Chapter 6
6
WHERE DO WE begin? At the beginning.
Well, by dinner, I have the beginnings of a plan. In the busy dining hall I grab a table and take bites of a sandwich between texting the only person I know who might have answers.
Hey! We didn’t get expelled.
The response is instant. Charlotte’s the type of girl who lives with her phone in her hand, never on silent, never on do-not-disturb.
YEsssss! I’m serious tho i’m really sorry I almost got y’all kicke out!!! I feel like hsit
I should feel ashamed about using her guilt to my advantage, right?
All good. That party was wild. Lots of different kids there.
For REAL! somebody ratted out those football players! They have to ride the bench our first game and it’s against State, too!
That’s bullshit! I don’t keep up with football, but vulgarity seems like the right response. Who was that girl yelling at everyone to leave? Tall blond ponytail
Victoria Morgan. Goes by Tor. A serious legacy. She adds a couple of thumbs-down emojis.
What’s her deal?
Her daddy and granddaddy and whoever else all the way back to whenever went to UNC. Couple years ago, her fam donated so much $ to the B School they renamed a building after them. Old money good ol’ boys. Legacy kids waltz in, get whatever grades, and leave 4 years later with great internships and jobs lined up
Old money and good ol’ boys. Why am I not surprised? This is the South. Tight-knit groups, lots of loyalty, established networks, plenty of resources. Perfect for the Legendborn, I bet.
What about that guy she was with? I pick out the descriptors that sound the most… reasonable. Dark hair. Angry. Yellow eyes.
SELWYN KANE WAS THERE!?!?! AND I MISSED HIM!?? He never parties with ANYONE. Holy Jesus that boy is hottt
A stream of emojis: tongue-out smiley face, both hands up, hunnit, kissy lips.
I shudder. I don’t think Charlotte would add kissy lips if she’d seen Sel snarl like a lion and almost break someone’s kneecaps with one hand. She texts me back before I can respond.
Selwyn doesn’t hang with Tor tho?
He doesn’t? They were both standing right near the fight. All true. All things anyone could have seen.
I’ve never seen them even SPEAK to each other. They don’t run in the same circles, babe. Not even close! He’s an EC junior like me and Tor’s a regular junior.
My wheels spin. So, the Legendborn avoid each other in public, but in private, they’re coordinated. Organized. They mentioned a Gate on campus. Is that where they usually hunt? If Sel is an EC junior, he’s not ageless; he’s eighteen.
Gotta go. Sigma party tonight! Wanna come?
Nope. Already on the dean’s shitlist.
By the time I finish dinner, the sun has set and ribbons of deep purple and burnt orange streak through the darkening sky. I push through the doors into the thick soup of a humid evening, lost in thought.
“Briana Irene Matthews!”
I freeze, then pivot slowly to look for the sort of asshole who calls out someone’s full name in public to get their attention.
Leaning against the wall just beside the exit is a tall white boy with tousled straw-blond hair and the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen. He looks like he belongs on the cover of the university brochure: impossibly bright and cheery, wearing plain jeans and a Carolina blue zipped hoodie. When he laughs, the sound is warm and genuine. “Now, that’s what you call a murderous expression!”
“Want to help me with the follow-through?” I snap.
He smiles, shoves off the wall with one foot, and strolls toward me. “You’re hard to pin down.” He looks up briefly, as if considering. Eyes back on me. “And rude , too, leaving me on read all day.”
My eyes fall shut as I mutter, “You’re the babysitter.”
“Does that mean you’re a baby?” My eyes snap open to find Nick Davis standing right in front of me, eyes twinkling with barely contained mirth. He is at least four inches taller than me, which is saying something, even though as a second-year EC he’s probably only a year older than I am. Definitely not built like any seventeen-year-olds I know. With his broad shoulders and narrow waist, he looks like one of those Olympic gymnasts.
I turn on my heel to leave. This boy is not part of the plan. Not the beginning, middle, or anywhere in between.
“Briana, wait up!” Nick jogs to follow. “I’ll walk you to your dorm.”
“It’s Bree, and no thanks.”
When he catches up, his fresh-laundry-and-cedar scent comes with him. Of course he smells good. “Bree, short for Briana.” His dimple-edged smile is probably on a poster at a dentist’s office somewhere.
“I’d be happy to escort you. Peer mentor and all that,” he says without a stitch of sarcasm. “According to the dean, you have a tendency to get lost at night and accidentally end up in the back of police cruisers?”
