Three Is A Crowd

Derek had three blocks left. Three blocks of sidewalk between the office and his apartment, and he’d walked this route enough times that his feet could handle it while his brain handled nothing at all. The evening air sat heavy against his collar, warm for late October, the kind of warmth that made the streetlights come on early and turn everything the color of old honey. His bag strap dug into his shoulder. He shifted it, and kept walking.

The second block had a bench and a broken parking meter he used as a landmark. He rounded the corner past the dry cleaner’s and saw her before he heard her, because Saraya had a way of standing in the middle of a sidewalk like she’d been poured there, hip cocked, arms folded under her chest, her whole posture saying I own this concrete and everything on it.

She wore a fitted top the color of red wine and jeans that did her no favors because they did her every favor, and her dark hair hung past her shoulders in a way that caught the streetlight. She saw him and her whole face changed.

“Derek.”

“You can’t be here.” He stopped walking. His hand tightened on the bag strap. “There’s a restraining order, Saraya.”

“That’s just a piece of paper, baby. A piece of paper with my name on it and your name on it and a judge’s signature.” She stepped forward. Her green eyes tracked his face. “You think paper stops me from caring about you?”

“I think that paper stops you from standing where I’m walking.”

She closed the distance anyway, and her body came against his the way it always had, chest first, hips second, her arms looping around his neck before he could step back. She smelled like cinnamon and something floral and underneath both of those, something that was hers. He remembered that smell. He’d woken up with it on his pillow for two months.

“I missed you,” she said into his neck. Her lips dragged against his skin. “Tell me you didn’t miss me. Lie to me. I want to hear it.”

He put his hands on her hips to push her back. She let him, but her fingers stayed hooked around his neck, keeping the distance short.

“I didn’t miss you,” he said.

“Liar.” She smiled. Her full lips pulled wide and her teeth showed. “You were thinking about me yesterday. Around six. You were making pasta and you dropped the wooden spoon and you stared at the floor for, like, a full minute. That’s not a man who’s not thinking about his girl.”

The cold ran through him. He’d been alone in his kitchen. The curtains were drawn. “How do you know that?”

“I know everything about you, baby.” She traced his jawline with one finger, her nail catching on the stubble. “That’s how I love. I told you that. I was upfront. You’re the one who couldn’t handle it.”

“Stalking isn’t love, Saraya.”

“It’s how I love. It didn’t bother you when you took me home on Valentine’s Day. It didn’t bother you when you were inside me and I said I’d never let you go.” Her eyes were wet. Her voice was steady. “I meant it then. I mean it now.”

He should have moved. His legs weren’t cooperating. She pressed closer again and her thigh slid between his, and his body remembered things his brain wanted to file in a drawer. His hands were still on her hips. He wasn’t pushing anymore.

“Come home with me,” she whispered. “One night. If you still want me gone after, I’ll go. I’ll walk away. You have my word.”

“Your word means nothing to me.”

“It used to.” Her arms pulled him closer. “It used to mean everything to you, Derek. You used to tell me I was the best thing in your life. You said that. On the couch. In your bedroom. When I was on top of you and you couldn’t even think straight.”

“Stop.”

“I’ll never stop. Not for you. Not for a judge. Not for anyone.”

“That’s the problem.”

She opened her mouth to answer, and another voice cut through the warm air like a thread pulled taut.

“Wow. This is so touching. I’m genuinely moved. Should I clap?”

Derek turned his head. A woman stood at the edge of the parking lot on the other side of the sidewalk, leaning against a light pole with her arms crossed. She was pale. Black hair, very long, pinned in a two-side-up style that left most of it falling past her shoulders. Black lipstick, black eyeshadow. Blue eyes that caught the light from above and held it. She wore a dark dress with a high collar and her lips curved into something pleasant and wrong.

“Who the hell are you?” Saraya finally released him.

The woman pushed off the pole and crossed the sidewalk toward them. Her hips moved the way a lie moves through a conversation, fluid and deliberate. She was tall, and her body under the dress was the kind of curved that made the fabric look like it was doing its best.

“I’m Hailey.” She smiled at Derek. At Saraya, she gave a shorter, tighter one. “I’ve been watching from across the street for about ten minutes. The whole show. Very entertaining. The part where you quoted him back to himself? Incredible. The pasta spoon detail? Chef’s kiss.”

