Smirking, she winds a lock of hair around her finger. “I think the only person with the power to hurt Jude is… you.”
I lean back, unsure what she means.
Her smirk has turned into a grin.
A sinister, knowing grin.
I grab her elbow. “Where’s Griffin?”
“Oh my gosh, Selah,” Kate says, stepping between us. “Will you give it a rest?”
Lainey toys with the skeleton key, her grin unwavering.
I grit my teeth. “How long until he shows up dead in the river like Ivy?”
A deafening silence falls.
Even Taylor Swift has stopped singing.
Lainey presses her hand against her chest. “What a horrible thing to say, Selah.”
Kate looks absolutely appalled.
So do several others nearby.
Jude appears at my side.
“C’mon,” he says, gently pulling me away as the ringing in my ears grows louder.
I dig in my heels. “Please,” I say to Kate, “you have to believe us. She isn’t safe.”
But the plea is drown out by a ripple of cheers.
Griffin Tate has stepped inside the barn with a bottle of vodka in one hand, a case of beer in the other. “I brought the party!”
Lainey claps her hands, then throws herself at him.
They kiss.
Several catcalls follow.
Dumbstruck, I stare at Griffin’s wrist.
It glows with a pattern of dots—a different shape from Lainey’s, but the same basic idea.
The barn begins to spin.
We have a major problem.
Because Griffin isn’t Griffin.
There are two of them.
24
A CLOSE CALL
Ipeer through a pair of binoculars into Lainey’s living room window from the passenger seat of Jude’s car. Currently, she’s away. At Griffin’s house. Twig and Naomi are trailing them. Lainey’s mom is gone, too. Apparently, she leaves most weekends to visit her boyfriend in Mill Creek.
