Chapter 46 Elle
ELLE
“So…”
I glance at Sutton as we weave through the Primordial Forest, feeling a strange sense of déjà vu even though it’s still light enough out to see. Awareness pricks at my skin like the tiny bites of microscopic parasites waiting to devour us.
A shadow passes between the branches, sending me a little closer to Sutton. I’m trying to keep my distance because of suspicions that already exist, but this creepy fucking place makes it difficult.
“So?” I prompt, waiting for him to finish the question. I can still feel him between my legs, and I’d be embarrassed if the rest of my body wasn’t so elated that he came after me.
That he wanted to talk and didn’t let me off the hook with shutting down. That he still wanted me.
“So,” he repeats, hiding a smirk. “Boyfriend, eh?”
My eyes widen, warmth drizzling across my face like honey. “I swear, I didn’t mean anything by that. It just slipped out.”
“Would it be so terrible?”
Pausing midstep, I stop completely, my feet crunching on dry, dead leaves in the dirt pathway. “You want to be my boyfriend?”
He lifts a shoulder. “If that’s what you want.”
My pulse grows erratic. I start walking again, falling into step with him. “I’ve never had a boyfriend before.”
“Never?”
“Not a real one.” I shake my head. “Back home, everyone was too scared of my dad to ask me out. Not too scared to slip backstage between rehearsals for a quickie but too afraid to risk being seen with me publicly. Then when I moved to LA, well…acting and moonlighting at whatever gig I could grab for extra cash took up most of my time.”
He doesn’t say anything, processing quietly.
The silence makes my skin itch. “You got to explain why you are the way you are, kind of, so I just also wanted to make a case for myself. You know, in the event I say something mean and hurt your feelings. I’m new to this.”
“I like when you’re mean,” he says matter-of-factly.
“You know you’re, like, severely repressed, right?”
He tosses me a grin that makes my chest flutter like a swarm of butterflies, and I spend the rest of our walk studying him from the side, trying to commit his entire profile to memory.
I consider asking about the Blackwater family. From what I can tell, there’s not much interaction between the Duponts and them, especially given the death of their only son last semester.
Or only known son.
Instead, I keep the questions to myself and meet up with Lexington in the Obeliskos later that evening—except he’s not alone. Asher and Lucy are lounging about on the thirteenth floor with him, while Aurora and Meg sit in the corner charting mushrooms for some fungi class they share.
I take the empty seat next to Lexington, lifting my brows in surprise when no one else pops out of the shadows. “No ball and chain tonight?”
He grins, flexing his biceps in the thin T-shirt he has on, leaning against the table. “Don’t ask what he’s up to. All I heard was fireworks and Sabrina and figured it was best if he stayed away.”
“Is he…setting off fireworks or making his own with her?”
He levels me with a look. “I didn’t ask. Don’t need to know.”
“Okay, here’s all the shit you asked for.” Asher slams down a stack of thick, cloth-bound books in front of me, blowing some hair out of his eyes. “Can I take my girlfriend and go now?”
“You don’t want to stay and help me sort through these? It’s your heritage too, you know.”
“Unlike you and Q, I don’t really give a shit where we came from. All the past seems to do is get people into trouble.” He shoves his hands inside his jacket pockets, shaking his head. “I’d much rather focus on the future.”
“Aw, my baby brother: ever the optimist.”
“It’s not optimism. I’m just being practical.”
“Doesn’t learning from the past help keep you from creating future mistakes?” Lexington asks.
Asher slides his dark gaze to him, unimpressed. “Who even are you?”
“I’m a friend of Elle’s.”
“Okay, well, next time I want your opinion, I’ll make sure to ask for it.”
Sighing, I take the book off the top of the stack and crack it open to the first page. “Jeez, just go, Ash. I’m not going to force you to stay here.”
“Lucy,” he barks over his shoulder at where she’s skimming through an encyclopedia at another table. “Are you ready to go?”
“I think I’ll stay here for a bit,” she says, not looking up.
Asher’s hands ball into fists. I’ll bet he wishes Foxe were here to use as a punching bag.
“Fine,” he snaps, stomping back over to where Lucy’s seated. He slams his ass into a chair, muttering something under his breath. She reaches up, threading her fingers through his hair, and he instantly softens at her touch, toying with his nose ring as he rests his head on the table.
A pang of envy splits my chest in two, so I glance away, refocusing on the book in front of me.
