Silence again. Courtney cleared her throat. “My parents had told me the fire had been a horrible accident. They really agreed to this… mass sacrifice?”
“Yes. Everyone’s parents did. I have a list they made at a club meeting where they each volunteered a child, and I’ve heard it confirmed from Ms. Westandfrom the god himself. I think your mother agreeing was a condition of her joining the Eldritch Club.”
Courtney stood back, her face pale. “I hate you for ruining everything,” she whispered, but her words had no venom. We both knew she wasn’t talking to me.
“You’re a cold-hearted bitch, Courtney Haynes. But you don’t deserve this. None of you do.”
Around the room, students nodded. They may have tormented me, hated me even, but they believed me. Right now, that was all that mattered.
“You’ve all been complicit in this plot your parents cooked up,” I said. “You tortured scholarship students because you enjoyed it. You knew what would happen to them at the end of each quarter, and yet you let it continue. You’ll have to do your own penance for your part in those crimes, but right now you’re also victims. You’ve been trapped here for too long and deprived of a piece of yourselves – a piece that might have urged you to act more humanely. It’s time for the lies to stop and the truth to set you free.”
That old feline fury flickered in Courtney’s eyes. Only this time, it wasn’t for me. “I don’t know what you’re planning for them, Hazel Waite, but you can count me in.”
My grin widened. I held out my hand. Courtney stared at it for a moment, like she thought it might burst into flame at any moment.Which I guess is true.Then she reached out and gave it a firm shake.
“I can’t believe it. I’m gone, like, five minutes and you’re making friends with the Queen Bee.”
My heart soared at the sound of that familiar voice.I must be imagining it. I can’t…
I turned my head, slowly, because I still wasn’t at a point where I wanted to take my eyes off Courtney, to see a hand running through sandy blond hair.
Greg grinned up at me like a cat who’d just caught one of those catnip mice and never intended to let it go.
“Greg?” I threw my arms around him. “It’s really you.”
He nodded, then winced as if the very act of moving his neck gave him pain. “She let me out,” he whispered. “A good-faith gesture to make sure you guys held up your part of the plan.”
“What about Zehra?”
Greg shook his head. He tucked something into the pocket of my blazer. “She gave me this. She said you’d know what to do with it.”
I didn’t dare open my pocket in the hallway, fearing what Zehra might have given me. Instead, I hugged Greg harder. He felt so good, so alive.
“What’s going on?” Amber asked. “Wasn’t that queer guy sacrificed?”
“‘That Queer Guy’ has a name.” Greg extended a hand to her. “Hi, I’m Greg.”
She looked confused for a moment, then reached out to shake. Greg grabbed her arm and folded her into a hug. Students laughed – not cruelly, just releasing tension. Amber’s face burned red with shock and embarrassment before she succumbed to the charm that was Greg and crumpled into his arms.
Trust Greg to slay them with his charms.
“I was never sacrificed.” Greg ran a hand through his hair. “But I’ve been locked in a room beside the gym, inhaling that foul rotting meat smell all day and night while our headmistress took vials of my blood for her experiments.”
“I thought you were into meat, fag,” Derek jeered, grabbing his crotch. For the first time, no one laughed. He stared at his friends before quickly dropping his hands.
“This shit stops now.” I raised a hand, palm out in an obvious threat.
Silence fell.
Quinn stepped away from me, his eyes wide. “Hazy, you shouldn’t…”
“No, Ishould. These bastards have done so much worse. If I burned them all now, they’d heal overnight, like Ayaz. But the scars from what you’ve all done to the scholarship students over twenty years – those will never go away.”
I looked to Sadie for confirmation. She nodded fiercely.
“But I won’t.” I lowered my arm. Derek let out a sigh of relief. “I won’t, because we’ve got a bigger goal in mind that requires us all to work together. You’re welcome to stick with your belief that faggots and gutter whores and people who aren’t white are beneath you, but that’s your loss. You can stay here and rot, because we’re the ones with the plan to get your lives back.”
“What?”
