CHAPTER SIXTEEN
these hills have eyes, and i got paranoia

MONDAY MORNING brought a monster to Violet's feet when she was committing her weekly truancy during art class—which was pointless, in her defense, because mixing primary colours to make a miracle mess of more colours didn't appeal to her in the slightest and Violet wasn't interested in the metaphorical, much less participating in it—and smoking in the bathroom with the window cracked open. From time to time, girls would come into the bathroom, cast one wary glance at Violet before hustling into a stall. When they came out to wash their hands, nosing out of the stalls like fearful rabbits leaving their burrows checking for snakes, and saw that she was still there, they flicked furtive glances her way, watching her through the mirror. But Violet kept looking ahead, out the window, blowing smoke to the sky. They saw her, but didn't stop her, and that made Violet feel like her father, around whom the seas kept parting.

"You shouldn't smoke."

In the reflection in the window pane, Alice Cullen's face loomed beside Violet's, behind her shoulder, a pale-faced ghost bearing deceptively innocent features, a pixie-cut and sharp eyes. Sharper teeth, Violet thought, as she snapped round to face the girl—the vampire—standing before her. Her hand curled around the hilt of her knife before she even knew she was moving. Under the garish bathroom light, the tip off the blade glinted menacingly. She gave Alice a stone-faced once-over, taking inventory of her posture, shoulders pulled back like a ballet dancer's, poised with gymnast's grace, noting the layers of necklaces piled over her chest, the gaudy charm bracelets encircling her wrists that jingled like bells with each movement. How she'd snuck up on Violet so soundlessly, so flawlessly predator-like, eluded her. But Violet knew. Vampires were fast. In the blink of an eye, Alice could have her skewered on the pipes, could rip her heart out with her bare hands, could drain her body of every ounce of blood in the blink of an eye. Violet straightened her spine, lips curling into her father's politician's smile.

"You should mind your own business."

Alice didn't once glance down at the knife in Violet's hand. If she noticed, she didn't comment. She wasn't even the slightest bit concerned. Instead, a polite smile curved her gloss-coated lips. Her glassy-eyed stare was unblinking, more unsettling than charming. Violet didn't have much of an opinion on Alice Cullen, but she'd heard rumours. Apparently most people thought she was weird, a little freakish, a little bit not sound in the head. Oh, she was freakish, alright. Just not in the conventional sense. How long Alice must've been like this—dead and deadly—struck Violet immediately.

"Violet, right? Hi, I'm Alice. Edward's sister." She stuck her hand out, a dainty action.

Violet's cool gaze flickered to Alice's hand, then back up to the girl's unwavering stare. She didn't take it.

"I know."

"I like your jacket," Alice said, clasping her hands in front of her.

Violet lifted a brow. Thorns of awkward silence wound around them. Alice's eyes darted down to Violet's hand.

"Relax, I'm not going to kill you. My family only drinks animal blood," Alice said, raising her hands in mock surrender. Violet's senses sharpened with the movement. If it was a gesture of reassurance, it was causing the opposite effect. Alice jerked her chin at the knife. "But you do know that won't kill us, right?"

In a practiced move, the knife in Violet's hand vanished back into her sleeves. She took a drag of her cigarette, easing the tension in her muscles. It wasn't that she trusted Alice. In actual fact, she felt the weight of her zippo lighter in her back pocket growing. If Alice wanted to kill her, Violet wouldn't be able to reach it in time. Just knowing it was there, though, alleviated her spiralling paranoia a little. She'd figure something out. She always did.

"Heard from the wolves that you're afraid of fire," Violet said, cocking her head.

Unadulterated disgust scrawled all over her features, Alice wrinkled her nose. "You shouldn't be hanging around them." Them, she'd spat acidly, a blasphemy, a rot in the centre of her tongue. Like they were black mildew on the walls of her perfect world of the undead.

You're literally dead, Violet wanted to say, wanted to grab Alice's shoulders and put her head through the mirror. Though she'd be doing the building more of a disservice, the notion seemed satisfying enough. What have the wolves ever done to you besides exact their purpose? You are the blight on this earth. You're not supposed to exist.

"Why not?" Violet said, instead, a spark of challenge in her icy eyes, a thermonuclear furnace beneath a sheet of hypothermia.

