Chapter 28
Dead girls didn’t have to worry about their professor breaking into their home.
They didn’t have to worry about the consequences of having an affair with their teacher, a man old enough to be their father, and apparently an absolute psychopath.
Dead girls didn’t have to fear who among the rich and elite in town were secretly worshipers of an ancient, eldritch owl god intent on sacrificing them.
They simply got to close their eyes for the rest of eternity and rot alongside the worms in their bones.
Once again, I found myself morbidly envious of the dead.
And more exhausted than ever before.
A hint of sunlight slanted through a gap in the curtains, a pale yellow nearly obscured by the encroaching gray of another storm.
I sighed and dropped into the wingback chair in my grandfather’s study.
My legs had carried me there without fully realizing it.
A room steeped in secrets and mystery, where the horrible truth of my bloodline had been hidden under my nose.
When I transferred from Oxford to Kilbride, it was only to support my mother during her time of need. The obedient daughter coming to the rescue of her broken-hearted parent. Yet, where was she? Off, traveling the world with her divorce winnings and a muscled beefcake.
Honestly, good for her. But where did that leave me?
Alone. Isolated. Left in the chasm of a broken home and stretched thin from two opposing sides of a public scandal. Hunted by monsters seeking revenge for a vow I hadn’t broken.
Coming to Kilbride took so much from me.
My routine, the friendships I’d fought to make in a foreign country, the goals I had set for that life and that time.
Change—I hated change—and I was dumped headfirst into the mire and told to swim.
This wasn’t what my final year of university was supposed to be.
And if I’d known the cursed school was concealing monsters and temptation, I would have begged on my hands and knees to remain at Oxford.
As a man had wronged my mother, it seemed I now followed in her footsteps. As mothers handed their inherited wounds down to daughter after daughter, we mimicked that never ending cycle. What a terrible trend—that repeating of history I found myself trapped in.
All it took was one dominant, educated older man with a genuine passion for his field of study and a penchant for making me crave the fire in his touch to undo me. Seduced by his magnetism, lured like a mouse in a trap, and now I faced the consequences of a desire that tasted like obsession.
Had I betrayed my morals by succumbing to temptation?
Did a tryst with my professor make me my father’s daughter?
I’d spent months thinking of my father with only disappointment. His affair brought shame to our family name and broke up our family. But what about mine? My affair with my teacher could ruin me.
Perhaps I’d made everything worse by acting like my father.
Now, that disdain for his actions turned inward and glared back at me. That almost worried me more than the degrees Luther had taken to be close to me—to protect me. I wished I had realized sooner that the center of Luther’s attention was a dangerous place to be.
My thoughts churned violently as the day progressed.
I didn’t know how to handle monsters by myself, and Luther’s claim over me frightened me almost as much as the stolas did.
I was torn between nightmares made flesh and a man who acted like he wanted to own my soul. Either way, I felt utterly doomed.
Buzzing in my pocket startled me from the turmoil of my thoughts. I plucked out my phone, scanning the text on the screen. It was from Moth.
You still coming tonight?
Fuck, I had completely forgotten about the party.
Normally, I wasn’t one for parties or crowds. Being around an overabundance of people set my teeth on edge, but there had to be safety in numbers. And staying home alone in my current state felt impossible.
Decision made, I texted back: Wouldn’t miss it.
The drive took barely five minutes, but blinked past in seconds.
Reality warped as if the roads were elongated serpents winding through trees.
Smoky mist twirled off the pavement, muting my headlights into a dim, buttery glow.
Brown and yellow leaves tumbled across the streets, skittering over the asphalt.
My heart drummed an erratic beat, and my fingers tightened on the steering wheel as a row of houses rose from the dark.
I didn’t need my GPS to tell me which house hosted the party.
It was a colonial revival style building with nearly every window flashing from the lights within.
Fellow students clustered around the yard holding red solo cups.
