Chasm finds me right after class, grabbing my arm in the hallway and pulling me into the handicapped bathroom. He locks the door and turns the sink on before coming back over to stand in front of me.

The entire school is up in arms about the car situation, but the administration is doing their best to keep everyone quiet and calm. The police have been called in, but I’m not worried. Vandalism doesn’t often warrant crack teams of investigators. Besides, everyone who attends school here is loaded beyond all reason. Paying to repair the cars—or simply buying new ones—is not a hardship for any family whose child attends Whitehall Prep.

It’s an annoyance at worst. This exercise wasn’t to punish them: it was to test me.

To see how far and how easily I could be pushed, how quickly I might let anger get the best of me. Even though I succeeded in doing what I needed to for Parrish, I feel like in the grand scheme of things, I failed myself worst of all.

“What the hell happened this morning?” Chas asks me, his voice tight and strained. He sounds disappointed, but not in me. In himself, more like.

I cross my arms, dropping my chin to my chest and inhaling slowly. I could feel every person in my last class staring at me, studying me, searching for weaknesses. How did I not see this side of Whitehall sooner?

Oh, that’s right. I had Lumen to protect me. Parrish. Chasm.

“I got jumped,” I whisper, and he lets out a snarl. I hear the sound of breaking glass and look up just in time to see Chasm’s fist in the mirror. He pulls his hand back, shaking it and snarling in Korean as he picks out a few shards and chucks the bloody pieces in the sink.

“Oh my god, Chas,” I start, grabbing a wad of paper towels from the dispenser and dabbing at the wound. It isn’t as bad as it could be, but he’s bleeding quite a bit. “Why the hell did you do that?!”

“I should’ve stayed with you,” he growls out, his voice this dark, dripping thing, full of rage. Chasm … it occurs to me that Chasm is the exact opposite of Parrish in so many ways. On the outside, Parrish is a complete and total asshole. On the inside, he cares so much that it breaks him down, it cripples him. Chasm tries to affect a pleasant presentation, to smile and laugh and flirt, but on the inside, he burns.

“You can’t be with me every minute,” I say with a sigh, putting his hand under the running water as he winces and tries to pull away. I tighten my grip, squirting a generous amount of soap into my palm and gently washing his hand. He stays where he is, letting me lather the soap around his knuckles, prodding my fingers against the myriad little wounds to make sure there aren’t any remaining shards of glass. “And I already told you: I don’t want you making yourself a target with me. Stay on the boys. They didn’t seem willing to get involved; it was only the girls.”

“Lumen,” Chasm says, which I already knew. “I don’t care if she is a girl, I’m going to kick her ass.”

“You’re not going to touch her,” I tell him, rinsing the soap off of his hand and then letting the warm water run over the cuts for a minute. I look up, forcing him to meet my eyes. “Chasm, promise me. You beating her up won’t help me or Parrish, not at all.”

I release his hand and some of the strange tension leaves the room. I pass him another wad of paper towels and watch as he dries himself off. As he does, I pull my phone from my pocket, finding a text from Maxx.

Made it out safe. Let me know if you need anything.

I let out a sigh of relief and lean my back against the wall, wishing for nothing more than Parrish’s warm arms around me, and a cozy bed we could both drift off in together.

“The headmistress grabbed me as soon as I walked in the door this morning,” he explains, which isn’t at all the promise that I was looking for. He shakes his hand out with a curse, tears his tie off, and wraps it around his bloodied knuckles. “I’m sorry that I wasn’t there.”

“What did the headmistress want?” I ask with a frown, watching as he stains the expensive silk tie with his own blood.

“She wanted to know what I thought about carrying on with plans for prom.”

“Prom?” I ask, realizing absently that they haven’t had one here since I came to Whitehall. Back home, junior prom usually happened late February while senior prom happened during March. Then again, they do things entirely different here at Whitehall. “What did you say?”

“I told her that I don’t give a shit about prom either way. Have it or don’t. It won’t bring Parrish back.” I cringe a little at the bitterness in his voice, but fully understand the source of it. I’m feeling a bit broken myself.

