“That’s what they want us to believe! The reality is, we’ve just stepped off the bus into some kind of weird sex cult being run by Will Price on his private island.”
“Um,” Bernadette said, licking her fingers, “I don’t think that’s it. I’m pretty sure that one over there is the sheriff’s daughter.”
“What? Why would you think that?”
“Because I just heard her call him ‘Daddy.’”
“Oh, sweet kittens.” I rolled my eyes at her naïveté. “No wonder Will Price lives here. This place is Hell, and he’s the Devil. Come on, let’s go.” I pulled on her arm, trying to drag her back to the gate.
“Wait, hold on.” Bernadette put on the brakes. “Yes, Will Price is a pretentious jerk. But let’s at least have a couple drinks before we leave, since we came all this way, and he’s paying for them. That’s the best way to get back at the patriarchy—by making them spend their money on us.”
Before I could stop her, she marched straight up to one of the cheerleaders—this one a pretty Black girl holding a tray of champagne flutes—and said, “Hi, I’m Bernadette Zhang. What’s your name?”
“Oh. My. God!” The girl’s eyes widened. “Bernadette Zhang! You write the Crown of Stars and Bone series!”
“Yes, I do.” Bernadette lifted one of the champagne flutes. “Thanks for reading.”
“It’s so cool to meet you! I love your books! I’m Sharmaine.”
“Hi, Sharmaine. Thanks for the champagne. What’s with the cheerleading getups?”
“Oh, we’re not cheerleaders. We’re the Snappettes, the high school dance team. And that’s not—”
Bernadette was already making a face as she tasted the liquid in the glass. “Gah!”
“Sorry, I meant to tell you.” Sharmaine looked apologetic. “That’s not champagne, it’s sparkling apple juice.”
“Ugh.” Bernadette put the glass back on the tray. “That’s what my kids drink. They can’t get enough of the stuff. I personally can’t stand it. Too sweet.”
“Yeah, sorry about that,” Sharmaine said. “We’re not allowed to serve alcohol since we’re under twenty-one. They’ve set up a bar right around the corner there, though, if you—”
“Thank you so much.” I hurried over to once again grab Bernadette by the arm. “It was nice to meet you.”
“Wait.” Sharmaine stared at me—well, at the badge dangling around my neck, the plastic laminate casing around it gleaming in the tiki-torch light. “Are you the Jo Wright, the author of Kitty Katz, Kitten Sitter?”
Naturally, I couldn’t go running back to the bus after that. “Yes,” I said. “It’s nice to meet you, Sharmaine.”
“Oh! My! God!” Sharmaine stooped to place the tray of sparkling apple juice on the side of the path. “I’m so sorry, but would you both mind? I just have to get a selfie with the two of you. You don’t even understand. Kitty Katz was, like, my favorite series of all time when I was a kid. And the Crown of Stars and Bone series is, like, my life now.”
“No problem,” Bernadette said, and wrapped her arm around my waist while Sharmaine swept a cell phone from the waistband of her shorts, held it high, and leaned in for a quick, expert selfie, smiling like the Instagram star she undoubtedly was.
“Seriously,” she said a second later. “My friends are going to die. You don’t even know.” Then, as she tucked her phone away again and stooped to pick up the tray, she whispered furtively, “Only, can you not mention that I got a photo with the two of you? Because they were really firm with us that we aren’t supposed to be doing that. Mr. Price donated like twenty-five grand to the dance team in exchange for us helping out with the festival this weekend, and I really wouldn’t want to let him down.”
Bernadette elbowed me in the ribs before I had a chance to blurt out what I wanted to, which was Wait, Will Price? Will Price donated money to your dance team? Are you sure? Because Will Price is Satan and would never do something nice.
Unless of course it was to somehow take advantage of a nice young girl like Sharmaine. That I would believe.
“Absolutely,” Bernadette said to Sharmaine. “We totally understand. Come on, Jo. Let’s go find that bar.”
Then Bernadette was dragging me down the path toward the house and the sound of the jazz ensemble.
“B-but,” I stammered. “Did you hear her?”
“Yes, I heard her.” The path had widened, and we’d left the jungle overgrowth for a wide-open area, a sort of courtyard leading up to the house, in the middle of which a large group of well-dressed, mostly older white people were gathered, laughing and chattering over the sound of the band, a bassist, drummer, and gorgeously curvaceous Latina female vocalist. “Let it go.”
“I’m not going to let that go. You expect me to believe that Will Price supports female athletes? Or artists? Or whatever high school dance team members are? No way. He just wants teenaged girls in short shorts serving him at the party he’s throwing on his private island.”
“Do you think that maybe you’re letting your antipathy toward him cloud your judgment a little?” Bernadette snagged a cheese tartlet from the tray of a passing Snappette.
“No. I saw who picked him up from the airport. She was age inappropriate.”
“I’m not saying you’re wrong. I’m just saying we should gather more information before we make a final decision. And by gather more information, I mean hit the bar for free booze, okay?”
“No. Not okay. Have you even—”
“Have I even what?”
I’d been about to ask her if she’d even read The Moment, then realized what I’d be admitting: that I’d read it (or had started reading it, anyway).
And that was far too humiliating a confession to make out loud. So instead I ground my teeth—something I’d been doing so much lately, my dentist had recommended that I wear a mouth guard at night to combat TMJ—and glared at all the happy partygoers around me. Most of them I didn’t recognize, but I was able to pick out Saul and Frannie exactly where I most expected to find them—standing in line for the bar—and Garrett where I wasn’t surprised to see him—pulling a “guild piece” from the ear of a well-dressed older woman who could only be a donor, and who of course screamed in delighted surprise at the “trick.”
There was Molly consulting with an older man in a white chef’s jacket and black pants—the caterer, since they were both in Will Price’s perfect-looking, chrome-and-stainless-steel-appliance kitchen, which I could easily look into since his house was made almost entirely of sliding glass doors and none of the curtains had been drawn. That’s how I was able to see that each room was exquisitely decorated in masculine tones of beige and taupe and gray, not a thing out of place, even in the bedrooms, where each bed—king-sized, of course—was tightly made, the pillows piled high and all facing a wall on which hung an expertly executed piece of modern art. No flat-screen televisions in Will’s house (I had one in every room, of course, and kept them blaring all day long unless I was working, which lately was never).