Chapter 20 Faust
TWENTY
FAUST
“So where were you, the past few hours, Fausty?” Sylvan’s words slide under my skin as I sit across from him in the private room of Castle’s.
Every bone in my body wants to break every bone in his.
All I can think about is hurting him. It’s fucking distracting. I’m not used to feeling so much so sharply.
The only thing that keeps me from going at his throat now is the fact that Neve Devine is on the couch beside me, and not him.
When I saw her straddling him, her hand around his throat, it’s as if my brain short-circuited.
For a moment, I couldn’t speak again, just like when I was a kid.
I wanted to, the words were there, in my head, the feelings loud, but they wouldn’t come out.
I found it impossible to say anything about my right winger’s position underneath this girl, so instead, I said exactly what Sylvan wanted me to say.
He knew I had news. I texted him to ask where he was.
He didn’t know what, exactly, I was going to say.
And he’s taking it too well.
I’d only planned to talk to him about it in the morning, but then Neve texted me.
In my mind, she’s North.
The part of the province I’m from; home, but a place I keep a healthy distance to, too. She’d never understand that nickname, though, and I don’t even know if it makes sense anywhere but in my head.
“And how do you know all this?” Neve adds, a healthy distance between us on the deep purple couch. She has a rum and Diet Coke on a coaster in front of her, delivered from a waiter who came in to check on us.
I’m not drinking anything, and Sylvan is sipping on a virgin Shirley Temple, two cherries along the rim that he hasn’t eaten yet.
I’ve watched Neve eyeing them more than once and I add that to the meager details I know about her.
Maybe she likes cherries. Maybe she wants a whole jar.
This is fucking ridiculous, what’s going on inside my head.
I need to focus.
There’s been a fucking murder, Faust.
I keep my palms pressed together, elbows on my knees as I stare at the scarred coffee table between us.
“Coach tipped me off.” I answer Neve’s question and ignore Sylvan so I don’t fulfill my fantasies of punching the living fuck out of him.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Neve snatch up her drink. Hear her swallow at my side. Even with this distance between us, her scent invades my senses. Incense. A cathedral, and she’s the Madonna.
Fuck, get out of my head.
“Since they’re already eyeing us sideways over… What was his name, Neve?” Sylvan’s tone indicates he knows exactly what his name is.
Was.
What’s the difference to me?
“You broke his nose.” I speak before she can, and this time, I lift my eyes to Sylvan.
He stares at me for a heartbeat before he’s breaking eye contact and sipping on the paper straw in his drink.
He swallows, hard, then sets his drink down and hooks both arms around the back of the booth, but he still won’t look at me.
“She told you.”
“I don’t keep secrets for you.” The words are from her, and I like them more than I should.
Sylvan snaps his focus to her so fast it shocks me. “What about for him?” There’s a bite to his words.
But he blinks.
Then his features smooth, turning cold and aloof again with a little smile playing on his lips.
“I would too.” He winks at Neve but doesn’t dare do the same to me. “Keep secrets for Faust, that is.”
“What was the cause of death?” Neve’s question, no doubt to me. Her tone is steady, hard, but the way she’s still nursing her drink, she’s not as stoic as she pretends to be. I saw her roommate laughing with some guy beyond the doors to the private room, but I’m sure she’ll be looking for her soon.
That means our time here is limited.
And unlike last night, I don’t think she’s going to let me give her a ride anywhere tonight. Judging by the distance between us and the fact she seems to feel as hostile toward me as she does Sylvan, no doubt lumping us together, she won’t want to be anywhere near me.
“Undetermined.”
“What did it seem like the cause of death was?” she seethes, correctly inferring Coach or someone close to him had eyes on the body.
I drove here after her text, nowhere near House Memorial Library, but I have no doubt cops, investigators, and nosy Drayton U kids are crawling around that crime scene despite the cold.
Someone saw something.
And I know enough about what it was.
“Stab wound.” The words are almost torn from my mouth. I don’t look at Neve to see how she’ll react, though. “Multiple.”
I stare at Sylvan.
A grin pops up on his face, and he’s refusing to look at either of us.
I inhale deep through my nose and don’t look away from him.
“How did you know Will was at my place? How did you know where I lived? How did you find my number?” Neve’s questions to Sylvan.
Questions I, too, want the fucking answers to since Sylvan Connor is a pathological liar.
“I don’t think any of that is important right now, Neve Devine.”
