The Dolls (32 page)

“Eveny, you have to let me explain!” she cries, but Caleb is already dragging her away.

He looks back once, and as our eyes lock, he mouths,
Go.

I run outside, where Peregrine’s Aston Martin is idling at the curb.

“What took you so long?” Peregrine calls out the driver’s side window. Chloe, Oscar, and Patrick are wedged in the backseat.

“It’s Arelia,” I say quickly. I cross in front of the car and get into the passenger seat quickly as they all stare at me. “She’s the traitor,” I say as I buckle my seat belt. “She’s from Main de Lumière.”

“The lip gloss?” Chloe asks.

I nod as Peregrine guns the engine. “I can’t believe it,” she says in a tight voice as she roars away from the curb. “Damn it!”

“Where’s Caleb?” Chloe asks after a minute. “He should be here with us, protecting you.”

“He’s not my protector anymore,” I tell them. Peregrine gasps and Chloe sighs in realization.

“What?” Oscar asks.

“She let him go,” Chloe answers sadly for me. “Eveny, do you realize what you’ve done?”

“Yes. I’ve given him his life back,” I say.

“Or you’ve doomed us all,” Peregrine whispers after a moment.

She floors the accelerator, and as the speedometer creeps past ninety, we all stop talking.

We roar through the bayou toward New Orleans and our date with destiny.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

W
e’re all mostly silent on the way to New Orleans as we digest the revelation about Arelia. “I just can’t believe she’d betray us like that,” Peregrine says four times before falling silent again.

It’s not until we get to the edge of the city that Oscar speaks up. “You know, Patrick and I were suspicious of her all along. I mean, the way she was always lurking around and glaring at everyone. . . .”

“You never thought to mention that?” Peregrine asks.

“You never listen to us,” Oscar says. “You act like we don’t have brains.”

Chloe jumps in before Peregrine makes the situation worse. “Oscar, Patrick, we’re very grateful for your protection. Peregrine’s just on edge.”

“Of course I am,” Peregrine says sharply. “This girl who’s been acting like our friend for years has just been lying in wait to murder us. It’s a lot to digest.”

“I just can’t understand her motives,” I say. “She had everything she wanted.”

“Not everything,” Peregrine says. “We were always going to be more powerful, more beautiful, and more privileged than her. We’re queens, and she’s not. Some people can’t handle coming in second.”

I think about my first day in the Hickories, when Arelia snapped at me that it had taken her years to become a Doll, and I had no right to assume that doors would open for me just because of my family name. “She did seem jealous,” I admit. “It’s just a long leap from envy to joining Main de Lumière and murdering innocent people.”

“You said yourself that Glory mentioned Arelia’s name the night she died,” Peregrine says.

“I know,” I reply. “I guess I should have listened to my gut all along, but it seemed so farfetched. I’m an idiot .”

“You’re not an idiot,” Chloe says as Peregrine begins to weave her Aston Martin swiftly through the city streets toward the heart of the French Quarter. “If anything, we’re the ones who talked you out of suspecting her. But let’s try to forget about Arelia for the time being and focus on what we have to do, okay? Tonight’s important, and our minds have to be clear.”

“Fine,” Peregrine says.

I look out the window and feel a little dazed as I try to turn my thoughts to the task at hand. The streets of New Orleans are heaving with people, many of them wearing hundreds of strings of beads as well as elaborate masks and, in some cases, feather headdresses. The city itself is saturated in bright colors, its soundtrack a cacophony of blaring trumpets, banging drums, and laughing revelers. People swig huge beers and bright red drinks, trip over each other, fall on the pavement, and sing off-key as we inch past on some of the side streets that aren’t closed to traffic. Peregrine’s jaw is set, and her lips are pressed together in a fine line as she drives.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” I say as a woman near our car screams up at several men hanging off an ornate balcony, pulls up her tank top to flash them, and receives a shower of beads and catcalls in reply.