Alice's mouth parted indignantly. "Well, first off, they smell—"

"They smell like any other person to me," Violet snapped cuttingly, eyes flashing. She thought about Jacob's playful smile, the light in Jared's eyes when he found Kit's in the dark, Embry's jokes and Quil's awkward kindness and Sam's futile attempt to save Luka and Violet. There was the unwavering security that hadn't left Violet once since the pillow-fight on the night Kit had phased into wolf form right in front of Violet and Sage, casting away all secrets she was meant to take to the grave just to protect them from Victoria. There was Paul's lambent eyes, Paul's warmth, the way he held her like she was more than money, cast away the writhing shadows and intrusive thoughts armed with teeth and red eyes. She knew she had a plan to execute—wrangle information out of the Cullens, and somehow, offending one of them didn't seem like the smartest idea.

Before, Violet might have taken a more neutral approach, might've held onto her composure so she could snake answers out of Alice. Not this time. Not now, when anger was a knife forged in her core, pinwheeling, slashing up her insides, her temper demanding to rip and rend the world. Twice, the wolves had saved her from the same monster. Violet owed them a life debt. "So yes, they were born to kill monsters like you, and that might seem threatening to your kind, but they're every human being's only line of defense. They exist only because your breed of monster does. Keep their names out of your bloodsucking mouth and get the fuck out of my face."

With a sharp flick of her wrist, Violet tossed her cigarette in the sink when it began to scorch her fingers, pinning Alice with a bone-cleaving stare, blue eyes gleaming like twin scythes.

Hurt flickered in her eyes. Alice swallowed. With the last shreds of her dignity, she lifted her chin, fixing a cordial smile on her lips.

"Well, I can see that I'm not welcome here," Alice said, acknowledging the hostility in Violet's combative stance.

Violet didn't answer.

Alice's smile tightened.

A beat passed as Alice held Violet's unfaltering stare. She didn't need a knife in her hand to hurt.

"I know you're looking for your brother," Alice said, catching Violet off-guard, her words like a blow to the gut. As Alice drifted to the door to go, she turned to offer Violet one last look over her shoulder, one hand on the door handle. "I see the way things work out. And I've seen Luka's future. I know you don't trust me, and you have a right not to, but I was just going to say that if you want, I'd be happy to help you save him."

A shadow of sadness flickered over Alice's face like a tide washing up on the shore and she looked like she wanted to say something else, but stopped herself before she could say it. And then she was gone.

Violet sagged against the wall.

☾

ALICE'S WORDS HADN'T STOPPED RESONATING in Violet's head throughout the day. Even at lunch, she sat in the cafeteria at an empty table by herself, distractedly picking at the fruit salad on her lunch tray as she turned over Alice's offer, staring into space. Why had she given her that look before she left? What did she know? And something that Alice had said... I'd be happy to help you save him... It struck her through the chest like an arrow. Saving Luka from Victoria was a given—Violet had always known he was in danger in her clutches. But the implication hit Violet like a sack of bricks the moment Alice had acknowledge it too. Somehow, it felt like every worst-case scenario was crashing down on her, a landslide of omen caving in her head.

Luka was alive—in some state—and Alice knew something. Alice was willing to offer her services. Alice had personally sought Violet out with intent to help where Edward wouldn't. Perhaps Edward had his reason for his reservations, but Alice was Violet's ticket to unearthing the truth. She could do something instead of sitting vulnerable in the dark, shooting blind. First, she had to find out if it was possible for a human to kill a vampire. There was no way in hell they were this indestructible, untouchable entity. Everything had a limit to its tensile strength, and if you kept hitting it, it'd shatter. If gods died because nobody believed in them anymore, there had to be something that at least weakened a vampire.

Did she feel a little guilty for snapping at Alice without even hearing her out? Not really. Violet thought it was warranted.

Only when Edward and Bella sat opposite her without ceremony did she snap out of her reverie.

Edward frowns. "You've spoken to my sister."

Violet didn't like the way his eyes bore into hers, the way he seemed to be mentally uncapping her head, unspooling her brains and picking at every single thought. A slow prickle started on the back of her neck.

"She told you," Violet said, cocking her head.

A small, mirthful smile tugged at Edward's lips. "I read your mind," he said, like it was the simple answer. Then he shook his head, a troubled look clouding his eyes. "I told her not to. Some things are better left untouched. But Alice never listens."

Violet couldn't tell if Edward was serious or not regarding the mind-reading thing. Nonetheless, she didn't want to find out. It freaked her out slightly, but she was shockingly calm. Nothing could really surprise her anymore, she supposed. Not after everything she's learnt since coming home to monsters and Thursday therapy sessions. They were starting to gather some questioning looks from the students milling about the cafeteria, some necks craned to catch a glimpse of the most unlikely combination of students to converge on school grounds—Edward Cullen and his girlfriend, Bella, sitting together with mad teen-terror Violet Korchak. A couple tables over, a group of seniors gaped at them, question marks clinging to their lips.

