Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Isabelle
The wind rustles against the studio windows, making the glass rattle. It sounds like someone trying to force their way in.
My hands still and I allow the chisel to dangle between my fingers while I gaze out the window, out into the night, trying to see whether I’m right.
Is someone— Kade —trying to get in here?
He could be watching me again. Why wouldn’t he? Apart from football, creeping me the fuck out seems to be his new favorite sport.
Seeing him the other night at the fundraiser was horrible. I stood in that corner holding the tray of drinks like an idiot for almost an hour before he left with the group.
God, I would never want to be alone in here with him. In here where no one would hear me scream if he decided to do something to me.
I’ve been here for the last two hours working on sculpture for my application to Cambridge. I don’t have much left to do, so maybe I should have skipped today.
It’s nearly four in the morning, a time that is no stranger to me. I like coming here at this time because it’s peaceful and oftentimes, like now, I have the studio to myself. On the rare occasion when the odd student comes by at this hour, that peacefulness remains.
I’ve had no such peace tonight. It’s the first time I’ve ever been here and felt so unnerved.
My apartment isn’t safe either. My safe zone was shattered the moment I saw Kade watching me outside my bedroom window. That night he infiltrated my sanctuary and destroyed my inner calm. Now everywhere feels wrong.
I continue staring outside, taking in the shadowy woods and the trees swaying in the wind.
There doesn’t seem to be anyone outside, but that doesn’t mean he’s not there.
With a slow, steady breath, I look back at my sculpture and decide to stay for another forty minutes.
I study my work, appreciating all that I’ve done. I’ve been trying to get the waves of the girl's hair to look more precise, but everything else looks amazing.
This sculpture is possibly one of my finest pieces.
It’s an alabaster sculpture of a young woman running through the meadow. My inspiration is John William Waterhouse’s painting The Lady of Shalot .
My girl has the same sort of long flowing Medieval dress, but I have her hair swept up by the wind in long graceful waves.
Normally I’d finish a sculpture of this complexity in two to three months, but I whipped this up in three weeks.
I’m proud of myself for getting it done in such a short space of time, and I have no doubt it will get me into Cambridge.
Sculpting has always placed me in my element. Just like my mother, sculpting was where my heart lay. I do oil paintings and watercolors, too, but there’s always been something more to sculpting that speaks to my soul.
I love the aspect of creating three-dimensional figures that look like they could come to life at any moment. I always do people and try to capture emotions on their faces.
I tried creating animals and other landscapes before, but it didn’t work out as well as my people sculptures.
I think it turned out as well as it has because my heart went into it. All my love for art along with my desperation for freedom and life.
This masterpiece will be the ticket to securing my placement with Christian Degas. So I can’t mess it up because I’m anxious, or paranoid.
With that reminder, I set my chisel down, deciding it’s time to go. It’s practically four now anyway, so it’s not like I’m leaving earlier than I planned.
I need to head back to my apartment and grab a few hours of sleep.
Sleep will do me a world of good because I have a long day ahead of me.
At least I’ll be spending the first part of it with Annika and Mackenzie. We have English literature first, then we’ll be going into the city for lunch. That’s something to look forward to.
I’m trying to spend as much time with all my friends as I can before I leave. That’s just as much for me as it is for them. When I head off to England, I’ll truly be on my own.
I’m nervous but excited to see what that might be like. I’ve never been on my own before. It sounds strange to say that because going away to college is supposed to be that. But because I’m around people I’ve known all my life, it doesn’t feel that way.
I pack my things, lock up the studio, and head down that dark path through the woods. It’s the quickest way back to Myrridin House.
Usually I enjoy walking this way because it goes by the river, but the moment I’m in the thick of the trees my anxiety returns.
The wind picks up my hair and the ends of my ponytail dance around my shoulders. The soft breeze whispers over my skin like a lover’s touch.
Not that I would know what a lover’s touch feels like. I’ve never had one.
I’m probably one of the only girls in my freshman year who still has her V-card.
I’ll be nineteen in a few months. I thought I would have lost that card by now, but like many other things nothing is as I thought it would be.
In the alternate universe I imagined Kade was supposed to be nice to me.
We were meant to be dating once I built up the courage to speak to him, and everything was supposed to be amazing.
Instead I feel like I’ve been thrust into a dark twisted fairytale where nothing is as you imagine, and you can’t even trust yourself.
