We watch them, and I’m not quick enough to intervene before the girl empties the cup in one gulp.
“I hate people like him,” she says. “Fucking Connor.”
Connor? She knows him?
Sable gasps as she watches a picture frame fall from the wall, and a group of guys start throwing it between each other, chanting a name I feel like I should recognize.
She rolls her eyes. “Idiots.”
Our eyes snap to the staircase—the guy who poured powder into the drunk girl’s cup is leading her up each step. She’s staggering now, so whatever he gave her has worked quickly.
Sable drops the glass and marches toward them, and I watch in awe as she takes two steps at a time, stops in front of the asshole, and shoves him so hard, he’s unable to grab hold of the railing on his way down.
His head hits each step until he lands at the bottom in a heap.
Sable wipes her hands. “No one does that in my house.”
I’m smiling again, and I realize she’s smiling back at me, and I don’t hate it. Sable’s eyes are mesmerizing, her body perfection, and her hair makes me desperate to brush my fingers through it. She’s the definition of beauty, in a fucked-up kind of way, since I’m the one who killed her.
She’s drawing closer, that smile still plastered on her face, a chuckle reaching my ears.
But then I remember my situation, my smile drops, and I turn away from her to get myself an untampered-with drink.
17
Sable
Inever understood the movies where the ghosts living in haunted houses harassed anyone who came onto their property.
I get it now.
It’s fucking liberating. I’d terrorize the whole country if I could.
Not only does it change the cycle of monotony and boredom, but it lets off steam like nothing else. Because no goddamn wonder those spirits were pissed off. These living assholes can come and go as they please, and they’re messing upmyhouse.Mydomain.
How dare they flaunt their fucking happiness in front of me?
I’m like a kid again, acting out and causing a fuss, only this time, there are no repercussions, and I’m not doing it for attention.
God help every living being under this roof.
I slap people’s drinks out of their hands and watch with utter satisfaction as the liquid splashes their faces and soaks their jackets. I’m the high school bully causing havoc because I hate myself and my own life, and right now, when my throat is raw from screaming and my lungs feel fragile from sobbing, I want to be worse.
So much worse.
My parents were always monsters in their own right, while I was always stuck in a box. I guess my prison is bigger now, but I was just given fresh meat, and it’d be a sin not to sink my teeth in and tear.
I take out another asshole’s drink, and another, and a smile splits across my face, whether from exhilaration, joy, or because I’m freeing myself from my inhibitions. The rage has always been a constant presence twined in my DNA, but for once, it’s not this beast bubbling inside me or a presence pushing to take over. We’re hand in hand without a leash.
The room is full of people nodding along to music, doing cones and lines and other things that would make every person in my bloodline turn in their graves. When I was alive, I only saw parties like this on TV. I didn’t have the friends to attend these things or the time to go even if I did. Figures I only get to see it when I’m dead.
There’s a flicker of envy in there, and I grab hold of that bitterness until I taste it in the back of my throat like it’s my very own drug. Shoving people, stealing phones and jewelry and hiding them around the manor—I’m a ghastly menace on the warpath.
All the while, in a house full of people, only a single person sees me. I feel Lynx’s eyes following me as I move through the crowd. Something about knowing his attention is on me has me feeling a little bolder, braver, like there’s a safety net beneath me that probably isn’t really there.
He might have killed me, but he’s been acting like my guardian angel recently: looking out for me around Tony and Tidus, helping me bury my body, bringing me down from the edge of my meltdown.
I guess being given permission to completely let loose was something I didn’t realize I needed.