The eternal optimist is starting to buckle under the weight of the world.

“Why did she ask you about the prom?” I wonder aloud as Chas turns toward the urinal on the wall.

“I really have to pee, but I don’t want to leave you alone in the hall …” he starts, and I flush ten colors of crimson, turning around to look at the wall. I’m sure my boobs are flushed, too, but what can you do? The thought of Chasm taking his dick out with me in the room is … it’s weird.

I reach over and turn the sink on to give him some privacy, waiting for him to finish.

He rejoins me at the sink, washing his left hand while his right remains wrapped in the tie and stuffed in his pocket.

“Did you just pee one-handed?” I ask, and he laughs at me. The sound is pleasant, echoing off the walls of the bathroom. For the briefest of instances, I almost forget why we’re in here, hiding from the world at large.

“Like a boss,” Chas confirms, turning back around to rest his ass against the sink’s edge. “You do know that I’m the student body president, right?” he asks, glancing over at me. I raise both my brows at him, and he laughs at me again. “Does not compute, am I right?”

“It’s just … where do you find the time?” I wonder, and he shrugs his shoulders at me.

“I don’t sleep much. When I sit down to focus on something, I don’t let myself get distracted. What does it matter? Anyway, I’m sorry I wasn’t there. What did they do to you? Who was in on it?” He sounds almost disturbingly interested in the information.

“They tried to throw me over the edge of the third-floor courtyard wall,” I whisper, and Chasm goes completely still. “There was a redhead leading the pack. Veronica something? Chas, they said a bunch of stuff to me about my dad. That, and … I honestly couldn’t tell if they were trying to … kill me. I mean, that’s insane, right? It’s insane.”

Chasm says nothing, staring at the opposite wall of the bathroom as the bell rings to signal the end of break. Frankly, the idea of making it through the rest of the day makes me feel unstable on my feet. How many days of school do we have left? Eleven?

It feels like an eternity.

“What did they say to you?” he asks, looking over at me, seemingly unconcerned with getting to class on time. It bothers me that he doesn’t deny the idea that his classmates might’ve actually been trying to, you know, murder me.

“A bunch of stuff about Justin. They called him an embezzler, a thief, they …” I trail off because the words that Veronica threw my way hurt. They shouldn’t. I mean, she was clearly trying to get a rise out of me. But for whatever reason, I’m bothered by them. “She claimed he stole a bunch of money and research and was driven out of town. I never found anything when I looked him up online.”

“There won’t be anything online about it,” Chas offers up, turning to me with a sympathetic look in his eyes. “Any news of Justin Prior was scrubbed a long time ago.”

“You know about Justin?” I ask, feeling suspicion rise hot and unwelcome in my chest. “You didn’t act like you knew anything about him when I first mentioned his name.”

Chasm shakes his head at me.

“I didn’t. I mean, I’d heard stories of your dad, but I didn’t know his name. Nor did I think it had any bearing at all on this.” He gestures randomly, seeming to indicate the situation with Parrish. “Look, we … we’ll talk later.” Chasm puts his hands on my shoulders, squeezing hard enough that we both wince from our injuries. “I’m going to walk you to and from every class from now on. Do not go anywhere without me. Not even to the bathroom.”

“I already told you—” I start, and he gives me such a sharp, punishing look that I stop talking.

“I don’t give a fuck about my reputation,” he says, and then he grabs my arm and yanks me into the hallway. Most of the students have disappeared into their classrooms already, but the few that are lingering cast strange looks our way.

Chasm takes me to my technical writing class, dropping me off at the doorway. The way he pauses there, his hands on either side of the doorjamb as his amber gaze tears across the classroom, worries me. He looks like he’s declaring war with a single look.

As promised, Chasm finds me after and guides me to computer science and then, later, keeps me by his side during lunch. Everyone is staring, but nobody dares bother us.

“They’re afraid of you,” I realize after a while, watching the crowd. I glance Chasm’s way, but he doesn’t bother to acknowledge my statement. Neither of us in the mood to eat, but we’re in the cafeteria anyway, sitting at a table in the corner by ourselves.

