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“Don’t freak out. Don’t talk. Just in case someone else sees,” he tells me kindly, and pulls me back into the deeper shadows with him as Jayden slowly walks towards his car, paying attention to his phone instead of his surroundings.
Most of the other cars are gone by now, and the few that aren’t are parked in the employee section. Before Jayden gets into his car, the man he’d been talking to pulls out of the parking lot; so by the time Jayden is close enough that I can see the details of his face…he’s alone.
And not paying attention.
Both those things make things easier for Rory. My companion looms out of the darkness, steps silent, and just walks up to Jayden, unsheathing the knife at his waist.
It isn’t until the very last moment that Jayden turns, eyes wide, and his phone falls to the ground. He gets his hands up, and for a second, I’m sure the ex-high school basketball player is going to put up a real fight. I’m so sure, in fact, that I take a step forward, ready to help.
But he doesn’t get a chance. There’s a word on his lips I don’t get to hear as Rory jams the blade into his stomach and rips the blade upward like he’s trying to open him up from belly to sternum.
And in the darkness, the blood just looks like tar as it stains Jayden’s clothes and drips to the asphalt below.
Now my feet take me out of the woods, and I edge closer to his car, shoulders hunched, as Rory stabs him again, this time in the chest. My steps draw his attention, and he looks at me from behind his mask as he grips Jayden’s coat, the jock’s hands scrabbling at Rory’s hands, silently begging him tostop.
It’s only then I see that Jayden’s lips are moving, his eyes wide as he stares at Rory with silent pleas dripping nonstop from his lips. I tilt my head to the side, not saying a word, and find that the fear has been replaced with something else.
Something all-consuming that forces me towatchas Rory digs the blade into Jayden’s throat and pulls.
I don’t expect the blood spatter to reach me. Even when it sprays on the hood of his silver Jaguar, I don’t think to move until hot, wet blood has sprayed across the mask and the sliver of exposed skin at my throat.
It’s so warm.Hot, really, as I smear the fingertips of Phoenix’s gloves in the blood at my throat and look at it in the dim moonlight. I hear Jayden fall to his knees, but it takes a few seconds to look at him again, and I can finally define the feeling that holds me captive, holds me to watching every bit of this.
Fascination.
Jayden whines. Writhes. Cries, even. But none of it evokes any kind of sympathy in me. Instead, I crouch down a few feet away, noting how similar he looks to a dying raccoon I’d once seen after it had been hit on the road.
The same frenetic movements possess Jayden as had that raccoon, until he’s thrashing and moving in ways that won’t get him anywhere. His eyes roam and rove, fixing on my mask and on Rory’s, and even when his limbs have stopped and his breathing has gone shallow, his eyes still move.
To me.
To Rory.
And finally, to something neither of us can see as they go still, then glaze over in death.
I should feel worse than this.I should feel something, anyway. Anything at all, other than a dull satisfaction that Jayden is dead along with most of the others that bullied Daisy until she’d done something that ended up in her death.
But try as I might, I can’t get excited or upset about this. Not like I thought I would, at least.
“Didn’t I tell you to stay?” Rory asks, not sounding particularly upset about it.
“You did,” I say, straightening as he steps away from the body. “Are you mad at me?”
“No.” He shakes his head, then motions for both of us to head back into the woods before he says, with surprise, “I’d just love to know where you got a taste for dead and dying things, is all.”
“Maybe I’ve always been this way?”
“Okay, well, that would mean youarejust as fucked up as we are.” He’s quiet as we walk, until he asks, “Hey, this doesn’t count as our date, right? Because I still want a real date in the next few hours, or I guess I could wait a day atmost.”
“Does it count as a date? Did you take Phoenix on a murder date?” I ask, more curious than anything at what thiswouldbe considered, in a relationship kind of way.
“I did not.”
“Then this is definitely a date. Because I want to say that I was the one who got to go murder with you on our first date.” My smile is wry as I take off the mask, and when Rory does too, I’m surprised to see the fondness in his grin, and the way his eyes dance.
“I’ll allow it, then. I suppose. But just this once, and just so we can hold it over Phoenix’s head. I told him to get us funnel cakes, by the way. Do you like funnel cakes?”
“Doesn’t everyone?” I ask, eyes narrowed at the question. How could anyonenotlove them? Unless they just don’t love fun.