Peregrine finally makes a right turn on a side street and pulls the car into a disabled parking spot along the curb. As we get out and head toward the back door of a big mansion, Chloe explains, “We were here last year to take part in the ceremony with our mothers’ sosyete—that always happens when a sosyete is a year away from inheriting its power—but this year, we’re the ones with the control.” The words make me shudder. Control seems like the wrong way to put it when we’re really just players in a game set up long before we were born.

Peregrine unlocks the mansion’s back door and flips on the lights inside. A huge, opulent parlor, all done in black and white marble, is illuminated before us.

“Beautiful place,” I say.

“It’s ours, you know,” Chloe says, turning to me. “This mansion.”

“Ours?” I ask.

“Yours, mine, and Peregrine’s,” she responds. “The greatgreat-great-grandmothers willed it to us. It’s our haven for practicing magic in New Orleans.”

“And,” Peregrine says, “our occasional place to get hammered and hook up.”

Chloe nudges me. “You and Caleb should come here some weekend. It’s really romantic.”

I swallow hard. “I’m pretty sure Caleb and I are done.”

Chloe pats my back. “Don’t give up on him yet. What you two have . . .” She doesn’t finish her sentence.

“We don’t have anything,” I say after a pause.

“You’re wrong,” she says. “And now that it’s not his responsibility to protect you anymore. . . .”

Peregrine gives me a sour look over her shoulder as she leads us into the kitchen, which has beige marble countertops and state-of-the-art stainless steel appliances. In the corner sits a teak bar with several bottles of liquor on top. “Chloe,” she says, “I think it’s pretty clear Eveny has ended things forever with Caleb.” My heart lurches, and I feel ill as she turns and says sweetly, “Champagne, guys? We’re fully stocked, and hello, we’ve just escaped a murderer! Shouldn’t we be celebrating?”

I look into the fridge, where the top shelf is lined with at least a dozen bottles of champagne with bright yellow foil wrappers.

“I’ll have a glass,” Patrick says.

“Me too,” Oscar adds.

“Me three,” Chloe says quickly. “Eveny’ll have one too. Right?”

“Um,” I say weakly. I should be feeling relieved, but instead, I just feel oddly unsettled. Knowing that Arelia was acting like our friend while she planned our murders unsettles me. It also reminds me that the deepest threats can come from the people you trust the most. I wonder if the person who betrayed my mom was someone she trusted too.

Peregrine plugs her iPhone into a pair of silver speakers and pulls up a playlist. A moment later, there’s music blasting, and Chloe, Patrick, and Oscar head into the kitchen to do shots.

“For one night, Eveny, do you think you could stop being so lame?” Peregrine asks, handing me a flute of champagne. “Let loose. Have fun. We deserve this.”

Margaux, Pascal, and Justin arrive ten minutes later, just as Peregrine is joining Chloe, Oscar, and Patrick for another round of tequila shots in the kitchen.

“The traffic was killer,” Pascal reports as he strolls in and tosses his keys on a coffee table.

“Maybe if you hadn’t stopped and leered at every topless girl we passed, we would have gotten here faster,” Margaux says. She pauses and looks around. “Hey, where’s Arelia? I thought she was with you guys.”

Chloe and Peregrine emerge from the kitchen, looking uneasy. I turn the music down, and for a moment, we just stand in uncomfortable silence.

“What?” Margaux demands. “What happened? Is she okay?”

“Margaux,” Chloe says gently. “Arelia’s the one who killed Glory.”

“That’s impossible,” Margaux says instantly. “This is some kind of a joke, right?”

“I’m afraid not,” Peregrine says. She quickly recaps the story about the lip gloss and the crimson stain on Arelia’s cheek. Before she finishes speaking, Margaux is already shaking her head vigorously.

“No, no, no, no,” she says. “This is all wrong.” She turns to me, her eyes blazing. “What did you say in your charm? Tell me the
exact
words!”

Startled, I explain that I asked that the gloss turn blood red on the face of the person who was lying about the night Glory died.

Margaux puts her hand over her mouth, and for a moment, she’s silent. “She
was
lying about that night,” she says finally. “But it’s not what you think. She didn’t kill Glory. She
loved
Glory.” When we all stare at her blankly, she exclaims, “She and Glory were dating, you morons! They thought you guys would ban them from the sosyete if you found out.” She turns to Peregrine and adds, “You’re not exactly the most tolerant people in the world.”

