Chapter 15
Once back in my room, I set up the trap using fishing nylon and fish hooks at an estimated eye level for men over six feet, hanging from the ceiling.
Then I placed the mousetrap on top of my underwear in my top drawer, and with my father’s voice echoing in my mind, saying, “Don’t fall into your own trap.
” So I drew a Nirvana smiley face on my hand with my ink pen to remind me that eye-plucking fish hooks were hanging on the other side of my door.
It was after midday by the time I left my room for the third time that day, and I paused again outside of Lev’s room and knew he wasn’t there this time.
There was a distinct empty shell feeling in this building, and I took the opportunity to run up to the next level to search for any sign of life.
Nothing. Empty. But it was the middle of the day, so most students would be somewhere having lunch with friends.
Then I climbed the next flight of stairs to the third level to see if Mila was in her room.
My thighs ached a little from far too much stair climbing in one day, and I remembered that I had a tube of Deep Heat muscle balm in my suitcase somewhere.
I swore I packed it, but I couldn’t remember unpacking it.
Maybe it was caught up in other things, or maybe I unpacked my bags so quickly and shoved my clothes in the drawers that I hadn’t noticed the tube.
When I glanced up from rubbing my thigh, I caught someone watching me through the crack in an open door. It was only for a second before they slammed the door shut, but it felt as though they were inspecting me as I stood at the top of the stairs.
I paused at their door, tempted to knock and introduce myself. They might be recluses who struggled to make friends, so it might be helpful for me to approach them. I tapped on number 18. “Hi,” I said, in case they were shy. “I live in Morgana too.”
I let a few seconds go by before stepping away from number 18 and knocking on Mila’s door, next number 20. Her room was empty. No one home, but I could hear rustling in number 18 and knocked again as I passed, and they still didn’t answer.
That’s okay, they might be doing something private, but before going back downstairs, I stood at the window facing the mountains and saw the outline of a castle similar to Ashthorn, and wondered who lived there.
The squeak of a door opened behind me urged me to look back, only for the person inside number 18 to shut the door before I had the chance to say anything, let alone see them.
Turning my back, I hurried down the stairs, my footsteps echoing, sending a shiver down my spine.
Once outside Morgana’s front, I felt the creepy sensation that someone was watching me, so I glanced up at the third floor.
Sure enough, a figure was there. They moved away as soon as I saw them, but it chilled me.
The thing was... if they were the ones who broke into my room, they might get a nasty shock if they did it again.
I arrived at the bus stop where I first met Mila, and five minutes later, an empty bus showed up. I smiled at the bored-looking driver in his fifties, guessing he was around that age. It had become interesting to me how staff manage to live out here, so far from their families.
“I bet you’ll look forward to all of the students arriving?” I asked him as I took a seat two rows behind.
Yes and no. I like the quiet, but they say a trainload is expected tomorrow,” he said as he shifted the bus into gear and it lumbered forward before picking up speed.
“Not today?” I questioned, slightly disappointed.
He shrugged his rounded shoulders, “Something to do with the police investigation.”
“Yeah, they’ve got the forensic scientists in there at the moment,” I felt as though I had inside knowledge, but he shrugged again as if that wasn’t surprising.
“We’re going past there in about five minutes, if you haven’t already had a look,” he explained, and I was unsure as to what he meant.
“The crime scene?” I pressed to clarify. “The carriages?”
“I’ll point them out as we turn the corner. They’ve been parked in the yard,” he explained, “with campus officers guarding them.”
The bus curved through the university gardens, steeping the bus in shadow from the overhanging trees with flickers of bright sunlight as we passed under small spaces between the branches.
The gardens were a mix of wild forest with cultivated gardens and, of course, Ashthorn’s strange taste in art and statues hidden within.
I’d barely explored a fraction of the garden, going by the campus map, and I’d find it a soothing place to relax in while studying on a sunny day.
“There,” the bus driver pointed to the left as we turned to the right, and I got a glimpse of the trainyard with two carriages, one behind the other, resting outside.
