“Someone take a photo of me,” Kennedy said. “I lookreallygood right now—wait, Gemma?” She paused, staring at her phone, then at me. “Are you sharing our location right now?”
“Maybe…”
“Oh my God! What is wrong with you? You have two hundred million people following you.”
“And?”
“And fucking Libby Whitehall waskidnappedbecause that bitch justhadto let everyone know she got a bigger yacht than Bezos.”
Shivers ran up my spine. Libby Whitehall had been returned—barely.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me.
Why the idea of someone finding methrilledme.
“Um, Libby was kidnapped because she was a ho doing ho things,” Blaire corrected.
“Someone’s still salty that Sebastian chose Libby…” Kennedy said, underbreath. “But seriously, Gemma, what the fuck?”
“Chill,” I said. “I’ll turn it off.”
I pulled out my phone and went to my page just as we reached the Underworld. Spotlights danced, the lights milky in the sky. The thumping of a bass drifted through the white fog.
We were getting close.
Every sound was magnified. The wire fence creaked in the salty wind. Where the beach met forest, dry blades ofgrass brushed against one another. Soft sand beneath our feet.
One by one my friends walked up the old boardwalk that led to the club. Behind them, I trailed my fingers on the old iron fence, heart in my throat.
Prick.
I stilled. A small bead of crimson welled on the pad of my pointer finger.
Still open to my page, I clicked to post a story. I painted the blood across my lips like lipstick, then blew a kiss to the camera.
Location, on.
TWENTY-SIX
GEMMA
If the Crownes celebrated every holiday like we were the ones who invented it, the Horsemen celebrated like heathens desecrating the original. The party’s theme was “Blood of the Gods.” Everyone was to come as some kind of divine tragedy.
It was their version of a toga party.
“I love a theme,” Kennedy said. In a lilac dress that barely reached her thighs, her stomach and back entirely exposed, she was supposed to be Persephone.
“You should have gone as Medusa,” Blaire said. “It suits you.”
Everything was more sinister, sexier. The champagne was dyed deep, blood red. The bottle service girls dressed like a Greek chorus, with short togas and red, glittery blood sparkling their skin.
Kennedy smiled. “And youstillhave time to go as a bitch.”
I’d had my dress made months ago, when this was supposed to be just another party. Strings of diamonds and glittery silver draped over sheer fabric. A slit up to my hip gave it a semblance of a toga shape, and more strands of diamonds fell from my hip, down my bare thigh.
Diamond butterfly wings sealed the look.
I was Psyche.
