CHAPTER EIGHT
the burn is just skin

FOR THE FIFTH TIME SINCE SHE'S SAT DOWN, Briar drags her spoon through her yoghurt granola bowl, white-knuckled and stirring her breakfast half to death, and considers all the efficient ways with which she could kill herself.

Upon her forehead, her scar blazes, the skin of her forehead prickling as though sunburnt, the scorching sun glowering down upon her, God's glaring eye bearing witness to the massacre Briar has been plotting since she'd sat down. The scar itself isn't anything remarkable, a sliver of silver scar tissue in the lucky shape of a number 7 just beneath her hairline, but her mother's always been inclined toward arcane symbolism. Her mother had called it God's promise, a Mark of Cain, or whatever biblical bullshit she'd been into before she swivelled her obsession toward incense and crystals and divining meaning from astrological movements in space. The Hebrew word for mark, א֔וֹת, could mean a sign, omen, warning, remembrance, motion, gesture, agreement, miracle, wonder, or, most commonly, a letter. After Cain had murdered Abel in cold blood, God had condemned him to wander the land, never to find rest beneath the ground, and upon his head placed the scar that would prevent his death. And as such, if anyone killed Cain, they would suffer vengeance sevenfold.

This, Briar does not see as punishment.

As much as Briar disputes the existence of God for the very reason that she's still stuck in North Carolina—or what JJ likes to call America's steaming orifice—a small part of her can acknowledge that she's been undoubtedly blessed with the power of survival. Like Cain, God wouldn't let anything touch her. Not ailment or death or the shameful mistake of light blue skinny jeans. But unlike Cain, Briar hasn't killed her brother. Yet. Instead, she's cursed to wander the streets of Kildare Island contemplating fratricide.

At this point, Briar knows she's beaten this metaphor to death, but there has never been a time she's felt more aligned with biblical events than when she's with Topper.

At mid-morning, the Island Club is bustling with brunch-gossip and rich housewives with nothing better to do except sip on bottomless margaritas and pretend to eat their criminally overpriced avocado toast. Sunlight stains the wooden deck, warming the cushioned seats and gleaming glasses. In truth, Briar doesn't care enough to disparage the Island Club as much as Kiara does, even if it is stuffed to the brim with snooty designer sunglasses, Ralph Lauren polos and white boat shoes. They serve a decent ceviche, and JJ sometimes pulled odd shifts here, which meant that he often snuck her beers under the table if she slipped him a fiver. Granted, what she wouldn't give, this temperate morning of blue-skies and free-flow coffee, to raze this place to the ground as she flicks her cool gaze up to meet Topper's loathsome glower across the table.

"I'm really glad," Paul Thornton says, sawing at the sausages in his full English Breakfast with more enthusiasm than warranted, "you two could make it to breakfast with your old man on this lovely morning."

While Topper stares intently into his cup of coffee, Briar rolls her eyes and taps two fingers to her temple, miming blowing her brains out over the late breakfast that her father had invited both Briar and Topper to. He'd called it father-children bonding time, but even though the family therapist is missing from their sad ensemble, Briar knows a thinly veiled intervention when she sees one.

"I'm in hell," Briar drawls, tossing her spoon to the side of her bowl and crossing her arms over her chest. "I must've died in my sleep last night. That's the only explanation."

"You're so dramatic," Topper scoffs, shaking his head. "You just have to make everything about yourself."

"Oh, because you don't?"

"You know damn well you're the reason why this meeting is even happening—you and your whore of a mother."

Rage slashes through Briar, filling her veins with lightning, white-hot and charged to strike. Balling her hands into fists to keep from hurling the entire bottle of San Pellegrino at him, she slants Topper an incinerating glare, teeth bared in a malicious snarl, her bottom lip throbbing as the stitches pull taut, stretched to the breaking point, and digs her fingernails into the heel of her palm. Pain pricks at her hands, and she feels blood welling in the crescents of her nails. Short of clawing Topper's smug face off, there's nothing much Briar can do in such a public setting except keep score.

"Yeah," Briar muses, venom dripping from her teeth, her tongue a razor on a pendulum, swinging and swinging and swinging, not caring whose skin it's slashing away at, "let's not forget your cuck of a Mom. Like mother like son. Don't pretend you're not in this, too."

