Page 88 of Rattle the Cage

Clearing my throat, I took the seat beside Nash, rubbing her back. “Thanks for having us. The house is beautiful. Do you get many visitors here?”

“Me,” Teresa raised her hand with a smirk. “I just graduated and moved out. Which feels so weird to say. I lived and breathed this place for four years, and now…”

Elle shook her head. “Ken and I do most of the visiting nowadays.”

Looking at the three of them, the math made sense. Between her purple-streaked curls and her glowy skin, Teresa was certainly vibrant but not quite young enough to be in college still. If I had to guess, the other two weren’t far off from graduation themselves.

Turning to Teresa, Elle batted her eyes. “You know that the door’s always open if you’re feeling a bit homesick…”

“Please,” Kennedy smirked. “Why would she shack up here when Xander’s palace is an option? Her house is so big it grew another house out back. If the LD house wasn’t the most secure place in Valemont for this meeting, you know damn well she’d be lounged out on one of X’s designer couches.”

Cyrus’ lip curled at the subtle brag, and Nash nearly laughed. I placed a hand on the back of Blade’s neck before she could pipe up.

Growing up the way we had, it was hard not to resent the ease with which the sisters spoke about money.

The Freaks had money, of course: enough of it to make my stomach ache.

But I’d seen exactly the type of work they did to earn it. Nothing about our lives was clean or simple. There was no four year plan, no crash pad or job security or sorority connections to coast on out in the real world.

Whether it was the Freaks running away from Heirs or me waiting to get spit out by the foster system, we had always been alone. And they⁠—

I didn’t know a damn thing about them.

My instinct was to turn my nose: these were a bunch of silver-spooned, trust fund babies playing fast and loose with daddy’s wallet. But what trust-fund babies did I know who looked like Teresa or Kennedy? Who would let a bunch of circus freaks into their sprawling mansion without batting an eye?

I rolled my shoulders back and tried to keep an open mind. At the very least, I needed to play nice long enough to make the trip out here worthwhile.

“Someone’s missing,” Cyrus frowned. “Where’s Xander⁠—?”

Before she could finish the question, the double doors slammed open, revealing a towering masc in a navy button down and slacks. There was no denying her presence filled the room.

If we were going on muscle mass alone, she looked like she might give my Freaks a run for their money. Though a hunt was about so much more than who was the biggest.

She was dominant and looming, and she didn’t apologize as she strode into the center of our conversation with her head held high.

Still, Elle narrowed her eyes. “We just had the drywall patched.”

“I had the drywall patched.” Xander flicked her green eyes over the brunette. Her expression landed somewhere between animosity and possessiveness. “And I’ll do it again.”

Elle rolled her eyes, thighs clenching conspicuously. As she sunk back into Kennedy’s arms, a sword and scales tattoo flexed beneath the hem of her pleated skirt: the same mark Teresa was sporting.

Weird.

But before I had time to wonder, Xander returned her assessing gaze to the four of us.

Cyrus stepped forward, clearly irritated by the theatrics. “Let’s make this fast. How tight is your control on campus?”

“Titanium,” Xander chuckled, her lip curving ever so slightly upward.

“Then I assume you’re well aware of the DMT problem in town. All the fucked up looking zombies stumbling around town, crashing from the high. Atwood’s full of cash, full of demand. A private university would be the perfect place for a research lab to crop up, some excess product to slip its way out into⁠—”

“Not possible,” Xander shook her head. “Like I said, LD’s grip on campus is titanium. And it’s only grown stronger since the zombies started showing up. There’s no active research lab here, and under my advice, the current sisters have been doing sweeps to clear out whatever they can.”

Cyrus’ brow furrowed. “Then how do you explain the worship circles on the quad, the dopamine crashes all over campus…?”

“We can’t stop people from leaving campus,” Kennedy piped in with a frown. “We get rid of whatever they come back with as soon as possible. But no one is naming a source…”

Xander crossed her arms. “Whatever those religious weirdos are on isn’t coming from within Atwood’s gates. But I’m willing to make some guesses about who might be supplying it.”