Lost Girls(47)

“You guys aren’t talking about some kind of sex club, are you?” I asked, remembering those condoms in my drawer. “Because if you are, I’m not going!”

“It’s definitely not a sex club. It’s better than sex.” Lauren watched me, excitement in her voice. “Just one thing, before you go in, you have to choose a fake name. Nobody uses their real names once they get inside. Okay?”

I frowned. “What name did I use before?”

She shook her head. “This is like a new beginning. You get to choose one. Anything.”

I didn’t have to think long. I chose the girl I imagined myself to be. “Odette,” I said, knowing she was the Swan Queen.

Zoe laughed, holding out her palm. Stephanie groaned and handed over a five-dollar bill.

“What?” I asked.

“You picked the same name as before,” Zoe said, linking arms with me. “I knew you would.”

Then the four of us linked arms, an act that gave me a little more courage than I would have had if I were alone. Lauren knocked on the doors, producing the tickets when a burly six-foot-six guy appeared, looking like he spent his days at the gym and his nights guarding the River Styx. He ran a quick gaze over the four of us, tickets in his palm.

“Team?” he asked, his lips barely moving, a cigarette hanging from one corner of his mouth.

“The Swan Girls,” Lauren answered, her chin held high.

“Good. Haven’t seen the whole team here in a while. Thought you broke up.” He kicked a low, silver platform toward us—a scale. “Weight, one at a time.”

I gave him and the girls a weird look, but we all did what he asked, each of us getting a necklace with a letter dangling from one end after we’d been weighed. I glanced down, saw that Lauren and I both had Fs, Stephanie had a B, Zoe had an S.

Then he held up a plastic Ziploc bag. “Phones.”

“What?” Lauren asked.

“New rule. Upper management says you gotta leave your cell phones and cameras with me. Look, I’ll mark your bag.” He took a black permanent marker and drew a large, sloppy S on the bag. “You’ll get ’em back when you go home.”

The girls grumbled as they dug out their phones, but a flash of warning thudded in the back of my head. I narrowed my eyes. “When did this new rule start?” I asked.

“’Bout ten days ago.”

A shot of panic fanned across my chest. They changed the rule after I was kidnapped. That horrid memory returned—that time I’d tried to call 9-1-1 and someone had knocked my phone out of my hand, then tied a gag around my mouth.

Had that happened here?

“Come on, give me your phone.” He held his hand outstretched toward me.

“Don’t have one with me,” I answered, glad that I’d made a last-minute decision to leave mine behind.

I probably should have been afraid, but I wasn’t. Another emotion was taking over, something stronger than fear. I was determined. It was finally time to find out the answers to the questions that kept me awake at night. I pushed my way past him and the other girls who were still digging through pockets and purses. Lauren lifted her head for a brief moment, as if she had wanted to be the one to go inside first, me on her arm. I merely nodded at her, knowing she would be at my side soon. But I didn’t wait for her or the others.

Something was calling to me, something I could no longer ignore.

Destiny.

I walked through the door and into the unknown. Alone.





Chapter Twenty-Six


A brilliant chaos waited for me on the other side. A crowd of teenagers cheered, all facing the center of the room, bright lights shining down on a stage, raised a few feet off the floor. Two guys were up on the platform, skin glistening with sweat, both of them naked to the waist, their muscles straining, the sounds they made being amplified by a loudspeaker system. They were fighting, a style that mixed boxing and wrestling and some form of martial arts, every punch spraying sweat that spun away like diamonds in the bright light. The sounds of oof and uh and thud echoed louder than the cries of the people who faced the stage, fists clenched.

The energy from the crowd was infectious.

The room was huge, about half the size of our high school gym, and it was packed with kids my age, most of them standing in clusters like mini-gangs, dressed in ways that distinguished them from the rest of the crowd. Six boys to my left wore long-sleeved green shirts with the word “Orcs” printed on the front and the back. Three girls wore rainbow wigs, hot pink shorts and matching sport bra tops; five boys had shaved heads and the word “Skulls” tattooed across their backs in big, violet Gothic letters.

I flashed on that photo of Nicole Hernandez, her hair streaked with pink, standing with a group of girls all wearing shirts that said “Pink Candi” in glitter.

Had that been her team? Had I met her here?

I spun around slowly, taking it all in, the feeling like I was at a big party, the smells of sweat and cologne thick in the air, smoke bombs bursting at the edges of the room, black in one corner, violet blue in another, everyone chanting words that I couldn’t distinguish, not at first.

Then I recognized one of the words being chanted.

Poe—Poe—Poe.

Despite the steamy heat from the crowd, a chill washed over me. Poe. That was what Lauren had called Dylan earlier and he had gotten angry, telling her she could get kicked out.