Page 146 of Feed Your Fiends

They're taking turns on stage, where the live band normally performs. They’re twirling with trays in each hand, on their heads, and on their heels, as they slip onto their backs and use their legs as tables.

Hale’s on the floor beside an Asian girl who’s balancing a tray full of tequila shots, one hand tangled in her yellow blonde hair. The colour contrasts starkly with her jet black roots.

“Don’t laugh,” he says, leaning up to grab a shot before pouring the clear liquid over her tits. “You laugh, you lose.”

She giggles, but quickly bites her lip as he leans down to suck on her nipples. Immediately, her tray wobbles as her legs shake. Two seconds before the tray crashes down, another girl catches it, though two shot glasses rattle to the floor, splashing the giggling girl across the face. Not that it’s a problem because Hale licks it off her lips.

“Fail,” he says simply as she rolls over, and the watching crowd erupts into a chorus of fakeawwws.

“I can pass at something else,” she says, still on her hands and knees.

“Like what?” he asks daringly.

“The no gag, no choke challenge.”

My stomach twists for an invisible Stassi. I’d heard a lot about Hale being obsessed with women. The king of any party. Community cock, Aria had called him on my first day at Beaulieu, but I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. I’d seen him glued to Stassi every chance he got when Zedd wasn’t around.

Seriously, what happened between the birthday party and now?

Hale doesn’t look like himself. He looks like a fiend ready to devour because his bloodshot eyes are thirsty,hungry.It’s so different from his restlessness when I’d visited him fresh out of the hospital. Then, he wouldn’t sleep because of the renovations. Now, he can’t sleep because something otherworldly is fuelling him.

I watch the dying, wispy rays of sunlight that manage to enter the club through the blackout shutters. Just how long had these auditions been going on?

He locks those hungry, half-hooded eyes on me, and although they shine, I swear there’s nothing behind those blue pools. I want there to be nothing behind mine. Because if there’s nothing, there’s no pain.

“You came,” he says.

The women cheer as another blonde balances a tray on her ass. If nothing else, they seem blindly accepting as they dance in the cages and on the bar.

“What happened to not being like Pierrot’s?” I ask as he gets to his feet.

“I’m not fighting who I am any more. I’m doing what I do best, and it makes everyone happy.”

The girls cheer again at some other trick.

“Why would I be something I’m not? Why would you? It’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

“I have nowhere else to go.” Technically, I can go to a hotel, I just don’t want to be alone.

It’s like Hale can hear my unuttered words because his smile broadens fiendishly. “Welcome home. You’re right in time for my inauguration.” He walks to a loveseat across from the stage and settles between two blondes, one ash, one strawberry, both wigs. “Do you want to be indoctrinated? There’s a place for everyone at the menagerie.”

Menagerie. Like a human zoo. The opposite of thesophisticatedblue bloods.

I take forever to answer him, and the girl rubbing his chest stops her massaging to pout at me. “She’s killing the mood. Fire crotches never live up to their fiery reputation.”

“Why was she even allowed in?” another girl calls. “Didn’t you get the memo? Blondesonlybefore ten.”

“Maybe that’s what she’s missing,” a passing girl says, ripping her wig off to reveal fried blonde hair as she dumps her wig on my head. “Blondes have more fun.”

It reminds me of when Aria put the curly black wig on my head while she donned a blonde one and spilled her heart out to me about Etienne. She got the words out because she wasn’t herself any more. Maybe I could be someone else, too.

“Elle,” Hale says. “Don’t you want to have fun tonight? I know what it’s like to be chewed up and spat out by the blues.”

“You saw the article. I did the chewing,” I say, gripping the duffel bag tighter.

“Look into my eyes.”

I do.

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