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“You call me a princess, but you’ve got it wrong. I don’t carry a tiara, I wear a crown and my only friend here is the king of thieves, the wolves and the motherfucking vipers. I may be the new girl, but I can get down and dirty too, pretty eyes.”
Said eyes flash greedily, the pulse at his neck matching the flutter in his jaw. I smirk and chuckle, passing him back the joint before righting myself in my seat.
“So, Rey sent you to spy on me.” It’s a statement, not a question, but he answers anyway.
“Yeah, he did. I mean, you and he are in line for the crown since your dad is the president. I don’t blame him for wanting to know what he’s up against.”
I hum under my breath, running my fingers through my hair, but don’t reply to that. It’s difficult to get a real read on Mateo. There’s something about him that rubs me the wrong way and I can’t put my finger on it. He seems like a guy with many different facets and none of them lead you to the core of who he is.
Is he a potential friend, or a potential foe? Seems like only time will tell.
The cars in front of us begin to move, but Mat continues to hold the brake down, his indecipherable gaze locked on me.
“Don’t be a pussy, ask what you really want to know.”
I narrow my eyes at him, weighing my words before deciding I don’t really give two fucks what he does with this question, I just want to hear the answer…lie or not.
“Who are you loyal to?” I watch him as he ignores the cars going around us, the drivers avoiding making any kind of eye contact with us.Hmm, they must know who the owner of this car is, and they obviously fear him.Even a cop car passes us without stopping.
“I don’t pray to dead saints, I don’t believe in things like honesty and honor,” I furrow my brows not understanding where he’s going with this, “I believe in myself, I have loyalty to me, and I honor my set of rules. Rey is my best friend, my brother, but even he knows not to trust the devil completely.”
“You consider yourself the devil?” I ask with a scoff.
His multicolored eyes seem to darken as he answers.
“A man with an agenda and no lines he wouldn’t cross should always be considered the devil.”
I feel my brows raise as he turns and hits the gas, tires squealing against the asphalt as we race down the street. Mateo maneuvers around cars, speeding past stoplights and drifting around corners. I laugh and roll the window down, opening my phone’s camera and recording a video. I don’t know if it was Mateo’s intention to scare me into fearing him but if it was, he failed miserably. High speeds and fine ass cars will never make me cower. They hype me up, fill my blood with endorphins and give me a rush of adrenaline unlike anything else.
Mateo laughs and drives under a bridge, the revving of the powerful engine echoes all around us.
We turn another corner and slow down. It’s a neighborhood off the main strip of the town, the houses standing tall. Some are wide and some are narrow with large front yards that are only divided by three feet tall wooden fences. In the front yards are signs dedicating some of the houses to certain fraternities and sororities, others have school campaign signs.
The houses begin to bland the further into the neighborhood we go until we reach what looks like the property of a church.
“That’s Coventry University.” Mateo says jerking his chin toward the church-like structure in the distance. We pass the football field and track field before entering a gated community.
“This is where the elite dorms are. We call it Skull Valley since this is where all the generations of Calavera Society members dorm for college. Since you are a Calavera, you’ll be dorming with Rey, and your boy toy, in the Calavera house.”
“Noah is not my boy toy, asshole.”
Mateo chuckles but doesn’t argue.
All the dorms—if they can even be called that—look like mansions designed by one architect who had only one design in his or her skillset. They’re all cookie cutters. Beautiful, but it’s almost like the designer copy-pasted each one into place. Thankfully, someone decided to change their appearances by painting them differently from their neighbors. Some are solid colors, others have their trims painted different from the siding, others have stone walls to complement the paint.
“This whole place feels fake.” I mumble to myself while watching a few students moving their furniture into their dorm.
“This town is older than New Orleans.” Mat says as he watches a girl around my age cross the street in front of us, winking when she makes eye contact. She rushes off with red cheeks and fear in her wide eyes. The fuck?
“Some of the buildings, like the public library, are original from that time. Coventry University, orCUas we lovingly call it, was originally the courthouse. It’s said it has the highest recorded witch executions.”
His eyes widen like he’s telling a spooky story rather than a tragic one.
“Let me guess, it was cursed then later, the building was used as an asylum and now the halls are plagued with the haunted screams of the lost souls?” I try to list every scary cliche known to man with a grin.
“If it were an asylum, I’m pretty sure half the wicked in this town never would have been born, me included, but you’re close. It was actually turned into a monastery but as the population grew, it became an academy back in the late nineteen fifties for junior and high schoolers. It was known as Calavera Academy—”
“Wait,” I stop him from continuing, “That’s my father’s family name. Does that mean—”