Saraya’s face hardened. “You’ve been following him.”

“I’ve been keeping an eye on him. There’s a difference.” Hailey tilted her head. Her long eyelashes caught the light. “I’ve been keeping an eye on him for three weeks. How long have you been keeping an eye on him? Since before the restraining order, I’m guessing. Which would make you the one he dumped. Which would make this whole seduction routine you’re running right now a little desperate, wouldn’t you say?”

Derek stepped back from both of them. His spine met the parking meter. “Three weeks? You’ve been following me for three weeks?”

Hailey’s expression softened. She turned her whole body toward him, shoulders angling in, hands clasping in front of her. The shift was immediate, total, like a switch. “I know how that sounds. I know how it looks. But Derek, you held the door for me at the coffee shop on Birch and I thought, this os a kind person with kind eyes. So I found you on social media and I read everything you’d ever posted, every comment, every tag, every photo going back six years, and I just knew. I knew the way you know about weather.”

“That’s not romantic,” Derek said. “That’s not charming. You’re telling me you stalked me.”

“I’m telling you I found you.” Hailey reached out and touched his sleeve. Her fingers lingered. “There’s a difference.”

“No, there isn’t.”

“Oh, she gets a restraining order for stalking and you stand here letting her grind on you in the street, but I do the same thing with more subtlety and I’m the problem?” Hailey’s eyes went wide, injured. “That’s a double standard, Derek.”

Saraya stepped forward. She squared up to Hailey and the height difference was two inches, maybe three, but Saraya made up for it with the set of her shoulders. “He’s mine. Get your pale hands off him.”

“Yours?” Hailey looked at Derek’s sleeve, where her fingers rested. “You have a restraining order. He left you. That means you don’t own him anymore. That means you let him go.”

“He didn’t let me go. He ran.”

“Why would he run from someone as devoted as you?” Hailey’s smile went thin. “Oh, wait. The phone tapping. The following. The knowing his schedule better than he does. I can see how that might wear on a person.”

“You don’t know anything about us.”

“I know he made pasta last night.” Hailey’s blue eyes held Saraya’s green ones. “I know he sleeps on the left side of the bed and leaves the right side empty even though there’s no reason to. I know his shower runs for exactly twelve minutes. I know he calls his mother on Sundays. I know his passcode is still the one you helped him pick. His birthday and yours. He never changed it after you left.”

The street was quiet. Derek’s chest was hollow.

Saraya’s lips parted. She looked at Hailey and something shifted behind her expression, a recognition, the way a dog recognizes another dog.

“How long have you been in his apartment?” Saraya’s voice was low.

“I haven’t been in his apartment. I’ve been outside his apartment. There’s a fire escape. The bedroom window doesn’t latch properly. He should really fix that.” Hailey’s smile showed teeth. “I’m a romantic. I’m not a criminal.”

“You’re a stalker,” Derek said. He pulled his arm from Hailey’s touch. “Both of you. You’re both stalkers. I’m calling the police.”

“With what phone, Derek?” Hailey produced his phone from the pocket of her dress. “I knew because of your past with…her, you might want to act rash, so I’m keeeping it safe for you. Because I care.”

He stared at the phone in her hand. “You pickpocketed me.”

“For your own good. I wanted to save you from yourself.” Hailey held the phone out. “See? I’m helpful.”

Saraya grabbed the phone from Hailey’s hand. “You’re nothing bit a common thief!”

“You did the same thing. You actually stole it first. Months ago. And you went through it. Don’t act like you have moral high ground here.” Hailey’s composure cracked and the smile fell away. Her blue eyes went cold. “I hacked his phone earlier than that, don’t get me wrong. I read the text you sent him at three in the morning. The one about how you’d rather die than be without him. The one where you threatened to hurt yourself if he didn’t come back. I read it and I thought, this woman doesn’t love him. She loves the feeling of being owed.”

Saraya’s hand tightened on the phone. “Give me one reason I don’t break this.”

“Because it’s his, and you love him, and you’d never hurt anything of his.” Hailey’s voice dropped. “Including himself. That’s where we’re different. I’d hurt him if he tried to leave me. I’d hurt him so bad he couldn’t leave me. Because that’s what real devotion looks like.”

Derek pressed his back against the parking meter. The metal was warm from the evening. He looked at Saraya, who held his phone with white knuckles and wet eyes. He looked at Hailey, who stood with her hands clasped and her expression bright again, cheerful, like she hadn’t just described breaking his legs.

