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Damian nodded. “We make sure the women get to do their thing. If it’s happening too fast, we do whatever it takes to delay it. Spill the cacao if we have to.”
“Spill the cacao,” Kai repeated, almost laughing. He let out a broken sigh, like it hurt a little just to think about it. “Soren’s already watching us,” he blurted out.
Callie looked up. “Soren—Jess’s Soren?”
“Yes,” Damian said. “That Soren.”
My stomach hollowed. “Is he the one who’s been leaving little gifts for me?”
Kai shook his head. “No. That’s one of the Keepers. James.” He said the name like it tasted bad. “He looks like somebody’s accountant, coaches a kids’ soccer team on weekends. He’s the one you should actually be scared of. He’s worse than Soren.”
Damian went quiet. Callie and I exchanged brief glances.
Kai looked at Damian. “If they catch us, they’re not going to warn us. We’re consorts who turned. They’ll kill us slowly and sleep just fine after doing it.”
Everything had suddenly turned even darker, when it was already the darkest thing I’d ever known.
Callie looked like she was ready to whimper again. She looked at Kai, then Damian, then Kai again. “Your own parents would do that to you?”
“They aren’t mothers the way you think of them, Callie,” Kai said. “And there are no fathers at all. When one of them decides she wants a kid, she picks a guy like she’s picking a stud at auction. Height. Teeth. Jawline. One night with somebody passing through, no real names, nothing written down.” He shrugged. “You don’t keep paperwork on livestock. My mother liked my father’s face at a party. That’s the only thing I know about him.”
Callie had gone very still on the sofa.
Kai turned to her. “That story I told you about my parents—”
“I knew it was bullshit,” she said.
They looked at each other, and I couldn’t tell who was hurt more.
“I guess I got fooled as much as you, then,” Kai said.
Callie nodded slowly. “What else has been scripted?”
“Callie—”
“I want the list, Kai. Not tonight. I can’t tonight. But I want the whole list.”
“You’ll get it,” he said. “All of it.” He looked down at his own hands. “Some of it’s going to hurt more than the flowers.”
“I swear to god, if I didn’t love you, I’d kill you,” Callie muttered.
Nobody said anything. The refrigerator hummed. We marinated in that for a moment. Men bred like cattle. Boys reared to be beautiful. It sounded absurd.
“And what about Adrian?” I said, thinking of Priya, losing her mind over Adrian’s creepy attention.
“Adrian’s a different problem,” Kai said. “Soren and James want things. They want the title, the money, the protection. But Adrian’s a true believer.” He shook his head. “So if it goes bad, Soren’s going to be busy turning it into a promotion. Adrian’s not going to calculate anything. He’ll come straight for us. And we’ll have to stop all of them from coming for the women.”
“So Soren’s the one who could get you caught,” I said. “But Adrian’s the one who’d come after us?”
“They’d all come after us. James and Soren dump our bodies,” Kai said.
Callie let out a strangled little gasp. The rest of us sat with it: the four of us, a stretch of coastline, and three Keepers who’d murder every one of us.
“We need a code for texting,” Kai said. “For the night, before they take our phones away.”
“They take your phones away?” I said.
“Yeah. In case you hadn’t noticed, Aurora’s a control freak.”
