𖡼.𖤣𖥧𖡼.𖤣𖥧
"You look ridiculous," Iris greets Xavier as the two walk out of their tents at the same time.
His group's theme is something joker related, so he has on a jester costume with white face makeup, black smudged eyeliner around his eyes, and red paint smudged in a smile around his lips.
"You look hot," he looks Iris's leather, black cat costume up and down.
"Wait until you see the whiskers," she assures seriously just as Enid walks up to her.
"No fraternizing with the enemy," she says very seriously, holding a black face paint marker poised and ready.
"I was working on my smack talk," Iris assures as Enid pushes her back into the tent to draw on her whiskers.
𖡼.𖤣𖥧𖡼.𖤣𖥧
"Wednesday, what time is it?" Iris is not as concerned on how her sister even entered her dorm room in the first place as she blinks against the flashlight Wednesday has pointed in her face.
"Shh," Wednesday underestimated how heavy of a sleeper Yoko is. "We have to go, right now."
And Iris knows she won't get any answers right now, so she blearily follows Wednesday out her room after slipping on the cat slippers Yoko got all of Ophelia Hall as a congratulations gift for winning the Poe Cup.
"Why are you doing this to me?" Iris stumbles through the halls behind Wednesday as she lets her sister lead her blindly throughout the school.
"It's Edgar Allen Poe," Wednesday says.
"Okay."
There's something with a statue and a riddle, and two snaps, and a weird basement, and a picture of their mother, and a bookshelf, and the purple book, and the last thing Iris remembers is someone putting a bag over her head and everything going dark.
𖡼.𖤣𖥧𖡼.𖤣𖥧
"Who dares breech our inner sanctum?" Some dark, brooding voice asks as Iris squints from the light of the some projector shining right in her eyes.
Her wrists are tied tightly behind some chair she's been put in, Wednesday to her left in a similar predicament, already starting to unravel the knots.
"You can take the mask off, Bianca," Iris states what they were both thinking, also starting to dutifully untie herself while still blinking against the harsh light.
She hears Bianca sigh heavily as the whole group of cloaked figures standing in a circle around the girls take off their masks and hoods, and Iris is grateful for a moment when Bianca turns off the projector, but taken aback as their identities are revealed. Xavier? Yoko?!
"Wait, I preferred you with it on," Wednesday snarks easily.
"How'd you get down here?" Xavier interrogates, avoiding all eye contact with Iris.
"Rowan showed us," of course Wednesday had to be cryptic with her answer before darting her eyes to her side. "Left pocket."
Xavier looks around for a moment before stalking over to Wednesday and snatching the drawing she had folded up there.
"I tracked the watermark to the Poe statue," she explains, needing them to revel in her genius. "Then, I solved the riddle."
"Wait," Kent interrupts. "There's a riddle? I thought we just snapped twice."
Even Iris knew there was a riddle.
"Aren't you the brightest in the bunch."
"The Nightshades are an elite social club," Bianca steps in. "Emphasis on elite."
"We have roof parties, campouts, the occasional midnight skinny-dip," Yoko goes off, but then stops when she sees Iris's narrowed glare in her direction.
"It gets pretty wild," Ajax confirms when she stops.
"Wow, do you guys even have a bedtime?" Iris takes the witty line this time, still taken aback Yoko has managed to keep this from her. Xavier too, but she thought she had something with her roommate.
"Last I heard, the Nightshades had been disbanded," Wednesday continues the conversation.
"Yeah, the group kinda lost its charter 30 years ago after some normie kid died," Xavier explains for the two, now allowing his gaze to shift to Iris who was busy having a conversation with her eyes with Yoko.
C'mon, I'm sorry.
You said you were leaving the dorm that night to finish your homework!
I made you one of my signature mojitos!
Did it even mean anything to you?
"But we have a lot of wealthy alumni, so Weems looks the other way as long as no one makes any waves," Davina explains for Wednesday who's still in investigator mind.
"Someone like Rowan?" Wednesday feels she's onto something.
Be mad at Xavier too! Yoko says with a slight head nod as the other keep talking.
Xavier's never lied about me being the only one who's seen him in his unicorn underwear.
"I say way we invite them to pledge," Xavier himself causes Iris to actually start paying attention again.
"What?" Bianca says incredulously.
"What?" Iris says, kinda confused.
"You're a legacy," Xavier explains to Iris, pointing at her parents picture on the wall as if it wasn't the first thing she noticed in her half-asleep haze when she was first dragged down here.
"After the crap they pulled at the Poe cup? No way in hell," Bianca scoffs, but this only confuses Iris more. Isn't the whole point of the game that it doesn't have any rules? "We're talking about not making waves, these two are a whole tsunami."
"We'll save you the trouble," Iris finds herself saying as Bianca goes into another ramble about how much she hates the twins. "We're not interested in joining your little book club."
"You're turning us down?" Yoko stares.
"Can you believe it?" Iris is still feeling snarky with her.
"Untie them," Bianca states.
"We untied ourselves five minutes ago," Wednesday shows the rope she'd been holding in her hand the whole time, and Iris follows her lead, dropping her own at their feet.
Both girls stand at the same time, Wednesday clearly wanting to get out of the room as soon as possible, and Iris knows she just expects her to get the drawing from Xavier's hand. He has it out for her to take, but keeps his grip for a tight for a moment until he realizes Iris isn't getting rid of this cold exterior for now.
"Do you want a matching black eye?" Wednesday is saying as Iris comes up beside her, Kent blocking their way before he looks nervous for a second and easily lets them pass. They're halfway up the stairs, all members watching them leave when Wednesday stops, Iris pausing for a moment too before going on anyway. "It's people like you who give kidnapping a bad name."
a/n:
pov: u try copy and pasting part of one chapter into another but start doing ur chem homework in between and when u come to paste it all u get is "polyatomic ion" and u have to rewrite the whole thing again 😍