I delete the email, then set the tablet aside. Without the glow from the screen, it’s dark in Samantha’s room.
I pull the covers up over myself and try to sleep, but when I turn onto my side I feel my knife digging into my thigh.
I should have cut somebody up after all.
I make a frustrated sound and get out of the bed, grabbing my shoes before heading into my own bedroom. I strip off my clothes and set my charm into its special box on my bedside table. The PJs I pull on are warm, soft flannel that’s so different from the tight dress I’d been wearing for the club.
We need to talk.
No we don’t.
There’s nothing to talk about.
I don’t need to hear them accusing me of being a slut or whatever they were going to do.
I mean, they weren’t going to do that.
I’m pretty sure they weren’t, because if they think I’m a slut they don’t need to show up and drag me away from sex-or-stabbing and they definitely wouldn’t finger me in public. If anything,they’rethe sluts.
Also, if this was about me being a slut, they wouldn’t have started going on and on about Zayden and Tate and everybody else who has it out for me.
I claw at my arm, and if my pajama shirt didn’t have long sleeves maybe I’d have scratched myself.
Why am I being like this?
Except I know.
Carly has a new best friend. Reaper was busy. Asch and River only bothered to show up because they wanted totalkabout Zayden or whatever petty problems they have right now and Blaze is sorry, so fucking sorry, that he hurt me but not sorry enough to have not done it in the first place and everybody on campus thinks I’m a monster or a slut or a whore or some fucking weak little victim who’s on the verge of a break down but I’m not.
I’m not.
I’m strong, I’m confident; I’m Pandora Pavone and nothing affects me and if they don’t shut the fuck up maybe I’ll murder them next.
I can start making frat brothers disappear, and maybe then people will take all these missing people seriously.
It’s about Zayden.
I’ll show them Zayden. Dig up all his secrets, make everybody despise him, drag his disembodied corpse through the mud and mutilate it all over again and shower the jurors with his blood and then they’ll know what kind of person he was.
Shit, shit, shit.
That’s not right. That’s not what I’m supposed to do. Zayden is already dead. There is no blood, no corpse.
I go to the desk and turn the light on. My gaze darts around the enclosure until I spot Echo, who’s hiding in one corner.
“Hi,” I whisper to her. With an unsteady hand, I open the enclosure and pull her out.
Echo snaps at me, like a baby snake likes to do, but after one attempted strike she calms down and lets me lay her against my chest. Her cool scales calm me, and I take her to the bed with me.
Thankfully Echo is tired too, because she doesn’t try to slither away from me.
“Do you think they actually care about me?” I ask Echo. “I’m fucking terrible, right? I wanted to stab a random guy because I invited him for bathroom sex and he wasn’t the right person.”
I giggle at myself. Am I really telling a snake about this? She doesn’t care about a random guy.
Idon’t care about a random guy.
Stabbing would have been a bad idea though, even for me. Way too public. So many witnesses.