“This isn’t happening,” he said.

“It’s been happening for weeks, baby.” Saraya stepped toward him. “She’s been watching you. I’ve been watching you. We just didn’t know about each other.”

“I knew about her.” Hailey smoothed her dress. “I saw her outside your building twice last week. I took photos for my notes. She’s not subtle. She parked across the street in a silver Civic. Same spot every time. I sat next to her at the coffee shop on Tuesday and she didn’t even see me because she was too busy staring at your apartment window.”

Saraya turned. “You sat next to me?”

“Tuesday. Two o’clock. You had a black coffee, no sugar. I had chai.” Hailey smiled. “You were wearing that same top, actually. You should wash it.”

“You were watching me too?”

“I was watching him. Same as you. You were merely a side project.” Hailey’s eyes moved to Derek. “I learn things by watching. I learn what people need. That’s why I’m here, Derek. Because I know what you need. She doesn’t. She knows what she wants and she calls it love.”

“And what do I need?” Derek’s voice came out flat.

“Someone who won’t threaten to kill herself to keep you.” Hailey’s smile fell apart. “Someone who’ll threaten to kill you instead. That’s more honest. That’s real. I’m real.”

Saraya put the phone in her back pocket. She moved toward Hailey, and her walk was the walk of someone who’d been in fights, the walk of someone whose body knew what was coming next. “You think you can take him from me?”

“I think he was never yours to take. I think you had him and you broke him and now he’s on a sidewalk trying to walk home from work without having a panic attack.” Hailey’s composure held, but her hands were shaking. “I think you should go home in your silver Civic or just drive somewhere and think about what you did.”

“I’ll kill you.”

“See?” Hailey turned to Derek. “Threats. Uncivilized. I would never threaten her. I’d just do it.”

Saraya stopped walking. The two women stood three feet apart, and Derek was two feet behind them, and the streetlight above them buzzed. The warm October air sat between all three of them like a held breath.

“You don’t know what I’m capable of,” Saraya said.

“I read your Instagram. You like sunflowers. You have a tattoo on your left hip. You cried during that documentary about penguins.” Hailey’s blue eyes were unblinking. “I know exactly what you’re capable of.”

Derek looked past them both. The third block stretched ahead, empty and lit with amber light, and his apartment was at the end of it. His keys were in his pocket. His legs worked fine. There was no reason he couldn’t walk away.

His feet stayed planted. His chest was tight. He watched the two women face each other, and the thing that kept him from moving wasn’t fear of either of them. It was the quiet, crawling certainty that this wasn’t over. That neither of them would let him walk. That the third block was the longest distance he’d ever tried to cross.

Saraya put her hand in her pocket where the phone sat. Hailey smoothed a crease in her dress. Neither of them blinked.

And from a doorway ten feet to Derek’s left, someone laughed.

The laugh came from low in her throat, more breath than sound, and Princess let it roll out of her like smoke. She’d been leaning in that doorway for the better part of thirty minutes, one shoulder against the frame, her weight on her left hip, watching the whole little drama unfold with the patience of someone who’d done this enough times to know exactly when to make an entrance.

She pushed off the frame. Her sneakers made no sound on the concrete. Short black hair fell across her face as she tilted her head, and she let it stay there, let the green eye and the blue eye peek through the strands at different angles. She liked the way it looked. She liked a lot of things about herself.

“You two are cute,” she said.

All three of them turned. Derek first, because he was the one closest and the sound had been at his shoulder. Then Saraya, her whole body rotating with that aggressive efficiency that Princess had already catalogued. Then Hailey, slower, her black-lined eyes narrowing with a recognition that wasn’t quite recognition yet.

Princess let them look. She was wearing what she always wore on a hunt night: a dark pullover with the sleeves pushed past her elbows, fitted pants, nothing that would restrict movement or hold a weapon she didn’t want found. Her hands were in her pockets. Her smile was already in place, the one that pulled a little too wide, the one that showed teeth people usually kept covered.

“So,” she said, drawing the word out. She stepped closer to the three of them and the amber streetlight caught her face. One green eye, one blue. Both of them steady. “You two shouldn’t fight. It’s pointless. After all, he belongs to Princess.”

