my direction—“or you’re next.”
Amelia blinks up at me with a thin smile on her lips, blood oozing from her nose. I knock the ball of teeth and hair out of my way like I were serving a volleyball.
“You bitch!” She says it soft yet shocked as hell that I had the nerve to chuck her sister’s head into the crowd.
I snatch her by the muslin sheath she’s wrapped in and lift her into the air. Hattie is solid as if she were real, not some figment of my psychotic imagination.
“Don’t you threaten me,” I seethe. “I have enough bullshit to deal with right now. I’ll find your damn family and send them to the reanimation station in time for the fucking holidays. Why don’t you make this worth my effort and lead me to the tunnels, so I can at least see mine.”
“When my family heals.” Her frame dissolves beneath my fingers and soon I’m grasping nothing but air.
“Laken!” I spin around fully expecting to find the twisted Tobias sisters disemboweling one another for sport, but it’s Pearl with a vaguely familiar boy in tow. “Miles, just asked me to the dance!” Pearl hops up and down as the rain starts in on something a little more severe than a drizzle.
I glance at the tall boy with broad shoulders and a self-serving grin. That’s right. I remember now. He’s my supposed ex-boyfriend.
“Pearl”—I shake my head—“I don’t think you should be dating people you hardly know.”
“My mother would say the exact same thing.” Her blue eyes beam like lanterns—the devious undertones, rife with sexual implications.
Why in the hell does everything make her so damn happy? What was in that resurrection formula anyway? Opium?
She belts out a laugh right in my face. “You’re not my mother are you?” She hops over to Miles and slings her arms over his neck. His dark brows rise in my direction as if this whole stunt were meant to drive me insane. “Looks like I’ve got a date for homecoming.” She brushes her lips over his neck and sinks her hand up his soaking wet shirt.
“Don’t worry, Laken,” he says. “You know I’ll always save a dance for you.”
Pearl dips her knees in amazement. “He’s going to dance with both of us!”
That’s not all he’d like to do with the both of us.
Clearly Pearl is a danger to herself and others. There’s no way I’m letting her out of my sight at that dance.
But first, I need to pay a visit to my least favorite faux Tobias sister.
It’s time to play the DNA game.
Coop
Hours after the game, the skies have miraculously cleared, giving me a window of opportunity to park before heading into the Trinity Country Club.
Grayson leans in toward me, her boobs ready and willing to bounce out of her low cut dress—hell, it’s high cut too if you count the way its hugging her bottom. Doesn’t leave much to the imagination not that I haven’t seen her naked. One more hairpin-turn and she would have spilled all over the dash like a pair of flesh-covered beach balls.
“I’m not that mad at you anymore for not renting a limo.” She crosses her arms and pouts as if she is still very much pissed over the non-luxury transport. Grayson filled me in on the fact she sunk two wine coolers earlier, and judging by the blowback, every time she opens her mouth, I’d say she gave a conservative number.
“I’m really sorry about that.” For the fucking thousandth time. “I just couldn’t swing it this time.” Which is true but even if I could, who the hell wants to give up five hundred dollars for the night when I’ve got a perfectly good truck that’s paid for? Grayson, that’s who.
“This time?” She catches her breath while sweeping me with a wide-eyed look of wrongful anticipation. “Cooper Flanders, did you just ask me to prom?”
Shit.
I give a weak smile as I bypass the valet parking and find a spot deep in the lot.
She unbuckles her seatbelt and dives over me in one svelte move. Her hands glide around my shirt with the ease of a greased snake. Her head dives down toward my crotch like she’s about to bob for apples.
“Whoa.” I slip out the door and go around to get her. Something tells me it’s going to be a long, long night.
We start making our way down the lot, and an eerie feeling like I’m being watched encompasses me. I glance back. A reflection on the rear