"What do you think you're doing here?" Violet asked, pinning the duo with a flat look.

Bella and Edward shared a fleeting glance. Bella turned to Violet with a small, shy smile. "Well... since you're pretty involved with the whole Victoria thing like me, I figured we could help each other out a little—"

Violet scoffed. "I am nothing like you."

Bella flinched like she'd been slapped.

Edward's eyes flashed. "Don't talk to her like that."

"Or what?" Violet flashed him a lethal smile. "If you won't tell me about my brother, then do me a favour and leave me alone. At least Alice would be of more use to me."

A beat passed. The air around them grew tense. Edward cut his eyes away, irritation scrawled all over his deathly pale face.

Bella opened her mouth to say something, but before she could, a shrill voice called out, "Bella! Hey! Get your cute butt over here!"

Violet lifted a brow.

Glancing over her shoulder to wave at her friend, Bella bit her lip in uncertainty.

"Goodbye," Violet said, coolly, flicking her fingers at Bella.

☾

DISDAIN TUGS AT PAUL'S FACE WHEN Violet recounts the weird encounter with Edward and Bella during lunch while he's sitting on her bed, leant against the headboard as she straddles his legs. Already, her pajama pants were lying discarded on the floor and his shirt, lying in a black pool beside it. She kept her blue hoodie on, though, the sleeves pulled all the way to mid-palm, knowing too well that she couldn't let him see the scars marking her skin, a patchwork of tally-marks scored from the base of her wrist to her elbows. An ugly, shameful collection counting down to her many afflictions and lapses in judgement.

"I swear, it's like the universe revolves around her or something," Paul grunts, annoyance tinging his tone, fingers flexing ever-so-slightly on her hips. "First, she mixes with the Cullens, then she drags Jake into the whole thing, which means by proxy we're getting caught up in her mess. And now she thinks she can drag you in too? No fucking way."

Violet rolled her eyes and pressed her mouth to his. Drawing her closer, Paul kissed her back feverishly. When she pulled back, he let out a groan.

"I'm already in this mess, remember?" Violet deadpanned. "Look, I only chased her away because Edward is a dead end. He won't help me find Luka, and I know he wouldn't tell me how to kill a vampire—"

"Probably because he knows you'd try to test it on him," Paul mused.

"—so I'm thinking of hitting up Alice to see what she's got for me."

Paul's brows furrowed. "Hold on, you didn't tell me this part."

"She found me in the bathroom today," Violet said. "She said that she knew about Luka. Not just, like, that he was taken, or anything. But she knew what he was up to. That she could help me find out more. Or something. She's so weird."

"You're weird," Paul teased. Violet flicked him on the ear. He put his hands up in mock surrender. "Look, I'm glad she's willing to help you. And forgive me for being a little skeptical, but just... be careful, yeah? She might not be doing this out of the kindness of her heart."

"That's what I'm trying to figure out." Violet pursed her lips. "There's no way she isn't doing this out of the kindness of her heart. I mean, she barely even knows me. We're thrown into this whole Victoria bullshit, and suddenly it's like they think we're friends. I get the whole ally-ship under duress thing, but there's something Alice is holding back from me. I swear I'm not being paranoid or maybe I'm reading too much into this, but you know the way she looked at me before she left. Like... I've seen pity, too much of it after Luka's funeral, and I know that's not it. She looked so... sad. Like, genuinely sad. I don't know what she saw, but..."

"You think Luka won't be totally okay when you get him out of wherever shithole he's been put in?" Paul offered.

"Possibly," Violet muttered, a bitter taste in her mouth. "I mean, I don't know. This is the first time I'm so out of my element. I mean I've always had a plan, and I do have one, but it feels more like sticking my hand into the dark and feeling around for something. I barely even know what I'm looking for."

"What can I do?" Paul asked, his concerned gaze burning into Violet's.

She shook her head. "You've done enough, I can't ask you for more. Just... Tell me you're getting enough sleep. Y'know, for school."

Paul rolled his eyes. "You can relax. I am, don't worry. Sam told us all to get all that school shit on lock so we can focus more on this stuff. You can ask Kit, it's why we're so busy most afternoons. We're doing wolf pack study group. Sam lets her pretend to be the alpha for a bit while she makes us get all our work done. It's kind of impressive, actually. She even made Embry and Jared shut up for more than five minutes."

