Chapter 261: [4.79] The Daily Report
Monday brought the Lexus back. A driver in a dark suit, naturally, because Vivienne had explicitly been asked not to send someone in a suit and Vivienne responded to explicit requests the way cats responded to closed doors. The driver handed me the keys with the solemnity of a man delivering nuclear launch codes, then disappeared into a town car that had been following him the entire way from Long Island. Mrs. Delgado watched the whole exchange from her window and made the sign of the cross.
Tuesday was the diner.
Diana showed up seven minutes early, which was either a new leaf or an overcompensation for eighteen years of chronic lateness. She wore a sundress that didn’t match the October weather and sat in the booth with her hands wrapped around a coffee mug like she needed something to hold onto. Iris ordered pancakes. I ordered black coffee and the ability to feel nothing, but the diner only carried the first one.
"Tell me about school," Diana said to Iris, and Iris told her, cautiously at first, then with growing warmth as Diana asked follow-up questions that proved she was actually listening. Art club. The manga project. A friend named Sarah who talked too much about K-dramas. Small things. Normal things. The currency of a relationship Diana had forfeited the right to trade in but was attempting to earn back one question at a time.
I sat across from them and ate nothing and watched my sister smile at the woman who’d left us.
Wednesday, Diana texted asking if we could have dinner. I said no. She texted back okay and didn’t push. That restraint alone was enough to make me suspicious. Diana had never in her life accepted no without a five-act negotiation that ended with someone crying, usually me.
Thursday I drove to the manor after school for festival setup and Cassidy met me at the gate wearing a sports bra and shorts that were technically athletic wear in the same way that a napkin was technically a garment. She had a tennis racket over her shoulder and sweat on her collarbones and her hair pulled back so the black streaks framed her face in a way that made her jaw look sharper.
"You’re late," she said, climbing into the passenger seat without waiting for an invitation.
"By two minutes."
"Two minutes is two minutes." She kicked her feet up on the dashboard. Her legs were long enough that her knees bent at an angle, and the shorts rode up her thighs in a way my eyes tracked before my brain could intervene with anything resembling self-preservation instincts.
The skin there was tan from whatever time she spent outside terrorizing tennis opponents and physics teachers alike, and there was a slight mark on her knee that might have been a bruise or might have been dirt. I noticed the detail before I could stop myself.
She caught me looking. The corner of her mouth lifted in something that wasn’t quite a smile and wasn’t quite a threat.
"Eyes forward, scholarship boy."
I turned back to the road and put the car in drive.
Friday arrived with the weight of a final exam I hadn’t studied for. The gymnasium had been fully transformed into a graveyard meets gothic cathedral aesthetic, with black drapes covering every wall and purple uplighting casting the space in colors that made everyone look slightly undead. The fog machine worked perfectly after my calibrations, sending low-hanging clouds of theatrical mist across the floor. Felix tested his Dracula voice approximately four hundred times until Marin threatened to staple his mouth shut with the clipboard she wielded like a weapon of mass organization.
Harlow FaceTimed me at ten that night to show me the finished butler vest. She held the phone at arm’s length so I could see the full garment, which meant I could also see that she was wearing a tank top with no bra and the fabric was thin enough to leave very little to imagination. The vest had red piping and ornate silver buttons and a lining she’d hand-stitched in burgundy silk.
"The collar stand is reinforced," she said, turning the vest so I could see the interior construction. "So it won’t fold down during service."
"It looks amazing, Harlow."
"You think?" She pressed the vest against her chest to model the fit, and the thin tank top compressed against her body in a way that made the shape of her extremely obvious against the dark fabric. "I measured it against the dummy but dummies don’t breathe, you know? Your chest expands when you breathe and if the vest is too tight across the sternum it’ll restrict your lung capacity and then you’ll pass out and I’ll have to do mouth-to-mouth."
"That’s. Not how CPR works."
"It’s close enough." She grinned into the camera. "Sleep well, Assistant-kun. Tomorrow you’re mine."
She hung up before I could correct her. I was technically Sabrina’s first, according to the rotation schedule that Vivienne had formalized in a shared Google Doc with edit permissions restricted to herself and read-only access for everyone else.
But tomorrow wasn’t about rotations or schedules or the elaborate romantic logistics of four identical girls with identical eyes and completely non-identical approaches to making my life impossible.
Tomorrow was the festival. The vampire maid cafe. Patterson’s desperate bid for a plastic trophy. Costumes and fog machines and themed drinks with edible glitter.
Tomorrow was also the last normal day before everything changed.
I pulled the blanket over my head and closed my eyes and tried very hard not to think about Cassidy’s shorts or Harlow’s tank top or Vivienne’s collar adjustments or Sabrina’s one-message-per-day system that had arrived at exactly 11:00 PM as it had every night that week.
Tonight’s message: Tomorrow you wear the fangs. This is not negotiable.
I responded: We’ll see.
She responded: We will.
Gerald watched me from across the room with his glassy unicorn eyes. Iris had positioned him on the kitchen counter at some point during the week, facing the couch, which meant he had a direct line of sight to my sleeping arrangements and therefore bore witness to every 2 AM phone check and every muttered conversation with myself about the choices that had led me here.
"Don’t judge me, Gerald."
Gerald judged me.
