The Rules (11 page)

“I
know
what you
only.
” She got to her feet. She wished she could pick up a brick and hit him with it. “Go away!”

“But we have to—”

Then she bent down and picked up a brick. Larson stared at her openmouthed. “Oh my God, did you get arrested for assault?”

Her arm spasmed as if it had a will of its own; he held up his hands and backed away. “No problem. I’m gone. See you, Praveen.” He turned and muttered, “Psych ward.”

Once he was gone and she had calmed down, she resumed her search. Her prize was a shopping spree in San Francisco and she was all for that. She’d get some black leather pants and a corset for when she went to live with Drew. And black satin sheets for their bed.

Finally something white caught her eye and she trained the flashlight on the bottom set of bricks. The rough chalk outline of an eye was drawn on the brick closest to her left knee.

She heard a footstep behind her. Rising, she turned, expecting to see Larson. There was no one there. Not too surprising: with all the hard surfaces, sound bounced and ricocheted.

She swept her flashlight across the jumble of parked cars; fog drifted lazily along the ground, but nothing else.

She turned back to the bricks to collect her so-called object. A moment later she could swear she heard a muffled laugh much closer than the footstep.

She spun around fast, light slashing through the darkness.

Cold, empty space.

“Okay, August, very funny,” she said.

Silence answered her.

Praveen waited a few seconds, then shoved the top bricks off with her feet. They fell with dull clunking noises, and she had nearly worked her way to the bottom when something scratchy touched the back of her calf.

She bulleted into the air and landed, wrenching her knee and nearly falling.

“That’s not funny!” she shouted.

A laugh skated on the wind.

“S-s-s-teal it.” An amplified whisper in her ear.
“Thief.”

Fury rushed through her, blocking out most of the fear. People did
not
mess with her.

“You suck! You’re dead!” she shouted, kicking aside the last two bricks and then grabbing up hers.

Running footsteps echoed against the bricks, the shells, the cliffs.

“You better run or I’ll use this to bash your head in!” she yelled.

There was an envelope taped to the side of the brick, proving that it was indeed the one she was supposed to get. Now she was sure that August knew about her little habit of taking things. So what? It had nothing to do with him. Who died and made
him
her judge?

Hefting her spoils, she angrily marched back toward the main building. Maybe she would bash his head in with this brick.

That
would shut him up.

“It’s so hot in here,” Stacy muttered from the table where Drew had parked her.

No one else was there. August had disappeared. He was always running off. Hiro had charged into the room, taken something out of his bag, and disappeared again. He didn’t even ask her how she was feeling. They used to be so close.

She wiped the sweat off her face, caking her fingers with eyeliner and mascara, and guzzled down the rest of a water bottle. Then she caught sight of her travel tumbler on the chair beside her. Maybe she
was
kind of careless with her drinks. She really hadn’t been trying to kill Mick. But he was being such a butthole now that she kind of wished she had.

“Not nice,” she murmured.

But she was feeling not nice. Maybe they were planning to go to Los Angeles without her. With a sob, she lurched sideways, plucking up the tumbler and cradling it against her chest. She tottered outside on her heels, sucking in the cold air. Her lungs were aching. The moon gleamed on the topmost layer of fog, making it almost shine; she could smell and hear the ocean but not see it, and she staggered left and right. Maybe she’d go crawl into the van and go to sleep.

Did someone scream?

Her eyes were tearing up; she held a hand to her face and her fingers blurred and stretched. Her hand was like a foreign object, or someone else’s hand. She peered through the fingers and saw—

“Hello?” she whispered at a figure standing a few feet away. It was a fuzzy outline, human-shaped, but who it was she couldn’t tell. She turned her hand around and contracted her fingers in a sort of clawlike greeting.

It still didn’t move. It just stood there and then, as she stared at it, a hazy glow bounced around and she saw two black holes where its eyes should be.
It has no eyes.
It was a white-faced monster, and it took a step toward her.

“Don’t hurt me,” she blurted, and her ankles gave way. She crashed to the ground, palms slamming into crushed shells, the sting of it shooting up both arms and slapping her cheeks. She let out a terrified sob.

The figure approached. Huge black half-moons took up her field of vision. Somehow she understood that they were the toes of a pair of boots.

“No, no,” she bleated. “Stay away from me.”

A hand wrapped around her upper arm and pulled her to her feet. She dangled like a string puppet, struggling to find her footing. The figure’s face swam before her and she batted at it.