Music vibrated through the foundation hard enough to reach me through the car.
Dread kept me paralyzed, knuckles white on the wheel, and breath coming out shallow and quick.
I regretted leaving the house, but I refused to spend the night alone, wallowing in misery and failing to focus on anything related to my assignments.
With each passing second, the walls had closed in around me, and I couldn’t remain in an ancestral home tied to the occult and smelling like sweet tobacco.
Fuck it.
I killed the engine, puffed in three confidence-boosting breaths, and shoved out into the cold.
An immediate, bitterly sharp gust hit me, carrying the funky scent of marijuana and beer.
Hugging my coat tighter, I jogged across the street to the sidewalk, aiming for the crowded walkway.
Halfway there, something wavered in my vision.
On instinct, I froze. Then I looked up.
Yellow slitted eyes blinked, opening wider into moon-shaped discs. The barn owl shifted, twisting its head around before snapping back to me. A soft hooting whispered through the treble and bass of the dance music booming through the front doors.
The sound slithered down my spine.
An exhale snagged in the back of my throat, causing me to choke on the frigid air. My hands clawed up to my neck, squeezing as if that would permit me to inhale and stave off the alarm sparking in my chest.
No, no, no, no, please, no…
A shoulder bumped me, knocking me out of a blossoming panic attack.
Plastic crinkled on the pavement as a red solo cup fell, and sour-smelling beer splattered across the walkway.
“Hey, watch yourself!” An already deeply inebriated man slurred out. He towered over me, sneering at me as if the cup had been the Holy Grail and I’d forced him to spill divine wine.
His breath was foul. Not as horrible as a monster, but deeply unsettling.
“Sorry,” I mumbled. But he’d already moved on, shoving himself into a cluster of men in matching jackets.
When I looked up, the rooftop was vacant. Nothing but darkness and heavy gray clouds obscuring the moon. The cold was crisp, and the dread in my stomach pressed heavily on my already frazzled nerves.
“Blondie!” someone called out from the front door. The familiar voice softened the sticky atmosphere glued to my skin.
Ignoring the tension, I approached the house. None of the talking bystanders on the porch gave me a second glance. It didn’t erase the sensation of being watched locked to the back of my neck.
The feeling of the party crashing over me barely dampened the prickling under my skin.
Bass reverberated in my chest, worsening the erratic rattle of my heart.
Lights flickered and spiraled in a dizzying projection of colors, disorienting me.
The heat of hundreds of bodies shoved together like clowns in a tiny car turned the first floor into a sweltering sauna, humid with sweat, too much cologne, and drunken breaths.
Bodies overlapped as they danced in the center of what I assumed was usually the living room.
Arms were held high over heads, swaying to the beat, waving under the lights and mimicking a flashing rainbow.
Voices shouted through the jumble of music and laughter.
Someone dancing in a skin-tight black dress sloshed her drink as she spun and giggled.
I tried to orient myself within the gravity of the party. There were too many people, too close, too loud. There might as well have been thousands of ants climbing all over my body.
“There you are!” A heavy arm draped over my shoulders, and I cringed at the unwelcome contact. “Saw you through the window, but almost feared you’d bailed on us,” Moth said directly into my ear, words already slurring at the ends.
I delicately extricate myself from his arm. He didn’t seem to notice my awkwardness. Instead, he smiled, face flushed and eyes bright from whatever he’d been drinking. Well on his way to being properly sloshed.
I shook my head, unable to form a response before he shoved a cup into my hand.
“You need to catch up, Blondie!” He tapped the bottom of my cup before I could protest. “Bottoms up.”
Wasn’t that why I had gone in the first place? To drink and maybe forget my troubles for a little while? To seek comfort and solace in companionship?
I swallowed a mouthful of something overly sweet with over-poured vodka. Warmth and prickly unease crashed through me and settled like a hot boulder in my stomach. The vodka fumes surged up the back of my throat and stung my nose.