The wind grows stronger, howling through the massive oak trees, and that imagination of mine takes over. Suddenly it sounds like a thousand ghosts surround me, chasing the moon in the afterlife. The branches of the trees look like hands reaching out to grab me, and the rustle of the leaves sounds like feet chasing me.
Everything is louder, my sight stronger, my skin sensitive.
I quicken my pace, wishing I’d had the good sense not to come this way. I wasn’t thinking. I was doing what normal me would do after finishing up at the studio.
By the time I get to the Hollows—a place that’s even scarier than the woods—my heart is pounding in my throat.
The urban legend around campus has it that a student was murdered here and the ghost of the caretaker who killed them haunts the place.
I always wondered what people thought of the student’s ghost because no one talks about it. They always fixate on the caretaker and the many sightings people have reported of his ghostly form with the chains of hell attached to his heart.
Great idea, Isabelle.
That was a real clever move. Scare yourself even more than you already were.
The distinct sound of twigs crunching under heavy boots has me halting midstride, and my heart stops.
A rustle swishes through the bushes and I look to my left, where both sounds came from.
There’s no one there, but there must be someone. I heard something. I definitely didn’t imagine that.
I know I’m on campus and there are loads of students out at all hours of the night, so it could just be one of them. But I want to see who it is and make sure it’s not Kade, then I’ll be on my way.
I hear the rustle again so I keep staring, waiting for whoever or whatever it is to come out. Nothing happens.
“Is someone there?” I decide to call out.
There’s no answer. It doesn’t surprise me. I didn’t expect anyone to respond.
Feeling silly, I turn to continue on my way but crash into a tall, foreboding man with the horrific face of a skull. In the silver moonlight he looks like he just came straight from hell.
I scream at the top of my lungs, drop my bag and get ready to run for my life, when he grabs my arm and deep male laughter rumbles around me.
He lifts one large hand and pushes the skull back, showing me it’s a mask, but the man under the mask is someone I least expected to see.
Dmitri.
He gives me a mirthless grin, similar to the way Kade smiled at me at the club.
Dmitri leans forward until he’s inches away from my lips and widens his grin. “What are you doing out here at this hour, Isabelle ?”
His sudden closeness—which is way too close for comfort—is just as weird as hearing him say my name. I’ve known him for even longer than I’ve known Kade and this is the first time he’s ever spoken to me.
Dmitri Valneko is as handsome as Kade and just as sinister. They come from the same background, so high-profile family, and he isn’t ever far from Logan. Or Kade.
And he’s still holding on to my arm.
“You scared me half to death. Let go of me.” I try to imbue my voice with a bravado I don’t feel and free myself, but to my surprise he tightens his grip.
“You didn’t answer the question.”
“What’s it to you?”
“Just curious. Not many people come out here at this hour. Never thought a sweet little thing like you would be roaming around the Hollows all by your lonesome. Especially with the ghost around.”
“That’s just a story.”
“Is it, though?”
“Yes. Of course it is. No such thing as ghosts.”
“But there are psychos.” The smile amplifies and he inches even closer. As if he’s going to kiss me.
I pull back and he gives me that maddening laugh again.
“Let go of me.”
“Of course.” He raises a sharp brow but thankfully, he releases me.
I take the chance to step away from him. My gaze flicks down to the ground where, to my annoyance, all the things in my bag have spilled out.
As I’m about to pick up my bag a hand reaches around my legs and swipes it.
I spin around to find another guy in a skull mask. Holding my bag up, he moves his mask back. He didn’t need to do that, though, for me to know that it’s Logan.
Dmitri.
Logan.
Where is Kade?
If his friends, who have never given me the time of day, are here screwing with me, he can’t be far away.
“Give me back my bag, Logan.” I try to keep my voice calm, but I fail.
“Not yet. Not until we’re done playing our game.”
“I don’t want to play any game. Give me my bag.”
“Well, damn, look at these pictures,” Dmitri says behind me.
I turn and see that he has my phone. And he’s scrolling casually through my pictures as if he has all the time in the world.
“Give me my phone.” I try to grab it, but he holds it higher and moves away.
“Sweet little Isabelle looks all grown up in her bikini.” He wolf-whistles and my cheeks grow hot. “Look at those tits and that ass.”
“Let me see.” Logan laughs.
Like he’s playing football, Dmitri tosses my phone to Logan. I try to grab it from him, but he’s too fast.
“Give me my things, now.” I sound and look like a mouse trapped between two lions.
“I see what you mean, Dmitri.” Logan scans through my pictures, then stares at me. “Love a great pair of tits and a fine ass, but for me it’s the lips. Tell me, Isabelle, can you suck cock yet?”
