Bitten Beauty (The Deadly Beauties Live On 3)

They laugh as I struggle against the flagpole, wishing the tears would come. I’d rather look weak than strong right now, because the inability to cry makes them think I can handle more.

Laughs ring out as the school lets out, and everyone points and stares. No one helps. Some take pictures. Others video me.

Everyone laughs. Everyone laughs. Everyone laughs.

“Freak! Freak! Freak!” Tommy Leonard chants, stirring up the rest of the crowd as the chant gets adopted.

In nothing but my underwear and my shame, I’m forced to watch in horror as they all look at me with mocking laughter and giddy eyes. Freak is painted across my stomach, and I’m forced to stand here and endure, tied in place.

In that moment, I’m happy I’m incapable of tears. Now I wouldn’t want them to have the satisfaction of seeing me cry.

That unbidden memory gets pushed away, and I take in what’s going on. Or try to.

My mother was insane—locked up for the ten years before she died. My father is a mystery, since he died when I was little and no one ever spoke of him. My aunt raised me to believe that there are logical answers to everything.

Me? I’m going insane trying to find a logical answer to the big ass fucking mystery of what I just saw, because there’s no way I saw what I think I did. Marilyn is rocking back and forth, mumbling incoherent nonsense, possibly suffering major shock.

Zee is real, and his name is apparently really Zee, since everyone is calling him that. It’s a crazy coincidence that he’s the one who found us in that closet, but I wouldn’t have known what to do if it had been anyone else instead of him.

Now, we’re in some dude’s cabin, while a group of them quietly discuss the details of what I recounted. I expected them to slap a straightjacket on me the second I dished out all the crazy, but they didn’t seem the least bit fazed by the impossible details I laid out.

Magic can’t be real. This can’t be real. There’s no way.

“Wake up, Leah,” I whisper to myself.

Marilyn whimpers and buries her face in her hands, still rocking. If she’s this traumatized, then the crazy has to be legit.

Zee is watching me, even though I think he’s listening to everyone else. He seems pissed off that I’m here, but it’s not like I asked to be brought here. However, I have asked to go home. Numerous times.

“She needs to be wiped. Obviously she can’t handle what she saw,” the one they call Chaz says, eyeing Marilyn like she’s annoying him.

“She just watched two people be murdered in an unexplainable, brutal way. Well, one. We just had to hear the second one be tortured to death,” I snarl, rubbing Marilyn’s back while she continues to stay in shock and rock.

“You seem just fine,” Zee says in an accusatory tone that I really don’t appreciate.

What’s his damn problem?

“I’m not fine, but I’m not broken like her. Maybe I’m in denial or something, but I’ve always been weird, so it’s not surprising. Can I please take her home? Or are we still being held captive? I thought you were going to call the police.”

Why the hell hasn’t anyone called the cops by now? I’m sick of telling them the story the police need to hear.

“The cops won’t be of any use,” a blonde says as she walks in.

All the men go stiff, and the other blonde named Kimber goes to meet her half way.

“It’s a murder. Why won’t they be of some use?” I ask, but my question gets overrode by another guy when he asks her something else too low for me to hear.

“All of it,” she says with a shrug. “Don’t act so surprised. You can’t keep something like this a secret from me. Besides, I deserve to know. I’m the one most affected by this.”

“I’m having it cleaned up,” the one in leather says. I think his name is Ice? Weird name.

“Dice, have them burn the blood, too. No evidence left behind,” Chaz says.

Okay, so not Ice but Dice. Even weirder. And I thought… Whoa! What?

“You’re burning the evidence?” I shriek.

“We have to,” Zee says, still watching me like he’s close to killing me. That has me admittedly on edge, since these people don’t seem completely sane or moral.