We gape at her. “Are you sure?” It’s Chloe who finally speaks. “Maybe she and Glory got into some kind of fight—”

Margaux cuts her off. “Just like I’ve already said, she was with me at the time Glory was killed. I swear on the graves of my ancestors.” She turns to me. “You kissed my cheek too, didn’t you? You know I’m not lying!”

“She’s right,” I say uneasily.

“Kiss her again,” Peregrine demands. When I hesitate, she says, “Do it!”

I give Margaux a quick peck on the cheek, and nothing happens. A knot of dread is forming in the pit of my stomach. Margaux’s telling the truth; it wasn’t Arelia, which means the real killer is still out there.

“I told you so,” Margaux says, her face pink with anger.

“We have to let Caleb know we screwed up,” I say.

“
You
screwed up,” Peregrine corrects, turning to glare at me.

“I’ll call him now,” I mutter. But I dial his number three times, and each time, it goes directly to voice mail.

“We just have to wait for him to get here,” Chloe says.

“I’m so sorry,” I whisper.

“You should be,” Peregrine says. “Not only is the Main de Lumière traitor still out there, but now we’re down one sosyete member for our ceremony at a time we could use all the help we can get. Excellent work, Eveny.”

Caleb arrives forty-five minutes later, just after twelve thirty, his suit rumpled, his eyes wild.

“I was wrong about Arelia,” I blurt out as soon as he walks through the door.

He glances at me as he greets Peregrine and Chloe. “Yeah,” he says, running his hand distractedly over the top of his head. “I know. She told me everything.”

“What happened to her?” I ask in a small voice, my heart hammering.

“She’s fine. She’s with Boniface. She was too shaken up to come along.”

“She must hate my guts,” I say.

“You were only doing what you thought was right,” Caleb says after a minute. “I don’t think she blames you. She knows she lied.”

“But that was her secret to keep if she wanted to,” I say.

“The bigger problem,” he says, “is that the killer is still out there.”

Peregrine comes over and whispers something to him, and he disappears for a few minutes with her. I’m sitting by myself in the corner of the room, nursing the same glass of champagne I was handed an hour ago, when he gets back, a tall glass of what I assume is a gin and tonic in his hand. He doesn’t look at me once as he joins the group.

“Loosen up, baby,” Pascal purrs at me as he makes his way to the kitchen for another cocktail. He’s slightly unsteady on his feet. “This is supposed to be fun.”

“Don’t you understand?” I shoot back. “We could die tonight. We don’t know who’s trying to hurt us.”

He snorts. “Nothing’s going to happen here. Geez, Eveny, could you just give the let’s-save-the-world crap a rest for once?”

When the clock strikes one, the whole group moves upstairs and out to the huge balcony overlooking Chartres Street, two blocks away from the famous Bourbon Street. The road below us is still throbbing with people, and I back against the wall, my whole body tense, as Peregrine and Chloe lean over the rail and flirt with guys, and as Pascal throws beads out to the dozens of girls who seem all too happy to show him their breasts.

“I love Mardi Gras!” he shouts, laughing, as a pair of twins flash him enthusiastically. I catch Caleb’s eye for a millisecond and am heartened to see him looking as uneasy as I feel. I brace myself and head over to him.

“Hey,” I say. “Are you mad at me about Arelia?”

“No, of course not,” he says. “But why did you release me from being your protector?”

I’m startled at the anger in his eyes. “I was trying to help you.”

“I didn’t ask for your help.”

“You didn’t have to. It wasn’t fair to you, Caleb. The whole system of you having to put your life on the line for me? I can’t ask you to do that.”

“That wasn’t your decision to make.” He walks away before I can say anything else.

I turn to see Peregrine staring at me with an indecipherable expression on her face. She looks away after a moment and claps her hands. “People!” she yells, and then when everyone just goes right on reveling, she whistles loudly, and the conversation on the balcony comes to a halt. “It’s time,” she says.