Topper's nostrils flare. Red heat flushes up his neck, tinging his ears a comical crimson, but credit to him for staying in his seat, even though Briar can read the tension in his shoulders, how badly he wants to hit her. Good, she thinks, blood-spill on the Island Club. And she can picture it, too, how it all goes down: lunging across the table and raking her nails down Topper's face, gouging out his eyes with her thumbs, the blood and pulp slicking her wrists. Topper, screaming names at her, hand fisting her ponytail and slamming her head against the railing over and over until her skull cracks and caves in, brains and matter splattered across the polished deck.

"Okay, enough!" Paul interjects, exasperation cinching his expression. "I didn't break you two here to fight. I want to talk about... us. As a family."

"You mean the family you broke into pieces?" Briar snaps in a voice made of iron.

Even Topper has nothing to say to that, as they both flick their disdainful gazes toward their father, who's massaging his temples in frustration, as if he wasn't the one who'd called this meeting into effect. A meeting in a very public place, as if a neutral setting would change anything. As if Briar's afraid of causing an explosive commotion in front of an audience and spoiling the atmosphere just to make a point. Which, in retrospect, just goes to show how well Paul Thornton actually knows his daughter. His daughter, the head cheerleader, the attention-seeker, the hell-bent hell-hound of a hell-raiser. Vindictive and vexatious as her mother, the villain of the Thorntons' story. There is no crowd in the world Briar would shy away from.

"Briar, please," Paul sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose and letting out a slow exhale. "Look, I just wanted to talk about what went down a few days ago. I know you told Topper, when I specifically asked you not to—"

"About how you're fucking my Mom again?" Briar picks at her nails, flippant, callous. "Of course, it's my fault for not keeping your sex scandal from your son, and not, y'know, any reflection of the actual lying, cheating scumbag who somehow wormed his way back into our house."

"Could you not be so crass?" Paul says, irritation blazing under his tone. "And keep your voice down. We don't need the entire Figure Eight knowing our family business. Anyway, I would just like to clear the air between us. Nothing's going to change, Topper, as I've said to you."

Topper's jaw tightens, and he casts his gaze away from their father, arms crossed over his chest, his eggs Benedict only half eaten.

"I wanted to apologise," Paul says, his voice haggard with exhaustion, as if the word itself took everything in him to utter, as if the shape of it weighed him down, which made Briar want to regurgitate the one mouthful of granola she'd taken before her appetite left her, "for my actions. For any confusion that I might've caused. It was a slip of judgement on my account—"

"Mom put you up to this, didn't she?" Topper deadpans, shaking his head in pure disbelief. "God, Dad, you are so predictable."

Briar lifts her glass of water and takes a long sip. "I'm more surprised you weren't kicked out on the street."

"I understand that there was an altercation, or an argument of sorts—"

Briar barks out a sharp laugh. "Oh, please, he barely touched me."

"Hey, I think you got a little something on your face," Topper says, tapping his lip as a reminder of his wrath, his signet ring flashing in the light, now clean of her blood. He says this so nonchalantly, so aloof with casual indifference, that Briar almost misses the look in his eyes, lambent with malevolent mirth.

Frustration creases her father's face.

"This feud—this nastiness between you two needs to stop! You're siblings. You need to stop acting like you're mortal enemies. Or do we have to attend another family therapy session to sort this out?"

At the same time Topper rolls his eyes, Briar lets out a scathing scoff—because on what authority is her father actually speaking on? He's very clearly pulling the patriarch card, but there's no power behind it.

They'd gone to family therapy once, back when Briar had first moved to Figure Eight and her father figured he'd nip the problem in the bud before another case of that violent summer in the swimming pool could begin now that Topper was much bigger and Briar was much angrier. Granted, that neoplasm of anger's been sitting inside Briar since she could remember, a blight that begun to fill the space of her body, growing as she aged out of childhood into teenage adolescence. Then when she moved to Figure Eight, malignant and metastasising until she could no longer tell where it ended and she began, or if she's just a whole body of scourge waiting for someone to infect.

"Don't sweat it, it's just a scratch," Briar muses, leaning forward and bracing her arms against the table, her gaze cutting through him, the scar on her forehead tingling. "But imagine what it must sound like to the Ivy Leagues—or even any state college—to know their applicant assaulted someone in the lower class on the merit of class discrimination?"

