Page 60 of The Bargain

“You’re very confident promising things you have no way of ensuring,” I say, trying to pull away from him.

He grins, lopsided and boyish, and although he relaxes his hold on me, he doesn’t quite relinquish it. His fingers brush up and down along my bare waist in a casual, oddly soothing caress.

“I have good gut instincts.”

“The same gut instinct that told you to pick a fight with Julian?” I ask with an edge of mockery, mouth quivering.

“My gut instinct is telling me you’re not having fun at this party,” he says, tilting his head. “Am I wrong?”

Of course he’s not wrong. How could I possibly have fun at this party? My sister is here when she shouldn’t be, and she hates me more than ever. My closest friends all seem to be on their own paths of self-destruction.

And the only person I actually want to be here with is only here because we’re essentially blackmailing each other.

“I never have fun at parties,” I say finally.

“That’s because you’ve never dated me.”

He kisses my mouth lightly, in such a natural and casual way that I don’t realise it until he’s led me away back into the house.

“C’mon, love,” he says. “Forget about the plan, we’ve already given the Inquisitor what he wanted.”

He smiles, warm and winning, and it’s all too easy to give in to him, to let him drag me away, to fall back into the sweetness of the lie.

“Now let’s go have some actual fun.”

22

Blood In

Elias

The night after the Halloween party, I wake up to the loud crash of my bedroom door being smashed open.

I don’t even have time to react, reach for the lamp or my phone. It’s dark in the room, but not so dark that I can’t make out the figures rushing in. Before I can even sit upright, I’m being grabbed and dragged out of bed. My leg hits the bedpost hard, but the pain doesn’t have time to register. A hood is shoved over my head, and then everything goes black.

There are no voices, only the sound of footsteps and movement, the disorienting rush of my breath as I try to gasp in air through thick fabric. Don’t panic. Panic is what kills people. Stay calm.

There’s a rush of cold—we’ve left the dorm building. Crunching gravel, dull wind. Branches whipping against my bare legs and arms. I’ve never regretted sleeping in my boxers more. My feet stumble painfully over pebbles, then frost-sharp grass.

I don’t speak—there’s no point. I’ve pissed off a lot of people over the years, but there’s only one person I’ve pissed off recently. And if Julian Langford is hellbent on revenge, then no amount of pleading or bargaining can save me now.

I don’t know how long we’ve been moving or how far from campus we’ve gone. Suddenly, the terrain changes under my bare feet: uneven grass and branches giving way to smooth, slippery wood. I try to rifle through my memories, guess where we could be. Then we come to a stop so sudden I almost lurch forward.

I’m shoved hard into nothing.

My heart drops through my guts. I reach out helplessly, scrabbling at thin air.

And then I go slamming into ice-cold water.

For a second, the shock is worse than anything else. Worse than the impact, the cold, the suffocation, the panic. My mouth opens on a gasp, and water rushes in through the hood, fabric clinging to the insides of my mouth.

Fuck. I’m going to die here.

I can’t die like this. I’ve made it through too much; all the good shit is still ahead.

All this hard fucking work. I can’t die before it all pays off.

Fuck that.