Violet didn't know which one to be surprised about first. The more she thought about it, the more the fact that Sam was actually pretty anal about education seemed more hilarious than the fact that the wolves were subjected to a study group run by Kit. She expected nothing less from the girl.

Violet hums, and Paul smiles a little. She's a little winded by how much it changes his face. For so long the world had said rough, the world said weapon, the world demanded he dive howling into the fray in a feral rage, ready to act at the drop of a hat. Nothing about him was soft, and Violet thought this part of him must be in new bloom.

"Do you know what you want to do after you graduate?" Violet asked, realising she'd never had the chance to open him up to her like this before, even though she's had many opportunities where it'd been just the two of them in a room.

Paul cocks his head in thought. "Honestly, I'm not really sure. I'm pretty much tied to the Rez with all this wolf stuff. I'm not going anywhere anytime soon as long as the pack is here. So it's not like I can go anywhere for school, even if I have the grades and we apply for financial aid. I'll most likely be stuck here. Which isn't really a bad thing, I suppose. New environments set me on edge."

Another fact she hadn't known about him. Violet couldn't imagine living her whole life in Washington. Even though she'd done some questionable things—attempted murder, amongst the many—to land herself back in Forks, after the Luka problem had been settled, she had plans to leave. This town bred too many bad memories she intended to box every single one of them away and never touch them again. Never look back. Go somewhere else. Anywhere else that wasn't on the west coast. Probably New York. Maybe even Europe. She didn't know what she wanted to pursue as a career yet, but she knew what she was good at, and these things she was certain of, she could work with. Like always, she'd figure it out.

"Here," Paul said, suddenly, shifting a little, one hand planted steady on her hip to keep her from toppling over sideways, as he dipped his hand in the pocket of his grey sweatpants. "I wanna show you something."

To her surprise, Paul pulled out a black notebook, which, upon closer inspection, was actually a sketchbook. He let her take it.

Flipping to the first page, Violet lifted her brows. She didn't know that Paul was into art. Come to think of it, she didn't know much about him at all. She knew the observational stuff—his loyalty to his family, that his emotions packed a punch, and he didn't hold back when it came to the people he cared about. His anger held the same intensity as his love, and everything he did, he did fiercely. She knew that he cared about her, and she knew that his family was broken after his father left, but that didn't make them anything less. She knew he struggled with academics, and he was frightening with a football. But she didn't know the fundamental stuff, like what his favourite colour was, or his favourite song. Personal things she blamed herself for not pressing him for. It felt like they were doing all this backwards.

"Holy shit," Violet murmured, the breath knocked out of her lungs as she flicked through the sketchbook, taking her own sweet time scrutinising every excruciating detail painstakingly pencilled into each sketch, black lines converging on paper, and Violet felt the impressions under her fingertips where the pencil had been pressed too hard into the paper, noticed the abrupt breaks where the point must've snapped, the angry strokes and the sharp edges. They were all colourless but they weren't lifeless. Midway, she flicked her eyes up and like magnets her gaze snapped together with Paul's.

A shadow of emotion flickered over his carefully blank expression. His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed, eyes flickering over her face, dredging up her reaction, scrounging up every micro-expression. Was he nervous?

Was the unshakeable, perpetually moody Paul Lahote nervous?

Paul's silence was fraught with an agitated tension. Seemed to suffice as an answer.

"This is incredible," Violet breathed, an indecipherable feeling swelling in her chest.

Most of his drawings captured the wolves. Wolves with their maws wide open, flashing an impressive range of canines. Wolves surging through the forest, a sharp focus in their eyes. Wolves bursting out of the floorboards. Wolves crushing arrows between their jaws, something Violet guessed was blood dripping from their gums. Some were random drawings of random subjects. A night-dark crow picking at a chicken bone. A monarch butterfly with crushed wings on a window sill. Waves crashing over the rocks, kicking up sea spray. Some must've been concocted in his head beforehand. A shark swimming in a broken Jack Daniels bottle. A shipwreck on the moon. Only a handful were of people, frozen in small moments. A doorway peering into Kit's room where she sat, arranging her dinosaur figurines on the floor. Jared shaking water from his head. Sam smiling at someone out of the frame—Violet guessed it'd been directed to Emily.

Enraptured, she couldn't stop looking, couldn't tear her eyes away from his work, so visceral, so soul-crushingly stunning. "You are incredible."

Pink tinging his ears, Paul scratched the back of his neck. "I've never shown anyone these before. You're the first."

Violet's heart stopped.

