I

"We're almost there…" Charlie's voice splinters the quiet meditation I'd found in the hum of the car engine and the uneven beat of raindrops against the windows. The car sluices through the wet tarmac, and I spare a glance through the front window. Grey skies and green smudges rising up in a mesh of brown and yellow streetlights.

"Yes." My voice is steady but inside my skin is crawling, a hysteric energy flooding me, strangled breaths catching in the bottom of my throat where I swallow them down and pretend they're not on manual.

My fathers cluelessness is both comforting and devastating. Solace in the space it is giving me and a yearning for comfort blooming under my ribs that I cast aside. Does he speak to fill silence or does he really not understand how acutely aware I am of each mile the car swallows, closer and closer to everything I've tried to forget.

I know exactly where we are.

The car pulls into the driveway and everything comes to a halt. Dread coats me faster than the rain when I step out the door, following a familiar path through sodden leaves and squelching mud.

"Everything's the same as you left it."

I stand frozen in the doorway to my old bedroom, papers scattered across the desk, drawers still hanging open, the mirror cracked in several places. Blood and mud coating the sheets of the bed.

I blink and the room changes. His words aren't literal. The mirror is gone, new sheets on the bed, everything tidy and away, like nothing had ever happened.

I walk into the room and tentatively sit on the bed, the memory of my own screams ringing against my skull. Four years feels like yesterday, but I'm not the same girl anymore. I'm strong now. I'm ready.

Tomorrow I'll see them all again, walk the halls with them. I'll act like I don't remember what they did to me, let myself fade into the background, hidden amongst the social order that dictates friend from foe, from outcast. I'll let their words and taunts slide off my skin like rain glancing off a waterproof jacket. No flinching but no fighting either.

Fear bubbles like lava under my skin for a moment, but my resolve hardens it to black stone. They were always subtle in the open, and I'll avoid all opportunities to be alone with any of them, at least for now…

I want them to underestimate me.

I don't want them to see it coming.

My hands grip the sheets, and I stare down at the tattoos adorning both of my arms. The ink work is immaculate, wrapping around my forearms perfectly, covering the long vertical lines of raised flesh on each wrist. The angels face away from me, their wings crossing at my elbow. Raguel on the left; the angel of justice and redemption. Samael on the right; the angel of death.

I can never take back what they did to me. But I can make them pay.

One by one, justice will be served. And I'm saving the worst of them till last.

Thinking his name makes my belly twist in revulsion and fury, a sharp needle of agony driving into my sternum and stealing my breath.

Edward. Cullen.