.o Tempting Fate o.

Evelyn

It was freeing, being alone. No more chains, no more orders. Only me and the knife and the needle. The hours ticked by, silent; their steady pace the only thing to keep me still, to keep me waiting. But I wouldn't be waiting long. It was coming soon.

The car pulled into the driveway of the Inn. The girl and boy got out, talking in quiet tones about their plans for the day. The girl sent a wary glance towards the road, towards the school two miles away. But she was weak, and the boy led her inside.

I turned my own gaze towards the mansion in the distance. The needle pressed into my palm, the knife against my ankle. Soon it would be over. Soon everything would be as it should.

Tick, tock, Cameron. Tick, tock.

...

Cammie

"So, has anything interesting happened?" Bex asked, sinking into the seat next to me. She leaned forward eagerly as if we were watching her favorite movie and not Zach talking to his possibly unstable cousin at the edge of the lake.

Two days had passed since Clara had spoken. In that time, she'd been debriefed by Zach, Grant, Jonas, Joe, and my mother. Three times we'd added a truth serum to her meals; every time she would comment on it before she took her first bite. Yet, her story never changed, never was it inconsistent with what Zach or the rest of us had experienced. In fact, if Clara was to be believed, she'd given us answers on Alyson's every plan and action since Zach had left them in Rome- in some ways even prior to then.

Today was the first day she was allowed out of her holding cell, watched officially by Zach, Joe, Abby, and my mother- unofficially by Bex, Liz, Grant, Jonas and myself. No one had seen Townsend since everything had been explained to him. Liz wondered whether he was still in the school at all.

Liz shook her head in answer. "She's still showing normal readings and behavioral patterns. She's passed every truth verification test we have, and there isn't a trace of ulterior motives in any of her features or actions." She sounded as if someone had offered her ten grand for reciting the first hundred digits of Pi. (Something she still did every night like some would count sheep.)

Bex shook her head. "She's one of them." To Liz, Zach's cousin was a mystery, a new formula to understand. Bex, however, saw Clara as nothing more than an enemy operative. Someone not to be trusted and taken out at the first possible chance. "For all we know, they've been planning this all along," she said, crossing her arms and putting her feet on the small table in front of us.

"They haven't. Trust me." Jonas looked up from the book he'd been hiding behind for the better part of the morning. As far as I knew, Jonas hadn't left Clara's watch for more than an hour at a time in the five days she'd been held in Sublevel Two. It was obvious he still hadn't rested. Dark circles were magnified by his glasses, which he didn't bother to adjust from their drooping state on his nose. He moved slowly, and I could feel Liz stiffen as he rose and stepped towards the glass. "Alyson wouldn't have sent Clara here alone. She's too fragile."

Bex sniffed. "Fragile my arse. She's as dangerous and mad as her lunatic aunt."

For a moment I was worried Jonas would jump her (or at least try to before Bex pummeled him), but he only sighed, shaking his head and cleaning his glasses. I'm not sure he meant for us to hear it when he murmured, "She's not crazy."

Beside me, Liz sat up a little straighter. "According to all my statistics, every variable has been-"

"She isn't an experiment, Lizzie!" Jonas snapped, and Liz flinched. Bex stood up, but Jonas was already backing up, shaking his head. "Liz, I'm-"

She was already gathering her notebooks, eyes dodging from papers to the door. "You know, I just remembered, Dr. Fibbs asked me for my research on the... um..."

"Lizzie-"

"Frequency of the name Suzie used as an alias," Liz burst, before turning tail and sprinting out of the room. The door shut behind her with a distinct snap. Jonas looked as if he were about to follow her, but Bex whirled.

I stood up, grabbing Bex's arm before she could maim the exhausted boy in front of us. "Bex, calm down."

"Don't tell me to bloody calm down!" she snapped, turning on me. "They've nearly killed us, destroyed everything we thought we knew." In a second she was marching around the room, eyes searching for something sturdy. Liz's tick was pacing but had Bex always needed to hit something. I reached down and grabbed a couch cushion which (according to Tina) a Gallagher Girl had once used to stop a bullet from killing a Turkish ambassador. Somehow, I suspected the cushion would prefer the bullet to Bex's spinning reverse crescent kick.

"You need to stop blaming them for everything," I grunted as another kick landed inches from my head.

"Why? It's their bloody fault."

I lowered the cushion, despite my instincts insisting I keep my defensives up. "They're not those girls." My fingers fiddled with the seam. "Despite what he did, Zach isn't his sister. He can't control her, and it's not fair to cut him off because of that." She looked like she was about to argue, so I added, "Just because they had a life apart from us, doesn't mean they're the villains."

Bex was quiet a minute, her body still poised to lash out. Then she relaxed, her shoulders sagging. "It's just- they lied."

I shrugged. "We're spies. It's an occupational hazard."

"Don't do that." Her body language hadn't changed, but there was a layer of steel in her tone.

Maybe that's why instead of asking "Do what?" I opted for, "What else can I do?" to which she didn't have a response. I continued, "I'm not dismissing the fact that I was lied to; I simply refuse to let that destroy me. I've accepted that maybe people I trust have secrets, that they've made mistakes and bad choices and maybe those bad choices have consequences." I shook my head. "We were all scared, Bex. We all did things out of fear or desperation or stupidity, and I'm not going to make Zach-" My eyes moved to the boy leaning against the wall as if he wanted to sink through it. "-Or any of the guys for that matter- feel like they're the only ones who have ever made a mistake."

"Mistakes get people killed."

