Page 55

“Tonight,” he spits into the phone. “The old graveyard. Midnight. We’re going to bury this thing.”

“Fine,” I snap. “But if you pull any shit, we’ll definitely be burying something.”

He can’t possibly be this fucking bad at this.

The old graveyard, which sits all the way past the stables, tucked just inside the eastern forest on campus, really is “old”. Like, pre-Revolutionary War.

In fact, the enormous statue of a heavenly angel which I’m crouched behind right now marks the final resting place of Thaddeus Ravencroft, one of the original founders of Knightsblood and the man for whom Ravencroft Library is named.

But I digress. What has my attention right now isn’t the monument. It’s Damiano.

After telling me to come alone and unarmed and waxing poetic about us “hashing this out” and “settling things like adults”, there he is, crouched behind his own tombstone hiding spot, a hood pulled up over his head and a big knife in his hand.

“Pro tip, dick-weasel,” I mutter as I glare at where he’s crouched maybe thirty feet away. “Don’t let the other side see the fucking ambush before you spring it.”

Okay, maybe the car vandalism took things a touch too far. However, telling me to come to a dark, desolate graveyard alone and unarmed, only to be lying in wait for me with a knife?

Yeah, who just took things too far now, bitch.

An extra-stabby sensation creeps over my skin as I reach into my hoodie and pull out the big, fuck-off nine-inch serrated hunting knife. My eyes narrow as I gauge the distance between our hiding places.

The games have been amusing. But he's escalated things past the point that I can overlook them.

I slip off my shoes and bolt silently across the dewy grass, erasing the distance between us in seconds. With a triumphant “Fuck YOU, mothafuuuuuckaaah!” I slam him against the tombstone he’s crouched behind and jam the edge of my knife to his jugular.

“Come unarmed, huh, bitch?” I snap viciously through clenched teeth as I hold the lethal edge of the blade to his skin.

When he doesn’t say shit, my temper explodes. With a snarl, I haul the knife back and slam the butt of the handle into the side of his hooded face, hard.

…So hard, in fact, that his head falls off and rolls the fuck away.

Wait, what?

My breath catches when the cold edge of a blade presses against the delicate skin of my throat.

“It’s a good thing I never in a million fucking years thought you’d actually adhere to that request,” a voice growls into my ear from behind me.

My stomach drops as I look down at the mannequin dressed in Damiano's clothes that I’m still pinning to the gravestone, its head lying on the ground a few feet away staring up at me with blank, unseeing eyes.

Fuck. Me.

I walked right into that.

Still doesn’t mean I can’t skip the fuck back out of it, though.

“Now,” Damiano hisses. “Drop the knife. Slowly. And then we can have a serious discussion about⁠—”

Nope.

He grunts as I spin out of his grip and slam the headless mannequin into his chest, knocking him off balance.

“Let’s fucking dance, bitch!” I snap.

I’m on him in a second, kicking the blade out of his hand and then pouncing on him, my own knife raised for the kill.

“Oh, you wanna dance, you little fucking nightmare!?” he spits back. I cry out when his forearm slams into my side, knocking me to the ground and sending me sprawling across the dewy grass.

He snatches his knife back up. But before he can plunge it down on me, I roll away, spring to my feet, and kick a clod of freshly cut grass and dirt into his face.