Saraya’s lips parted. She looked at Princess the way someone looks at a stain on a clean shirt, with offense and confusion in equal measure. “Excuse me?”

“The man.” Princess pointed at Derek with her chin. “That one. The tall one who looks like he hasn’t slept in three days. He’s Princess’s.”

Derek opened his mouth. Nothing came out.

Hailey shifted her weight, her pigtails swaying against her shoulders. The gothic composure she’d been wearing like armor didn’t crack, but Princess watched her fingers tighten on the strap of her bag. A small tell. A delicious one.

“I don’t know who you are,” Hailey said, her voice measured and musical, “but you’re confused. I’ve been watching Derek for weeks. I know his schedule. I know which coffee shop he stops at. I know——”

“Princess knows all of that.” Princess waved a hand. “Princess knows about the coffee shop. Princess knows about the little routes he walks. Princess knows he takes the long way home on Tuesdays because he likes the bakery smell on Fifth.” She scratched the side of her nose. “Princess knew all of that before you did, sweetheart. Before the ex showed up again.” She glanced at Saraya. “Before any of this.”

Saraya took a step forward. Her brown skin caught the light and her green eyes were hard and bright. “We dated. He’s mine. I don’t care how long you’ve been lurking in doorways like a creep——”

“Creep.” Princess rolled the word around. “That’s funny coming from the woman who was just pressing her tits against him in the street after having a restraining order filed against her.”

Saraya flushed.

Princess felt a warm tickle move through her chest. Fear was her thing, always had been. She got off on it, on the smell of it coming off someone’s skin, on the way their pupils dilated and their breathing changed. But there was something almost as good about watching people realize they weren’t the only predator in the water. That surprise. That little jolt of oh. She breathed it in and her smile widened.

“Let Princess explain something to both of you.” Princess pulled her hands from her pockets and held them up, palms out, like she was surrendering. She wasn’t. “Princess saw Derek. Princess picked him. Princess picked him before the coffee shop, before the ex returned. Before any of this.” She gestured at the empty street, the amber light, the two women standing there with their territorial hackles up. “He’s Princess’s. Princess has been patient. Princess has been watching. Princess has been waiting for the right moment to introduce herself.”

“And this is the moment?” Derek finally spoke. His voice was flat. “Three women on the street at ten PM?”

Princess looked at him. Really looked. His jaw was tight, his shoulders held stiff, and there was something behind his eyes that she found deeply attractive. Not fear. Something worse. Resignation. Like he’d already figured out he wasn’t getting out of this and was just waiting to see what shape the trap took.

She liked that a lot.

“This is the moment,” she confirmed. She turned back to the other two. “Now. Here’s the thing. Princess is going to ask you both a question, and Princess wants you to answer honestly, because Princess will know if you’re lying.”

“Who the fuck do you think you are, Ms. Talks-in-third-person-like-a-fucking-psycho?” Saraya said.

Princess ignored her. She pulled her sleeves down over her hands, a habit, a comfort. The fabric bunched at her wrists. She rocked on her heels, forward, back, a small rhythmic motion that she knew made her look unhinged. She didn’t mind.

“How many people have you killed?”

The street went quiet. Somewhere a car alarm chirped twice and stopped. The amber light buzzed above them, a faint electrical hum that Princess had stopped noticing minutes ago and now noticed again because the silence made everything louder.

Saraya’s mouth opened and closed. Hailey’s expression didn’t change, but her body did. She settled her weight, lowering her center of gravity. Princess saw it and appreciated it. That was a fighter’s adjustment, or at least someone who’d been in bad situations before.

Princess held up her own hand, fingers spread. “Princess will go first. Twenty-three.” She folded her thumb down. “Twenty-two men.” She folded her pinky. “And one woman who lied about being a man, but that’s a technicality Princess is still working through.” She spread her hand again and wiggled her fingers. “Your turn.”

Saraya stared at her. The flush was gone. Her brown skin had gone ashen under the streetlight and her lips were pressed into a thin line. “You’re insane.”

“Probably.” Princess nodded. “But Princess asked a question. How many people have you killed? And before you answer——” She raised one finger. “Princess is very good at knowing when someone is lying. It’s like a party trick, except the party is a basement and the trick involves a lot of plastic sheeting. So.” She tilted her head. The hair slid across her face. “How many?”

“Zero.” Saraya’s voice was clipped. “I’ve never killed anyone.”

