Page 30 of Sweet Torment

Megan glances back, eyebrow raised. “Yeah. Our hacker friend. Why?”

“I might be able to help.”

10

BIANCA

Whitney used to paint my nails black because she said it made me look dangerous.

Now her blood is caked under those same nails, and I can’t stop thinking about the irony while whatever drugs they pumped into me make the ceiling spin lazy circles above my head.

Muffled voices drift my way, and I should probably pay attention, but I keep thinking about Whitney teaching me how to do winged eyeliner in her bedroom. Her room always smelled like bubblegum lip gloss and the fruity body spray she loved from that store in the mall.

“You have to be precise,” she’d said, tongue poking out while some boy band crooned from her stereo. “One wrong move and you look like a raccoon.”

And now she’s dead.

My new best friend at age seven. Her dad brought her to our neighborhood barbecue, and she’d marched up, ketchup smeared across one cheek, declaring right then that I was hers. Weekends at her place were cupcakes and cherry Coke. We’d steal her dad’s medical journals from his office and giggle over the anatomical diagrams. At thirteen, we planned our lives out in neon gel pen.

Then came high school. Whitney discovered how magnetic she was. Head cheerleader, queen bee, the kind of laugh that scrambled boys’ brains. By sixteen, she had a whole court to orbit her.

Now Whitney’s on a slab somewhere with stab wounds I put there using the same hands that curled her hair for prom.

I killed her.

Should I be horrified? Sick with guilt? Maybe. Maybe that will hit eventually.

“—got her good, I’m telling you.” A woman’s voice, closer than before. “Molly needed twelve stitches.”

I keep my breathing even while someone dabs at my arms, face, and legs. It stings.

“The screamer?”

“That’s the one, Letty. Tried to claw Molly’s eyes out during morning meds.”

A low snort. “Thank God she’s leaving Thursday.”

“You see the photos, though?” The younger voice is almost giddy. “The estate where she’s going for her trial? Looks like an actual castle.”

“With gargoyles,” another voice jumps in. “Total fairy tale shit.”

“More like a horror movie,” one mutters. “She got selected for a first reveal.”

First reveal? What the fuck is a first reveal? Sounds vaguely pornographic and deeply unpleasant.

“That pack must want an omega bad.”

“They’ve been waiting forever, requirements out the ass, and she met them.”

“Rich people are so weird.”

Hands prod at my bandages. I don’t so much as flinch, even when they get close to where it really hurts.

I want to listen.

“Speaking of trouble. What about this one? Weren’t they supposed to move her today for a drug trial?”

Drug trial?