My eyes snap wide and my cheeks burn. “You asshole.”
“Is that a yes or a no? Are you offended that I think you can’t suck cock, or is it that you’re so good at it that I shouldn’t have to ask?”
Jesus Christ. What the hell is this?
As far as weird and strange goes, this is well beyond. I feel like I woke up one day and ended up in a different timeline. Like maybe I went through the wrong door. Or maybe like that movie Inception , I’m asleep but awake in a dream.
That must be it, but I’m stuck here in a nightmare and I have to find my way out.
I weigh my options. Should I run away and leave my stuff? I could do without my bag, but my phone has all my pictures, notes for art projects and contacts.
It has the one contact I have in England. The art professor I met at the gallery when I was fifteen. Her name is Charlotte. She's now head of the art department at Cambridge University, and her boyfriend is now her husband.
“Maybe it started just like this,” Dmitri taunts. “I think that caretaker met the student here on a night like this.”
“I think you’re right,” Logan agrees. “I think he watched and waited for the right moment to strike.” On seeing my distress, he waves my phone in the air.
“Why are you doing this?”
“I actually think he planned to meet her here.” Dmitri ignores me.
No one ever confirmed whether the student was a guy or a girl. The idea that it could be a girl seems to interest Logan.
“Maybe he was in love with her, and when she told him she couldn’t be with him, he slashed her throat.” Logan focuses on me and comes closer. As close as Dmitri was. “What do you think, Isabelle?”
He walks me back until I crash into Dmitri again, then the two of them have me sandwiched. My blood heats as I realize I’m pressed up between their hard bodies. If anyone were to see us like this out here in this deserted area, there’s no way they would think this wasn’t sexual.
The shocker would be seeing me. Me, Goody Two-shoes Isabelle, looking like she’s about to have a threesome with two of the most popular guys on campus
“Tell us what you think, Isabelle.” Dmitri’s lips are at my ear. “Do you believe the caretaker killed the girl because she broke his heart?”
My nerves are on fire and I’ve lost control of my heart. It’s beating out of cadence like a broken engine on a truck that won’t start properly.
“Give me my things and let me go.” My voice is whisper-soft and careful.
Logan answers by coming close again. He brushes his lips over my nose. “Answer the question, Lolita .”
I glare back at him, hating the nickname more than ever.
“How do you know it was a girl?” I stutter. “Maybe it was a guy. Maybe the caretaker was just crazy and he felt like killing.”
Logan laughs. “Listen to you talk. It’s always the sweet ones who surprise you most.”
He moves back and the space frees me from the awkward position.
I back away from them, but they follow me.
I take another few steps backward until I’m pressed flush against another hard wall of a chest that wasn’t there before.
I freeze, knowing who this has to be.
Kade.
One large arm slips across my chest, holding me in place. At his touch every nerve in my body stands on end, as if I’ve been pumped with electricity. Then a thrill races through me from the top of my head down past my toes.
An unwelcome blush follows in its wake and suddenly I’m so hot I can’t catch my breath.
With his free hand he creeps his fingers along my hip, feeling the bare skin under my sweater.
He moves to my ear, his hot breath tickling my skin and I feel him everywhere.
How many times have I imagined him touching me? Now that he is, and I know he hates me, I should want nothing more than to run far away, out of his grasp.
Except the thrill still moving through my body tells me that I’m secretly excited to have him so close.
The uncanny, fucked-up thought paralyses me further, spreading heat all over me.
“I think it was a girl, Lolita ,” Kade speaks into my ear, his voice sounding deep, lazy and languid, like he just got out of bed.
“I think the caretaker was in love with a girl but she didn’t want him,” he continues speaking, giving his theory of what happened. “I think he was obsessed with her.”
His voice drops lower on the word obsessed .
“Or maybe he really was a psycho who liked killing. Regardless, I still think the student was a girl, so you should be more careful on campus, Lolita. Then again, it seems like this girl here has the right idea. She’s leaving, boys.”
Suddenly he holds my acceptance letter from Cambridge before me and my lungs squeeze.
“ Dear Miss Kolyav, we are pleased to offer you a conditional acceptance to Cambridge University for Christian Degas’ scholarship program .” He puts on a newscaster voice then laughs deep and low.
Shit. No one was supposed to know about Cambridge. Least of all him and his friends.
I try to pull out of his arms, but he holds me in a tighter lock and I’m so close I can feel the steady beat of his heart against my back.
