Chapter 35 Neve
THIRTY-FIVE
NEVE
With my phone clenched tight in my hand, I walk across the black wooden floors, past the kitchen, Cynthia’s closed bedroom door, toward the scratching noise against the entrance. I glance at the text thread with Faust and he feels like a lifeline, although I’d never admit anything like that to him.
His last text is bright in the dark and I hold my breath as I read it over and over on a loop, the chill of the apartment like ice down my spine beneath my black cami.
Are you afraid I do?
As I get closer to the door, the built-in black bookshelves lined with psychology texts and old journals and bone-white sculptures of foxes, ravens, and some animal’s spine no longer feel like home.
They feel menacing. Animated. Alive.
The sound at the door raises the hairs along the back of my neck, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to let someone fuck with me right outside of my own home and do nothing about it.
It could be an animal, crawled up through Midnight Blackwell’s and trapped at our door. The thought is reassuring, considering there’s a murderer prowling Drayton’s campus.
The text bubble on my phone pops up again in my thread with Faust, at the exact same time the creak of a floorboard sounds outside of the apartment door.
My breath catches and I snap my head up, wishing I’d brought a knife, but the gilded black door is here, and I’m not running away now.
I step closer, my bare feet cold along the wooden floors.
Closer.
My throat feels tight, my body tense, but both locks are on and the person outside might be able to kick the door down, but they’d have to do a lot of work to make it happen.
Closer.
A text pops up, flaring my phone screen brighter at the same time I’m close enough to see the small, glassy peephole in the door.
33
If you let me, I’ll keep you safe.
If you let me…
I swallow the knot in my throat, then step closer to the door without touching it. The scratching sound is soft, and it’s back. Like a knife softly carving calligraphy into the wooden door.
I squint one eye, press my face closer to the peephole, holding my breath as I do.
I’ll keep you safe.
A gasp threatens to spill from my lips when I see the soft glow of the sconce lights spill over a shadow before me, right in front of my door. A grim reaper. A masked killer. Someone with a black hood over their head, chin dipped, concealing any part of their face.
I want to step away, jump back from the door and scream, but I don’t dare.
I curl my fingers around my phone, letting the cool metal and glass ground me. The person is tall, their chest is level with the peephole, covered by that black hoodie, the shadows around them heightening their contrast.
The scratching sound doesn’t stop.
It’s against the door.
Right there, where my ribcage could be if the wood vanished between us.
Fear shoots through my limbs, but so does anger. How dare you? And another question, as Faust’s text scrolls through my brain. Who are you?
He’s worn a black hoodie nearly every time I’ve seen him. He’s big, broad, tall.
Silent.
Twisted.
Quiet.
I pull back from the door, the soft scratching still between us, and my thumbs fly over my keyboard as I text him back.
By stalking me?
As soon as I send the text, I press back up, eye to the peephole.
And shock ices inside my heart.
The stalker’s face is strangely illuminated now, revealing the strong column of his throat, the blue vein beating under his skin. My eyes crawl higher.
Sharp jawline.
Five o’clock shadow.
But the only way I’d see so much is if… his phone lit up with my text.