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Spencer had thought she’d seen Red Coat, and the two of them had sprinted after her through the halls, only to have the door slam shut behind them after following a flash of red into a supply closet. She caught her breath and sank down the wall until she was crouched on the floor, head in her hands. Mona tried the door a few times, but it wouldn’t open, and she sat down on the floor, legs sprawled across the narrow width of the room.
“I swear I saw her,” Spencer said. “Now we’re just sitting ducks, right where Red Coat wants us.”
Mona tapped away at her phone, checking for an A text or calling someone to get them out of here, Spencer didn’t know. She was eerily calm, and didn’t even seem to mind the dust. A spider crawled out from behind a mop, approaching her leg. “I don’t think this was supposed to be a trap,” Mona said. “Red Coat wanted to draw us away from the party, get our hopes up with her little smoke and mirrors trick, but I’d bet she didn’t know the closet would lock from the outside.”
“When has there ever been something Red Coat didn’t know?”
Mona shook her head. “She wouldn’t do it like this. Trust me, Spencer, I may not know who Red Coat is, but I have an inkling of an idea what it’s like in that little head of hers. There’s always logic behind her moves. One of us or all of us in here makes sense. But you and me? She wouldn’t waste her time locking us in here unless there was some button she wanted to push. Or some kind of terrible secret between us. And I have absolutely nothing to hide, for a change. From you, anyway.”
Mona was probably right, because Spencer wracked her brains but could only think of one thing she was hiding from her. But there was no way Red Coat could know about something Spencer was only just barely able to admit to herself. It was easy to forget sometimes that Red Coat couldn’t actually trawl Spencer’s mind for blackmail material.
“Unless you’re holding out on me?”
“What?” Spencer said. “Uh, no. You know everything I know.”
“Then lighten up a bit,” Mona said. “Let your hair down, Hanna’s coming in twenty minutes to spring us out of here.”
Spencer nodded, content to sit and read the warning labels on cleaning products until their rescue arrived, but Mona rose to her knees in front of her. Spencer was still as Mona leaned over her, bracing her arms on Spencer’s shoulders. The light was low, a single burnt-out bulb dangling on a chain above them, and Spencer felt sure her pupils were blown wide as she stared up at Mona, mouth dry. Mona looked like she was doing calculus in her head, kept meeting Spencer’s gaze and then looking off somewhere above her. Spencer swallowed and angled her head down, trying to look straight ahead, but there was Mona in front of her, of course, so she watched the rise and fall of Mona’s chest, the shift of her necklace against her collarbone with each breath.
It couldn’t have been more than a few seconds, a handful of breaths, before Mona reached up and plucked a bobby pin from Spencer’s hair.
“What are you doing?” Spencer asked.
“Springing us out early.” Mona held the bobby pin in her mouth and began to extricate another, fingers delicate in Spencer’s hair.
“Oh,” Spencer said, and she tried not to sound disappointed or lean into the touch, not having much success at either.
Mona collected a few more bobby pins and sat back on her heels. “What did you think I was doing?”
“Nothing.”
Mona looked at her again like she was a math problem and Spencer wondered how it was possible that Mona hadn’t figured her out yet. Sometimes it felt like Mona was so shrewd, had such a knack for reading people that she had to know. But then other times she would fix Spencer with a look like this, and Spencer wasn’t so sure. At this point it would be a relief, no matter how badly Mona reacted, if only to save Spencer from wondering any longer, but she could never summon the confidence to do anything other than wait to be found out.
The air was so still and silent between them, and then Mona reached for her again, but it was only to tease out the section of hair that had been freed from its pins. It tumbled down, curling against Spencer’s cheek, and Mona twirled it around her fingers and gave a gentle tug.
She smiled, and then turned her attention to picking the lock. “We’ll be out of here in no time.”
Spencer let out a long, shaky exhale. If Red Coat hadn’t done this on purpose, she clearly had a preternatural gift for torture.