Page 72 of Deadly Little Scandals

Lily held out her hand, palm up, and after a second’s delay, Victoria handed over the scissors.

“It’s just hair,” Lily said, bringing the scissors up.

Before I could say a word, she’d grabbed a chunk of her blond hair and sheared it off at the chin.

’m out! Are you okay? I didn’t step on you too hard, did I? I tried not to step on you too hard.”

“I’m fine, Sadie-Grace. Now go.”

“I’m not leaving you.”

“You have to. I have no idea where we are, but you need to be somewhere else when she gets back.”

“I could try to find help?”

“Yes. Justgo.”

looked slowly from the long chunk of hair on the floor to Lily, who was still staring Victoria down.

“Hope,” Victoria said. “A little help here?”

Hope stepped forward and took the scissors from Lily’s hands.

“She’s good with hair,” I heard a White Glove whisper beside me. “Really good.”

As I watched Hope, with herappreciation for chaos, assessing the damage Lily had wreaked, I thought back to the picture in the dossier Campbell had shown me. To Summer.

I tried to imagine what it would feel like to be Hope, to have lost a sister.

Ten minutes later, Lily was sporting a chin-length bob.

“My work here is done,” Hope declared. She snipped the scissors in the air to accentuate the point.

I let myself look at Lily. The bob didn’t look bad at all. Mostly, it lookeddifferent, which I deeply suspected, for Lily, was the point.

As the lot of us got dressed again and headed for the main house—and the party—I thought back to the night at Arcadia, when Campbell and I had found three keys waiting for us at the valet stand. The White Gloves had already cut Lily once.

But that was before we’d caught her father with Ana in the woods. Before her family had fallen apart. Before she’d broken up with Walker and fearlessly taken a chunk out of her own hair.

Pick her,I thought.She needs this more than I do, more than Sadie-Grace, maybe even more than Campbell. Pick her.

Stepping into the foyer, I found myself looking automatically for Nick. Per our plan, he was supposed to meet me here. I would play the role of his escort. His date. We’d mingle. We’d chitchat.

We’d make sarcastic comments about the evils of mingling and chitchat.

But Nick was nowhere to be seen.Where is he?I tried and failed to push down the urge to get out my phone. The screen informed me that I had a missed call and a text: three words, which was practically a novel, considering Nick’s views on texting.

Something came up.

He didn’t say what that something was.It doesn’t matter,I told myself. I didn’t need him here to hold my hand.

To hold me.

The whole point of this party was creating an opportunity for Ana to show up and taking advantage of the opportunity to talk to her if she did. That would be easier without Nick along.

I’m glad something came up.I’d halfway convinced myself of that when my grandmother saw me from across the room. She must not have spotted Lily yet, because she eyed my side bang and crossed the open floor plan to talk to me.

“Sawyer, might I have a word?”