I huff and pick up the pace, but he matches mine without missing a beat. “How did you find me?”
He shrugs. “I asked Dean McKinnon for your class schedule and campus ID photo.” He holds up a hand before I protest. “Not personal information typically shared with students, but the EC consent forms we all signed waive that right between mentors, orientation assistants, and other assigned guides. I found out when your last class ended. Made a guess as to when you’d hit dinner, then estimated how long it’d take for you to get through the buffet line in Lenoir, find a table, and eat at that hour of the day. All I had to do was show up and wait outside the exit closest to Old East.”
I stop, my jaw open. He grins, clearly amused and more than a little pleased with himself. “So, you’re a creep?”
He holds a hand to his chest like I’ve wounded him. “Not a creep, just clever! And operating under Dean McKinnon’s explicit orders to make first contact with you today .” Ocean eyes set in a tanned face take me in, and a knowing smile sends a wave of warmth to my ears. “Timed it perfectly too. You walked out five minutes after I arrived.”
“Being clever and being creepy are not mutually exclusive.”
“Oh, I agree.” He scratches at his chin. “There’s probably a Venn Diagram or a graph of direct proportionality in there somewhere—”
I groan. “This is, by definition, using your intelligence for evil.”
Nick tilts his head. “Correct. On two levels, in fact.” He raises a finger. “Using one’s cleverness to creep and”—a second finger—“using one’s cleverness to diagram the cleverness-to-creepiness relationship.”
I open my mouth, close it, turn, and walk away. He follows.
We walk in silence for a few moments, letting the night flow around and between us. I glance back once. Nick’s easy stroll reminds me of a dancer: long strides, straight posture. When my eyes reach his face, there’s a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. I whip around.
After a minute, he speaks up again, his voice curious behind me. “So, did you jump the cliff? The one at the Quarry?”
“No.”
“Well,” he muses, “aside from landing in the dean’s office on your first day of school—a record, I’m guessing, so well done—it’s not the worst thing to do. Cliff’s not that high, and it’s kinda fun.”
I turn back to face him, surprised in spite of myself. “ You’ve done it?”
He chuckles. “I have.”
“But aren’t you the dean’s golden boy?”
He lifts a shoulder. “I’m great on paper.” A few minutes later, we arrive at an intersection where walking paths branch out all around us in a circle like spokes on a wheel. He steps beside me and we walk together down the path on our right toward Old East. Crickets and cicada song drone in the distance.
I wonder if Alice is back in our room. We’ve fought before, plenty of times, but nothing like this. Nothing that left me feeling this cold. I imagine Alice’s eyes in my mind, angry and scornful. The last person who’d yelled at me like that had been my mom. How am I so good at hurting the people I love? Hurting them so badly that they scream and cry in my face?
“So, Dean McKinnon said you enrolled with a friend?”
This boy is intuitive. Unnervingly so. “Alice. She’s always wanted to come here.”
He eyes me. “And you didn’t?” I blink, unsure how to respond, and he takes my silence as an answer. “Then why did you come?”
“I’m a smarty-pants.”
His scan of my face is quick, appraising. “Obviously,” he murmurs, “but that’s how you got here, not why . Nobody comes to EC just for the classes.”
I snort. “Tell that to Alice. She’ll be crushed.”
“Not answering the question. I see.” His attentive eyes pass over me like he’s found my insides and wants to idly peruse them. No rush. Don’t mind me. Just digging out your guts.
“Dean McKinnon asked me to talk to you about your student activity requirement since some campus groups begin recruiting members the first week of school. See any you like?” I’d completely forgotten about that part of the program. Nick spots the look on my face and hides a smirk behind his palm. “Do you even know what a student group is?”
“I can guess,” I growl. “Clubs. Professional degree orgs for pre-med kids or pre-law kids. I dunno… fraternities and sororities?”
“Mostly right,” he says, “except EC kids can’t join frats or sororities. Minors in environments notorious for partying and drinking? That’s a no-go. What parent would send their precious underage baby to UNC if they thought we were studying organic chem during the day and doing keg stands at night?”
“Well, which one did you join? So I know which one to avoid.”
“A second sidestepped question. Cricket Club.”
“Cricket. Club. In basketball and football country?”
He shrugs. “I knew it would piss my dad off.”
Something twists in my heart, tight and sharp. “Oh?”
“My dad’s an alum. A psychology professor here.”
“And he wants you to do something other than cricket?”
