And there she is, pale body stretched across the grass like she’s sleeping. Obviously, Ivy hasn’t been dead as long as Danny, so she can still fake it. Life, that is. At least from a distance.

“We just saw her in the hallway today,” I manage to get out, anxiety flooding my body with adrenaline. It’s interesting, isn’t it, how perceptions and needs can shift with time? I’m worried about the boys getting caught, more than anything. What if that douchebag detective Constantine were to drive by? What if the Thing were to cruise up in his Dodge Charger?

Shit.

Oscar and Callum join us. One from inside the house, the other from the shadows. The fuck was Cal doing out here? Nobody else seems to care, so I figure he must’ve been on watch or something. I’ll tell you one thing: I would not like to find Callum Park crouching in the darkness, waiting for me.

“Grab the tarps and gloves,” Oscar says, yawning. He’s dressed in black satin pajama pants, hung criminally low on his hips and showing off all those pretty tattoos of his. Even though it’s obvious he’s just woken up out of sleep, not a hair is out of place. His glasses are clean. Oh, and he’s still a goddamn asshole. “Bernadette, are you deaf? Move your ass and get the tarps and gloves,” he snaps, and I scowl at him.

If this were a different time and place …

But a group is only as tough as its weakest link, and let’s be honest here: I’m flagging.

I move into the house, glad that the girls are long past the point of waking up for the night, and grab the extra tarps from a plastic bag near the front door. There are dozens of them, and I can’t help but wonder if the guys keep them on hand, like paper towels or some shit.

Heading back out into the dewy grass, I pass the tarps to Callum.

“You look rough, my friend,” he whispers to Hael as they unwrap one of the tarps with freshly gloved hands. “What happened?”

“What do you think happened? Brittany’s dad is the head of the anti-gang force. He’s a cop with an extra dose of asshole attached to his title. He beat the snot out of me and then threatened to press rape charges. You like that one?”

“I oughta box your fucking ears for getting us into this shit,” Vic snarls, and Hael’s entire face flushes with shame. He grits his teeth as he helps Cal roll the body of our dead classmate onto the tarp. Second time we’ve done that today.

This time, I won’t look at Aaron. I hate how right he was about all of this.

“Bernadette, I tried to warn you. We’re messed-up. Havoc is fucking messed-up. You just—”

He never finished what he was going to say, and I never got the chance to clarify, but I’m pretty sure it was you just never saw it. And I didn’t, because they didn’t let me. Even when they were metaphorically kicking the shit out of me during sophomore year.

These are my boys.

Mine.

I have to protect them. Even if I hate them a little bit. Even if they’re fucked-up and twisted and their spirits are darker than pitch. This is it for me, my endgame.

Yanking on a pair of gloves, I help the guys wrap Ivy up and bind the tarps with rope.

Cal says it’s the cheapest goddamn rope you can buy at Wal-Mart. Their guys pick it up on the regular, usually in a large load of groceries, and they always pay cash. It’s pretty hard to trace.

When they lift her into the Camaro, I stand back. It only takes Cal and Hael—the clear ‘muscle’ of the group—to do it. There’s no time to steal a car now, not with the shit that’s following us around.

“You think this was Mitch?” Aaron asks Vic as Hael slams the trunk closed.

“Doubt it,” Vic replies, lighting a cigarette. He moves over to the side of the garage where Aaron’s left his lawncare shit. There’s a backpack attached to a bottle of Roundup—I’d tell him that shit is cancer-causing, bee-killing garbage, but that would imply I had enough room in my brain to care about issues outside my own life—that he picks up. “He’d be too freaked out by his dead bestie to pull a stunt this elaborate. There’s no way he left the house to work on this without at least noticing the god-awful stench of his car. Go check the boys.” Vic is spraying the grass with the Roundup, holding his phone with the other hand, and smoking, all at the same time.

It’s impressive.

“They’re not answering,” Oscar confirms, looking down at his iPad. The light catches on the edges of his face and makes him look ghoulish. He glances up at me. “That’s not a good sign.”

“Definitely not. Especially after how bad they messed up on Halloween,” Victor murmurs, seemingly annoyed but not worried. Then again, his shoulders and arms are tight. He’s full of shit, isn’t he? Just too damn good at playing pretend.

It only takes Cal, Hael, and Aaron a few minutes to report back.

“They’re gone,” Hael says, nostrils flared. “Every guy in the immediate vicinity, and we had, what, six?”

“Eight,” Vic corrects, gritting his teeth. A bead of sweat rolls down the side of his face as Hael pulls his keys from his pocket. Guess I know where he’s going after this. “This isn’t good. This is bigger than Charter Crew shit. They didn’t kill anyone on Halloween. I mean, they might now, since we left that special delivery of ours. But not yet, not this quickly. Even if they did, they’d leave the bodies for us to find.”

My blood chills as something occurs to me, and the fine hairs on the back of my neck rankle.

“The Thing,” I say, licking my suddenly dry lips. My gaze meets Oscar’s, of all people’s, but there’s no emotion inside his gray irises, like he’s either really good at pretending he doesn’t have emotions … or else he truly is a sociopath.

“You think he’d go this far, this quick?” Vic asks, looking askance at me. “Because he knows we have one video?”

“Because one monster always recognizes another,” I whisper, my eyes on Victor but my focus elsewhere. Hael pauses, one leg inside the car, to watch me. I blink and the fog in my vision clears. “You might be a different breed than he is, but he knows. And now that he’s seen me with you, he knows about me, too.”

“How so?” Hael asks, and I let out a deep exhale.

“That I’m a monster, too,” I tell them, without a shred of shame in my words. “And he knows exactly what we’re going to do to him because, if given the chance, he’d do the same to us.”

“Why Ivy?” Aaron asks, but we don’t have time to talk about it. We need her body gone like, fucking yesterday.

“Because she was with Vaughn the night we found him,” I say, because I know how my stepdad works, the things he does, the way he retaliates.

“What about our boys?” Vic asks, nodding at Hael. The latter climbs in the Camaro with Aaron and Cal, killing my opportunity at having any alone time with Aaron tonight

“I don’t know,” I say, feeling a cold chill fall over me. And it’s not the dew, or the fact that it’s nearly four in the morning. It’s because I know that once Neil Pence latches on to something, he never lets it go.

It makes me wonder … if my sister’s suicide was really a suicide at all.