Chapter 20 Elle
ELLE
A week after my encounter with Sutton in the forest, I drag Aurora, Lexington, and Lucy to the Apollodorus in the hopes of uncovering more about the Anderson curse and Fury Hill’s lore.
“Ugh, I don’t like this,” Aurora mutters.
I shoot her a dirty look as Lexington shimmies open the door to the basement stairwell.
We’d gone to the Obeliskos first, under the impression that all the archives and important town information were kept there.
According to one of the student aides, though, an older part of the collection had been moved after some sort of vandalism incident.
I’m not sure whose call it was, but when I asked Lexington if he could get us access, he’d been very excited about the prospect.
Comparatively, the libraries look similar with their dark wooden and carpeted floors that creak beneath every step, the ebony and oak furniture that looks as if it’s been here since the school’s founding, and high ceilings with various colorful murals painted on them.
Walls of bookcases, locked doors, and empty study rooms decorate the main levels, and while the Apollodorus is smaller in size, it feels somehow even more haunted.
“No one is forcing you to be here,” I tell Aurora as she grips Lucy’s biceps, half hiding behind her smaller frame.
“You promised doughnuts,” she whines. Her French manicure digs into the sleeves of Lucy’s black long-sleeved shirt.
“Doughnuts? She told me there was a sign-up for a reproductive rights walkathon,” Lucy says, narrowing her blue eyes.
“So I didn’t want to go down here alone,” I snap, crossing my arms. “Sue me.”
“You guys are gonna scare the ghosts,” Lexington says, holding the door open for us.
“Not funny,” I mutter.
“Wasn’t a joke.” Though his smirk contradicts his words. He nudges me forward with an elbow, and I glare at him.
Swallowing over a knot in my throat, I lean past the doorway, peering down at the spiraling descent into the underground. The stairwell itself is dark, with seemingly only one dim wall sconce per level, and endless.
“Can we go already? I don’t think we should prolong this.” Aurora huddles close to me, breathing on my shoulder. Her hands find the back of my sweater, tugging, the thick scarf around her neck bumping against me.
“What are you looking for exactly?” Lexington asks as we head down, taking each step slowly as if they might give out at any moment. “Town lore? The archives are pretty boring, so you’ll probably want to go for founders’ journals or even the old Delphic Pages paper.”
“Paper?” I ask. “That gossip site was a print tabloid first?”
“Oh yeah. It only went online maybe a decade or so ago? I have no idea who made the shift—some undergrad, most likely—but when my mom was a student here, Pythia’s musings were printed and posted front and center in the dorms and on all the Lyceum’s bulletin boards.”
I hum, gripping the wobbly railing to steady myself. The picture I saw of the cave in one encyclopedia flashes through my memory, and I wonder if a Pythia of the past captured it.
Maybe that’s why the photographer’s name had been redacted.
We pass one floor, and I can practically hear Aurora’s teeth chattering every time the plumbing in the walls lets out a groan. Goose bumps pepper my skin even though I’m no stranger to old buildings, since the Asphodel where I grew up was a remodeled hotel.
Not to mention my dad’s shady past pretty much guarantees some level of bloodshed happened there, though neither of my parents talk about that part of their lives at all.
Still, not talking about things doesn’t mean they didn’t happen, and the internet does have articles from early in their marriage.
Plus, what they won’t say, sometimes my aunts and uncles will.
“Do all founding family members attend Avernia?” I probe.
“Historically? Yes.” Lexington purses his lips. “Though I guess your dad would be the exception there. While not well received, your ancestors before him were still permitted to attend school—so long as it wasn’t more than one at a time.”
“Because of that stupid curse, right? What exactly do they think me and my siblings are going to do to them? Surely we know vampires aren’t real.”
“That’s what they want you to think,” Aurora mutters.
Lexington tosses her a smirk. “It’s hard to say what people think the curse in manifest will look like.
Cronus was rumored to have drained townspeople of their blood, so maybe they do think you’re all vampires.
He also married the Dupont widow after the other founding patriarchs died, so some believe there were extramarital activities happening there.
Dude was knocking off the seven deadly sins like they were on his bucket list.”
The Dupont widow? My heart thumps faster at that revelation, but I force myself to remain calm.
“Sounds a little satanic panic-y to me,” I say.
“Also possible. The founders passed on their superstitions, and the belief in the curse predates a lot of the buildings within city limits. You can’t really blame them for it.”
“Well you can blame them a little,” I note.
