Chapter (Mary part 1)

Mary

The music is pounding in time to my heartbeat. I can feel the bass in my chest—badoom, badoom. It's hard to see across the room of writhing bodies, especially with the fog from the dry ice, and the flickering light show coming down from the club's industrial ceiling overhead.

But I know he's here. I can feel him.

Which is why I'm grateful for the bodies grinding against one another all around me. They're keeping me hidden from his view—and from his senses. Otherwise he'd have smelled me coming by now. They can detect the scent of fear from yards away.

Not that I'm scared. Because I'm not.

Well. Maybe a little.

But I have my Excalibur Vixen crossbow 285 FPS with me, with a twenty-inch-long Easton XX75 (the tip, formerly gold, now replaced with hand-carved ash) already cocked and ready to be released at the merest pressure from my finger.

He'll never know what hit him.

And, hopefully, neither will she.

The important thing is to get a clean shot—which won't be easy in this crowd—and to make it count. I'll probably only get one chance to shoot. Either I'll hit the target… or he'll hit me.

"Always aim for the chest," Mom used to say. "It's the largest part of the body, and the spot you're least likely to miss. Of course, you're more likely to kill than wound if you aim for the chest rather than the thigh or arm… but what do you want to wound for, anyway? The point is to take 'em down."

Which is what I'm here to do tonight. Take 'im down.

Lila will hate me, of course, if she figures out what really happened… and that it was me who did it.

But what does she expect? She can't think that I'm just going to sit idly by and watch her throw her life away.

"I met this guy," she'd gushed at lunch today, while we were standing in line for the salad bar. "Oh my God, Mary, you wouldn't believe how cute he is. His name's Sebastian. He's got the bluest eyes you've ever seen."

The thing about Lila that a lot of people don't get is that beneath that—let's face it—slutty exterior beats the heart of a truly loyal friend. Unlike the rest of the girls at Saint Eligius, Lila's never pulled an attitude with me about the fact that my dad's not a CEO or plastic surgeon.

And yeah, okay, I have to tune out about three-fourths of what she says because most of it is stuff that I have no interest in—like how much she paid for her Prada tote at the end-of-season clearance sale at Saks, and what kind of tramp stamp she's thinking about getting next time she's in Cancún.

But this caught my attention.

"Lila," I said. "What about Ted?"

Because Ted's all Lila has talked about for the past year, ever since he finally got up the guts to ask her out. Well, I mean, all she's talked about besides the Prada sales and back tattoos.

"Oh, that's over," Lila said, reaching for the lettuce tongs. "Sebastian's taking me clubbing tonight—at Swig. He says he can get us in—he's on the VIP list."

It wasn't the fact that this guy, whoever he was, claimed to be on the VIP list of the newest and most exclusive club in downtown Manhattan that caused the hairs on the back of my neck to rise. Don't get me wrong—Lila's beautiful. If anyone is going to be approached by a random stranger who happens to be on the most sought-after VIP list in town, it would be Lila.

It was the thing about Ted that got to me. Because Lila adores Ted. They're the quintessentially perfect high school couple. She's gorgeous, he's a star athlete… it's a match made in teen heaven.

Which is why what she was telling me did not compute.

"Lila, how can you say it's over between you and Ted?" I demanded. "You two have been going out forever"—or at least since I arrived at Saint Eligius Prep in September, where Lila was the first (and, to date, pretty much the only) girl in any of my classes to actually speak to me—"and it's the prom this weekend."

"I know," Lila said, with a happy sigh. "Sebastian's taking me."

"Seb—"

That's when I knew. I mean, really knew.

"Lila," I said. "Look at me." Lila looked down at me—I'm small. But, as Mom used to say, I'm fast—and I saw it at once. What I should have seen from the beginning, that ever-so-slightly glazed expression—the dull eyes… the soft lips—that I've come to know so well over the years.

I couldn't believe it. He'd gotten to my best friend. My only friend.

Well. What was I supposed to do? Sit back and let him take her?

Not this time.

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