“Simon Says. Isn’t that right?” Mr. Alderidge challenges.
I bite my bottom lip. “Aunt Leighton?” I ask uncertainly. Leighton stares, her expression waning, her face more colorless than usual. “Aunt Leighton.”
“The game is Simon Says,” Third declares. “Alderidge is Simon, not Leighton, so you do what—”
“I know the rules,” I say fiercely. Third’s eyes widen at being interrupted in front of his guests. The entire room is holding their breath. “I don’t care. I’m out.” They move as if they expected me to quit, like I don’t have what it takes, and for the first time that feels good.
I mean to make my way to Saint’s side, to hear her reassurances, but someone else catches my eyes first. The only person who looks like me, attempting to fade into the background. Charles looks as if he wants to be here about as much as me. He takes a step back when he sees me, edging away, but I won’t let him escape me.
“Charles, stop,” I say, following him to the edges of the ballroom, close to the balcony doors. The moment we’re in each other’s company, it’s like the eyes of the New England elite glaze over, slipping past us, focusing again on the game. I am used to making myself a background set piece when I need to, from being in yearbook, being Esme’s friend, from being Black, and that serves me well now. “It’s me—”
“I know it’s you, Adina. I literally see you,” Charles says sharply. He holds himself so brittle that a sharp wind would snap him. “Are you all right?”
“Of course,” I say, because this is nothing. This is humiliating. But this doesn’t hurt. My jaw smarts, but it’ll be gone by the morning.
“That didn’t look okay,” Charles says, shaking his head. “That looked… that was… has that been going on all this time? The… sick games? Girls getting lost?”
“Dying. And yes.” He looks at me for more, but I say nothing. It doesn’t seem like it should require any further explanation for him to believe what he’s just seen, what Third said.
“What the fuck?” Charles says. “I’ve heard about the Finish all my life, but it’s not supposed to be like this. If I knew that this… I wouldn’t have…” He sounds shaken by the revelation, like it ruins the way he looks at the world. I don’t have time for it.
I reach for his sleeve and hold tight so he doesn’t run. “You have to get me out of here.”
Charles’s eyes widen. “Adina—”
“Charles, please, they’re going to kill me. If you don’t… if I don’t…，” I stammer, shaking my head. I steel myself over, looking across the ballroom. Saint is watching me, sincere and serious and, above all, worried. “If you won’t, tell Toni I need her.”
Charles looks sick. “Adina, you want me to get her involv—”
A scream.
It’s not any of the girls—I recognize all their screams now. It’s a woman, in response to what she’s just seen.
Penthesilea has bowed out. I knew she would. Even she knows that self-inflicted violence for spectacle is a step too far.
But Esme. There Esme stands, still with blood on her lips, and now a fork hanging by the tines from her fucking palm, the points tearing open her skin, leaving blood dripping down her wrist.
“I win?” she asks, her voice tiny.
Leighton shakes herself out of her reverie, eyes focusing on Esme again. “You win, Miss Alderidge. You continue to be first.”
There is something lost about Esme amongst the arms of her parents, as they swarm in, kissing their pride to her temple. The room applauds, but Esme is staring at something no one else can see, her brow furrowed. It’s like something has left her that she can’t find again, and she misses it, desperately, more than anything.
In that moment she looks like the girl who was my friend, once, and more than ever, I know that tomorrow, in the Royale, I won’t be able to kill anyone, not even her, because she’ll always look like the girl who might have been my friend.
CHAPTER 28
CHARLES USES THE COMMOTION TO break away, and because I have nowhere else to go, I stay. I stay through the dancing and laughing, pressed up against the wall, with Saint at my side. We watch as Pierce makes his turns about the room, speaking to each important person like he’s known them for years, confident in his ability to communicate on their level. Once or twice, I catch wind of his ambitions when he’s close enough.
“Political science. Then an internship, hopefully with you, Senator. That’ll certainly lead me on my way to governor one day,” he explains when the senator asks him what he’s going to major in, what his plans are, what his future is. He is so sure.
When someone thanks him for the invitation—not Third, not Leighton, but him—Pierce smiles and says, “There’ll be plenty more social events here. My mother is not one for a full social calendar, but I certainly am.”
Penthesilea works the room just as well, but with her, now that I know what she’s really like, I can see how each movement is calculated. She is following Pierce. At a distance, but still. She speaks to every single person that he speaks to, cementing her place.
Esme and Hawthorne are huddled together, sitting with Esme’s parents and another set of parents that I have to assume are Hawthorne’s. Hawthorne has wrapped a table napkin around Esme’s palm and their heads are bent together, ignoring everything around them.
No one makes an effort to speak to us and we don’t make an effort to speak to anyone else, even when Leighton swoops by us on her second turn around the room. She glowers, jerking her chin at the old money of Massachusetts, making it very clear what she expects from me. I stare back at her, stony faced.
“I think…，” Leighton declares, and she lets it linger, waiting for her words to carry enough that attention is turned toward her. “It is high time for the girls to get to bed. They have a very big morning ahead of them.”
“A big day tomorrow, Pierce,” someone calls, and there’s a crackle of laughter that no one finds inappropriate.
“Come along, ladies,” Leighton prompts.
I push off the wall and take one more sweeping look around the room. Graham is no longer here—shocker. Charles skulks in the back now and I try to meet his eye, but he won’t even look at me. Saint tugs me along, and we’re just nearly out of the room before fingers slip into my free hand, stopping me where I am.
When I turn, I snatch back my hand immediately. I want to say something terrible to Pierce, but I can’t think where to start.
“Good night, Adina,” Pierce says, and he sounds kind again. He leans in and presses a kiss to my cheek and I flinch so hard, I crash into Saint. Pierce pulls back and smiles, satisfied that I have learned my lesson. Determined to resume our story.
Saint tugs me away, looping her arm through mine, sneering at Pierce as we walk out of the room. Leighton stops just in front of the doors, looking at us as we cluster closer together. I can feel Esme right behind me, and I don’t even mind. At least she’s between me and the jackals still inside.
“Tomorrow morning it will only be us. It is important that the Royale remain one of our closest held secrets. So at eleven, you will present yourself in the hunting parlor in your finest,” Leighton says. She takes a deep breath. “You have all played an admirable game. But tomorrow, it will all come to an end. Thank you. Good night.”