“Niffy and I are way ahead of you,” he said. Behind Moth, Niffy was clutching a nearly full beer bottle and scanning the crowd.
I noticed their usual third missing from sight.
“Hey, where’s Talon?” I called over the thumping music.
Moth paused mid-sip.
Niffy whipped around and snapped, “None of your business, Blondie.”
The hostility of the reply slapped me. I clutched my cup to my chest and stopped swaying to the beat. “Um, okay. I was simply asking.”
Her upper lip curled, baring her teeth, and her nose scrunched. “Don’t.”
Moth stepped in, shouldering Niffy out of the way.
She cut her gaze to the other dancers surrounding us, head craning to peer around the crowd.
Her energy unsettled me almost as much as her nasty attitude.
I’d never been great at confrontations unless a retort escaped my tongue before I knew it was coming.
Instead of replying, I bit the inside of my cheek, frowning as Moth stole my attention.
“Ignore her,” he said, swirling the contents of his cup. “Talon had a, uh, family emergency. Left earlier in the day.” My lips parted, but he waved me off. “Don’t worry about it.”
It was an obvious lie, but it didn’t affect me enough to press him on the matter. And I didn’t care enough to ask.
Moth must have known it was a poor lie, because he avoided eye contact and continued drinking.
I opted to follow along and took a long drag of whatever mixed drink was on offer.
Slowly but surely, the movement of the music pulled me in like flotsam riding frothy ocean waves.
A drag and flow, push and pull, swaying to a heavily up-tempo synth song.
Snapshots of light and color swayed in chaotic unison with the music, fractals of purple, red, blue, and gold glittered across the walls and blurring faces.
For seconds, minutes, maybe hours, the rhythm guided me as I continued chugging away at one drink after another shoved into my hand. Drinking and swaying until the last drop passed my lips, and I’d sufficiently melted into the luxurious haze of alcohol and dancing.
The feeling of an intense gaze watching me blazed across the back of my neck.
My pulse spiked, and my eyes snapped open.
I stood still in the middle of the room, with dozens of bodies writhing around me. A blur of movement, like smeared paint in my periphery. The party liquefied around me, people and lights warping into nonsense, and I jolted away from the suffocating influx of anxiety creeping in my veins.
I needed to get away for a moment. Even as I stumbled through the shuffling, gyrating crowd, my heart palpitated and the world tipped under my feet. Only one corner remained clear, and I struggled toward that empty side of the room.
Separated from the crush of bodies, I found myself in a back hallway. I pressed my heated face to the wall, sucking in large gulps of air. The scent of sweet tobacco, woodsy vanilla, and spices swept in.
My breath caught.
A strong, sturdy arm hooked around my waist. Pulled into a firm chest, I struggled as fear sparked, but my sluggish, uncooperative limbs were terribly useless. A gloved hand clapped over my mouth, stifling a scream already drowned out by the music.
“Ophelia, fuck, stop fighting—it’s me!” a graveled voice urged into my ear while dragging me further down the hall into the darkness. He threw me into a room around the corner, and a door slammed, closing us off from the thumping atmosphere of the college party.
Ocean-blue eyes appeared in front of me, with an expression born of thunder and fury. The dim lamplight of the spare bedroom and the deep shadows of night painted a portrait of contrasts, stressing features simmering with radiant anger and dazzling relief.
He was so insufferably handsome.
“Lu-Luther…” His name struggled past a thick, dry tongue as if I’d been stuffing my mouth full of cotton all day.
“What were you thinking?” he snapped, hauling me upright. “You should have stayed home. It’s dangerous to be out, especially at night. I had everything under control, but you…” He trailed off, shaking his head as he stared down at me.
Words failed to form. All the defensive, sharp, witty things I could have said dissolved into the murky waters of my mind.
“What’s this?” he muttered, eyes sparkling. “An Ashcroft with no snarky remark?”
Only a pathetic whimper escaped in response.