Chapter Sixteen
With every action on autopilot,I move across the field, past the doors, and through the tower in a daze. The laughter from the common room sounds like it’s coming from underwater. The furnaces have come to life, and their artificial warmth feels alien against my skin, so different from the heat emanating from Ryker’s body.
It takes me two tries to push the elevator button, and once I’m inside, I spend several seconds just standing there, staring at my distorted reflection in the metal door, barely able to remember what floor my room is on.
He couldn’t have poisoned me… and yet that’s how it feels. My skin is tender, feverish. I don’t know how late it is; I can only hope that my roommates will be in bed because I have no idea if I could face anyone right now.
Twelve—floor twelve. That’s right. I press the button and lean against the elevator’s side, trying to keep my breathing under control. Control, control—I need that for tonight. I’m not going to let Ryker take it away from me. I refuse.
My heart sinks as soon as I’m in the hallway. Pools of light leak from beneath all three doors—people are still up. So much for avoiding interactions. Muffled giggles come from Angelica and Shivani’s room—as well as much more uproarious laughter from my own. Just wonderful.
The door’s unlocked. Of course. And, upon opening it, I discover that my roommates are definitely not in the mood for a safety lecture.
“Lia! You look like shit!” Sage, sprawled upside down with her legs hooked over the back of the couch, sounds absolutely delighted by the observation. “What have you been doing, running around in the woods?”
I thumb the deadbolt shut behind me. “Of course not. That’s ridiculous.”
“She looks like—” Aimee pauses to hiccup. She’s cross-legged on the floor, glasses slightly askew above her rosy cheeks. “Like a Survivor contestant.”
They’re drunk. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised—but, really? On a Tuesday night?
Then again, my own Tuesday night activities haven’t exactly been the most dignified, either.
“You have leaves in your hair,” Sage informs me. “And—oh my God, is that a hickey? Jesus, okay, girl! Maybe I underestimated you.”
“I just went for a walk.” A quick hand to the back of my head reveals that, sure enough, my usually sleek hair is a mess of tangles and forest debris. “I’m gonna go clean up.”
“Not too loud!” Sage urges, perhaps unaware of how hypocritical her words are. “The other freshie’s trying to sleep. Got an early class tomorrow, I think.”
“I’ll be careful.”
Aimee passes Sage a brimming shot glass, and I take the clinkof their wordless toast as my dismissal.
The bathroom door is shut on Harper’s side, so I waste no time in stripping down and cranking up the shower. A cursory glance in the mirror confirms what I’ve been fearing—a half-moon of reddish purple mars the skin below my jaw, clear as day. Crap. Ryker was right; there’s no hiding something like that. Everyone—classmates, teachers—is going to know exactly how I spent my evening.
Whatever. I’ll worry about that tomorrow.
Right now, I need to focus on my plan for tonight. If things are done remotely the same as they were in my mother’s time, my plan should work. But?—
Ouch.
A hiss of pain escapes me as the water hits my shoulders. I pause with one foot in the shower and one on the bathroom floor, running my hand cautiously over the stinging skin. My palm comes away tinged with red.
What?
I twist around, trying to get a look at my back in the mirror. Sure enough, my upper back is crisscrossed with shallow cuts, some of them beaded with half-dried blood.
Oh my God. The tree bark—that must be what did this. In the moment, suffocating beneath Ryker’s hungry touch, I didn’t feel the pain… but the damage is unmistakable.
Despite the heat billowing from the shower, I convulse in a shiver.
This is bad—really bad. Papa warned me time and time again to be careful, to keep my wits about me at all times… and now, less than a week into my time at Crimson Elite, I’m letting myself get so distracted that I don’t even notice my own blood being drawn.
Distracted by a guy, no less.
I should cut this off now, before it gets worse. Ryker is bad news—for anyone, really, but especially for me. If I’ve got even a shred of sense when it comes to self-preservation, I need to resolve this instant to never see him again.
But remembering his shadowed eyes, the low growl of his voice, the way he lifted me onto the motorcycle as though I weighed less than nothing…
Knowing I should stop is one thing.
What if he doesn’t let me?