“Stacy. What the hell?” It was Hiro. He sounded angry. She pressed her face into his shirt as silent tears dampened the cloth.

“I think someone screamed,” she told him.

“They’re all playing their games,” Hiro said. His voice lowered. “Lots of games. She’s probably laughing right now.”

“She,” Stacy repeated. “She who?”

“Never mind.”

“You hate me. You want me to quit and go away. You’re afraid I’ll mess things up in L.A.” She waited for him to deny it. “You do!” she cried.

He kept his gaze fixed on her and she moved cautiously, feeling totally detested. She lost track of time, and then her boots echoed on wood, and she knew they were at the dock. She heard the ocean; the fog was thinner here, and she saw sharp stars above and sharper rocks below.

Leaning over the railing, she closed her eyes and tried to let herself throw up. But she’d never been able to do that; she hated vomiting. Hiro rested his hand on her back and the weight of it made her lean farther over.

He’s going to push me,
she thought in a flash of terror.
He’s going to kill me. He hates me that much.

“Hiro, stop! Stop!” she begged. She tried to turn around but she couldn’t do it. The world was whirling. The deck rocked back and forth.

And then there was pain.

ROBIN’S RULE #4:
Believe the best of people until they prove otherwise.

Beth may bluster and Thea may rave

But when you give in, girls, you…

Tonight someone will change your life.

The tension’s so thick you could cut it with a…

When you give in, you
cave.

Robin led the search for a cave on the property. There was a ginormous one in the cliff beneath the highway. Thea, Beth, and Robin trooped across the parking lot to search it, Thea whimpering dramatically as they passed Beth’s Beemer. Beth was getting very touchy and seemed to be taking every expression of less-than-loving the scavenger hunt as a personal insult. Robin was suffering from cognitive dissonance: she wasn’t particularly enjoying the hunt, but once it was over, there would be real partying. She and Kyle were definitely connecting, and she couldn’t wait to hang out. Maybe make out; for sure crow over the Penalty Babes’ victory.

But the large cave was completely trashed, and the coppery tang of blood permeated the darkness. Thea retreated, Beth loping behind her. Robin didn’t argue her case very hard that they should give it a more thorough search for their next object, which was obviously a knife. More with the theme of murder weapons. It didn’t smell good and she was afraid they would find a dead animal, which then got her to worrying about the presence of coyotes or even mountain lions, which were more aggressive. It simply wasn’t true that wildlife stayed away from people, at least not in wine country. Coyotes were actually welcome in Callabrese because rats loved to nibble on the wine grapes, and the coyotes took care of the rats. Mountain lion sightings were not unusual, either. If animals were lurking around the cannery, the smell of food might encourage them to be bold.

The other hunters were busy: hair-raising screeches were followed by raucous laughter echoing over brick and stone; the fog paced and shifted, alternately obliterating the cannery and then focusing the moonlight on new sets of details. Robin stared up at the bell tower and jerked; she was pretty sure someone was up there, and she squinted hard to see if she could tell who it was. One of August’s spies, she supposed. She gave the figure a wave. It didn’t wave back, and with the next roll of fog, there was no one there.

“I hate this,” Thea muttered.

“Grand prize,” Beth said. Robin tried not to react and Beth chuckled. “Test answers.” She grinned at Robin. “Or limo.”

“Test answers,” Thea said. “I’m only in it for that.”

“But the Rolling Stones are so cool,” Beth said. It was obvious to Robin that Beth was just messing with Thea. She wanted the test answers, too.

“I don’t think we should go in there,” Robin said, studying the mouth of the large cave.

“Maybe there’s another cave?” Beth suggested.

“Like a sea cave?” Robin asked.

“Yeah.”

It could be. Of course, if they were wrong and this really was the cave they were supposed to go into, they’d just be delaying the inevitable and wasting precious minutes. She took another step and the smell of blood hit her hard. She backed away. “Let’s check just to be sure. We can come back if we have to.”

They made it to the beach quickly, and as they walked toward the redwood pylons of the dock, half a dozen
things
burst from beneath the sand and stood fully upright. They moaned and gyrated as Thea shrieked, running smack into Beth and falling on her butt. Beth grabbed on to Robin and Robin’s flashlight panned across their clump of attackers. Their rotted faces glowed in the dark, their eyes shining with crimson light. They began to groan and claw at the fog with their arms.