Eyes narrowed, Topper clenches his jaw, the realisation slowly dawning on him. The kegger, John B's bloodied face in the shallows, the sadistic rage that'd charged the air that night. It's all coming back to him, and Briar can see him weighing the meaning in her words, the intention behind the venom. She has half a mind to pull her phone out and put the video on full blast. Topper's future imploding. No amount of money or family affluence can buy him out of the rut Briar is going to bury her brother in. And though she might not rest beneath the ground after she kills him, anyone who touches her would feel her vengeance sevenfold.

This is no punishment.

This is true power.

Briar's grin glows, all menace and mirth, a baring of teeth. "I'd think twice about talking smack about my friends, considering the spectacle you made of yourself that night. Quite unbecoming of Judge Holden's coveted grandson. Don't you think?"

Topper purses his lips. "No one will testify against me. Besides, that dog threw the first punch. There were at least fifty witnesses."

Briar laughs, a crude and horrible thing. "What's eye witness testimony against concrete evidence?"

Thunderous rage distorts Topper's face, flushing dark red, the same murderous expression he bore when he'd hit her, as if he would do it again in broad daylight. He knows he's cooked, even if he doesn't know what Briar has, exactly.

Paul glances between them. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Oh, you know," Briar hums, adrenaline ripping through her veins with such trembling fury. "Us kids and our phones, can't go a moment without trying to capture it."

Briar stands and conveniently knocks over her bowl of granola into Topper's lap, spilling its contents down his legs. The bowl clatters to the ground, and Topper's vicious curse and the ensuing scramble to clean himself up makes Briar smirk, but even as she walks away from the Island Club, all eyes on her while she flounces out of the establishment with her head held high, the skirt of her blue sundress flipping, she's still trembling with wrath.

✷

THE WRECK IS THE FIRST PLACE BRIAR GOES, even if she doesn't mean to. Somehow, the blind odyssey of her feet had taken her down the familiar path she'd worn into the soles of her shoes, the smell of fries and boiled seafood engulfing her as she pushes open the glass doors. The cool gust of indoor air-conditioning soothes her hot skin, still blistering from the walk and the residual anger of this morning's events. Like the needle of a compass, her heart ticks toward the counter, but her gaze lands on some unknown part-timer wiping down the surface in the place where Kiara usually stood.

"If you're looking for Kiara, she's with the Pogues," the deep, ever-malcontented drawl of Kiara's father's voice at Briar's shoulder draws her attention. When she spins around to face him, his solemn expression doesn't shift. He stands with his arms crossed over his chest, cocking his head toward the main entrance. "Left her shift midway. Surprised you're not with them, too."

"Yeah, well," Briar says, tight smile tugging at her lips, "not really my crowd. I hang out with Kiara. They're just... there."

Mr Carrera lets out a disgruntled grunt. "Wish Kiara had that same mentality."

"You could always make her pull more shifts here," Briar suggests, dragging her finger along the countertop. Selfishly, she knows she could keep better track of Kiara this way, but the outcome is just as unlikely as the conversation, in which she can already foresee Kiara throwing a fit and threatening to run away if her parents ever got in the way of her summer of running buck-wild and half savage with the no-good boys of Pogue town. Besides, there's the mystery of the compass, now, whatever that means.

Kiara's father lets out another grunt, already turned back to the cashier, where he's sorting bills and such, and already forgetting all about Briar in favour of more adult problems. In turn, Briar salutes him behind his back, steals a lollipop from the little bowl on the counter and heads straight to the chateau.

Eventually, the sound of loose gravel crunching beneath her white converse pulls her into a different skin—one where she's more cognisant of the way she glitters in the midst of the rough neighbourhood. Not that she's never noticed how she stood out from the other kids the way most cheerleaders seized command of a room, too used to attention not to demand it everywhere she went. In the caste of Figure Eight, where everyone gleamed in a way—from Tiffany diamonds and Patek Philippes to the plastic cast of their store-bought, botox-doused skin—Briar shone in the manner of glitter and guts, ponytail flicking, terrifying for the fact that she could do anything she wanted, and still keep her fearless tribe of bubblegum-popping, skirt-flashing, savage girls who could flip and fly through the air as and when they wanted. She was young and fierce and bored, and they wanted her. Where she sat, comfortable on the top of the pyramid, she didn't need to worry about image or high society politics, and she cared even less for debutante balls and small town gossip.

