The Rules Read Online Free PDF Page A

the generators, the
whoosh
and rush of the water. An owl singing to prey.
Come out, come out, wherever you are.
    And the guitar. Whoever was playing it had skills. No wonder Hiro’s band had been signed to a label.
    Jacob started to walk on.
    Then something cold and sharp slid into his back, pushing out all the breath in his body.
    He didn’t feel the shells stipple his face as he fell forward, hard. Didn’t feel his nose breaking. Didn’t feel the serrated hunting knife being yanked out and thrust back in again.
    Out.
    In.
    Out.
    In.
    Didn’t feel the blood spilling into his lungs, filling them like water balloons, pouring into his esophagus.
    He wouldn’t feel anything ever again.

CRIME SCENE
    BETH’S RULE #1: Be nice. Or at least appear to be.
    “This is
it
?” Thea said anxiously as Beth led the way to the door of the warehouse. Thea kept gathering up her ponytail and stroking it like a cat. “I thought we were going to some kind of mansion.”
    “Where would be the fun in that?” Beth grinned at the glittery, glow-in-the-dark sign August had placed above the door: INFERNO: ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO ENTER HERE. Nice touch.
    At first it hurt Beth’s feelings when August had told her that he was going to plan the hunt alone. It was the very last one, ever. She’d helped him throw four amazing hunts and God knew how many smaller parties since forming the Pact, and she’d been looking forward to really pulling out all the stops on this one. She knew he wanted to make it super scary (although it would be hard to top Halloween) and she’d been creating storyboards and flow charts of clues for months. But then just after spring break, he’d told her he wanted her to have a chance to play. In all the time they’d known each other, she had never gotten to be a guest. So he was going to run this one on his own.
    “This is payback,” he’d said sweetly, and she couldn’t seem to convince him otherwise. She liked playing hostess. In fact, being just a guest was a sort of demotion.
    Then he reminded her that if she was a scavenger hunt contestant, he could pair her up with Larson Jones and offer a prize such as a fully crewed getaway—sailors, steward, cook—on the DeYoung yacht,
Guilty Pleasure.
That had caught her off guard. She hadn’t realized he’d noticed that she’d been crushing on Larson. What
else
had he noticed?
    “I don’t like stuff like this,” Thea said anxiously. “I hate horror movies and scary rides and those walk-through haunted houses.”
    “This will be totally different,” Beth promised, although she had no idea if that was true. She
did
know August had specifically asked her to get Thea Wade to the party. Jacob Stein had a crush on her and August wanted something from Jacob. To her consternation, August wouldn’t tell Beth what it was. It probably had something to do with motorcycles, since Jacob worked at the local motorcycle dealership.
    “Maybe I’m getting something for
you
at the biker store,” August had told Beth, and Beth had smiled her sweetest smile.
    Not for the first time, she wondered if he suspected that for the last three months, she had been laying the groundwork for Life after August. She assumed he would be good for using his parents’ connections to get her into the college of her choice—that being Oberlin—and maybe there’d be one more great summer, but after that, he’d be going away to college and their bond would weaken. It was inevitable.
    She had to be practical and brutally honest with herself. People were going to pretend to like August for the rest of his life because he was rich and his family was important, and for the rest of
her
life, she might have to continue to pretend to like people like him. It all depended on how much friendship from other people she could purchase in the time allotted. So while she had the reputation of being August’s friend, she had to line up social clout for senior year. Beth hoped he understood.
    There were