Page 29 of Snake

Knox

Silas isn’t the only one scowling when he and Mason walk through my dorm room door. Mason’s text was pretty straightforward, but judging from the expression on his face, there’s more to the story than just, “Nim threw our chocolates away.”

“So does this mean she’s not going to the dance?” Silas asks the room, hands tucked in tight under his armpits.

I frown at him. “I don’t know.”

When Silas’s scowl deepens, my frown dissolves. I can’t hold on to anger as long as I used to. It all feels so fucking pointless in the end. All that wasted energy.

I don’t get angry anymore. I get even.

“This isn’t working.” Mason takes a box of chocolates from his pocket and comes to perch on the arm of my sofa, hands knotted between his thick thighs as he shares a glance from me to Silas. He opens the box, stares at the sweet inside, and shoves it into his mouth.

I don’t stop him. Neither of us does.

“We need to fix this,” Silas says. “And fast.”

Sighing, I rub my fingers over my eyelids. I’m in half a mind to tell him to drop it, but I don’t want Eliza one-upping us either.

I’m so…tired. Killing Lorenzo should have simplified everything. Fix everything. But it’s just made it worse. We might have gotten rid of the monster, but it’s as if his evil influence still pervades every inch of Cinderhart.

Of our lives.

I drag my hands away from my face. Silas looks over at me, peers up at my hair. I haven’t fixed it yet, so I’m still rocking a patchy orange-and-black look.

Might as well leave it as is. Halloween’s just around the corner, anyway.

I laugh. “Christ, I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but why the fuck are we still fighting this?”

Mason glares at me. “Fighting what?” He tosses the chocolate box across the room, sinking it in my trash can without touching the rim. “She doesn’t want us. I’m not even sure we want her.”

I blink, frown. When I move closer to the two of them, my steps are measured and slow. “But we need her.”

Their eyes tell me differently, until I add, “I thought it was a case of wrong time, wrong place…but I don’t know about that anymore.” I shove my fingers in my hair, toying with the silky strands. “What if none of this is a coincidence? What if she was always meant to be there that day?”

“Why, so we’d chicken out and not do it?” Silas sounds fucked off, his voice shaking. He rips his arms out from under his armpits, curling them into fists as he faces off with me in the middle of my dorm room. “Was she supposed to stop us? Because if that’s the case, then Fate, or Destiny or whatever fucking deity you’re trying to insinuate was involved in this, they fucked up by sending her.” His mouth twists into an ugly grimace. “She’s weak. Nim Winters couldn’t swat a fly, and you’re saying she should’ve stopped us?”

“She swatted my balls pretty fucking hard,” Mason mutters, wincing when we turn our attention on him. “Had to skip class so I could ice my jewels.”

A laugh bursts out of me before I can stop it. I can’t even imagine how Nim could reach Mason’s groin with her knee, but the image is one for the books. I turn to Silas. “Maybe she can stop us.”

Something comes over Silas’s face. “No, Knox.” He charges up to me, his finger poking hard into my chest. “You fucking swore.”

It’s my turn to grimace. “Silas—”

“Three months, you said, then it’s the next name on the list.”

Jesus Christ, I’d thought he’d forgotten. Ha, forgotten? Silas fucking wrote that list. The same night we decided to kill Lorenzo, he grabbed the back of a restaurant bill and scrawled a whole list of names on there.

We were going to cleanse Cinderhart.

The Serpents would strike back.

I thought we were all avoiding the subject of The List, but I guess Nim’s taken our mind off those diabolical plans. But looking at Silas, I can see that same zealous light in his eyes he had that night. Here I thought Lorenzo’s blood would have quelled his thirst for vengeance, but now I’m wondering if he wasn’t just too caught up with his own shit to bring up the subject again.

“We’re not even sure what’s happening with Lorenzo’s case,” Mason says quietly. I know he didn’t want to go ahead with more killings. He was silent after Silas wrote that list.

“Something would have happened by now,” Silas says. “We said if we weren’t in fucking prison, then we’d move onto the next name!” He shoves a hand in his blazer pocket, pulls out his wallet.

---