Briar had one foot in this world, and her other blasted through the wall into every other world. She could go anywhere, be anything, and they wouldn't stop her because they knew—she would be the one to get out of this sinking town. Whether by route of an unquestionable cheer scholarship, tumbling and soaring her way into any of the UCs on the West Coast, or by sheer will, tear her way through the interstate with claws and teeth.

In the Cut, though, Briar grew wary of the stares from the rugged boys perched on their overgrown lawns. She felt overexposed, glittering now in a way that made her stand apart from the people of this side of town. She wasn't one of them—this much was clear—she was too underworked, polished, clean except for the scars on her hands and knees, the mark on her forehead burning like a target. Here, Briar shone in the way of a beacon, an outsider. Too brash and careless for Figure Eight, too bored and seasoned to be a seasonal tourist event, too shiny to be a Pogue. What was she, then? She keeps her head high, slips her white-rimmed cat-eye sunglasses over her eyes, and struts down the beaten path that bleeds into a dirt road, red dust blowing off the top.

Before long, she's strolling up to John B's chateau, its rundown roof and peeling paint far more inviting than her own house. She hears JJ's voice before she sees them, sitting out on the porch, heated and bellowing through the mesh veil wrapped around the porch to keep the bugs out.

"It's a heavy vibe right now—"

The screen door bursts open as Briar strides in, cutting off JJ's train of thought.

"About time!" JJ snarks, scowling, white-knuckling the vape in his hand. "Where the hell were you?"

"Chill, man," Briar drawls, her mood thundering across her face. "I was at brunch with Topper and my Dad."

Kiara lets out a sympathetic whistle. "You got ambushed?"

"Big time," Briar says, collapsing into the dust-caked sofa beside Pope, and smoothing out her tennis skirt over her toned thighs. "What's he going on about?"

"Long story," Pope sighs.

"Square groupers," says JJ, eyes wide, gesticulating wildly, red-faced and frothing at the mouth, his rabid retelling wiring the tension in the air, "I'm telling you, there's something fucking dark happening. You remember Scooter? The dead body? And the motel? I'm telling you, we walked right into something cursed—"

"JJ and John B went to check in on Scooter's wife," Pope says, much more helpfully, "and, apparently, there were actual thugs looking for the compass. Big John's compass."

"No way," Briar says, grinning, a darkness flickering to life. "Now this is some interesting shit."

"You should've seen her, Thorny," JJ says, manic now, his voice heavy. "They beat the shit out of Miss Lana. Trashed her house. I'm telling you, this is beyond fucked up."

"Why would they want the compass?" Kiara says, brows scrunched.

"It's a piece of shit," Pope says, incredulous. "You couldn't pawn it off for five bucks if you wanted to. No offense, John B, I know it's, like, in your family—"

Briar shares a glance with Kiara. "Just because something isn't worth any money doesn't mean that it's not instrumental. Your house key is just brass, but it's also the way home."

"The office," says John B, abruptly, the epiphany tunnelling his vision.

They look at him, but before anyone can say anything, he's already beelining for the front door, carving a warpath through his house toward the aforementioned study, the others tripping over their own feet to trail behind him. Briar swipes her phone from the sofa, where it fell out of the waistband of her tennis skirt. She turns to follow the others, but a flash of metallic black catches her eye. The gun. She swipes it off the arm of the sofa where it'd been left, an afterthought. Last one in the single file line they'd shuttled into, Briar enters the house.

Amid their jabbering, she watches the back of Kiara's head, notes the sun-bleached streaks in her curly hair, the colourful flash of her friendship bracelets knotted around her wrist as her arms swing by her sides in the careless and uncouth the way Briar's Mom hates. Everything that burned under her skin from this morning, she wants to tell Kiara, to dissect the breakfast with her useless father and Topper's insolence, but for that to happen, she has to get Kiara alone, but nowadays, Kiara's never alone. It's such an inconvenience.