“Connor.”
He turns to me as I say his name, like he’s a puppy and I have his leash. It’s powerful, and I don’t really relish that kind of thing. Making people dance at my command. I don’t even believe he’s giving it to me. He’s just good at pretending.
But right now, I want to know what Neve wants to know and I’ll do whatever it takes to get the answers.
“Answer her questions. We’re all dying to know the truth.”
Neve takes another drink. I hear the ice clink against her teeth. When she walks out of this room, she’s going to be wasted. I could see it in her eyes when I stood behind Sylvan, her on his lap. She’d already been drinking. Even the questions she asked, the words were slightly slurred.
I don’t want her to go to Cynthia.
I want her to come with me.
Sylvan reaches for his drink, but Neve suddenly snatches it away from him, sliding it toward her. She sets her own down—it’s empty, I realize with a twist in my stomach—then grabs both cherries by the stems from the glass.
I don’t need to watch her eat them.
I don’t need to think about what else she could do with that mouth.
I can’t afford a distraction. Not in general, and definitely not tonight.
Sylvan slowly retracts his hand.
I realize he’s not wearing gloves, and I note how pale his skin is. But I don’t see anything unusual. No scars, no visible wounds.
Why was he so covered up before, or am I just jumping to conclusions? Then again, I can’t see the back of his left hand fully in the dim light.
He laces his fingers together, letting his hands tilt down, his knees spread and eyes on the table.
Then he starts to speak.
“I followed Will. The moment he stepped on campus—right at Bun Duns—the police swarmed him. He’s not a student here, and he’s connected to a murder victim.”
Bun Duns is a doughnut shop that sells mini donuts in tiny pink boxes. I’ve never been there, but everyone on campus knows about it.
Neve shifts slightly on the couch at his mention of it, and I wonder why. She doesn’t seem like she’d indulge in many doughnuts. Come to think of it, I’m not even sure I’ve ever seen her eat.
I don’t fucking like that.
“I happened to be there,” Sylvan continues.
I can’t imagine him indulging in a doughnut either but I can imagine him accompanying a girl and buying her a box or two.
“After he spoke to the police, he kept walking, over the green, toward Cathedral Street.” Her street. Sylvan glances at Neve.
I want to take his eyes from his skull.
“I followed him.” Sylvan shrugs. “My date wasn’t going well.”
Neve coughs.
Sylvan smirks up at her, but one look at me, and his eyes are on the table again. It is an act, isn’t it? The timidness. Neve was right.
It’s unsettling.
“He ducked inside the bookstore.” He glances at Neve.
“I didn’t think much of it, until I looked up.
” He wouldn’t be able to see her there, but he’d see someone likely lived above it, thanks to the curtains.
“I went around the back. Climbed over the wall.” He seems to relish the stalkerish nature of it, the way his smile tips up.
“The door above the staircase is unlocked.” His smile drops. “You should fucking fix that.”
Neve doesn’t speak. Neither do I.
He’s right.
“I walked down the hall. Saw your door close behind him.” He’s staring at her, no smile now.
I want him to keep going but I want him to stop that.
He doesn’t, though.
“When I heard some commotion, I went in.”
“And my number.” If Neve is grateful to Sylvan for intervening, she doesn’t show it, nor should she. Sylvan Connor is the type to smell blood and poke at it. Before you know it, there’s a body-sized puddle all over the floor. “How did you have that?”
Sylvan shrugs once. “Stalking.”
He’d only have to casually ask around, wouldn’t he? Neve Devine is a beautiful girl. I’d never seen her on campus before that night but this is one of the biggest schools in the country so that’s not entirely surprising.
Still, I don’t like it.
Any of it.
And the more I think about his stalking, the more another question forms. “How did you know who Will Barbour was?” Or was it the police presence that caught his attention? Either way, I’m not supplying that answer for him.
Sylvan lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “I research.”
Silence shifts between us. No one trusts anyone else, and I don’t feel satisfied with anything my teammate is saying.
“What did you say to Will, when you pushed him out of my apartment?” It seems like Neve’s last question for the night, the way her words slur and slide and there’s exhaustion in her tone. But she’s composed in a way, too. Those words might have been slurred, but they held conviction. A trump card.
Sylvan doesn’t smirk, which surprises me. He just holds Neve’s gaze and says, “I told him if he bothered you again, he’d be gone.”
Neve cuts her eyes to me.
But I don’t have anything to say.