Page 58 of Victory at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys 5)
I smile and open my eyes.
“Or something. I’d much rather be a Havoc Girl.” I press up to my tiptoes, plant a lipstick smudged kiss against his cheek, and then drop back to my heels just in time for a tentative knock to sound at a door marked Employees Only. “Come in,” I say as the funeral director hesitantly cracks it open and slinks into the room like a kicked dog. I point back at the pink-lined casket behind me. “We’ll take that one.”
“Yes, miss,” the man murmurs, refusing to make eye contact. If he knows we fucked in his funeral parlor, he doesn’t have the balls to say a thing about it.
I take Oscar’s hand in mine, the way Callum has no problem doing with me. “It makes me feel human.” He was so damn right about that. There’s like nothing like a coffin-fuck followed by some chaste handholding to put the human experience into perspective.
“Hey,” I start as I lead Oscar to the exterior door. The way he looks at me, it’s a pinch of wariness mixed with overwhelming confusion—and tainted by love. He really does love me, doesn’t he? This knave known as Oscar motherfucking Montauk. “Do you think you could show me a little of your knot mastery?”
The look he throws me is full of innuendo, but that’s not the only thing I have in mind.
Murder is right up there alongside it.The feds know exactly where our safe house is. There was no way to hide our move across town from Sara Young. It’s always a possibility that they’ll leak our location to the GMP, but that’s exactly why we’re here. If Maxwell sends his goons into the heart of Prescott, they’ll see exactly how influential our crew can be.
“Bernadette,” Sara says after I open the door wearing pajamas and a yawn. Today is Stacey’s funeral. There’s always the possibility of trouble there, too, but we have to attend. We owe that much to her girls, at the very least. “I’m sorry, did I wake you?”
She offers me up a Styrofoam coffee cup with a plastic lid. Since it has no logo and looks jank as shit, it’s likely from my favorite coffee shop two blocks over. The place doesn’t even have a name, just a neon sign that says Coffee. It used to be a bakery, but everything else they served was crap, so they scrapped that part of the business and now just sell cups of coffee for a dollar out an old drive-thru window.
I take it, eyeing Sara warily as she stands there with her blond hair in a bun, her face cool and composed as it usually is. I’m aware that I’m balancing on the fine edge of a knife, caught somewhere between victim and perpetrator in the black-and-white depths of her mind.
“Your nails look amazing,” she offers as I lift the cup to my lips, the little ring on the end of my pointer finger catching a stray shaft of early morning sunlight. It’s Friday now, February seventh. It should be a normal school day, but there’s nothing normal after a school shooting, is there? Just a shaken and altered reality that makes you question everything you know about the world at large.
“Can’t take credit,” I say with a shrug of one shoulder. “One of Stacey’s girl’s aunts did it for me. Also, we draw heavily on black culture here in Prescott, so I kind of need to acknowledge that, too.”
Sara just stares back at me and blinks her doe-like eyes. Constantine stands about ten steps behind her, scowling and flicking his eyes around like he’s preparing to be mugged or shot at any moment. To be fair, he’d probably deserve it. I’m not certain that anyone in this neighborhood has had a positive experience with a cop.
Victor appears behind me, a six-foot-five monster of a man that I’m happy to take on as a personal shadow. He frowns down at police girl, shirtless and clearly annoyed at her intrusion. We all slept in, gathered together in one room for protection. Or so the boys say. Personally, I’d keep them with me every night, all the time, if I were to have my way.
“QUEEN OF THE FREAKS” by AViVA is playing on my new phone, left on the coffee table and turned up as loud as it can go. It makes me smile at Police Girl as she looks between Vic and me. This is my motherfucking personal anthem.
“To what do we owe the pleasure of your visit?” Vic says, letting the words roll off his tongue like a threat. Constantine moves a few steps forward but is at least intelligent enough not to provoke Victor. “Here to give us back our phones?”
Sara smiles. It’s a pleasant smile but no less dangerous than the wickedness etched into Victor’s face. It’s a threat, a challenge.
