Page 10 of Wicked Court

“Uh, no.”

“Huh.” She actually looks at me with pity. “Your loss.”

Sasha shrugs out of my grip and I’m forced to follow her while pointing toward the cauldron. “That can’t possibly be sanitary. Why would you want to go over there and?—”

“What? Do it again?” She arches her brow. “Flashback time: our first party of freshman year. We both lined up for Morgan, and he got to use his knife on us with his buttery, husky voice asking me what my greatest desire was.”

My best friend literally shudders with delight at the memory.

I open my mouth to tell her the truth—that when I reached the front of the line, I whisper-begged Morgan not to cut me and just to go through the motions so my friend wouldn’t hold it over my head for the rest of my life. He’d angled his head, and I swear he smiled behind his mask, then chuckled like he knew something I didn’t. But he gave me the out.

I’m cut off from confessing my lie when a foreboding tingle hits the side of my face.

Sasha and I have walked into the space of the clearing between where the line and the half-circle of spectators are.

And, I’m slow to figure out, we’re out in the open.

I don’t know why that realization slithers into my mind like a viper, but it coils around my neck, tightening against its base, warning me to run.

My attention pulls from Sasha and toward the spiral of steam wafting from the heart of the clearing and the man standing behind it, his mask blurring in and out of focus from the smoke, those two empty black voids and that lipless, plastic smile pointed directly at me.

“Oh my God, is he looking at me?” Sasha hisses, then whirls to face me, brushing down her hair with her hands. “How do I look?”

“Totally fuckable,” I say absently, unable to tear my gaze from those empty eyes.

I’m so unnerved and confused by the feeling of being watched that I don’t register Sasha dragging us toward the cauldron before it’s too late.

I dig my heels in. “Wait, Sash?—”

“Relax, El! It’s just a silly tradition. A little blood, a wish, and bam—good luck for the year. What could go wrong?”

“You don’t actually believe in this stuff, do you? It’s all fake. A gross effort for the guys to take stock of the incoming girls and how hot they are. It’s a meat market for Meat House!”

I’m desperately clutching at the nickname given to the boys’ dorm, Meath House, hoping to break through Sasha’s intentional deafness. Anything to stop my gallows walk to the front.

Because that’s what it feels like. Like I shouldn’t be doing this.

“He’s beckoning us with his eyes. We’re going, El. If I have to drag you there—oh, shut up, Cynthia.” Sasha cuts herself off to yell at a trio of girls complaining we’re cutting the line. “Consider this a lesson in assertiveness. In life, as in line-ups, it’s seize the day, or stay in the background. Class dismissed.”

She motions the girls back while yanking me until I smack into her side.

Under normal circumstances, I’m the one who lightens the unfiltered blows Sasha gives out to unsuspecting students, being the nice one, the thoughtful one. But right now…

I can’t look up.

My nerves tighten at the masked figure so close. I sense a familiar presence behind it, a feeling that intensifies as I draw closer.

“State your wish and offer your tribute,” comes an intonation above my head, the velvet nature of his tone casting an odd shiver down the contours of my back.

I glance up and notice the blade glinting in his hand, freshly cleaned by a sophomore beside him with a table of hospital-grade disinfectants.

Well, that’s something at least, I find myself thinking blandly, not that I’m allowing him to slice any part of me.

Movement distracts me from my study, shadows dancing behind the skull man. No—people.

Another cloaked figure appears within the crowd of spectators, much taller than anyone else. His skull mask glares white, the flickers of the candles set up around the cauldron ritual framing the emotionless leer.

I glance away, unsettled, only to clash with another figure on the opposite side, dressed the same way. A cloak and a skull mask.

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