Princess looked at her. She took her time. She let her mismatched eyes move from Saraya’s face to her hands to her posture to the way she held her shoulders and the set of her jaw. She read the tension there. She read the way Saraya’s left hand had gone back to the pocket with the phone. She read the small scar above Saraya’s right knuckle that came from something narrow and sharp.

“Liar,” Princess said, and the word came out warm.

Saraya’s nostrils flared. “You don’t know anything about——”

“Princess knows you cried when he broke up with you and the crying stopped faster than it should have. Princess knows you went home and you didn’t call anyone. Princess knows you sat with something sharp in your hand and you thought about him, and the thoughts you had weren’t about getting him back.” Princess tilted her head the other way. “They were about making sure no one else got him either. Princess doesn’t think it’s the first time this has happened.”

Saraya said nothing. Her green eyes were wet and her full lips trembled.

Princess let out a breath that was almost a sigh. She’d hit the nerve she was aiming for. She always did.

She turned to Hailey. “And you? How many?”

Hailey stood very still. Her black eyeliner made her blue eyes enormous in the amber light, and the shadow on her lids gave her face a hollow, bruised quality. She looked at Princess for a long time. Then she looked at her own hands.

“I don’t know,” she said.

Princess blinked. That answer she hadn’t expected.

“There are gaps,” Hailey continued. Her voice had lost its music. What remained was flat and careful, each word placed like a foot on uncertain ground. “In my memory. Whole stretches of time I can’t account for. I’ve woken up in places I don’t recognize. I’ve found things in my apartment that aren’t mine. Clothes. Shoes. A watch once. IDs.” She paused. “I’ve changed. People tell me I’ve been places I don’t remember going. Said things I don’t remember saying.”

She looked up. Her blue eyes were clear and steady and something in them matched something in Princess’s own face. A resemblance. A recognition. Princess felt a sharp pull in her chest that she identified as interest.

“My history keeps rewriting itself,” Hailey said. “I don’t know how many. I genuinely don’t.”

Princess studied her. She searched for the lie the way she’d searched Saraya for it, reading the body, the breathing, the micro-expressions. She found fear. She found confusion. She found a deep and genuine uncertainty that couldn’t be faked.

“Okay,” Princess said.

Saraya made a sound. “Okay? She just said she might have killed people and you said okay?”

“She told the truth.” Princess shrugged. “Princess can work with truth. It’s the lies that annoy her.” She looked at Saraya with her full face, both eyes visible through the curtain of hair. “You should try it sometime.”

Saraya’s hand came out of her pocket. The phone was in it. Princess noted the movement and filed it away.

“So here’s where we are.” Princess took a step back and spread her arms. She looked small and pale and unhinged under the amber light, a dark-haired girl with a smile that split her face wrong and two eyes that didn’t match. “Derek is Princess’s. Princess picked him. Princess has been patient. Princess has let you two have your fun, have your little territorial pissing match, have your moment. But Princess is tired of waiting, and you’re both standing between Princess and what she wants.”

She dropped her arms. The smile stayed.

“Leave. Walk away. Go home. Forget about him. Find someone else to obsess over.” She put her hands back in her pockets. “Or stay, and find out what twenty-three kills’ worth of practice looks like up close.”

Derek made a noise. A small sound from the back of his throat. Princess didn’t look at him. She was watching the other two.

Saraya planted her feet. Her wide hips and thick thighs gave her a low center of gravity, and she set her shoulders the way someone does when they’ve decided not to be moved. “No.”

Hailey smoothed a crease in her dress. The motion was precise, almost ritualistic. Her blue eyes moved from Princess to Derek and back. She chewed her black-painted lips once, a quick nervous motion that vanished as fast as it appeared. Then she shook her head, slow and deliberate, her long ponytails swaying with the movement.

“No,” Hailey said. “I don’t think I will.”

Princess looked from one to the other. Saraya, rigid with fury, her knuckles white around the phone. Hailey, still as a photograph, her composure rebuilt and held in place by something stronger than confidence. Derek between them, his face blank and tight, his hands hanging useless at his sides.

Neither woman moved. Neither woman left.

Princess felt the warmth in her chest spread. It crawled up through her ribs and into her throat and settled behind her smile. This was the part she loved. This was the moment when everything became simple, when the mess of want and obsession and territorial noise burned away and left only the clean geometry of a problem with one solution.

