Page 16 of Rot

I was Sloane Karnagy, daughter of the Bedlam Butcher. I wouldn’t let some eighteen-year-old tell me what I was allowed to do. He’d get a rude awakening if he kept trying to be the boss of me.

“Trying?” Elias echoed, picking up only that word out of the whole question. “Who said anything about trying?”

“Elias, please. I’m not scared of you. You don’t intimidate me. I won’t let you tell me what to do.” I leaned closer to him, setting an elbow on the center console between us. The seatbelt stopped me from leaning too far over.

“Is that so?” His hand tightened around the steering wheel, but his other arm moved to rest on the center console as well, leaning against mine. His skin was warm, practically burning up, and I wondered if that was because he’d just had sex, or if he always ran hot.

I’d seen the face of true evil. I’d been born from it. But he didn’t know that, and I wasn’t about to tell him my past, either, so instead I said, “You don’t know the things I’ve seen. I’ve seen a lot worse than you.”

Elias’s top half leaned over the middle, his face now inches away from mine. I could feel his hot breath on my face, blooming across my skin. In the darkness of the car, his eyes were pitch-black. “I doubt that. You don’t know what I’ve seen.”

If we sat down, side by side, and tallied up our list, I’d be the winner, no doubt about that. There was so much Elias didn’t know about me, things he’d never know.

“What have you seen, then?” I asked in a whisper. “Tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine.” I ran my tongue over my bottom lip, suddenly eager. It was a bad idea to get into a pissing match with him, but God, how I wanted to.

Right then, my heart beat just as fast as it had in the woods, when I was listening to him and Dana. It had to be the rot, pushing me forward, wanting me to get a taste of his darkness so I could show him my own.

His was nothing like mine. No one’s was.

Elias let out a long breath, his nostrils flaring. His jaw ground. For just the quickest of moments, I could’ve sworn he was going to let go of the steering wheel and bring that hand to me. Now, what that hand would’ve done, I didn’t know. Hit me? Wrap around my neck and choke me?

I wanted to see what he’d do, and so far, all he’d done was hold back.

How boring.

In the end, he pulled himself away from me and stepped on the gas, lurching the car forward once again. Elias didn’t say another word as he drove us home.

Getting on his nerves was far too easy, but if I wanted to see him really snap, I had to be a bit pushier. By the time I was done here, I’d know all of Elias’s secrets. I’d know what made him tick, what made him so angry all the time, what made him want to be alone so much. And maybe, just maybe he’d find out why I wasn’t afraid of him.

Chapter Five

I was ten years old when the rot made me get into a fight. I was fine; it was the other girl that had gotten a chunk of her hair pulled out and a bloody nose during recess. I sat with my back straight in the principal’s office, waiting for my grandmother to show up. I was a Karnagy; the rules applied differently to me than they did to everyone else. Our money was old, our name respected. No one wanted to get on my grandmother’s bad side. She was the one who was in control of our assets.

I was confident that I wouldn’t be in trouble, not really.

My grandmother arrived soon enough, her blond hair pulled back into a tight bun, just the barest hints of makeup on her face to hide the growing wrinkles around her hazel eyes. She wore the outfit she’d surely gone to the country club in, a flowery dress and short heels, paired with stockings underneath.

“Mr. Charles,” my grandmother spoke as she entered his office, taking the empty seat beside me. “I trust this is important, for you to pull me away during my lunch.” She had the kind of presence that no one could deny, a snide air about her that made most people either hate her or fear her, and regardless of whether you hated or feared her, you never wanted to get on her bad side.

The principal, Mr. Charles, was a small man. Thin in frame, wiry, the kind of man who looked ridiculous wearing such big glasses on his face. Weaselly. “Ah, uh, yes, Mrs. Karnagy. I’m not sure what the secretary told you when she called—”

“She told me nothing, just that it was an emergency and I had to come have a sit down with you and my granddaughter,” the woman who I was named after rattled off, a slight frown on her face. “Let’s get on with it, then. I have things to do, as I hope you do as well, considering you are the head of the faculty here.”

Mr. Charles appeared rattled at her bluntness; it took him a while to get going again: “Miss Karnagy here beat up a fellow student during recess. The girl got a broken nose and… and some hair pulled out.” He reached up to his own head, lightly touching his short, graying hair, as if imagining it himself.

“And how do you know it was Sloane and not some other student?”

“Well, she had some blood on her knuckles, and a chunk of the girl’s hair in her hand when the recess aid reached her.”

“That seems like evidence anyone could’ve planted on my granddaughter.”

Mr. Charles chuckled nervously. It wasn’t a secret that our family was one of the richest, if not the richest, in the city, therefore we could make a lot of problems for this school if we wanted. “Mrs. Karnagy, a dozen other students saw it happen—”

“Sloane has always been bullied for who her father is,” my grandmother spoke, cutting into whatever else the principal was going to say. “Those other students, as you call them, have ostracized her from the very start of her education, and you, along with every other faculty member here, have done nothing to protect her from the relentless bullying.”

The principal paled. He glanced at me, and all I did was stare back at him with wide, innocent eyes. I didn’t like my grandmother too much, but she had a way with weak men that I admired, even from such a young age.

“That… that might be so, but I’m afraid I cannot—” Mr. Charles was, once again, interrupted by my grandmother.

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