The wood-splintering sound of John B breaking into his father's forbidden study draws Briar back into the present, and they spill in after him, the reek of old pages and musty wood and rank varnish flooding her senses. It's clear that the study has been left untouched for years. Briar drags a finger over the surface of a shelf and it comes away caked in dust. She flicks it off and inspects the cramped room, the manic explosion of John B's father's brain splayed out before them. Books and papers clutter every surface, stacked upon desks and shoved into overflowing drawers. Pictures are tacked to the walls amid vision boards and post-it notes. Research into the Royal Merchant, as John B has pre-empted. Briar never thought sunken treasure could contain this much lore, but here it is, packed into one tiny room, rife with obsession.

John B slams a cork board filled with notes and old photographs onto a stack of papers. "This was the original owner. Right here." He taps the greyscale photo of a sea captain with a thick white moustache emphatically.

The compass isn't nothing.

As they make sense of the board, following the dates scrawled in John B's father's handwriting, the turnover rate at which the compass changed hands boils down to a fine point.

Briar lets out a sharp laugh as the same thought seems to occur to them at the same time.

"Hm," JJ hums, sardonically, "it seems like there's a reoccurring theme here."

"Yeah," deadpans Pope, "you have a death compass."

"I do not."

"You think you're the first person to assume he can defy ancient lore?" Briar drawls, her voice dark as an omen, her smile a horrid, serpentine thing. Outside, the rooster crows on and on and on. "It's all there. You hold onto that cursed thing, you'll be dead within the year."

"Does that mean you're out?" John B challenges, lifting a brow.

"Hell no," Briar says, grinning. "I'm all in."

They find the compartment in the back of the compass, JJ and Pope's anxious heckling bouncing off John B's skin as if it were made of rubber. The moment John B takes the compass apart, the game changes. Etched into the brass face of the compartment is the word Redfield. The weird, angular R, John B points out, is his father's signature. Briar picks up the cork board. She taps a nail to the scrap of paper scribbled "Robert Q. Routledge" and cross-matches it with the inscription.

Swiftly, they move onto what Redfield can possibly mean. An anagram, Pope guesses, but as they work through the possibilities, JJ being completely unhelpful and Kiara scrambling and Pope's mind whirring as he scribbles down his guesses, John B drifts over to the window at the rumble of an engine. Briar glances over his shoulder.

Through the blinds, through the dust-caked pane, they watch as a black car with a reinforced grating swings into view. John B pales—she can only guess what this means for them.

"Told you," Briar says, slightly smug. "Dead within the year."

"Guys," John B calls, transfixed. When nobody responds, he tries again, barking, "Guys! Somebody's here!"

That catches their attention.

"Is that them?" Kiara's voice trembles, panic clawing at her throat, the temperature in the air dropping as alarm flickers across their faces. "Is that them?"

"John B, man I told you—"

"Hey, hey, look at me." John B crosses over to JJ, jabbing a finger in his face as he catches him by the collar and backs him into the wall to contain JJ's spiral. "Where's the gun?"

"Gun?" JJ echoes, confused and delirious with fear for a moment. "I can't—"

Briar draws the gun from her waistband.

"It's here." She presses it into John B's hand. "It was on the porch."

He gives her a terse nod, fingers tightening around the barrel.

"ROUTLEDGE!" Comes the raging roar from somewhere closer to the entrance, heavy footsteps thudding against the hardwood floor. "Where you at, boy?"

Outside the study, the clatter and clamour of someone rummaging through the house, overturning tables, cutlery and books and newspapers crashing to the ground draws closer and closer with each step. The study explodes into motion, a frenzy of hands and papers flying, Pope and JJ working the window—their only means of escape now that the front door was out of the question—Briar and Kiara searching the drawers for something to unstick sliding mechanism. Kiara procures a metal file from one of the drawers and pushes JJ back to cut through the paint sealing the window off. Back pressed against the door, John B's eyes are shut, the gun clasped between his hands, drawn and ready to fire. Briar has to wonder if he even knows how to use it. If he's taken the safety off before.

On the other side of the door, the voices ring through the corridor. Pope and John B raise their fingers to their lips, and the rest of them fall silent.

Then the knob jimmies, meeting resistance. One of the intruders pounds against the door.

"You better not be in there!"

Briar's heart jams against her throat as the door shakes with a dreadful judder, the sound of a body flinging against the wood echoing through the room with a deafening reverb.