I step into the shower with my heart pounding, far too aware of the scrapes on my shoulders when the water hits them. It hurts, but not as much as the realization that—after all of Papa’s warnings, all of my caution and care—I’ve already managed to totally screw myself over.
Worse yet, if everything goes according to plan, I’m going to be in even deeper trouble by the end of the night.
But nothing in the world is going to stop me.
Regardless of the torment I feel over my own conflicting thoughts, I can’t deny the fact that something about Ryker makes me feel… wanted. Like I’m floating, but not untethered. Something about him pulls me in and sets me alight.
Brushing my fingers over my lips, I can still feel the hungry pressure of his mouth on mine. The way my stomach knotted with something I can’t name. The rush of bodily euphoria that I yearn to feel again…
No matter how dangerous that may be.
I stay in the shower, thoughts and sensations coursing wildly through me, until the water runs clear—then towel off, take a deep breath, and return to my darkened bedroom.
A glance at my phone tells me that it’s coming up on eleven o’clock. I still have time, but that doesn’t stop my heart from hammering. Within the span of a couple of hours, it’ll all be over. I’ll have an invitation to the secret society that operates within the literal underground of the school, ready once and for all to enter the thorny web of secrets in which my mother found herself so deeply entangled.
I have to focus.
Everything I need is in the duffel bag. A change of clothes—black turtleneck, socks, and leggings, plus silk gloves to avoid fingerprints. A balaclava, concealing everything but my eyes. The three tiny silver instruments that constitute my lock-picking set. And the Swiss army knife, just in case.
Papa would be furious if he could see me now. He’s not a temperamental man, but if there’s one thing he cares about, it’s being in control. In control of his house, his finances, his work… and, most of all, me.
But not anymore.
I’ve rehashed the plan countless times, but there’s no harm in doing so again. Get outside. Find a decent hiding place—the rose bushes should work well enough, so long as I can avoid the thorns. Then comes the waiting—hours of it, potentially, but that’s not a concern. I’m as wide awake as I can ever remember being. If I’m right—if the society still exists, if they still distribute invitations, and if those invitations are still delivered past midnight on the first new moon of the semester—I might actually be able to make this thing work.
Because after the waiting comes the following. After the following comes the stealing. And then…?
Well, I’m not sure what will happen next. It depends on a thousand little things, including the content of the invitation itself.
No matter what, though, I’ll be one step closer to my mother. One step closer to finding out what really happened to her all those years ago.
My gloved fingertips brush over the spine of the Moleskine journal, lingering for a few moments. I would explain to Papa if I could, but he would never understand. He refuses to understand. For him, my mother is a thing of the past. What’s buried is buried, though he would never say so in such plain terms. If he were to accept that her death may have had another causet, he would be forced to confront years of inaction, and at his age, the guilt might just kill him.
Me, on the other hand? I’ve only just entered the real world. My entire life has yet to unfold before me, and I can let it take me wherever I want.
Even to the past.
“I’ve got this, Mom,” I whisper, lips stirring against the fabric of my mask. “I’m going to find out what happened to you once and for all.”
And once I do, I’ll see you avenged.
I promise.
Sage and Aimee’s tipsy chatter has finally died down, but I’m still careful as I return to the living room—the last thing I want is for anyone to get a look at me dressed like this, slipping out in the middle of the night. I peek through the keyhole—all dark—then ease the door open an inch at a time. Sure enough, the couches are vacant. That’s a good start.
Here’s where the challenge really begins.
I know how to stay quiet. One foot in front of the other, following a floor beam—straying from the straight line could cause the hardwood to creak. I unlock the door in slow motion, slip outside, and close it behind me without so much as a whisper from the hinges.
The hallway is dim but not dark; the overhead lights, on full blast during the day, hum with a low amber glow, faint enough that the red-painted doors seem almost black. The other rooms have gone quiet, and my only companion is the heavy beat of my heart as I make my way past the elevator, towards the shadowy maw of the stairwell.
I haven’t taken the stairs before, only the elevator, and they’re draftier than I was expecting. As my eyes adjust, I peek over the metal skeleton of the banister, towards the zigzagging stone steps below. Twelve floors is a dizzying height, especially because I can’t see all the way down—after the first few sets of stairs, they taper off into blackness, creating an illusion of infinite depth.
