Page 51 of The Bargain

“I don’t l⁠—”

I interrupt myself. No. This is part of the plan, isn’t it?

Even if it’s not quite true. I don’t like Elias. He’s not the kind of person you can like. Liking is gentle and neutral; nothing about Elias invites neutrality.

“I don’t see how it’s any of his business,” I say quickly. “I don’t care what Julian thinks.”

“Hm,” Emerald says, with a pointed glance at my cheeks. Then she adds in an annoyed tone, “He seems to be under the impression that you’re getting back together at the party.”

“I don’t know what could possibly have given him that impression.”

Emerald lets out a dry laugh. “What do you do to these guys, Dess, to get them so obsessed?”

My mind flashes back to Elias walking out of the head girl study. That was almost two weeks ago—I’ve not heard a word from him since, no summons to his bedroom or my study, not so much as a text.

My voice comes out soft and bitter. “Not all of them.”

If I have any power to make anyone obsessed with me, then Elias is impervious.

Or maybe his desire is just like everything else in his life: coin-operated.

The party looms darkly over me for the rest of the half term, wearing Elias’s face. It casts a smirking shadow over my classes, my studies, my essays, my tennis practice, even my sleep. It’s only with the greatest dread and reluctance that I agree to go costume shopping in London with Emerald and Mira—who both seem to have an agenda of their own when it comes to the party.

Guess I won’t be the only schemer there, at least.

“I don’t want to see you in another white dress,” Emerald tells me with a level of aggression that’s frankly uncalled for. “This is our last Spearcrest Halloween—I want you in the sluttiest little outfit imaginable.”

She grabs a shiny black dress from the rack, so short it might as well not have a skirt at all. I scoff, but when she hands it to me, I hold it up to my body and glance at the mirror, mind flashing to Elias. How would he react if I turned up in something outrageous?

I don’t like the dress, but I would like to wipe that mocking smirk off his face, for once.

“Julian would have a heart attack,” Mira says with a little giggle.

With a shudder, I shove the dress back on the rack and throw Mira a little grimace.

She couldn’t stand out more against the garish colours and golden tassels of the costume shop if she tried. She’s dressed in a classic Mira ensemble: a deep blue tweed two-piece, pristine cotton socks and pumps. Her long hair, dark and smooth as black agate, is kept back from her doll-like face with a pearl-studded headband. She looks like a gossip magazine It-girl—Spearcrest’s own perfect queen bee.

And she never has anything bad to say about anyone.

Emerald—not so much.

“We can only hope,” she’s saying, flipping through racks of velvet corsets. “If we managed to get rid of that asshole, Birnam, then we can get rid of Julian, too.”

My stomach flips, and I almost drop the Venetian mask I’ve just picked up. I glance at the girls, praying they didn’t notice my reaction.

“Poor Birnam,” Mira sighs. “Crazy, what happened to him, isn’t it?”

“Not really,” says Emerald, picking up an acid-green dress and holding it up to her body. “Everyone knows what a little creep he is. He had it coming.”

Emerald doesn’t know how right she is, and for the first time since I discovered what my brothers did, I wish I could tell her. The entire truth, all of it. She’d probably understand.

But if she didn’t, you’d have betrayed your own brothers for nothing.

You know you can’t risk that.

I try to keep my tone calm and curious when I speak up, half-heartedly pretending I’m considering between two masks.

“Is he still in hospital?” And, without waiting for an answer, as if this is more gossip than anything else, I add, “Did they ever find out what happened to him?”