Orange police tape strung around them, and two people in full plastic protective gear were examining something on the stairs of one carriage.
It was only a few seconds, but I saw enough, and the rumor became a reality, and it was close to the bone. There were many students on that train, so someone must know something. “Do you know any details of the crime?”
He shrugged as he slowed the bus down to pull up at a bus stop where two guys in white tennis gear boarded. “A body found is all I know,” the bus driver stated. “There are rumors that are unwise to delve into, but all I know is that the death is suspicious.”
He drove to the Sports School, and the forest fell away, replaced by massive strips of green sports fields and a massive indoor stadium.
The tennis guys got off here, and I caught a glimpse of tennis courts as the bus drove right up to the stadium, where another bus stop was to pick up five guys with basketballs in their arms.
“Fuck, this place was weird,” I mumbled quietly so no one could hear. It’ll be easier to build a university on flat land in a city, but no, they built it on the side of a mountain in the wilderness.
The bus began to ascend up a winding road lined with classroom buildings partially hidden in trees, and I checked my map to find that I was in the Science School – botany, biology, physics, math, etc.
The bus stopped twice for students and was half full as it wound further up the side of the tree-covered hill into an area lined with fancy frat and sorority houses.
As the bus stopped to let off students, I spotted the peak of the castle rising from the trees, and as the bus moved past, I could see it clearly, and I was right, it was a mini, less palatial version of Ashthorn.
More interestingly, I saw the name Ludworth on a plaque erected on the stones, then The Lud on a hand-painted sign in the window. Death Becomes You.
I rolled my eyes at their cringey sign, then caught a dark-haired man sitting on a beach chair with his head down, scrolling on his phone. The older Warwick brother, Nicolae, is sitting like a king on his throne. At least I knew where they lived.
Anger broiled so much through my body that I found it difficult to stay still as the bus traveled out of the residential area and back into the school.
I was tempted to jump off at the next stop and confront that man, but I had no proof that the Warwicks stole it in the first place, hence I needed to break in on the quiet and search the building.
But I hadn’t imagined their frat house being so large. It’ll take me an age to search that place. I estimated by what I could see that it had maybe ten rooms, perhaps more. My heart sank. This was a nightmare.
I dropped my head down in despair as the bus stopped again, and a friendly voice said, “Hi Addie,” breathlessly, then she took the seat in front of mine.
“Hey, Mila,” I had to scrape the barrel to sound enthused, but I was so disheartened.
She had the other friend with her, the brunette Erin, who managed a genuine smile, which I returned.
Erin was pretty with bronzed skin and deadly straight, shoulder-length hair with a severely cut fringe.
She’d fit quite comfortably in one of those dancing and singing girl bands because she had an air of sexiness to her that I could only hope for.
I hadn’t noticed how attractive she was at first, probably because I was trying to dodge the evil glares she shot at me the first two times we met.
But it seemed she was warming to me now that it was clear that I had nothing to do with the razorblade in the cupcake. I mean…who the fuck would do that?
The Warwicks? It seemed particularly cruel and sadistic, even for them. But I didn’t know them. I had no idea what they were capable of; however, I was aware of what their father was capable of. Merciless, lying behavior ran in the family.
“We’ve just been at music school,” Mila told me, pointing to a Greek-style, white building that didn’t fit in with the old stone buildings that surrounded it.
“Wow, fancy,” I cawed, comparing it to the boring, modern square Business School building that I will be spending a lot of time in from next week. “Was that another weird project by Ashthorn?”
“Yeah, you should take a look. There are all these statues of Greek Gods, but some of them have distorted faces,” he rattled off.
Erin interrupted, “He takes beautiful things and makes them ugly and calls it art.. Like a headless Hades is holding his own head in front of his,” she pointed to the space between her legs. “It’s like a porn scene.”
I snorted, trying to imagine the scene. “What? Hades took his own head off to pleasure himself? God, what type of man was Ashthorn? You’d think faculty would censor it, place a cloth over it so students don’t get ideas.”
“You don’t see the penis,” Erin clarified, laughing. “You only see the act and then use your imagination.”