Psycho Killer (29 page)

Blair reached the door to the women’s room and turned around, pushing it halfway open with her rear end.

“Just leave me alone, okay?” she said sharply, and went inside.

Nate stood outside the door for a moment with his hands in his pockets, thinking. That morning, when he’d put on the green sweater Blair had given him, he’d found a little gold heart sewn into the sleeve. He’d never noticed it before, but it was obvious Blair had put it there. For the first time, he’d realized that she really meant it when she’d said she loved him.

It was pretty intense. And pretty flattering. And it kind of made him want her again. It wasn’t just any girl who’d sew a gold heart into your clothes. Or cover her body in paint and greet you naked at the door.

He had that right.

Serena had to pee desperately, but Blair was in the bathroom.
After Blair and Nate had been gone for five minutes, though, she couldn’t hold it any longer. She stood up and headed for the ladies’ room.

Familiar faces gazed up at Serena as she passed their tables. A waitress offered her a glass of champagne. But Serena shook her head and hurried down the marble hall to the bathrooms. Quick, heavy footsteps smacked on the floor behind her. She turned around. It was Cyrus Rose.

“Tell Blair to hurry if she wants dessert, will you?” he told her.

Serena nodded and pushed open the door to the ladies’ room. Blair was washing her hands. She looked up, staring at Serena’s reflection in the mirror over the sink.

“Cyrus says to hurry if you want dessert,” Serena said abruptly, walking into a stall and banging the door shut. She sat down on the toilet, but nothing happened. Her bladder was full, but nothing came out.

Serena couldn’t believe herself. How many times in the past had she and Blair gone to the bathroom together, talking and laughing while they peed?

There was a quiet, awkward pause.

Don’t you just
hate
awkward pauses?

“Prepare to die,” Serena thought she heard Blair whisper in a low growl before she left the bathroom.

The door swung shut, but even with Blair gone Serena couldn’t relax. Like Diana, goddess of the hunt, she was the huntress. She wasn’t used to being hunted.

Cyrus caught Nate in the men’s room.

“You and Blair have a fight?” Cyrus asked. He unzipped his pants and stood at the urinal. Lucky Nate.

Nate shrugged as he washed his hands. “Kind of.”

“Let me guess. It was about sex, right?” Cyrus said.

Nate blushed and pulled a paper towel out of the dispenser. “Sort of…” He really didn’t want to get into it. He certainly wasn’t going to mention the body paint.

Cyrus flushed the urinal and joined Nate at the sinks. He washed his hands and began fussing with his tie, which was bright pink with yellow lions’ heads on it. Very Versace.

Read:
tacky
.

“The only things couples fight about are sex and money,” Cyrus observed.

Nate just stood there with his hands in his pockets.

“That’s all right, kid. I’m not going to give you a lecture or anything. This is my future stepdaughter we’re talking about. I’m sure as hell not going to tell you how to get into her pants.”

Cyrus chuckled to himself and left the bathroom, leaving Nate to stare after him. He wondered if Blair knew Cyrus was planning on marrying her mother.

Nate turned on the tap and splashed cold water on his face. He studied himself in the mirror. He’d been up late last night with the boys, playing stupid drinking games to
Tomb Raider
. Every time they saw Angelina Jolie’s nipples, they had to drink. He’d tried to drown his worries about Blair and Serena in as much booze as he could swallow, and now he was paying for it. His face was pale, there were brownish-purple circles under his eyes, and his cheeks were still sort of gray from the paint. He looked like shit.

As soon as this damned brunch was over, he was heading into the park for a smoke in the sun and a can of whiskey and Coke. The perfect cure-all.

But first he’d have to flirt with Blair a little bit. If she would let him.

Instead of returning to her table when she left the ladies’ room, Blair made her way across the Sackler Wing, toward Arms and Armor. She’d waited long enough. It was time.

Rain and Laura spotted her first.

“Blair! Over here!” Rain called, patting the empty gold chair next to her. Their parents and friends were working the room, socializing, so the girls had the table to themselves.