“What’s the matter? Already flaking out in your freshman year?” His taunting voice pulls at my insides. “Not enjoying life here at Raventhorn?”
“I wonder why?” I find my voice, feeling grateful it doesn’t tremble like the rest of me.
“Aww, don’t tell me you’re leaving because of me.”
“Get over yourself. You’re just a mean asshole. Didn’t you read the part where I got accepted to a scholarship program?” Hearing myself speak in such a defiant way instills a spark of courage in me.
He laughs deep and hearty. Dmitri and Logan join him.
“ Mean asshole. But that’s exactly how you like me, Isabelle. Isn’t it?”
I pull at his arms again. “I don’t like you.”
Kade presses his cheek to mine and drops the hand holding the letter back to my stomach.
“Liar.” He presses his lips to my neck and nibbles on the skin there, making my pulse gallop across my throat. “You never stopped liking me. Even now, despite yourself, you want me. You just can’t help yourself.”
“I want you to leave me alone.”
“Are you sure that’s what you want? Because I don’t believe you.”
“That’s exactly what I want.”
“Liar, liar, liar, liar.” He licks the shell of my ear and to my horror, the wild sting of arousal claws at my insides. “You like this. Me touching you.” His hot breath floats over my neck and his fingers climb higher and higher over my stomach.
“I don’t.” The strangled tone of my voice suggests I’m lying. The truth is I can’t think.
“You like the way my hands feel on your body. And you want more. You want me to touch you everywhere.” His fingers brush the underside of my breast and I bite back a moan.
“Let me go.”
“I don’t think that’s what you want. I’ll bet my entire fortune that if I touch your pussy right now, your panties will be soaked.”
I want to protest but the moisture gathering between my thighs tells a different story and silences me. It also tells me that I’ve definitely, absolutely, officially lost my goddamn mind.
“Maybe I should check you right here in front of my friends.”
Friends. Shit . For a fleeting moment I totally forgot Dmitri and Logan were here.
Panic snaps my mind back into focus and I gather myself. “Let. Me. Go. You’re crazy. And you need to stop following me.”
“No, no, Lolita. You and I are just getting started.”
“Why?” My breath hitches but I realize instantly that this could be my chance to get to the crux of this crazy shit. “What the hell did I do to you? I’ve never done a damn thing to you to make you go all psycho on me. So tell me, what did I do?”
It feels like the question of the year. Or possibly of my life.
Time seems to freeze around us while I wait for his answer. But I don’t get one. Instead, Kade loosens his grip on me, releasing me from his grasp.
Cautiously, I take a step forward and turn to face him, to look at him right in the eye.
I wish I could see the monster I imagined in my mind snarling back at me, but Kade Gurkovsky is just as devastatingly handsome as I’ve always known him to be.
The silver moonlight amplifies that untamed beauty beneath his hardcore masculinity, making him almost look like a storybook prince.
His eyes rivet to mine and I find I can’t look away. He stares back at me with malice laced in the depths of his bright blue eyes, but there’s something more there that still enchants me.
With a quick snap of his fingers toward Dmitri and Logan, they hand him my phone and bag with all the contents that fell out of it. Then he shoves the letter back into the bag.
Looming closer, he holds the bag out for me to take. I grab it quickly before he changes his mind.
“Stick around, Lolita .” He speaks in a low, deep voice, slow and purposeful so that each word wraps around my insides. “Raventhorn will be no fun without you.”
Those words would sound genuine and endearing from anyone else. But from him… they sound like a threat.
“Go home.” The ghost of a smile tips his lips.
I’m surprised he’s letting me go. I’m desperate to leave but I’m just as eager to get the answers I sought.
I search his eyes and realize that he knows what I’m thinking. And he’s not going to tell me.
“Don’t you want to go, Lolita …?” A smile crawls across his lips.
The sight sends a shiver rushing over me and I turn to leave. Shaking legs carry me away, but I glance back at him.
Kade won’t tell me what I did to him.
In my experience, when people will neither confirm nor deny something and act the way he did, it actually confirms the question.
He does have something against me, and rather than tell me what it is, he wants me to suffer.
That unsettling thought I had last night about leaving creeps back into my mind. Am I running away because of him?
At this point I don’t care about the answer.
Yes.
No.
It’s the same answer to me and now I can’t wait to leave.
Before I take the path to Myrridin I look back over my shoulder again. They’re all still there. Standing together like a wolf pack.
That’s a fitting thought because I feel like I’m being hunted.
Because I am.