No Good Witches | ONC √

Coerced Confession

The Fletchers lived in Downtown Rayview, in the more obstinate penthouses on the ocean front. The elevator trip up to the front door was the longest one I'd been on in my entire life.

Mallory fussed with her thick brown hair in the mirror of the elevator, debating whether she should toss the bulk of it to the left or the right. She sighed and abandoned the task all together, unbuttoning one of the buttons on her crisp white uniform shirt, just revealing the hem of her lacy black bra (at which point I decided that I probably needed to avert my gaze) and pushing the sleeves up to her elbows.

It was a truly fascinating ritual, one that I hadn't ever seen displayed before me in real life. Mostly because my only friend was Sofiane, and his idea of getting ready was spraying himself with copious amounts of deodorant and asking if he still smelled.

Oh, Sofiane. That big, dumb idiot. If we failed, and Miss Kelly...stayed true to the deal...I don't know what I would do with myself.

"Hey."

I was startled slightly by the sound of her voice, but her tentative smile soothed me, if only slightly. Rebecca.

I turned to face her, leaning the majority of my weight onto the elevator wall. "Hey."

She bit the inside of her cheek as she looked at me, her green eyes carefully studying my face. She bumped her knee into mine. "He's going to be okay, Cassandra."

I smiled down at my knee, at the patch of skin her own had christened. I was feeling bashful all of a sudden. Tired. I simply did not have the energy for the usual Cass Bullshit. "How do you know that though?"

She tilted her head and raised her eyebrows. "The power of positive thinking?"

I snorted.

"Seriously. I'm here. I know you like doing things alone. And after what happened earlier today, I'm probably not...not your favorite person right now but," She reached out and placed a warm, soft hand on my wrist. "I'm here for you if you want me to be."

I opened my mouth, about to tell her that she could not imagine the extent to which I wanted her to be here when the elevator dinged and the purple holographic above the door changed from the usual run of numbers to a Times New Roman P.

"It looks like we've arrived, ladies." Mallory observed. She turned to us. "Are you ready?"

"Uh—"

"Yup!" Rebecca straightened, and her hand fell away from my wrist so quickly I was hardly sure it had ever been there in the first place. "Or, at least I'm trying to manifest readiness."

"Yeah. I'm sure you are. Cass?"

"Well, I mean..." I looked from Rebecca's deflated posture to Mallory's raised eyebrows and suddenly felt pressure once more to be Big Scary Cass with Scared Cass energy. Still, I rolled my eyes and pushed myself from the wall. "Are you ready, Mallory? Sure you don't need to touch up your lipstick before we go in?"

"Oh!" She exclaimed as the doors hissed open. She walked into the party with her head down, digging through her purse. "Thank's for reminding me."

I frowned at her, but my silent judgment was soon cut off when I saw the pandemonium that was Max Fletcher's Post Game Mixer.

The expansive, ridiculously expensive space before me was not the image that came to mind when I thought of apartments, and not the Las Vegasian display before me when I thought of high school house parties.

There was a proper DJ set up on the far wall in front of one of many floor to ceiling windows, the music reverberating through the polished, hardwood floors. Floating orbs bathed the teenaged (although, they didn't all look like teens to me) bodies below in shifting hues of purple and green and blue. And there were people everywhere. By the elevator, on the "dance floor," on the staircase, and some even on the ceiling and walls.