“So am I,” said Nadine, although this wasn’t true and she wasn’t sure why she’d said it to him. Sitting in what should have been the driver’s seat with no wheel in front of her felt like the perfect metaphor for how out of control this situation had gotten, but she wanted him to take her seriously. “I know you know more than you’re letting on about Noelle. You, and Odessa, and Ben.”
“Is that right? And what’s your plan? Are you going to torture the information out of us?”
“I bet you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” she said, before she could stop herself.
“Oh, Nadine.” His laugh was rife with dark amusement. “You have no fucking idea.”
“You know what I think,” she said, after a pause. “I think you’re trying to scare me. Because you’re afraid of what I’m going to find out about you and your weird and creepy family.”
“Clearly, it isn’t working,” he said, turning down the square. “Or you’d be having an evening nightcap with Helena Peters right now, toasting to my ruin. So if your plan is just to needle me to death with those little kitten teeth of yours, I suggest you revisit the drawing room or find yourself another ally.”
“I don’t like you,” she heard herself say.
“I’m devastated,” he said solemnly.
She gripped her bare knees, staring out the window as a chuckle escaped him.I’m glad you find mesoamusing, she thought angrily. The afternoon strollers had apparently gone home to dinner. Now the sidewalks and the square were as empty as they’d been before.
“Fine,” she said. “If you’re not going to answer my questions about Noelle, why don’t you tell me what the hell is going on with this town? Why are they acting like you’re—”
“The devil incarnate?” he suggested dryly.
“You said it,” she responded stiffly. “Not me.”
“Mm. I don’t think even you could resist me if I was able to get you alone.” His smile turned dark. “All towns need their demons, Nadine.”
(A raven needs a sparrow)
The hairs on the back of her neck prickled. It was the same ominous feeling she’d gotten, being alone with that cab driver on that long stretch to nowhere, but cranked up by a factor of ten. Because with Cal, the threat felt more immediate. Like all it would take was a single word.
She pushed that thought right out of her head—he was terrible, she told herself. Terrible for making her think these twisted thoughts, and for teasing her the way the boys in her school had. Almost as if they were punishing her for not being as pretty as her sister.
Suddenly, she felt very young and very stupid.
A child who had found herself at the adult’s table, with no means of riposting the things they kept saying over her head.
Noelle deserves better than this.
They had arrived at Jessica’s street. Cal had parked out in front with the lights off, and she could see the glow in what she believed was Jessica’s living room. She wondered if Jessica was waiting up. Watching. Maybe she’d heard the car pull up and could see them right now.
Maybe Cal had turned his lights off so Jessicawouldn’t.
“Some of those rumors are true, you know,” he said, slinging an arm over the back of her seat. “I have taken girls into those woods.”
Her stomach turned over on itself. Fumbling for her seatbelt buckle, she said, looking away from him pointedly, “I don’t care. They’re your woods. You can do what you want in them.”
“How very pragmatic of you.” He was laughing at her again, she could tell. But now was something dark lurking between the spaces of his words. “Don’t be like this, Nadine. We’re on the same side. I want your sister found as much as you do.”
“Do you,” she said, the words falling like stones.
“I do.” Cal plucked up a lock of her hair, making the rest of it slide over the back of her nape as he twisted it in his fingers. “So tense,” he said, watching her shoulders lock against an involuntary shiver. “What is it about me that makes you nervous? Is it my body? Or just—me?”
Nadine let out an explosive breath, groping behind her for the door. When she slid out of the seat, she nearly got tangled in the buckle again. Her legs felt wobbly and uneven.
Oh my god.
Cal laughed, watching her. “Goodnight, Nadine. Dream of me.”
Her spine went rigid. She spun around. “You—”