“Good,” she said. Her mismatched eyes were bright and her smile was too wide and her hands were in her pockets where the blade waited. “Princess was hoping you’d say that.”

The amber light buzzed. The street was empty. Three women stood in a loose triangle around a man who couldn’t move, and none of them were going to walk away.

Princess rocked on her heels. The blade’s handle was warm against her fingers. She breathed in through her nose and the night smelled like car exhaust and someone’s laundry detergent and the sharp copper edge of what was about to happen.

She smiled. She always smiled. This was her favorite part.

Saraya moved first.

Derek saw it in the way her weight shifted off her back foot, the way her fingers uncurled from her sides. She lunged at Princess with both hands reaching for hair, for throat, for anything she could close her fist around, and the sound that came out of her was not a battle cry or a scream. It was his name. She screamed Derek like it was the last word left in her mouth and she needed to spend it before something took it from her.

Princess stepped to the left. Saraya’s fingers caught the ends of her black hair and pulled, and Princess let them. She let Saraya grab a fistful and yank her head sideways, and then Princess drove her elbow into the hinge of Saraya’s jaw.

The crack was quiet. Wet. Saraya’s legs buckled and her grip went slack and Princess shook her hair free like a dog shaking off water.

“Saraya—” Derek started, and then Hailey was there.

Hailey came from the right, low and fast, and she didn’t go for Princess. She went for Derek. Her arms wrapped around his waist and she pressed her face into his chest and her shoulders were shaking and she smelled like cheap vanilla perfume and cigarette smoke. Her fingers dug into the back of his jacket.

“He’s mine,” Hailey said into his shirt. Her voice was muffled and thin. “He’s mine, he’s mine, He held out the door for me, I’ve been watching him for weeks, you don’t get to——”

Princess backhanded her across the face.

Hailey’s head snapped sideways. She lost her grip on Derek and stumbled three steps, caught herself on a parked car’s side mirror. The mirror bent under her palm. She shook her head once, hard, like clearing water from her ears, and when she straightened up her blue eyes were glassy and her black lipstick was smeared across her cheek where Princess’s knuckles had caught her.

“You don’t touch him,” Princess said. She stood between Derek and both of them now, her hands loose at her sides, the blade still in her pocket. She hadn’t drawn it yet. Her shoulders rose and fell with even breaths. “You don’t touch what belongs to Princess.”

“He’s not yours.” Saraya was upright again, swaying, blood on her lower lip where she’d bitten through it. Her green eyes were wet and her fists were clenched and her whole body vibrated with something that lived in the space between grief and fury. She pointed at Derek without looking at him. “He’s mine. I had him first. I had him on Valentine’s Day. I had him every night for three months. You think you can just——”

Princess hit her again. Open palm this time, flat across the mouth, and Saraya’s head whipped to the side and she staggered and caught herself on the same car Hailey was leaning on. The two women stood shoulder to shoulder against the sedan, both of them bleeding, both of them looking at Princess with expressions that belonged to different species of ruin.

Derek’s back was against the wall of the building behind him. The brick was cold through his jacket. His hands were at his sides and his fingers wouldn’t close. He could feel his own heartbeat in his wrists, his throat, the backs of his knees. He should run. He should turn and run and not stop until he was behind a locked door with his phone pressed against his ear and a dispatcher on the other end. Not that he even had his phone anymore…

But he couldn’t run. His legs wouldn’t listen. His legs had stopped listening somewhere around the time Princess had said twenty-three with that smile on her face, and the rest of him had followed.

Hailey moved again. She was flexible, Derek could see that in how she moved. He watched her drop into a crouch that her body had no business making, her knees on the asphalt and her spine curved, and she swept her leg at Princess’s ankles. Princess jumped. Hailey’s shin passed underneath her and Hailey used the momentum to spin on the ground, one hand on the pavement, and she kicked again from the other side. Princess caught her ankle. Held it. Stared down at Hailey with those mismatched eyes catching the amber streetlight and giving nothing back.

“You’re flexible,” Princess said. “Nice.”

She twisted Hailey’s ankle.

Hailey screamed. The sound bounced off the buildings and came back thin and wrong. Princess let go of the ankle and brought her heel down on Hailey’s stomach while Hailey was still on the ground, and Hailey folded around the impact with a sound like all the air leaving a room at once. She curled onto her side, one hand on her belly and the other gripping her ankle, and her mouth was open but nothing came out.

