The Tenth Night

Nathan Chance

Nathan’s lighter sputtered slightly as he ran the edge of his cigarette through the flame. Taking a deep breath in, he let himself relax. The meetings always left him tense – after all, discussing murder with a group of self-confessed psychopaths was one thing; trusting them was another game entirely. He always found himself slightly paranoid after he left the meetings. Every single person that had congregated in the coffee shop was perfectly capable of turning around and stabbing him in the back quite literally and Nathan wasn’t quite ready to die.

Letting a mushroom-cloud of smoke tumble from his lips, Nathan watched the familiar number plate of Veronica Whitby’s car fade into the night. If the group made him uneasy, Veronica turned him into a full-on paranoid recluse. The woman was terrifying and for some reason, she had taken a dislike to Nathan from the very beginning. He knew that he asked for it in ways – it wasn’t his fault that he was a complete jerk at times – but she seemed to bring the worst out in him. There had been more than a few occasions where the two had butted heads during the meetings and Nathan had the oddly worrying feeling that one day it would backfire on him. Veronica made him nervous, more so than any member of the group and he was always glad to see the back of her.

Taking another long drag on the cigarette he now held loosely between his fingers, he recalled the name he had been given. Connor O’Neill, the jerk that had been flirting with Eriko online for a short while. He was already thinking up ideas of what he could do once he got his hands on the idiot. As much as he hated to admit it, he had an affectionate soft spot for the Watanabe twins. He saw them as the younger sisters that he never had. Not that he’d ever let them know that. Being affectionate to people other than himself was not a behaviour that Nathan had programmed into his public persona. This would be a revenge of sorts, because only he was allowed to be a jerk to the group. No one else was allowed to take that spot.

The ashy edge of the cigarette was beginning to get dangerously close to Nathan’s chewed-up fingers. He dropped the butt with a lazy flick and ground it underneath the sole of his shoe.

“Bad habit.”

Nathan jumped visibly, before turning on his heel to face Rae Edison. It always struck Nathan how little she had changed since high school. They had been in the same year, same class and at one point, the same bed. Things had changed since then, of course. She had studied medicine; he had spent his time lazing around learning new chords on his guitar. She had a job, he didn’t. The only similarity they now shared was the desire to rid the world of what they perceived to be scum.

“Yeah, well there’s no point in stopping now,” Nathan muttered darkly, kicking the torn remnants of the cigarette into a nearby drain. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Rae watching him curiously. Her eyes were still as big and hazel as they had been when he had been sixteen and they had spent the day at her father’s boathouse. They had spent the whole day smoking and talking about life. She had told him of her desire to get as far away from her deadbeat father as she possibly could, he had told her where he would take her on holiday when he was famous. Back in those days, they had been love’s young dream. Now she was the doctor who hadn’t ever managed to get away and he was the layabout with no fame whatsoever.

And of course, they were both harbouring a massive secret.

“What?” Nathan asked after a moment, glaring sullenly at Rae. She shrugged, twisting the keys to her car around her finger. She opened her mouth and closed it again after a second, shaking her head slightly as if she were thinking carefully about how to word her next question.

“Do you need a lift?” she asked eventually, throwing a hand carelessly in the direction of the Mercedes. “I can drop you off on the way home.”

Nathan contemplated. Rae was the only one that he trusted absolutely and completely in the group, so there was no reason for him to refuse. Besides, it was pretty damn cold outside and it gave him a chance to see if she had any information on his name that he could use. On the flipside, it meant a whole car journey filled with awkward silences and ‘remember when’ conversations – conversations mainly started by Nathan in a feeble attempt to embarrass the paediatrician.

In the end, the biting wind that was chilling Nathan to the bone made his mind up for him.

“Sure,” he sighed. “Why not?”