She didn't know much about art. Luka had been the prodigy in the Korchak household. He mostly drew landscapes, loud, in-your-face art that could've been graffiti work. But she knew that art, to its creator, took a different kind of courage to share. Though they'd been close, Luka had adamantly refused to show Violet his drawings even when she kept prodding, tried out different methods of manipulating him into letting her see his art. It was personal, all these ideas kicking in their heads poured out into existence, an ink-blot piece bled out on paper.

(Luka's sketchbook might be somewhere in his room. Violet made a mental note to go look for it. Something a little less than a memory, but a piece to hold onto, no less. So far, in all the time she'd been home, she hadn't been brave enough to venture into the room. There were days she'd stood outside, staring down the door, half-expecting Luka to come out and submit to her demands to go outside and skate until the sun went down. But she never made it past that. She couldn't even bear to put her hand on the doorknob.)

And now, Paul was showing her his art.

Violet pinned him with a meaningful look. "I didn't know you could do this."

Paul lets out a soft laugh. "It's not something I parade around. I figured if nobody knew, I wouldn't have to show anyone these."

A warm glow like the last rays of a golden sunset filled her chest.

"Have you ever thought about art school?" Violet asked, amazed.

Paul looked a little uncomfortable. "I mean, yeah, at some point, I have. But this is, like, more my own therapy than something I want to pursue as a career. Hell, I'm not even sure about what I want to do with the rest of my life besides serve and fight with my pack, which already limits me from a lot of choices since I'm staying here."

That couldn't be healthy. Born defender or not, everyone should have the option to explore their future outside of what everyone else expected them to do. But Violet understood. She didn't really have a say in what the wolves could or couldn't do.

"I get it," Violet said, her mind hinging on something he'd said. Therapy. She loved that this was his outlet, but she wanted to know how the wolves were dealing with their entire situation. Phasing at sixteen, going through periods of instability in such erratic patterns couldn't have a pretty impact on their growing brains. That, and killing vampires. Even though they were capable, Violet still thought making this a routine must be terrifying. She flicked through more drawings, taking her time to admire each one. Some of them didn't look like they'd been done with pencil. The lines were too thick, some sections too smooth to be shaded in. Art had no value in Violet's life, but it seemed to matter to Paul, and she saw the talent emanating from the page. Stills that looked so life-like. He possessed something special that not many people had.

"I did this one with charcoal," Paul said, tapping the page she was on. It was the top part of a lighthouse. Violet recognised the curve of the cupola, the solar valve, and a dilapidated gallery, and the lantern panes emitting light, artfully smudged rays knifing across the page.

"I used charcoal in art class once, back in middle school," Violet said, the tasteless memory unravelling in her mind. "We had to draw the art room. My sketches were so bad I ended up colouring the entire page black and telling the teacher I'd drawn the room in a black-out. She wasn't impressed. I thought it was pretty creative."

A corner of Paul's lips twitched in amusement. "You are a special breed, Violent."

Violet flicked him an aloof smile. "I know."

"Cold," Paul said, letting out a breathy laugh.

She resumed flipping through the sketchbook, thumbing the pages with more care in her life than she'd handled anything else.

Halfway through, she'd begun to notice something odd.

"Hey," Violet mused, showing him the page. A girl standing on the beach, staring into the horizon, wind snuck through her hair, tossing strands across her face that she itched to tuck behind her ear. "That's me."

Nonplussed, Paul blinked. "You don't mind, do you?"

She flipped to the next page, and there she was again, this time the page had been split into four frames of the same scene, like a stop-motion animation, except more realistic. In the first box, she was lightning on a skateboard, absolutely killing a kickflip, a vicious smile slashed across her lips. The second, she was still mid-air, her beanie coming off her head, hair flying behind her. Third box, she'd wiped out, hitting the ground hard. Fourth, she had her teeth gritted, irritation wired on her features as she sprawled on the ground propped up on her elbows with her board lying turned over by her feet. It looked so real she could hear the sound of the board clattering to the ground in her head.

Violet shook her head. "You know me. I'm a narcissist."

Rolling his eyes, Paul gave her knee a squeeze. The relief dissolving the guarded apprehension in Paul's face almost stabbed a knife through her heart. When he broke out in a wide grin that lit up his dark eyes, there was no stopping the avalanche between her ribs.

It scared her a little, what that meant.

AUTHOR'S NOTE.
I LOVE THEMMMM??????? and yall......... why did alice look at vi like that 👀👀👀 it's all coming together...... my plans are set in motion..........