“Here,” Laura said, handing Blair a glass full of champagne and peach puree.

“Thanks,” Blair said, taking an impatient sip.

“Anthony Avuldsen just came over and tried to get us to come to the park with him.” Rain giggled. “He’s kind of cute, you know, in a Waspoid kind of way.”

Hey, cool word!

Laura rolled her eyes. “Isn’t this boring? How’s your table?”

“Don’t ask,” Blair said. “Did you see who I’m sitting with?”

The other two girls sniggered. “Have you seen that billboard of her by those dead artist guys?” Laura said.

Blair nodded and rolled her eyes.

“What’s it supposed to be, anyway?” Rain asked. “Her belly button?”

Blair had gotten awfully close to having her own Remi brothers portrait done, but she still had no idea. “Who cares?”

“She has no shame,” Laura ventured. “I actually feel kind of sorry for her.”

“Me too,” Rain agreed.

“Well, don’t,” Blair said fiercely before making her escape.

Nate pushed open the men’s room door at exactly the same time that Serena pushed open the ladies’. Together, they walked down the hallway back to the table.

“Nate,” Serena said, smoothing her new yellow Marni dress over her legs. “Can you please explain why you’re not talking to me?”

“I’m not not talking to you,” Nate said. “See, I’m talking to you right now.”

“Barely,” Serena said. “What happened? What’s wrong? Did Blair say something to you about me?”

Instinctively, Nate reached into his jacket pocket and fingered the silver flask of whiskey that was hidden there. He looked down at the marble floor, avoiding Serena’s beautiful sad eyes.

“We should get back,” he said, speeding up.

“Fine,” Serena answered, trailing after him.

Chuck smirked at them knowingly as they returned to their chairs.
How was it?
his face seemed to say.

Serena wanted to rip off his other eyelid. She ordered another cup of coffee, dumped four teaspoons of sugar in it, and stirred and stirred, wondering where the hell Blair had gone.

Nate ordered a Bloody Mary. Chuck followed suit.

“Bottoms up!” Chuck cried cheerfully, banging his glass against Nate’s and taking a big gulp. Blood red tomato juice sloshed on the white tablecloth. Blue frogs hopped crazily in their round glass cage.

Serena pushed her chair back and stood up to hunt for Blair.

A Kentucky rifle. A double-barrel breechloading pinfire shotgun. The crossbow of Count Ulrich V of Würtemberg. The
rapier of Christian II, Elector of Saxony. The flintlock gun of Louis XIII, King of France. The flintlock pistols of Empress Catherine the Great. Rowel spurs. A powder horn. The small-sword of Colonel Marinus Willet.

Blair browsed the displays, finally deciding on a pretty Colt third model Dragoon percussion revolver inlaid with tiny golden animals and displayed in a nifty blue velvet–lined wooden box. A life-sized oil portrait of the proud Revolutionary War leader Colonel Marinus Willet himself looked on as she wrapped her fist in her lavender Lutz & Patmos cashmere cardigan and broke the glass.

Serena heard the alarm. Instinct told her to run toward the sound, sure that Blair was up to something. She dashed across the sun-dappled Charles Engelhard Court in the American Wing and through the glass doors to Arms and Armor. The doors swung shut and locked behind her. Before her stood the collection’s central exhibit, a lifelike display of four mounted knights and their horses. The alarm pealed loudly. Tourists ambled around the display, unfazed. Blair was nowhere in sight.

“Miss, you can’t do that!” a suited security guard on the other side of the display shouted at Blair.

Blair pointed the revolver at him. “Oh, shut up,” she snapped. “My family basically owns this entire wing.”

Serena shot around the mounted knights and across the main hall. She ran up behind the quavering guard under Blair’s arrest and stopped short. “I doubt they’d put a loaded gun in a display case, Blair.”

Blair pulled the trigger, hoping to blow a large hole through the guard’s chest and then through Serena’s. The trigger clicked. Nothing happened. Fuck. Serena was right.

