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“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“No? Are you or are you not fucking the chiefs?Allof them? Lord Fauntleroyandthe liar?”
She’s peering at me intensely and suddenly I’m on guard. It’s not aboutfucking. It’s more than that. It’s…important. But as I think this to myself, I hear Li’s cruel, heart-clutching laughter. The mockery as she regards me unhinged. Of course it’s just fucking. It’s all just fucking.
“It’s none of your business.”
Li’s smile widens. “That’s a yes, then.”
Arabella shifts slightly, like she can sense the strange new tension in the air. “Li…”
“You’re right,” Li says with a nod, her eyes sweeping up and down my body in distaste. “You’re not even worth wasting my breath over.” Just as I think she’s about to leave, and just before I release a small, relieved sigh, her smile turns into a deadly smirk and she snarls, “But youareworth this.”
A weight collides into my chest, so quickly that shock radiates throughout my body more than any pain.
I stagger backward, blown off my feet, until I grip hold of the handrail to keep me upright. It takes a moment for the world to reorient, and I stare up at Li as memories swirl in front of my mind — of her and me in a darkened corridor, lantern lights dimming with every ferocious kick as I’d slid into blackness. Lying to the daughter of a billionaire. Not the done thing. Fear blooms through my chest as my body anticipates more of the same: a thrashing, a trouncing, a beating, a death.
I’m not a fighter. Not like Li. Not like the gremlins. Not with flying fists and cruel words at the razor-edge of my tongue. Hell, it takes my tongue effort to find the right words at the right time. Some may think my flight-over-fight response is a weakness, but I know others are willing to respect it, and the pacifism it stands for. People are built differently, after all. My fight, if there is one, is with the conceptual, the intangible: with injustice and corruption, with lies and cover-ups. Not withpeople. Not with those who’ve decided to hate me when they don’t even know me.
And yet, as Li bears down on me, her white teeth flashing, I think, perhaps for the first time in my life, that nothing would be more satisfying in that moment than socking her perfect button nose.
It’s like she defies physics. She moves faster than the others, a streak of lightning with a sharp black bob. In my periphery, I see Rory’s gleaming head turn, and it seems like it occurs in slow-motion while Li’s operating on a speedier, whizzier plane of existence.
She grabs a fistful of my hair until I cry aloud. And in a rough sneer, she spits down at me, “This endsnow, weirdo.”
