“And you were going to tell us when?” Oscar asks, adjusting his glasses and cocking his head in that way that gives me the chills. He’s digging into me with slate-gray eyes and a frown like a knife’s edge. So sharp. It’s fucking cutting.

I steal another shot, but I can’t shake five sets of eyes by drinking.

“I’m telling you now,” I say, which is the biggest copout known to man. I stare into the shot glass. “I was going to say something after the break, if it was still going on.”

“Well, I’m sure it’s nothing,” Vic says, but the way he looks at Aaron terrifies me. It’s almost an … you were right sort of expression. The annulment springs in my mind, and I down a third shot.

“Let’s go dance,” I blurt as a new song comes on. I grab Hael’s hand—because he’s the easiest to deal with, emotionally speaking—and drag him to the dance floor.

“Well, well, Blackbird,” he purrs, dragging me so close that we’re as close to fucking as we are to dancing. “I see you’ve got good taste: you’ve picked the best letter of Havoc.”

“Just thought you’d be a club rat is all,” I yell over the music, leaning up on my tiptoes as Hael’s hands trace my waist. He settles his grip on my hips, squeezing me hard enough that I wonder if I won’t have bruises tomorrow.

“Seems like you were right,” he shouts back, molding my body to his as we dance. His honey-almond eyes look down into mine, much darker in the shadows of the club than they’d usually be. It gives him this edge, this reminder that every once in a while, that smile of his cracks.

My palms press against his chest as I look into his eyes. One of his legs between my own, pushing up my dress as we sway and rock to the beat. My skin is speckled with little droplets of sweat, the colored lights above our head turning them to rainbow jewels. When I lift up on my toes to press my mouth to Hael’s, he stops me with a finger against my lips.

He releases me abruptly and steps back, but his eyes never leave mine. I’m aching for him now, practically burning up. My stomach hurts, and my head is spinning. I end up closing my eyes, my body gyrating to the music. There’s a constant bassline thumping along that sounds like a heartbeat. I lean into that, letting it carry my movements as I drift through the shadows of the club, twisted up with alcohol. Being in here, around all these people, helps banish the awful thoughts skittering around inside my head.

And trust me: there are a lot of them.

When I open my eyes, I see that Hael’s moved even farther away. I can still see him, but only until a different man steps into view. And he most certainly is not a part of Havoc.

I look up, into a pair of blue eyes framed by thick lashes. The guy’s eyes are the color of sea glass, but, despite their unusual hue, there’s nothing inviting about them. Those natural female instincts of mine tell me to run.

Instead, when the guy steps up close and rests his hands on my hips, I let him.

His skin is pale, his hair jet-black. He’s got a slick smile and an expensive outfit. I know right away that this is James Barrasso, the son of the gang that showed up to a school party armed to the teeth. Because they’re looking for Havoc. Because they know Ophelia. The same gang that supplied the Charter Crew with drugs to sell.

Fucking hell.

I can only handle two songs with the guy before my nerve breaks. Luckily, right before I’m about to step away from him, he makes the break for me.

I stop dancing, swiping my hand across my forehead. My lips are parted, my tongue tasting the lipstick on my lower lip. He might think I’m looking at him like a hot fuck. In reality, I’ve decided this guy needs to die. I’ve been around enough predators to know one when I see him.

He takes my hand, and I allow it. I want to see what he’s going to do, what he wants. I’m not surprised to find out that he already knows who I am. We weren’t the only ones who came here tonight looking for someone.

“You’re as enchanting as I thought you’d be, Bernadette,” the guy says, releasing my hand. The bones suspended from the ceiling spin slightly in the breeze from the janky ass air conditioning unit. It’s as hot as the surface of the fucking sun in here, but I feel instantly cold as I stare back at James Barrasso, the heir to the Grand Murder Party and its strange connections to the Charter Crew, to Ophelia, to Neil. “Tell your husband that I said hi.”

He turns and disappears easily into the crowd as I turn and find Victor standing beside me. His entire body is taut, like a bowstring.

“What the fuck was that about?” I ask, because the way Vic’s staring at me is terrifying in its own right, like he might lose me before he’s ever really had me.

And I don’t like that. Not one motherfucking bit.

“I just wanted to see how bold he was,” Victor tells me, reaching up to push a particularly low-hanging bone away from his face. He’s goddamn terrifying, the way he looks after James. I think again about his hands around Logan’s throat; I wonder what the boys did to Kyler. He will not be attending school at Prescott High next Monday. That much I do know.

“And?” I ask, panting, sweating. For some reason, I’m so nervous all of a sudden that my stomach hurts. The reason Victor looks the way he does, the reason Aaron’s face is so dark and drawn, is because there are only two outcomes to this game: either we win, or we die.

That’s it.

Victor looks down at me with his endless black eyes, and I swear to god, the crowd makes a bubble around him. It’s as if they can sense the way he’s staring at me, like he’s going to consume me.

“Would you dance with my girl in front of me?” he asks, and I shiver.

No.

No, I most definitely would not.

Any break from the nightmare that is Prescott High is a good break, even one that has me resting on the couch more often than not. I’m so fucking sore from dancing at the club that I fall asleep on it as soon as we get home.

When I wake up, Oscar is sitting on the opposite sofa and staring at me.

He’s shirtless and beautiful, his body dipped in ink by the hands of some dark, unforgiving goddess. He’s a wet dream on the outside, a nightmare on the in. The way he’s sitting with his back ramrod straight, the HAVOC tattoo on his knuckles stretched and straining with tension, I can tell he’s about to drop a serious bomb on my ass.

What that bomb is, exactly, I have no idea.

“We need to talk,” he says as I groan, sitting up and rubbing at the side of my head with the heel of my hand. What was in those shots?! I wonder, because I swear to you, I haven’t had a hangover since I was like, thirteen and got so drunk on a bottle of Everclear that Penelope had to sit up with me all night to make sure I didn’t choke on my own vomit.

I didn’t get drunk again after that, not until after she died.

“No shit,” I murmur, slumping into the cushions and then wincing as the edge of my phone digs into my ass. With a curse, I dig it out and check the time. It’s barely seven-thirty in the morning. No wonder I feel like such crap; I’m probably still drunk. “What do you want?”

I don’t mean to snap at him like that, but how can I be vulnerable with him? How can I show him a softer part of me, the way I do Victor or Aaron? Because every time that I do, he lashes back at me like I’ve wounded him. That sort of behavior starts to hurt after a while.