“Oh, man,” Chris said with a shit-eating grin. “He doesn’t know.”
“I don’t care,” Jared said, forcing disinterest into his voice as he leaned back, tipping his chair onto its back two legs. “Whatever.”
Mia leaned in, clearly unable to deal with the tension any longer. “Ms. Saunders got that house in a divorce settlement, right?”
“That’s what I heard,” Jared said.
“The guy she was married to is the principal here.”
Jared raised an eyebrow. “So what?”
“So that house is a family heirloom,” Clare supplied. “His great-grandfather or something built it from the ground up. The fact that your aunt took it….”
“Wait, she was, like, twenty years younger than him or something. Extramarital affair turned second marriage turned second divorce, right?” Jared didn’t know the details, only the bits he’d picked up from his mother’s screaming arguments with Hadley.
Clare nodded. “Right. And Saunders went back to his first wife with his tail between his legs when it all went wrong. She took him back but roasted him, or so legend says, for being so weak as to let the second wife take the fucking heirloom house.”
“Is he going to make life difficult for me because of who I live with?”
“Who knows,” Clare said, her eyes gleaming. “Won’t it be fun to find out?”
Jared laughed and roughed his hair up with the palm of his hand. “If that’s how y’all get your kicks, then all right. I think I like Biggie’s brand of fun a little better, though.”
“Yeah, baby,” Chris crowed, and the subject once again turned back to the party on Saturday night. While the others threw themselves into a discussion on dress codes, Jared rocked on the legs of his chair, observing and wondering.
Chapter 4
If Jared had been impressed by Chris’s palatial family home, he wasn’t quite sure how to gauge Adam’s. It was easily twice the size of the white mansion, and sat up on top of the hill, surrounded by lush green forest, and had a spectacular view out over the bay.
In comparison, Chris’s place looked crude. Like what a seventeen-year-old millionaire would pick to live in: big, brash, ostentatious.
The Hemlock house was pure class.
The front was a jumbling mixture of glass, wood, chrome, and brick, opening the house to the nature surrounding it on several levels. There wasn’t a fountain in the middle of the drive, nor was there a drive at all, really. The house was tucked away into the landscape like it belonged there; the epitome of modern construction.
The lack of parking space was being handled by what looked like an underclassman, who was directing cars between the trees or around the back of the house where there was a wide field. Jared laughed humorlessly, awed at the sheer arrogance of Adam Hemlock, who was apparently getting the lowlier kids to do his dirty work.
When he was waved around the side of the house, Jared shook his head and parked at a deliberately awkward angle in front of an honest-to-God candy-pink Cadillac.
“You can’t park there,” the kid whined as Jared hopped out of his truck with his bottle of Jack.
Jared grinned and walked on up to the house.
Since it was the weekend, it looked like the party was a little wilder than Chris’s, which was saying something. Instead of scouting the place like he usually would, Jared walked through to where the music was blasting and sat on the arm of Chris’s large leather armchair.
“You one of my bitches now, homie?”
Jared grinned. “Sure. Where’s the party boy?”
“He hasn’t turned up yet.”
“But he lives here!”
Chris shook his head. “You got a lot to learn yet, new boy. Adam won’t turn up until the action really gets started. He’s down in Seattle right now getting his dick sucked. Trust me, that’s the best thing for everyone. He’ll be in a much better mood when he gets back.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“Look around,” Chris suggested. “Don’t go upstairs, though, or Hemlock will rip your balls off.”
“Good to know,” Jared said drily. “You want a drink?” He held up the bottle of whiskey.
“Gin and juice.”
“Should have known. I’ll be back.”
The house didn’t follow any conventional layout, so it took Jared a while to figure out he needed to go downstairs to find the kitchen. It was full of girls, no guys, strangely, and the music down here was definitely more pop-orientated, as opposed to the R&B playing upstairs.
Two of the three witches were manning a punchbowl full of a sickly-looking pink liquid. Since he was now determined to play the game with these girls, Jared crossed and kissed Ryder, then Clare, on the cheek.
“Ladies,” he murmured, “you look delightful this evening.”
“Jared,” Clare said. “I hope you’re not coming over to the dark side.”
He laughed at that. “I don’t think so, sweetheart. Biggie wants a gin and juice.”
Giving her Chris’s drink order was an experiment. He still wasn’t sure what was going on between the two of them, and there was something strange about Clare’s unusual insistence on calling Chris by his given name, where mostly everyone else called him Biggie or Wallace. Her gaze hardened for a moment; then she turned to fix the drink.
“That’s mine,” Jared said, handing the bottle of Jack to Ryder. “Watch it for me, and I’ll share it with you.”
“Works for me,” she said with a shrug. “Pepsi?”
“Yeah. And ice.”
“Got it.”
The three of them piled back upstairs with drinks in hand, joining Chris where he’d planted himself next to the DJ and his turntables. Jared looked around, trying to take things in.
The DJ and his setup were clearly portable and not a permanent structure in the house. If he had to guess, Jared thought that this was probably a study area, although a huge, luxuriously appointed one.
The walls were a sage green color, and walnut bookshelves reached floor to ceiling on either side of a wide fireplace. Huge windows looked out over the front of the
