“Why?” I didn’t understand the masks, but I hadn’t been to many, correction, any, high-school parties, so maybe it was something I missed or a new trend?
“To hide your identity so you can be whoever you want and do whatever the fuck you want,” Atlas said, turning to glance back at me, a pinch of somberness in his sapphire eyes. “To be free. Nefarious. No inhibitions. No rules. No…consequences. You go knowing anything can happen and accept that.”
Paisley clenched her teeth. “Basically, a free pass to be an asshole and have sex. Sometimes without consent.”
I blinked, my stomach dropping. “You’re not joking?”
“I wish I were,” she muttered, flipping the blinker on, its steady tick, tick, tick parroting in my ears.
I wanted to say the idea completely turned me off, wanted to feel disgusted, repulsed, ready to dismiss it entirely, but it didn’t. Well, the idea of rape was beyond vile, like abhorrently so, but the other stuff…being free… The concept pulled at something dark and curious in me, something I didn’t want to examine too closely. And that bothered me more than I wanted to admit. “Have you ever gone?”
Atlas shook his head, his gaze sliding away from mine. “No.”
“Once,” Paisley said bitterly. “I don’t recommend.”
“Not that it matters,” Atlas added, lifting his face toward the open window and the sun streaming in. “You need the mark to get in, and no one’s going to mark us voluntarily. We have a reputation for not being able to keep our mouths shut. We’d bespilling all their secrets.” He glanced at Paisley, who kept her eyes straight ahead, her expression unreadable.
She exhaled slowly, her breath shaking. “Whatever. We might as well tell her. She’ll probably find out sooner or later.”
“Tell me what?” I asked, leaning forward an inch.
“I tried to get Raven Night shut down my sophomore year.” Her short painted nails tapped on the steering wheel. “Let’s say it didn’t go well for me.”
Was that the reason I’d always sensed tension between her and Mason? The way her shoulders stiffened whenever he walked by or the way her smile never quite reached her eyes when he spoke to her. She seemed…less sharp with Maddox. Still wary. Still careful. But different, like the anger she held for Mason didn’t extend quite as far to his twin.
Paisley pulled up in front of my house and put the car in park, the engine settling into a low idle. Then she turned in her seat, draping her arm over the back of the headrest so she could see both Atlas and me. “Freshman year, a friend of mine and I got the mark. We were so excited.” A sad smile ghosted across her lips before disappearing. “We were also so naive. Neither of us had any idea what we were walking into. At the time, it seemed grown-up—high-school boys, masquerade masks, loud music, the thrill of being included in something exclusive. And it was. For the first hour or two.” She swallowed hard, her throat working visibly. “I saw some messed-up shit, but nothing like what I stumbled into in the cellar.”
A cold knot of dread formed low in my gut.
Atlas stayed quiet, letting Paisley take her time as she relived what I could see was a horrible memory.
“My friend and I had been drinking. I lost track of how many. Not that it mattered. More than half the drinks were laced, depending on the color. There’s a code. We didn’t know.” Her gaze flicked away from my face, staring into nothing, lost in thepast. “I don’t remember how I ended up down the stairs. I could barely walk, could barely see straight. When I finally got lucid enough to understand what I was seeing…” She closed her eyes for a second, her lashes fluttering against her cheeks. “My friend was completely naked except for her mask. That was the first thing I recognized. And the guy holding her against the wall, his hands pinning her wrists above her head. Another in front of her…”
She stopped to take a ragged, uneven breath before continuing. “I screamed,” she said quietly, her eyes opening again but staring through the windshield instead of at us. “Someone told me to shut up. Grabbed my arm hard enough to bruise. And I can honestly say I’ve never been more scared in my life than I was in that moment. I’m sure you can guess what they were doing.”
Air scraped into my lungs. “What happened to her?”
“She transferred, just disappeared one day without saying goodbye, and I lost one of my best friends.” Paisley’s voice cracked slightly before she steadied it. “It’s better that way, I guess. I understood why she couldn’t come back. The shame, the way people would look at her, whisper about her… But every day I saw those assholes in the halls laughing, joking around like nothing had happened—” Her expression hardened, freezing, eyes furious from reopening an old wound that hadn’t fully healed. “I got more fucking mad until I decided to do something about it.”
Atlas took her hand and squeezed it.
“My friend refused to go to the police. She knew who they were and still wouldn’t do it. She was afraid for so many reasons, and I understood, but the idea of them going unpunished? Of them being able to do it again to someone else? I couldn’t live with that.”
“Not that it mattered,” Atlas said, ice in the notes of his voice. “When you have power and money, you get away with a lot more than being an asshole.”
“I used Mason to get in the next year,” Paisley went on, her tone flat now, stripped of emotion. “Flirted with him, made him think I was interested. This time, I didn’t drink. I took pictures with my phone, tried to document everything I could. Thought I was being careful. I wasn’t. Mason caught me in one of the back rooms, phone in hand.” A humorless huff escaped her lips. “Destroyed my phone right there. Smashed it against the wall until it was nothing but pieces, but it didn’t stop me. I borrowed someone’s phone and called the cops, told them what I’d seen, gave them names and the church location.”
“What happened?” I asked, though I already knew the answer wouldn’t be good.
“Nothing. Two of the cops who showed up were crew members, Ravens. One was the father of one of the guys on the team. The guy I’d accused.” She shook her head slowly, her expression bitter. “They told me to go home. Said I was drunk, making things up, and that I’d regret causing trouble for some party that had gotten out of hand.”
Atlas frowned, his expression supportive of his friend, but his eyes were hard, full of anger. “This town couldn’t be more fucking crooked.”
“I learned to fight different battles,” Paisley replied. “Battles I might actually win.”
“Like looking into the missing girls,” I said, the pieces clicking together.
She nodded, her gaze meeting mine. “Who knows if the cops even care. Or how hard they’re looking. But I do. And I won’t stop.”