“Saraya, go,” Derek said. His voice came out hoarse. “Get out of here. Call someone.”

Saraya laughed. It was a broken sound, a laugh that had been crying too recently and couldn’t shake the wet edge. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and left a red smear across her knuckles.

“You want me to leave?” She looked at him, then, for the first time since the fighting started. Her green eyes were red and her full lips were split and her brown skin had a scrape along the jawline where she’d hit the car. She was still beautiful. She was still the woman he’d met on Valentine’s Day, the one with the wide hips and the thick thighs who’d caught him staring and liked it. “You want me to leave? After everything? I——”

Princess hit her in the throat.

Not hard enough to crush. Hard enough to close the airway, to send Saraya to her knees on the asphalt with both hands clutching her neck and her mouth gaping. Princess stood over her and watched with her hands back in her pockets and her head tilted to one side, studying Saraya the way someone studies a faucet that won’t stop dripping.

“Too emotional,” Princess said. She said it the way someone says too salty about a meal. A critique, not a condemnation. “That’s your problem. You let it get in the way.”

Saraya tried to speak. Nothing came out but a rasp and a string of saliva. She looked up at Derek from the ground, her eyes huge and shining, and her mouth shaped his name even though no sound carried.

Hailey was getting up. Derek saw it from the corner of his eye, the slow unfurling of her body from the fetal position on the pavement. She rose in stages, one hand flat on the asphalt, then both knees, then halfway up, and then she straightened all at once and her face was different. The glassiness was gone. The smeared lipstick made her look older, harder, and the black eyeshadow running down her temples gave her a look that belonged in an emergency room or a confession booth. She was limping on the ankle Princess had twisted, but she was standing.

Princess turned. The turn was unhurried, almost gentle, and she pulled her hands from her pockets as she completed the rotation. Her right hand held the blade. It was small, shorter than Derek’s index finger, and the metal was dark. Not stainless. Something else. Something that didn’t catch the light.

Hailey saw the blade and didn’t stop. She lunged.

Her hands found Princess’s wrist and her fingers locked around the bones and she twisted, using the leverage of her entire body, and for a moment Derek thought she might actually disarm her. Princess’s grip shifted but held. Hailey’s flexibility turned against the hold, her body bending at angles that made Derek’s own joints ache in sympathy. She contorted out of the arm lock Princess attempted and drove her forehead into Princess’s nose.

Princess recoiled. Blood appeared in a line from her left nostril, running over her lip, and she touched it with her free hand and looked at the red on her fingertips. Her expression didn’t change. Then she smiled around the blood, her teeth pink, and she stepped into Hailey’s space before Hailey could reset.

The blade went into Hailey’s side. Deep. A slice along the lowest rib, lateral, opening a line of red through the fabric of her shirt. Hailey gasped and grabbed at the wound and her fingers came away wet. She looked at the blood. She looked at Princess.

“You stabbed me,” Hailey said. Her voice was quiet. The blue eyes were wide and wet and her black lipsticked mouth was trembling, and for one second she looked like a child who’d been hit by someone she trusted.

Princess tilted her head. “Yes.”

Hailey swung at her. The punch was wild, off-balance, driven by the injured ankle and the blood soaking into her waistband. Princess caught the fist in her palm. Squeezed. Hailey’s face crumpled. Princess pulled her forward by the captured fist and brought her knee up into Hailey’s stomach, and Hailey folded over the knee and stayed there, held upright by Princess’s grip on her hand, and a sound came out of her that Derek had never heard a human being make. A low, animal keen that didn’t have words in it.

Princess let go. Hailey dropped to the pavement.

Derek was shaking. His whole body was shaking, his hands and his jaw and the muscles of his thighs, and he couldn’t make it stop. He watched Princess step over Hailey’s body and walk toward Saraya, who was still on her knees, still clutching her throat, still trying to breathe. Princess stopped in front of her and crouched down to eye level.

“Hi,” Princess said. Her voice was gentle. Her smile was enormous and her mismatched eyes were bright and blood ran from her nose to her chin. “You should have left when I told you.”

Saraya looked up at her. Her green eyes were swollen and her lip was split and her throat was bruising in dark patches along the sides. She looked at Derek. Her mouth shaped something again, maybe his name, maybe please, and her hand reached out toward him across the five feet of asphalt between them.

