Chapter 8
Two scarred vintage desks sit on opposite walls, already stocked with everything your average college gal might need: wooden crosses, athames, bell jars with incense and herbs, and little vials I guess are filled with holy water and powders for exorcism and banishment.
They’re decorated with a few pillar candles and some ritual books, as well as a fresh set of number two pencils.
The two twin beds are on opposite sides of the room, wooden bed frames replete with bedknobs and carved headboards.
Whoever Sophia Valentine is, it seems she’s beaten me to our dorm.
While one bed is empty, the other is already fitted with a mess of unmade sage-green sheets.
There’s even a lipstick-stained wineglass perched on the bedside table.
“Are you capable of shutting the fuck up for even two seconds?”
When I spin toward the source of the words, I find a drop-dead gorgeous woman plowing through the door, phone pressed right up against her ear as she shuts her eyes in frustration.
I recognize the telltale signs of a hangover, and when she dumps her backpack on the bed, I clock a nightclub stamp on her wrist. Sophia Valentine, I assume.
“But it’s not me! It actually is you,” she says, kicking her cowboy boots and socks off—anklet and toe ring on full display—and unloading a mess of textbooks from her backpack onto the comforter.
She’s got on jean shorts that show plentiful butt cheek, an oversized T-shirt of some band I’ve never heard of, and a handful of necklaces dangling from her elegant neck. Her cascade of long hair is coppery brown, but some sections shine golden when she runs her hand through it in exasperation.
“No number of vintage cars is going to make me want to fuck again, okay? It’s getting weird. And can you please stop texting my mom?”
I feel my brows shoot up my face and stifle a laugh, turning to ignore the conversation and give her some kind of privacy.
My fingers find a groove on the mattress of what I assume is my bed.
I don’t have books to put away or anything to move in.
I should probably just leave the dorm, but I don’t know where exactly I’d go.
“Are you listening to me?”
Maybe the armory. I do need to get my blade fixed. Probably easier here than finding a welder in the Half City and pretending to be a LARP enthusiast again.
“Hello? Spooky girl? I’m talking to you.”
I whirl around. “Me?”
“Yes, you.” Sophia’s smile is broad—big teeth, full lips, a little gummy, but beautiful in an old-fashioned starlet kind of way. Her wispy bangs nearly fall into her eyes. “Who else would I be talking to?”
I make a face at the phone in her hand.
“Oh, him? Don’t worry about him. Male hunters are idiots.”
“Vintage cars, huh? Plural?”
Sophia turns back to the books on her bed. “The 1965 Porsche 911 was especially hard to part with.” She rifles through her things until she finds what she was looking for—a crumpled piece of paper—and spits a wad of gum into it. “I was asking if you just got here.”
“Just in time for that riveting orientation,” I deadpan.
She gives me an assessing once-over. “I’m into your whole black-cat vibe.”
“Black cat?”
“Yeah.” Sophia slips her loose T-shirt over her head as she talks, and I realize too late she isn’t wearing a bra.
“Hot, bored, hair like the shampoo commercials, resting bitch face.” I adjust my facial expression as Sophia digs through her things once more, and this time a little baggie of red dust falls out along with the thinnest white tank top of all time, which she slips on.
“How are you not sweating? It’s hot as balls out there. ”
“No, I fully am,” I tell her, my eyes still on the baggie on the floor. I guess I should’ve assumed she was a partier. “I can’t lift my arms in this shirt for the rest of the day.”
Sophia laughs, big and loud. “Where are your bags?”
“I don’t have any. I’m actually from Astera, so I have a place there—”
“Nobody’s from Astera.”
“What do you mean?”
Sophia pulls open the antique armoire and yanks out a pair of beat-up Birkenstocks. “Harker alums get stationed there, but nobody lives there. Not permanently. Hunters’ souls give demons too much of a hard-on, and the Brood is based in Astera.”
I bristle at what she’s implying. “So?”
“So the Elders trust Harker professors and students to take care of most deviant action while living safely within Harker walls. If hunters were to live there, raise hunter babies there…Why serve up a soul buffet for the Brood?”
That explains why this school was here all along but I’d never seen many hunters gallivanting around my city.
Also explains that no-hunting-without-a-teacher rule a bit more.
“Well, I’ve lived there all my life and haven’t been a soul buffet yet.
And I have a mortal roommate and a job in the city too, so I probably won’t be in the dorms too much. Don’t want anyone back home to worry.”
Sophia shrugs. “Fine by me. Word to the wise—you don’t need your lymantrian coin to get in and out of the gateway in the Windsor anymore. You can just step through that kiosk anytime when you want to come and go.”