“Maybe,” he offers up, sighing and putting his elbows on the table. Chasm lets his head hang down for a minute before looking up at me. “Or if they aren’t, they should be.”

“Tell me what you know about my father,” I start, sitting up straight and wondering why I have to get this information out of a friend instead of my own bio mom. I mean, she told me about the typewriter, but nothing about … a startup or embezzlement or anything like that. “What’s the story there?”

Chasm’s gaze sweeps past me, searching the crowd for, I think, either Lumen or that Veronica girl.

“My father and your father were close friends,” he offers up finally, looking back at me. “Your dad gave my dad the money he needed to start his company.”

“Fort Humboldt Security,” I offer up, and Chasm’s brows go up.

“Uh, that’s part of it. How do you know about that?”

“Because Fort Humboldt Security installed both the security system as well as the cameras at the Vanguard house,” I offer up, palms flat on the table. I hate that I’m even making the accusation, but there it is.

“Yeah,” Chas offers up, looking down at the surface of the table. “I already thought about that actually.” He lifts his gaze again. “It wouldn’t be impossible, I guess, for my father’s company to have fucked around with it.” He sits up straight again, his mouth in a grim line. “I didn’t want to mention this, but maybe we should check the lake house? My dad has a ‘friend’ staying there, and he doesn’t want me over there. Doesn’t that seem like a weird coincidence?”

“It really does,” I reply, thinking of everything else we know. “It just feels sort of obvious . I’m wary of anything that seems too obvious. I did … well, that day I saw you with that drunk girl …”

Chasm gives me a sharp look, but he doesn’t stop me from talking.

“I felt like I recognized the woods near your house, like maybe that’s where I was when I woke up that night and started walking. Is there a skatepark nearby?”

“I guess there could be? I don’t know.” Chasm pulls out his phone and sets it on the table, opening up a map and then typing in the address of the house. He zooms out and looks around the edges of the property, his body going still as he spots a nearby park. Emerald City Skate is what it’s called. “Jesus.”

We exchange a look across the surface of the table.

“We have two field trips we need to take then,” I continue, cradling my left hand with the broken fingers in my lap. “Mr. Volli’s house, and the lake house.”

“We could maybe swing one on the way home today and one tomorrow, without Tess realizing it. That is, if you can get Maxx to grab Kimber for me.” He glances her way, toward the table where she’s sitting with her friends. She looks our way, but her expression doesn’t give anything away.

Does she know that I was jumped this morning or why? Does she care? What does she think of me sitting here with Chasm?

“It might have to be vice versa,” I amend, looking back at him. “You’ll have to take Kimber, and I’ll go with Maxx.”

Chasm frowns heavily at that, but he doesn’t argue. He knows as well as I do that this is a better solution to the problem. The very last thing I need is another enemy under my own roof. Keeping Kimber calm is paramount.

“Maybe it’d be better if I just went with Maxx myself, after we dropped you off?”

I give him a look that he returns with an unrelenting stare of his own. That’s not happening, but we don’t have to argue about it just this second. I need to know about Justin.

“Tell me everything you know about my father,” I demand, and Chasm sighs.

“It’s not a lot. All I know is that he had some unicorn techie startup thing going on.”

“Unicorn?” I ask, and Chasm shrugs.

“Venture capitalist slang for ‘worth a billion dollars’. Your dad was creating a series of apps that he was going to sell to the military for a buttload of money. All I know is that some sort of scandal went down, and he was stripped of his title in the company, his assets were seized, and he was run out of town.”

My stomach drops and I feel a little dizzy.

Not only is my father the Seattle Slayer, but he’s a thief? A disgrace?

“A lot of people in this town hate him. But nobody’s seen or heard from him in like … fourteen years?” Chasm offers, tacking a question mark onto the end of that sentence.

Fourteen years.

Since I was stolen from a daycare center.

Fourteen years … fourteen days that the Slayer holds his victims. And Parrish is on day eleven.

We’re running out of time, and I don’t feel any closer to an answer today than I was nearly two weeks ago.

Where are you, Parrish? I wonder as the bell rings and Chasm rises to his feet. Where the hell are you?