The first few I flip through aren’t of much use—they’re overall Fury Hill history, detailing things like how the infrastructure was initially intended to be built higher to deter lower-class citizens from venturing into the mountains.
Avernia began as the center of town, but when deadly illness rolled through, eliminating a major portion of the population, the limits moved, and older plans were slashed and burned.
Like Sabrina said, Avernia College was used as a triage center during those founding years, lending to the rumors about ghosts and hauntings that exist even to this day. A few entries talk about the student organizations—although only the Curators and Visio Aternae.
“Seems a bit odd there’s nothing in here about Death’s Teeth,” I mutter.
“Well, even the stuff about the founding families feels a little…contrived,” Lucy says, clearing her throat. “They practically write about the Duponts and Blackwaters like they’re the sole driving forces of the town while everyone else is background noise. And the Andersons…”
“Are cursed,” Aurora finishes from her corner.
Asher snorts, glaring at me. “What an exciting history we have here, Noelle.”
I roll my eyes, going back to the books. There has to be something that gives more information about how and why things turned out like this.
Mentions of Cronus Anderson and his strange healing remedies during the mass disease spread seem to be likely culprits; people often fear whatever they can’t make sense of. But to be honest, it’s not really my family I’m trying to find out about.
I scour the archives for anything on the other founding families: almost an entire line wiped out by paranoia, death worship, betrayals, and sin.
That’s what it all seems to come back down to—the people of Fury Hill may believe they honor their gods, but really, everything they do is tainted by their vices.
Eventually, Asher and the others get up to leave, citing weekend plans that they want to get a good night’s sleep for, and then it’s just Lexington and me.
He’s playing some game on his laptop, not paying any mind to the copious amounts of research I’m trying to catalog.
A librarian makes his way up to the floor, carrying a leather-bound notebook under one arm. He pauses, glancing around, adjusts the round glasses sitting on the bridge of his nose, then scratches at his pale skin. “Did Ms. Wolfe leave?”
“Lucy went home, yes,” I answer.
“Ah. She asked if I had anything on the history of Fury Hill locked away in the back rooms up here. I found this, but maybe—”
“I’ll take it!” I say, scrambling to receive the journal he offers.
“Please remember to return that to the circulation desk in the lobby,” he instructs, turning on his heels to head back downstairs. “Or else you’ll be suspended from school until it’s been retrieved.”
Giddy, I skip back to the table and flop down, placing the book gently on the wooden surface. It’s old and stiff, covered in a thin layer of dust that indicates it hasn’t been checked out much before. Lucy had said she’d try to find something rare, and it looks like she delivered.
Leaning back in my chair, I crack open the spine, startling when a small rectangular packet slips out, falling to the table. They’re stapled together, and the packet is pressed so thin I’m afraid to touch it at first.
Lexington glances over as I stare. “Wait. That’s a Pythia journal.”
“A what?”
“Pythia’s journals. She used to write on this really fine carbon copy paper, staple it together, and leave them like little pamphlets all around campus.”
I trace over the bold signature carved into the front and glance at the dates below it.
My heart stops dead in my chest.
Eight years ago.
Autumn.
The same year I came to visit Quincy.
It could be a coincidence, I suppose. Stranger things have happened.
I turn the page, intrigued anyway.
And immediately wish I hadn’t read any of it at all.
Looking up at Lexington, I swallow hard, pushing down the bile rising swiftly in my throat. His gaze meets mine, concern lining his eyes.
“Are you okay?” he asks, leaning close. “It looks like you’re about to pass out.”
Shaking my head, I press my fingers to the page, nausea pumping through my bloodstream. The scratch of pencil marks on the paper almost transports me in time, and I’m back in the forest as I read the entries, desperate to find my way out.
— The rule of three applies tonight: it’s the first time any sophomore class has had three founding family members enrolled at once. Prophecy coming to fruition.
— Targets drugged, moved to Tartarus. Continuing death’s rite ceremony.
— The group has pivoted. Incarnate now the center of their attention. Their pick for Incarnate—S will be claimed physically as theirs while they wait for a Maiden and sacrifice.
From there, the entries begin to feel a little more personal, less clinical, like whoever was watching the events unfold had suddenly gotten much closer.
My stomach lurches as I read through, reliving each entry not as something I’ve concocted from my imagination but from my own memory.