As the door caves, splinters exploding off the hinges, Briar gives the window a hard tug, and it slides up with more force than intended. She dives through first, landing on the grass in a forward roll. Blood turned to slush, she reaches back to help Kiara clamber over the sill, before dragging her over to the first hiding spot she can find.

The chicken coop is disgusting, but Briar doesn't think dying is any better, so she sucks it up and crawls through the small entrance, hands and knees sinking into moist dirt and chicken filth. Breathing shallowly against the frantic flutter of wings and indignant clucking, Briar crawls until she hits the back of the coop, the furthest end from the entrance where the others are just coming through now. Kiara instantly slides into place beside Briar, her tremorous breaths filling the tense silence.

The boys pack close, JJ nearly landing in Briar's lap face-first when he scrambles into the cramped hiding space. He doesn't even make a joke of it, not even a single devious look. That's how Briar knows it's bad. That's how Briar knows JJ is truly afraid. And that, alone, sends a shard of icy fear lancing through her chest.

Even from here, they can hear the banging and crashing of the two men violently overturning the Chateau. They'd beat someone half to death just hours prior, and the vigour with which they stormed through the house, wreaking destruction with every step, is only testament to what they'd do if they ever found them.

Then they watch, through the slits in the planks of wood, as the two men come spilling out of the backdoor, carrying boxes of Big John's research and loading the trunk of their car with it.

At that moment, the rooster squawks in incessant, territorial rage, and Briar's body runs cold as one of the scruffier-looking men turns his attention on the coop, her eyes stuck on the gun in his hand. She glances back and catches John B's eye, and he seems to read the line of questioning in her flinty stare. He holds the gun up silently.

"Oh my God," Kiara sobs. "Oh my God."

Briar wraps her arms around Kiara, pulling her shaking body in, smothering Kiara's fear in the juncture between her neck and her shoulder.

He's drawing closer, eyes narrowed, and it feels as if the walls of the coop have disappeared as he raises his gun.

JJ pounces on the rooster, and it clucks louder. Then, with a sharp jerk, he snaps its skinny neck, the sickening crunch of bone breaking muted between his firm grip.

Silence falls upon them like a guillotine. Briar feels John B shifting on the other side of Kiara, and watches as Kiara reaches a hand back and grasps John B's hand. Something in her gut sours at the wretched sight, the hot swill of some dark emotion she can't bring herself to name searing up her insides, and she digs her fingers into Kiara's shoulders before she even realises she's even doing it, hard enough for her to feel it, but not hard enough to bruise.

"Ratter!" The other hitman shouts. "What the hell are you doing? Let's go!"

Spell-broken from his suspicion, Ratter blinks. He eyes the coop for a long moment before he backs away.

Kiara sags against Briar, sinking into the cradle of her embrace, shaking so badly Briar can feel the tremors right through to her bones. Briar shuts her eyes, relief flooding her bloodstream as she hears the sound of a car door slamming shut. Even when the screech of the cars pulling off the property rings through the air, neither of them move. In the crackling silence, perforated by Pope's ragged breathing, JJ muttering vicious curses under his breath, the soft thump of John B's head falling back against the wall, Kiara's pitiful whimpers, and the beginnings of Briar's soft but manic laugh bubbling uncontrollably from her chest, the gravity of their situation begins to sink in.

Death compass indeed, Briar thinks, and laughs even harder, clinging onto Kiara more for support now, more to anchor herself before she falls apart, unravelling at the seams. They're all staring at her now, JJ with a bewildered look and parted lips, John B with a flat glare, Pope with wide eyes, and Kiara with... with something akin to fear. But they don't let go of each other.

They sit like this for what feels like hours, the sound of their heartbeats hammering against her ears, Kiara's breath against her collarbone, her hair tickling her face, clinging on so tight it feels as though they might fuse into one person.

AUTHOR'S NOTE.
agh sorry it's been so long. i really missed briar and i want to get into the dynamics of briar x jj x kie sooo bad BUT we must WAIT we must hold onto hope we must be patient. i'm anything but patient tho :')

✷

SUNDRESS ── jj maybank / kiara carrera
Chapter Eight,   THE BURN IS JUST SKIN.
⚓️          S1.02: THE LUCKY COMPASS