Both girls dashed away to arm themselves. Serena broke a glass case and chose the saber of Sultan Murad V. It was long and sharp and perfectly arched, with a gorgeous gold-tassled jade hilt, encrusted with gold and precious jewels. Blair broke another case and chose a yataghan from the court of Süleyman the Magnificent, a gleaming sword-machete-spear combo with a nearly three-foot-long blade that looked sharp as hell and was decorated in gold with a fight scene between a dragon with ruby eyes and a phoenix with silver teeth.

The weapons were so heavy the girls had to use both hands to wield them. The security guard had disappeared, either afraid for his life or calling for backup, or both. The alarm was loud. It rang in the girls’ ears. But that didn’t stop the tourists.

Nothing ever does.

“Do you girls know how to get to the Arts of Africa, Oceana, and the Americas?” a ditzy bald man wearing half-glasses asked them.

“Shut up!” Blair shouted at him, and sliced him in half.

“Blair!” Serena scolded while taking a stab at Blair with the saber.

“Like you’re so perfect,” Blair scoffed, leaping away with balletic grace.

Serena drew back the saber and prepared to strike again, accidentally disemboweling a tour of matriarchs from the Cosmopolitan Club while she was at it.

Whoops.

Blair swung at Serena with the yataghan’s gleaming blade. Two security guards ran in to stop her, losing their legs as Serena swung back with the saber to defend herself.

Whoops again.

Besides the now-locked doors to the American Wing, Arms and Armor had only two methods of egress—the main entrance, and a stairway in the far right-hand corner of the hall. Serena sprinted toward the stairs, her breath coming short and fast, her arms aching as she ran with the heavy saber.

Blood dripped from Blair’s weapon onto her gunmetal Miu Miu mules.

“Oh, no you don’t!” Blair cried, giving chase.

The girls’ footsteps echoed in the cavernous hall. A display of armor for a mounted Japanese samurai warrior looked on in delight, his cricket bat of a sword remaining sheathed in its leopardskin scabbard.

Running up stairs with a long, heavy saber was hard work. Plus, Serena didn’t play tennis. With aching legs and arms she labored, sweating and panting, to the top of the stairs, headed for Musical Instruments on the second floor.

Next thing you know they’ll be going at it with cellos.

Far fitter, Blair took the marble steps two at a time. Soon she was right behind that familiar blond swath of hair. Blair squared her shoulders and took aim. She drew her arm back like a bow and hurled the yataghan at Serena’s straining form, catching her between the shoulder blades. Blood blossomed on the yellow dress. Slowly, like a slain warrior in a movie, Serena dropped her saber, staggered, and fell.

Blair wished she had a chainsaw. Somehow she’d expected Serena’s death to be grisly, gruesome, and
noisy
. But the stairwell was quiet. She waited for Serena to rise up and strike again like Glenn Close in the bathtub at the end of
Fatal Attraction
, but nothing happened, not even a twitch of Serena’s bloody hand. Blair turned and headed back downstairs again, feeling slightly
ripped off. At least Serena was dead now, but her new shoes were totally fucked.

Security was busy locking down the area. No one was allowed in or out while the murderers ran amok. Blair returned to her table and began to devour her crème brûlée. It was full of eggs, but she didn’t care—she’d throw it all up soon anyway.

“Hey Blair.” Nate came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders, causing Blair to drop her spoon with a clatter. He smiled and leaned over her. “That looks awesome. Can I have a bite?”

Blair’s hand fluttered nervously to her heart. Sexy Nate. Her Nate. God, she still wanted him—so, so much. But she wasn’t going to give up that easily. She had her pride. Regaining her composure, she reached for her Bloody Mary and downed the entire drink in one big swallow, including the poison dart frog Chuck had thrown in just for fun.

“You can have the rest,” she belched and pushed her chair back. “Excuse me.”

Outside the Met the ambulances were just arriving. There would be quite a commotion once they figured out that Serena van der Woodsen was dead.

Blair clacked away on her soiled mules to the ladies’ room where she could stick her finger down her throat
and
hide from security.

Some lady.