawkins. I was just a girl vibing out. Maybe it was exactly what I’d be doing if I never would’ve gotten tangled up in the dark side.
It was like that for a while—me vibing, Lola doing her thing, the crowd paying attention only to the band on the stage—until something invisible nagged at me. Until the small hairs on the back of my neck stood up, an almost otherworldly sensation sweeping over me.
I felt like I was being watched. But with a quick glance around, I didn’t see anyone who stuck out like a sore thumb. Nobody holding a gun, pointing it at me, in revenge for the humiliation I handed to Tessa. No assassin or kidnapper trying to hurt me.
There was nothing, so maybe that unexplainable feeling was simply me being paranoid. After everything that happened to me, I didn’t think anyone could blame me for feeling uneasy. I spent so long with my guard up, constantly looking over my shoulder, that it was a habit to me.
It was probably all in my head. Only time would make me more normal.
Or I’d never be normal, and I’d slowly become more and more fucked up. Again, only time would tell.
Black Sacrament ran through their set list, and as the songs went on, I noticed Lola’s dancing becoming sloppier. She was a master at acting drunk—or in this case, high. Her smile became crooked, her eyelids took on a heavy, uneven blink, and she swayed with a gait that inspired me. If I didn’t see her spit out that pill, I’d think shewashigh.
Damn, that woman was good. So good she was inspirational.
I might not have been a master at this game, at this hunt, but I was ninety-nine percent certain it was time for us to leave. We’d be leaving the venue before the show officially ended, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. We’d avoid the inevitable traffic jam that would encase the parking lot and street after the show let out, which meant we’d reach our destination sooner.
And that meant we’d get down to business quicker. I didn’t know about Lola, but I for one was dying for this.
I spent so long wondering, imagining, craving. Having a taste of what it was like when I was using the clawed gauntlet… some people might’ve been born mad, but others, like Lola, were molded, shaped by the world and the people in it to become the animal she was.
Which one was I? Was I born like this—had my darkness always been hidden deep inside of me—or did the more recent events of my life help lead me down this path?
Did it even matter? No, I didn’t think it did. In the end, it was the same. We wanted more than most people in this world could ever dream of, craved the things society outlawed. But, just like every law-abiding citizen, we were still part of the same system. Until the system got a complete overhaul, people like us would always exist.
I weaved through the crowd, coming upon Lola and her chosen prey. Let’s just call him Tod, for the sake of things. I lightly touched Lola’s arm, and Lola leaned her head back on Tod’s chest and grinned at me with that sloppy smile of hers.
“Hey,” she said, pulling me in toward her and Tod. “I was wondering when you’d come join the party.” She glanced at Tod and added, “She can be a stiff, but once she loosens up… the girl’s crazy.” And then she giggled like she had the world’s best secret stuffed inside her heart.
Lola turned so that her chest brushed against his, and in the process she set a hand on my hip and pulled me closer to her. The way she gazed up at Tod, like he was just the man she was looking for, made his dark eyes glimmer with glee, and that glimmer only intensified when she suggested what she did next.
“Why don’t we all go back to our hotel room? Maybe you and I could help my friend loosen up a bit?” The way she cocked her eyebrows, how she bit her lip suggestively; it was clear what she was suggesting, and I played my part by glancing between her and Tod and acting a bit coy.
I know. Coy, me? If there was one thing I wasn’t, it wascoy. Me and coy shouldn’t ever go together in the same sentence, but alas, sometimes you needed to play the part, and this particular scene required some coyness.
Tod, the asshole, grinned like he just won the lottery and his life was about to change. “Hell yeah,” he said over the music. “Let’s get out of here.”
I didn’t know his name, and he didn’t even offer it. I did know Lola scoped him out beforehand; she wouldn’t pick someone who came with a large friend group. She avoided those men because they had friends who’d immediately miss them. No, to do this right, you had to pick someone who wouldn’t be watched as they were leaving with a pretty girl or two.
I was learning a lot from Lola. She’d become my inspiration, my personal bible, the only woman in the world I looked up to and admired.
And, yes, had a teensy-weensy girl crush on.
We left the venue together. As we exited out into the crisp night air, Tod glanced at us. “You want me to follow you there, or—”
Lola giggled, tripping over her own two feet and practically slamming her tits into Tod’s arm, which he didn’t seem to mind. “We took a ride here. Why don’t you drive us?” Of course, I knew why she suggested that: having his vehicle there would make it easier for her cleanup crew to get rid of it, to scrub the inside before doing whatever it was they did with vehicles they needed to make disappear.
Criminals lived in a whole different world. It really was crazy to me—and what’s even crazier was how at home I felt amongst them.
I wasn’t born for a life of politics. No, I fit much better with Lola and her world than my dad and his.
Tod led us to his car on the far side of the lot, and Lola and I scooted in the backseat together. Lola sat close to me, her knees touching mine, as he got in the driver’s seat and asked, “Where we going?”
She leaned her cheek on my shoulder. “The Best Eastern on Nineteenth Street.” She hummed as he put in the hotel into his car’s GPS and got a route. Twenty minutes away, far enough out of the city.
As Tod drove us, Lola took on her best, most flirty voice as she made small talk during the drive there. And by small talk, I meant some of the most suggestive small talk I’d ever heard, but Tod was into it, and that must’ve been why she leaned so heavily into it.