Like a descent into Hell.
But I’ve got no time for morbid thinking like that. I have a job to do. I grip the wrought iron banister and begin my descent, moving light and fast on my tiptoes. One floor… two… three… I pause to glance downwards again. The bottom floor still isn’t visible. Just a pit of shadow?—
Shadow that moves.
My brain can’t make sense of what’s happening before me. The darkness itself is shifting—coalescing—taking on a physical form?—
Then my mind clicks and the illusion is shattered. I’m looking at a person—but a person dressed from head to toe in pitch black. Not practical stealth wear like mine, but a bona fide Grim Reaper robe, hood and all, its hem rustling so smoothly along the stairs that the figure might as well be floating.
I jump away from the banister and brace myself against the wall. Have to think fast. The stairs are too narrow to try and pass them by unnoticed. I have my knife—but it’s tiny, more of a tool than a weapon. My only choice is to go up—as far up as I need to. If they’re headed for the very top floor, I’m dead meat—but otherwise, I can make this work.
I start up the stairs two at a time, balancing speed and stealth with knife’s-edge precision. The occasional risky glance downwards confirms that the figure is still coming, still moving with that eerie, seamless grace.
I’m on the eleventh floor, the twelfth, the thirteenth—my legs burn with exertion, but it’s a familiar sensation, almost a comforting one. Fourteenth floor now?—
When I check this time, the figure is gone.
Their pace has been steady all this while, consistently two sets of stairs below me. Which means that, by my calculations, they’ve finally stopped off at the twelfth floor.
My floor.
My heart jackknifes in my chest. Is it possible—? Could it be that, after all of my precautions, they’ve selected me as a new recruit?
Surely not. They have no reason to connect me with my mother—I look nothing like her, and it’s not as if we share a surname.
I could hedge my bets, wait until the figure leaves—perhaps I’ll return to my room to find… something with my name on it. An envelope? A scroll? My mother was vague in her description, never detailing exactly what ‘the invitation’ was.
But there are other girls on our floor, and the odds are against me. Better safe than sorry, especially when it comes to something like this.
I creep back down as quickly as I can, eyes glued to the faint light spilling from the twelfth floor hallway. When I reach the landing, I flatten myself against the wall and scoot towards the entrance in increments—if the figure looks back and sees me following… nope. Can’t think about that.
I chance a swift peek around the corner, and my stomach jolts at the sight before me.
The hooded figure—six feet tall or more, now that I have a proper look at it—is standing in front of the middle door, the one leading to the room shared by Angelica and Shivani. One broad hand, clad in a heavier glove than my own, lifts some sort of long bronze tool from a robe pocket. I can’t see too well from here, but it looks far heavier and older than the flimsy room keys we were given—and yet it is a key, it has to be, because it’s sliding into the lock like a knife into butter and twisting without resistance.
The figure slips inside the room. I could make a run for it, try and get back to my suite before the stranger reemerges—but even the slightest of sounds would be too great a risk for me to take.
Instead, I do what I do best: I back into the shadows, down onto the eleventh floor landing, and I wait.
The minute or so that passes may as well be an eternity.
I just want a chance to be normal, I told my father. I want to be like all the other girls.
Well, look at me now. Skulking in a gloomy stairwell with a balaclava and a knife.
A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do, right?
A flicker of movement catches my eyes. That’s the stranger, all right. I huddle closer to the wall. Don’t look down, I urge it silently. Don’t look down… Why is it lingering like that? Crap, could it be looking down already? The shape of the hood makes it impossible to tell. But there’s still no way it could see me, not while I’m dressed like this, perfectly motionless…
All at once, the figure resumes its ascent, almost slithering up towards the thirteenth floor and beyond, as silent as the shadow which it so closely resembles.
I force myself to count to thirty, and then I’m on my feet, all but sprinting up the stairs. My hallway is as still and quiet as before, undisturbed—if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I’d never think that a person had been creeping through it mere moments earlier.
With no time to waste, I make straight for the middle door.