“Oh, thanks.” I pause, studying her. I thought students were supposed to stay on campus throughout the semester. “How do you know that?”
Sophia can’t contain the hint of a smile at her lips. “Your deviant-infested city has better nightlife than anything happening on campus.”
She says nightlife, but she means drugs.
“Anyway…you wanna borrow something?” She eyes my armpits. “For the sweat situation?”
“Nah, I’m used to it,” I tell her. But between this girl and Peter, I’m kind of floored. Why is everyone so friendly? “It gets blisteringly hot in the city this time of year.”
Sophia nods, fishing a lipstick from her bag and swiping it across her full bottom lip in the mirror.
It’s easily the perfect color to match her tan, freckled skin.
She’s like a seventies rock star. Or a mermaid.
“I grew up by the ocean where it’s way cooler.
It’s taking me a beat to adjust. What’s your first class? ”
I shrug. I’m not sure how to tell her I’m just biding my time until tonight, when I can get into that library and research my dad undisturbed. “I was late to orientation. Haven’t registered yet.”
“Perfect,” Sophia tells me. “You can follow me and I’ll sign you up for all the classes I’m in. Like a ride-along. I’m Sophia, by the way.”
“I gathered that,” I tell her. “Viv.”
“What’s it short for? Vivica? Viviana?”
“Vivienne.”
Sophia appears vaguely disappointed. “Vivica would’ve been badass.”
I can’t help my laugh. “I agree, actually.”
After Introduction to Aztec Weaponry, Lymantrian Beings I, and Western European Rituals and Exorcisms, I’ve amassed a twelve-credit course load before the second half of our classes tomorrow and enough books to weigh down a commercial airliner.
And we still have one class left: Underworld Studies with Professor Lisette.
The classroom is in a basement that smells like cinnamon and sweet coffee, and I spy four used mugs on Lisette’s cluttered desk.
The annex has no windows, but it does have one wrought-iron chandelier lit with flickering candles and a black chalkboard spanning the entire back wall.
The wooden seats creak when we slide into them, and when there’s no space left, students take to the floor and cram themselves into the aisle in the back.
“Popular course?”
“Very,” Sophia tells me, making herself comfortable cross-legged despite how cramped everyone is beside her. “Even though Lisette is impossible.”
“Scoot down, Soph,” someone says. When I look up from my new notebook, I see that the voice belongs to a guy with the rich bronze skin of a surfer and the build of a gym rat.
“Elliot,” she says brightly. “This is my new roommate, Viv. Viv, this is my Elliot.”
“Your Elliot?”
He grins, his teeth as pearly white as a dental brochure. “We’ve been told platonic life partner is a mouthful.”
Elliot is just as cool as Sophia. He’s jacked—more muscle than man—and boy-band handsome.
The two of them exude a charm I’d thought reserved only for models and socialites.
He squeezes past our entire aisle and plops down next to Sophia, tossing a casual arm over her shoulders.
When I adjust to make some more room, I accidentally kick my stack of textbooks into the seat in front of me.
“Shit, sorry,” I mumble. Only when I bend down to pile them back up, I see the student I’ve nearly taken out with my avalanche is none other than Peter. Kitty sits beside him, organizing her notes.
“Viv.” He grins. “You stayed.”
“Trust me, I’m as shocked as you are.” But I know my smile betrays me.
“You find your roommate?”
“She sure did,” Sophia butts in. “Sophia Valentine. Hi.”
Something about what she’s just said stuns poor Peter into another stratosphere.
His pupils dilate, his cheeks flush. I can hear his brain go blank.
It only hits me a moment later that it’s not what he’s heard but what he’s seen.
Peter is in literal awe of Sophia. And who could blame him?
Her stunning body is practically on display in the world’s littlest tank top and shreddiest shorts, her anklet and gold bangles drawing the eye to every inch of exposed skin.
“Hi,” Kitty says in Peter’s place. “I’m Kitty.”
“Sexy name,” Soph tells her, and Kitty awkwardly tucks a strand of dark hair behind her ear. “This is Elliot.”
“ ’Sup,” he offers. “I like your tattoo.” Elliot is covered in traditional Pacific Islander tattoos of his own, which swirl up and down his carved arms.
Kitty’s brows knit inward before she comes to some realization and shakes her head. “Oh, no, it’s just a stamp from a bar.” She rubs absently at the white antlers inked on the inside of her wrist, and I realize it’s the same one as on Sophia’s arm.
I shake my head. Hunters.