Princess took Saraya’s reaching hand and bent the fingers back. Too far. The crack was nauseating. Saraya made a sound and her hand dropped.

Princess stood. She looked down at Saraya with that wide smile still fixed in place, and then she brought her foot down on the back of Saraya’s head. Saraya’s forehead hit the pavement with a sound that Derek felt in his fillings. She went flat and stayed there.

The street was quiet. The amber light buzzed above them and a car passed three blocks away, its headlights sweeping across the intersection and disappearing, and somewhere a dog was barking at nothing. Hailey was curled on the ground with one hand pressed to her side and the other reaching toward Derek, fingers open. Saraya was face-down on the asphalt with blood pooling under her forehead, her thick black hair fanned out around her head. Hailey barely moved. Saraya didn’t move at all.

Princess turned to face him. She wiped the blood from her nose with the back of her wrist. The blade was back in her pocket. She stood in the amber light with her short black hair pushed across her eyes and her too-wide smile and her small pale face, and the blood on her chin made the smile look carved there.

“Hey,” she said.

Derek stared at her. His back was pressed against the brick wall and his hands were flat against it behind him, fingers spread, and he could feel the rough surface catching the skin of his palms. His heart was too fast. His breathing was too fast.

“You’re shaking,” Princess said. She stepped closer. One step. Two. “That’s okay. They always shake at first.”

“They’re——” His voice cracked. He swallowed. “Are they——”

“Probably.” She stopped in front of him. Close enough that he could smell the copper on her breath and something floral underneath, shampoo maybe, something incongruously clean. She tilted her head and her hair fell across her left eye, the green one, so he could only see the blue. It was pale and bright and empty of anything he recognized. “If they aren’t dead, they will be.” She paused. “Princess warned them.” Another pause. The smile widened. “You heard. Princess gave them the chance to leave.”

Derek’s jaw clenched. He could feel his teeth grinding against each other. Behind Princess, Hailey’s fingers were still reaching toward him, curling and uncurling against the asphalt, and Saraya still hadn’t moved, the blood under her head was getting wider.

Princess reached out and took his wrist.

Her fingers were cold. Her grip was firm, not crushing, the grip of someone who had done this before and knew exactly how much pressure kept someone in place without breaking the skin. She held his wrist the way you hold a leash. The way you hold something that belongs to you.

“You’re Princess’s favorite,” she said. Her smile was the yandere smile, the one that went too wide and showed too many teeth and sat on her face like something she’d put on in front of a mirror. Her blue eye was steady on his and her pale skin was flushed and the blood was drying on her chin in a dark line. “Do you know how Princess knows?”

He didn’t answer. His wrist was in her hand and his legs wouldn’t move.

“Because Princess chose you,” she said. “Princess saw you before the coffee shop. Before she tried to come back and take what was Princess’s.” She didn’t look at Saraya. She didn’t look at Hailey. Her eye stayed on Derek. “Princess watched you. Princess learned you. Princess knows what you drink. Princess knows which earbud you put in first. Princess knows you walk home the long way because you don’t like the underpass.”

She squeezed his wrist. “And Princess knows you’re not going to run, because you’ve been standing there this whole time and you haven’t moved.”

Derek looked at her. He looked at Hailey on the ground, reaching for him with blood between her fingers. He looked at Saraya on the pavement, her face turned to the side now, one green eye half-open and watching him through the curtain of her hair.

Something in his face changed. It wasn’t relief. It wasn’t gratitude. It was the understanding that settled in like weather, slow and total, pressing down on everything. The worst option had won. The most dangerous person on the street had won, and she was standing in front of him with his wrist in her hand and blood on her teeth, and she was the one who would walk away with him. Not because she’d earned it. Not because she deserved it. Because she was the one left standing.

“Good,” Princess said. She read it in his face, whatever it was. She read it and she smiled wider. “Let’s go home.”

She pulled him off the wall. His legs moved. He didn’t want them to move and they moved anyway, and she led him past Hailey’s reaching fingers and past Saraya’s open eye and into the amber-lit stretch of sidewalk that led toward his apartment. She walked with his wrist in her hand and her stride was easy and unhurried, and the blood on her chin dried and flaked in the night air, and behind them two women lay on the pavement and the streetlight buzzed and nobody came.