“Yeah,” I agree. “ - if we are in opposite world, and dreams are actually nightmares.”

She ignores me and latches back on to Jack the second he separates from Charlie, steering him towards the pool. Jack goes along with it, grimace obvious. Why is he doing it if he doesn’t like it?

“You,” A voice hisses in my ear. I turn to see Charlie, anger etching his mouth.

“Me,” I say. “Now that the introductions are over, we can finally move on to tea.”

“You’re distracting him,” Charlie says. “You’re a goddamn distraction he doesn’t need right now.”

“Exqueeze me?”

“You heard me,” Charlie insists. “You see that red-head in the bikini? That’s an important source of info we need on our side. Jack’s gonna wind her around his pinkie, and he would’ve already, but you’re here, and for some f**king reason he likes your dumb ass and is putting it off.”

“You’re mistaken. We hate each other. Platonically.”

“You’re cockblocking him,” Charlie snarls. “Now get the f**k out of here, before I throw you out myself.”

“My, are you always this polite with the ladies, or am I the exception? Or perhaps it’s the dudes you reserve your politeness for? Understandable. Dude-asses are polite-worthy as hell.”

“Get. Out.”

Over his tanned shoulder, I see Hemorrhoid lean in and graze Jack’s cheek with her lips. Jack doesn’t recoil, taking it like a frozen statue, inclining his head only slightly in response. I get the message. I always get the message, because I’m Isis Blake and I’m last choice for teams in gym, always, and whatever we had has been swallowed up by the void of Sophia, by the pain, by the ice-cold shield against it all he calls ‘work’. The little ball-light of hope I held in the darkness flickers, weakening irrevocably.

“I was already leaving,” I say. Charlie watches me the whole way to the garage. My fury is the dull, aching kind, lingering even as I park and trudge up the stairs into the dorms. Yvette is, mercifully, not there. Her text from four hours ago reads; ‘staying at a friend’s, don’t worry’. Another booty call, maybe. I don’t care. It’s her life, and as long as she’s safe and happy, I’m fine with it. I’m curious, but the throbbing hurt from the night beats louder against my skull as I lie in bed and stare at the ceiling, hot moisture clouding my eyes.

I can’t sleep. Not until I say something. I grab my phone and text.

‘Do you know how many times you’ve made me f**king cry?’

His answer comes later, much later. It wakes me in two hours. I imagine him in her bed, sitting over the side of it, naked and with her naked and sleeping opposite him. I imagine his tousled hair, his lean muscles, his blue eyes made silver by the moonlight.

‘Too many.’ He says. Thirty minutes pass, and then; ‘Find someone who doesn’t make you cry. Find someone better.’

***

‘Do you know how many times you’ve made me f**king cry?’

I stare at the text, the sickly electronic light boring into my eyes like spears. Spears of guilt. Spears of regret. I shouldn’t be here, and what’s left of my heart knows that the second I read the words. I should be there, with her. I should be a normal college student, not playing at one while trying to catch a criminal.

Not f**king the criminal’s girlfriend so she’ll give me dirt on them.

It had been boring and routine, the steps ingrained in me from my time at the Rose Club. I’d added every trick I could to satisfy her – satiate her so fully she’d be crawling on her knees for more in the morning, and next week, and the week after that. Her mouth is the only useful part of her – spilling the secrets of Kyle, and consequently, his partner Will.

It’d been the first f**k since spending the night with Isis at the hotel. Isis’ smell surrounded me, vanilla and cinnamon, even when I hadn’t touched her for very long. The hurt in her brown eyes haunted me as I came in the nameless girl, the silent name on my lips spilling from a place of heart-torn, guilt-laced pleasure, and if I shut my eyes I could pretend, if only for the briefest second, that it was Isis beneath me.

But the illusion faded quickly.

‘Use everything you can to your advantage,’ Gregory’s voice resonates from training. ‘And that means your damn pretty face. Women will love it. Use them.’

The evidence we need is one step closer.

Redemption is one step closer. Redemption for Sophia. Redemption for Isis. Catching Nameless, putting him away for life so that she never has to see him again, is the one good thing I can do for her. The one good thing I can do, period. The one thing that could put a dent in redeeming the hurt I’ve inflicted.

I pull on my shirt and button my jeans, leaving the posh apartment quietly so as not to wake her roommates. I pause at the door, looking back into the shadowed apartment that holds the evidence of my sordid manipulations.

I thought I was done with it, with this. But I got it backwards - it was never truly done with me.

“Redemption,” I murmur, and leave. The guilt sears me, gnawing at my insides. I need relief. I need distraction. I need something other than Isis’ text, my phone burning up in my pocket with her sadness and disappointment.

What does she want from me?

I can’t give her anything. I can’t give anyone anything anymore. My heart is empty and broken and useless.

The neon lights of the college district flash with technicolor temptation – pawn shops, strip clubs, liquor stores open late. I find what I’m looking for in a seedy club packed to the brim with sweat-stench and greasy bodies. I watch the crowd carefully from the bar, and pounce on the one man who slips a roofie into a brunette’s drink.

He is bleeding - his nose broken and his arm dislocated - when I am done with him. It takes forty seconds, and he punches back with equal fervor and splits my brow with his knuckles, hot blood oozing into my eyes. For those forty seconds it’s all static – I am a blank canvas, moving like Gregory taught me, punching and dodging like he taught me. Nothing is in my mind but moves and counter moves, observations and rapid calculations of how fast my opponent’s fist is moving, where it will land, how to sidestep and trip him so he’ll eat a precise stone step of the club. I am empty. Isis is gone. Sophia is gone. There’s only the taste of blood and anger and sweat, and the soundless roar of the beast in my head. But the roar is different, now. It is sharp and honed and precise. It is softer, yet more chilling.

‘When it asks to be fed, feed it promptly, and in small portions. It will never rebel, and you’ll never hurt anyone you don’t want to, as long as it’s fed.’ Gregory’s words echo. ‘As long as it’s fed, you are the master.’

The bouncers break us up, and as they lead me out I nod at the brunette, who gathered around to watch the fight with the rest of the club.

“Your drink was spiked. I suggest you take a cab home.”

She looks shocked, and her friends sniff at the drink in her hand. Her horrified face is the last thing I see before they dump me into the road. The beast gives me strength enough to stagger back to campus, and collapse in bed, the blind rage fading rapidly, cooling like lava hitting ocean water.