Angelica and Shivani’s eyes, frozen on photo paper, watch as I close my hand around the knob and give it a twist. Locked, of course. Not a problem—I may not have a master key of my own, but I don’t need one. This is where the tools from my duffel come into play.
I sink into a crouch and lay out my handy little trio of silver devices. This is a basic tumbler lock, easy work for someone with my training. After all the practice I’ve had—Papa is nothing if not thorough, often to the point of paranoia—solving the pins’ position is a cinch. Within a few moments, I have a solid sense of how the springs are set—and then it’s just a matter of jiggling, combing the pick carefully back and forth to coax the pins into place…
There. The lock disengages with a faint click that feels like a thunderbolt in the oppressively quiet hallway. I freeze for a moment, half-expecting to hear footsteps on the other side—nothing.
I scoop up my tools, crack the door open, and slip inside, shutting it swiftly behind me. The lights are off and the curtain drawn, but my eyes are well trained for the dark, and within seconds I have a decent sense of the suite’s layout—identical to my own, down to the twin couches, but slightly smaller, with two bedroom doors set into the walls rather than four. These two are by no means neat freaks—bottles, papers, and spare items of clothing litter just about every surface.
Behind one of those doors is the invitation. I’ve got a fifty-fifty chance…
Steadying myself with deep breaths, I head to the left. If they lock their bedrooms at night, this is going to get a lot more complicated—but the door moves easily at my touch, opening inwards with a faint squeak of its hinges.
I stop moving. Even my heart seems to still. Somewhere in the darkened room in front of me, a body groans and shifts—my lips are almost numb with tension—but after a moment, it lapses into a soft snore.
Can’t relax yet. I crouch low to the floor and extend a hand, feeling around for anything out of place, but I come up empty. The cloaked figure can’t have put it too far inside—that would be an unnecessary risk, right?
The room’s sleeping occupant stirs again, mumbling something nonsensical.
I’m back on my feet. Need to get out of here. It’ll be in the other room—it has to be in the other room.
The second door opens just as easily, this time without even the trace of a creak. It’s brighter in here; the window’s curtains are pulled aside, and even without a moon, the ambient gray light of campus is enough to highlight the clutter scattered across the floor and desk.
I know the invitation as soon as I see it.
It’s not an envelope or a card or anything that I’d suspected. It’s a box, small and plain, hewn of dark wood. Unobtrusive, but starkly contrasting with the odds and ends scattered around the rest of the room. When I kneel down to touch it, my fingers brush across hinged metal handles on either side. Almost like a little treasure chest. There’s something carved into the surface—letters, perhaps—but it’s impossible to make them out without a proper light.
Don’t mind me, I imagine saying as I lift it and tuck it against my chest. I’ll just be taking this and going on my way.
I feel like I’m walking on air as I reenter the hallway. But I’m not in the clear yet—have to hurry back to my own suite, lock the door, half-sprint to my bedroom, double check that the entrances to both the bathroom and living room are firmly shut…
A sigh of relief whispers past my lips, so heavy that it leaves me lightheaded.
I made it.
I’m holding it.
I climb into bed, flick on the side table lamp, and sit cross-legged, contemplating my prize. A. Alexander—that’s what the lettering says, carved in neat capital letters. Under the glow of the lamp, the wood isn’t ebony like I initially suspected—it’s something I don’t recognize, a deep, rich red veined with chocolate brown. Warm to the touch I discover after I shuck off my gloves.
There’s no lock, only a metal clasp securing the box’s lid.
Judging by the weight, there can’t be much inside. Definitely not anything dangerous. So why do I almost feel afraid to open it?
Maybe because my mother would disapprove. Her letter begged me to pursue a normal life, and here I am, walking right into the trap that may have very well ended hers.
Sorry, Mom. Sorry, Papa.
But I need to do this.
I hold my breath, undo the clasp, and lift the lid.
A note, no bigger than the palm of my hand, sits nestled against black fabric. Perfect calligraphy sculpts a terse message in red ink:
You have been chosen. Southern corner of the woods, midnight at the week’s end. Garments enclosed.
Tell a soul, and death will find you swiftly.
No signature.
Oh my God, it’s real.
And I just found my way in.