"Has anyone died yet?"

I'm not sure what Bex's response would have been because her voice was drowned out by a blaring siren and blazing lights. Our discussion was lost in the chaos as we shared a glance before tearing down the halls, the mechanical voice above us screaming, "CODE BLACK. CODE BLACK. CODE BLACK."

...

Irony is a strange thing. The world's sense of humor. The only problem is, I thought on a plane hours later, was one simple fact: the world is cruel.

Bex and I shoved our way past panicking seventh graders and excited juniors. The seniors were helping Madame Dabney heard a group of wide-eyed girls into their dorms before the doors sealed. In the Hall of History, we passed a group of sophomores screaming that they didn't have time for a lockdown because the latest episode of Criminal Minds was airing in ten minutes.

We almost didn't make it outside, but Bex unceremoniously shoved me (something that would leave a nasty bruise on my knee) before swinging her own body down into an expert Lycanster Slide just before the steel doors shut.

It was already dusk, the shadows of girls running long against the lawn. My mother was already by the lake. Joe was yelling something at some passing ninth graders, and Abby was holding Clara's arms behind her back with a grip strong enough to break glass.

Jonas looked like he wanted to say something to her, but he looked at Joe. "Where's Zach?"

To my surprise, Clara beat everyone to the answer. "Grant showed up and told Zach to follow him, before-" She stopped talking as Abby applied more pressure to her arms, forcing Clara to lean closer to the ground. I almost felt bad for the smaller girl, but her smile, as if she were holding back a laugh, stopped any pity in its tracks. Looks can be deceiving, and something in the girl's eyes told me she was amused by Abby.

"She just held her hands out when the alarms went off." I spun around to see Liz, and I don't know what shocked me more, the fact Liz of all people had startled me, or the fact that she had run out here after Jonas had snapped at her. She nodded towards the girl on her knees. "I guess she knew Abby was about to jump on her, so she just looked up and held her hands out towards her." She said it as if she were trying to convince herself, and I couldn't really blame her. Zach's little cousin had been strange since we'd brought her here, though according to the Blackthorne Boys, this was how she normally was.

"We can't get her back into the mansion without lowering our defenses," Mom was telling Bex.

"But if they're breaking in to extract her-"

Clara looked up. "It's not an extraction-"

"-we don't have many resources to guard her and the school."

Joe cocked his head towards Bex. "Miss Baxter, surely you of all people are not doubting your sisters are capable of defending against an extraction party?"

"It's not an extraction," Clara said again, only to be pushed against the ground by Abby. I took a step towards the girl. Beside me, Liz winced.

Bex huffed. "Of course not. I am only saying if they attempt to free her-"

"They're not-"

"-it's because they're confident they can get in and out. No one in that school has ever seen those girls before, and as crazy as they are, Zach's little gang of misfits knows how to get around Gallagher."

"That doesn't mean-" Whatever my mother was about to say, was cut off by a shrill, ear-splitting scream. Heads turned to the girl on the ground. The girl who was now grinning like a baby.

Mom glanced at Abby. "Knock her out."

"No!" Now, I'm sure everyone expected Jonas to object, but I highly doubt anyone could have foreseen Elizabeth Sutton, the world's least threatening Gallagher Girl in history, to lunge at Abby, knocking the Nicotine Patch safely out of the way and allowing Clara to roll out of my aunt's grip.

It only took a second for both Mom and Bex to pounce on Clara, but that wasn't really the point. The point was, not only had Liz just jumped another Sister (no matter how harmless it had been), she had defended Clara. Maybe that was the reason no one objected when she snapped, "Let her talk."

There was a beat of silence before Clara looked at Liz and whispered, "Thank you." Then she looked at each of us in turn before her wide eyes landed on me. "It's not an extraction," she said again. There was a small giggle in her voice. "If it was," she grinned, "I would be long gone, and the alarm wouldn't have gone off. Ally's just giving you a warning." She looked at Bex, who looked close to jumping forward and strangling the girl. "I would watch the front gates if I were you." Clara turned to Jonas. "Oh, and find Zach. I think she wants to see him."

"Eva?" he asked.

Clara sighed. "She's alone. I think they should be careful." Then she started giggling again, and I'm quite positive Abby wanted to get another Nicotine Patch.

I glanced at Liz, who looked as if she was trying to fold in on herself. She kept glancing at Abby, then Mom, then Joe. It took me a minute before I leaned over and whispered. "Someone check the gate-"

"Headmistress Morgan!"

A senior was running towards us, a quiver of arrows over her shoulder. The P&E class must have been covering archery today. She stopped a few yards from us, her eyes grazing over Clara. "There's someone at the gates." She glanced at Macey. "And I think you're going to want to see who it is before attacking."

…

Zach was waiting at the gates when we arrived, but he wasn't looking at us. His eyes were glued to the car parked in front of the titanium bars. It was a beat up Toyota, the tint peeling from the windows and mud splattered against the sides. Framed by the clean-cut lawn and white cement, it stuck out like an old penny in a jar of shiny new dimes. But that wasn't what everyone was worried about. No, we were concerned about the girl leaning against the passenger door.

Alyson smiled. "Hi, Zachy. It looks like you have a walk-in."

To every reviewer,

Thank you. Thank you for taking time to read a lonely girl's story. Thank you for encouraging me, and thank you for sticking with me as I disappear for months.

I can't tell you when the next update will be, but I can tell you that it's all planned out. The ending is outlined if you care to stick around for it.

Thank you again. X