“Help! Help!” Thea hollered, crabwalking away from them, and Robin and Beth doubled over with laughter.

“They’re zombie robots,” Beth said. “Halloween zombies.”

The zombies stopped moving. They were truly hideous, with hacked-up plastic fingers and eyeballs dangling from beneath matted gray hair. Their clothes were tattered, “bloody,” and covered with dirt and cobwebs. Bones protruded from shoulders and legs. One zombie was dressed like a bride. A shriveled bouquet was laced through skeletal fingers.

Robin darted forward and waved a hand in front of the bride zombie’s face. The zombie’s eyes lit up and her jaw clacked open. She swayed from side to side and moaned.

Robin took several steps back and the zombie stopped moving.

“Motion-controlled,” she confirmed. “I don’t see any cords. They must be battery-operated.”

“Oh my God!” Thea cried in disgust. “That’s it! I’m going!”

“Wait! Look!” Beth shouted. She darted forward, weaving in and out of the cluster of undead to the figure farthest away from Beth. Human-shaped, it was standing just inside a large hole in the cliff. Another cave. A faint light shone behind the figure, impossible to notice except at a precise angle.

A dummy was wearing a tattered khaki jacket and pants and a big-game hunter-style pith helmet. It was aiming what appeared to be a real rifle straight at them. Robin reflexively put her hands on Thea’s shoulders and moved her out of the line of fire.

“That’s not a real person,” Thea said uncertainly, and Beth laughed.

“Are you
kidding
? Does that look real?” She looked expectantly at Robin, and Robin trotted around the zombies, joining Beth in front of the thing. It didn’t move and somehow that made it creepier.

It wasn’t as real-looking as the other zombies. It appeared to be made out of some kind of rubber, its decaying features dotted with tiny mushrooms and velvety blotches. One eye was blank; a brown iris and ebony pupil were chipped and fading in the other. As Robin cocked her head at it, a spider crawled up the side of its face.

Robin spotted the black hilt of a knife positioned behind the upraised hands that were holding the rifle.

“When you give in, you
cave.
You can cut the tension with a
knife,
” Beth whooped, rising on tiptoe and patting the mannequin on the head. “Sorry about that, old chap.”

“Gasoline, rope, knife…okay, this is completely deviant,” Robin grumped.

“So where’s the clue?” Thea asked, hugging herself and staying well away. “Let’s just get the envelope and get out of here!”

“We have to take the knife to August,” Robin reminded her. “So we have to pull it out of his chest.”

“Yucko.” Beth made a face. “You do it, Rob.”

“It’s going to move or something,” Thea warned. “Or something else behind it will leap out at you.” She took two steps back.

Robin raised her brows questioningly at Beth, who moved her shoulders and gave her head a shake.

“Don’t touch it!” Thea said. “Something bad will happen!”

“The Penalty Babes are not big babies,” Beth said.

Kyle,
whispered Robin’s inner voice.
Coffee with Kyle. With a red velvet cupcake and a make-out session on the side. Kyle and his adorable dimples.

Then she clamped both her hands possessively around the knife. Taking a deep breath, she slowly drew out the blade.

There was a sucking noise as blood gushed down the statue’s chest. Robin steered clear of the spray, almost landing on her own butt. Thea let out a shriek and Beth swore.

The knife dripped bright red liquid onto the sand, barely missing the toe of Robin’s boot. Of course, it wasn’t blood, but she had no desire to find out what it actually was. Instead, she wiped the blade on the dummy’s filthy clothing. The sleek shank was maybe eight inches long and very shiny—in other words, new. August must have bought it and planted it just for tonight.

Then she peered at the mannequin’s chest. A clear plastic bag had been taped such that when she had pulled out the knife, the sharp edge had sliced open the bag, allowing the contents—the fake blood—to spill out.

“He should have at least put this thing in a sheath so we wouldn’t hurt ourselves when we found it. I could have cut myself,” Robin said, gingerly clutching the knife as if it might bite her.

“Or cut one of us,” Thea whined. “Are all the hunts this violent?”

Beth didn’t reply as she tugged at the dummy’s khaki shirt. Slashed nearly in two by the knife, an envelope was taped to the chest. She grunted with satisfaction and dislodged it, coating her fingertips with “blood” in the process. “I think this is colored corn syrup. That’s how they make fake blood in the movies. I read about it.”