Page 11 of The Knight

Tanner shrugs. "That's the idea I guess."

Fabulous. I'm putting my greatest hope in the hands of a teenage boy who couldn't care less. Let's hope the combined intelligence of Lukas and Blake manages to make up for Tanner's complete bullshit.

Which leaves one.

I dare to look at Cole.

He smirks at me, a trap I'm about to fall into, one I can see and somehow can't step around.

"Let's do this thing, then. Get in a circle and put your hands together, everybody—the Scooby Doo gang is on the job."

If he lives to the end of the semester, it'll be a miracle. Even my small hands would fit around that throat well enough to strangle him to death.

"It's a deal, then." I take a deep breath, wondering if this is what it feels like to bargain your soul away to the devil himself. "You four will help me put Hass away for good, and I'll leave Coleridge. Forever."

We don't shake on it, but we don't need to. After everything that's happened, all the terrible things we've done to each other and said to each other, a handshake would be meaningless.

Instead we share a kind of understanding: that we're all fucked-up liars, and we're going to see this thing through to the end.

Because it's the only way for them to get rid of me—and vice versa.

Chapter 5

Mothers should be comforting. Like lighthouses that sit on shore and guide boats home, or a net that catches people jumping out of burning buildings. They're the arms that comfort and guide, the anchor in a ferocious storm.

At least in an ideal world.

In this world, my mother doesn't comfort me.

I comfort her.

"It'll be okay." My voice is muffled by her hair as she presses against me, my hands flat against her shoulder blades. "I'm fine, Mom. Nothing... nothing really happened."

"How can you say that?" Sobs escape her mouth between each word. "I almost lost you too."

Too.Just like Silas. She doesn't even know yet that it was the same men—I haven't told her that, and neither have the police, I imagine. I don't think she would survive knowing.

Our mother has never been the strongest woman. It's been months since I last saw her, but already her body feels frailer against me, her bones closer to the surface of her skin, every breath slightly hitched. I know she's been working two minimum wage jobs trying to make ends meet, neither of which give her health insurance, and I worry.

But there's no room in our relationship for me to be the one worrying about her. Not when she needs my comfort to keep herself together.

So I press my cheek against her dry hair and murmur, "It'll all be okay."

When her cries and sobs have settled into sniffles, she moves back and I turn to Wally. He's waiting in the corner of the room, hands in his pockets, shoulders rounded and slouched. I find myself glad that the Elites left before Mom and Wally showed up, and I don't know if it's because I would be embarrassed of my new enemies or my old family.

"Jade wanted to come," Wally says, shuffling over to me to share a casual hug, one that gives me comfort instead of taking it. "She has finals, though, and you know how her mom is."

"Shouldn't that mean you have finals too?"

He waves my concerns away. "I'll take the tests late. Principal Snyder said it was okay. Besides, this is more important." Clearing his throat, he says in a haunted voice, "You almostdied."

I did. It hits me all over again as I meet his eyes and see the genuine concern there for my life and safety. I was kidnapped, drugged, put in a trunk, and about to be murdered. I still don't understand what stopped it from happening or why, but I can feel the phantom pull of a rope around my neck when I closed my eyes.

Maybe twins are fated to die the same way, and this was fate's way of trying to pull me down into the earth next to my brother, to rest with him for eternity.

"I'm still alive, though," I tell Wally and the universe alike. "See? Heart's still beating and everything."

"I'm just glad the police found you." Wally doesn't know about Hass and he doesn't need to. "Do they know yet why they did this? What's the deal?"

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