“That’s fair, especially since these are beliefs held by the town alone. Outside Fury Hill, no one cares.”
“Which is probably why no one in my family ever heard of a curse until Quincy enrolled.”
He points at me, nodding. “Exactly.”
Lucy scoffs. “Either way, Fury Hill groupthink almost got me killed.”
“Yet here you remain,” he says as we round the next floor, veering into a hall off the side that seems to get narrower the farther we go. “Honestly, you all lucked out somehow avoiding detection by Death’s Teeth. They’re the real threat to the Andersons.”
That name sends a chill skittering down my neck. “How come?”
We walk to the end of the hall, passing multiple blank, inconsequential doors and one marked Archives. The last is a solid wooden barrier with slash marks slicing across the paint, making my chest tighten.
“Everyone thinks of Death’s Teeth as this sexy vigilante group,” Lexington says, slipping a lock-picking kit from the inside of his corduroy jacket. He bends slightly, fitting the tools into the doorknob. “But that would imply they’re doing some sort of public service, avenging crimes or whatever.”
“They’re not?”
“No one’s ever seen real evidence of it. That’s kind of the point though—the obscurity. If you don’t know enough to ask questions, they can get away with anything.”
“Do you think what the Curators said about the murders last semester were true?” Lucy asks softly. “That Death’s Teeth framed them?”
Lexington shrugs. “Maybe. I have heard they deal in orgies and human sacrifice among a host of other things Pythia likes to claim.”
“Human sacrifice?” I stare at his fingers as they work. “Is there a religious component to this school that I’m unaware of?”
“I’m sure it’s got its roots in something,” he replies, finally pushing the door open to reveal a massive, unpainted room filled with dozens of bookcases, most of them only half-filled.
“Growing up, my parents were always saying that death was the ultimate god to some people in this town, so maybe the sacrifices are their way of appeasing him.”
“Or her,” Lucy adds. “Death could easily be a woman. Or nongendered at all. I don’t think we should confine its identity to Western gender norms.”
“Fair enough,” Lexington says, straightening to his full height once again.
“Point is no one really knows anything about Death’s Teeth, and they like it that way.
But given all the weird shit that’s been happening, and Avernia’s long list of inexplicable student disappearances and deaths…
” He looks at me, shrugging. “I’d say staying off their radar is your safest bet at survival. ”
“And I’d say yours would be not entering restricted areas on campus,” a baritone voice asserts, shattering the air around us.
The four of us let out a noise of surprise, whirling around to face the intruder. Aurora clutches Lucy’s bicep, and Lexington slides a little closer to me, hooking his foot around mine as if he plans on protecting me.
I glance at our shoes—mine a Mary Jane, his some kind of sneaker—and then at the voice’s owner.
Sutton stands at the bottom step, arms crossed over his chest and a stern frown resting on his annoyingly handsome face. His jaw clenches as he looks at our group, slowing to a near stop when he notices how close Lexington is to me.
Good. Be jealous.
Especially since flanking his sides are Percy, Sabrina, and my sister.
The latter places her ringed fingers on her hips, narrowing her eyes slightly at me.
“Told you they were trying to break into locked archives,” Sabrina says, twirling her blond ponytail with one hand.
Percy shifts the cardboard box he’s carrying, averting his gaze.
“Jesus Christ, Sabrina, you’re such a goddamn tattletale,” Lexington mutters.
“Don’t be mad at me because you broke the rules, Abbott,” she says.
“Can I be mad that you’re such a Goody Two-Shoes?” he quips back.
“We’re not doing anything wrong,” I say, meeting Sutton’s eyes finally as I ball my hands into fists. “Research is a school-sanctioned activity.”
“With proper permission,” Sutton replies curtly. “Which you’d need from the library board and the dean. I’m going to assume by the lock-picking kit Mr. Abbott is holding that you obtained neither.”
“You know what they say about assuming,” I tell him.
Exhaling, Sutton reaches up and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Would you all just go back up to the main floor? You’re not allowed to be down here without a faculty escort.”
“And Asher’s looking for you, Luce,” Quincy adds.
I smirk. “How sweet. You have your own little lapdog.”
She frowns, poking my side. “Hey, don’t take your irritation out on my love life.”
My shoulders slump. “Sorry, Lulu.”
Lucy grins, wrapping her arms around my neck. “It’s okay,” she whispers in my ear. “I have a tendency to lash out when I’m around the man who pushes my buttons too.”