The Dolls(97)

“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

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31


We’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.