“Yep.” Nick tips his head backward and watches the tree limbs as we pass under them. “Follow in his footsteps.”
“But you’re not going to do that something else?”
“Nope.”
“Why not?”
He drops his gaze to mine. “Because I don’t do things just because my father wants me to.”
Suddenly, irrationally, the twist in my chest transforms into something more aggressive. “He just wants a connection.”
Nick scoffs. “I’m sure he does, but I don’t care.”
I stop on the pathway and turn to him. “You should care.”
Nick stops walking. Uses my earlier response against me. “Oh?”
“Yes,” I challenge.
We lock eyes, brown to blue, and something unexpected passes between us. A tug of friendship, a dropper full of humor.
“You’re pushy,” he observes, and smiles.
I don’t know what to say to that, so I start walking again.
Old East appears ahead of us, beige-yellow brick and unremarkable identical windows running in rows down its sides. You’d never guess it had been standing for almost two hundred and thirty years—the oldest state university building in the country.
I don’t know why it bugs me that Nick doesn’t want to connect with his father. We’ve only just met, we barely know each other, and he doesn’t owe me any details about his life. It shouldn’t irritate me.
But it does.
Contempt and jealousy intertwine and slice through my stomach like jagged claws. I want to aim them at this Nick so that he can feel what I think of his wasted luxury: a parent who’s still alive for reconciliation. I turn to him, the words on my tongue, when I catch a flash of unearthly light in the distance, just over his shoulder.
Selwyn’s magic had been smoke and swirling silver. These flames, pulsing in the sky above the trees, burn a rotting neon green.
“Oh my God…,” I whisper, my heart suddenly racing.
“What?” Nick asks.
I’m running past him before any other thoughts fully form. I hear him yelling behind me, asking me what’s wrong, but I don’t care. I can’t care.
This time of day on a college campus makes a straight path impossible. Strolling students, sitting couples, and a Frisbee game send me zigzagging. Last night I ran away from magic. Tonight, I have to run toward it. For my mom, for my dad, for me. I have to know the truth. I have to know if not getting a chance to talk to her again was my fault, or if—
I round a hedge, and the world drops out from underneath me.
Crouched between two science buildings is something I’d never imagined could exist.
The creature is outlined in thin green light. Its body flickers, gaining density, then thinning, then gaining it again. It could be a wolf except that it stands twice as tall and instead of fur it has a semitranslucent layer of stretched and blackened skin that flakes off at the joints of its four legs. It bares two rows of teeth, curved backward like scythes. Thin rivers of steaming black saliva stream between its lower canines and pool on the grass.
I don’t know what sound I make—a gasp, a near-silent yelp of fear—but its head whips in my direction, glowing red eyes and red-tipped ears pointing my way. It howls, and the piercing sound bounces between the buildings until it assaults me from all sides, freezing me to the spot.
The creature drops low, a growl gurgling in its throat, and launches itself at me.
I brace for the bite of teeth, but suddenly a figure barrels into the creature, knocking it off course mid-flight.
The heaving wolf-thing hits a brick wall with a heavy, squelching sound, a smear of black splattering the wall from the impact.
“Run!” It’s Nick who stands between me and the creature.
The creature hauls itself to its feet. It shakes its body like a dog, flinging dark liquid in every direction. Where the spray lands, grass sizzles like bacon in a pan.
“Bree!” Nick bends down on one knee. “Run!”
Heart pounding in my ears, I stumble—and fall. An arrow of pain shoots up my palms into my elbows.
Nick yanks a thin silver baton from a sheath strapped to his shin. He shifts into a high crouch, then whips the baton down in a slicing motion. The rod extends into a thin, sharp blade.
A hidden weapon. Just like Tor’s.
Nick spins the sword in his grip. At the top of the arc, a small silver cross guard pops out over his hand.
The creature leaps off powerful hind legs and Nick dodges, slicing its ribs as he goes. It lands and swings its tail. Nick ducks, narrowly missing the barbed tip.
The two dance faster than I can follow: Nick slashes. The creature swipes black-tipped claws at his chest. Nick opens it up and sickly light pours from its skin.
They circle each other, both panting hard. Then, the pattern breaks.
Nick steps backward; the creature follows. Nick drops his chin and takes another measured step back—into a closed alley between buildings.
There’s nowhere to run.
He’s trapped, and he doesn’t even realize it.
The creature rears back—
Instinctively, I scramble to my feet and yell, “Hey! This way!”
Nick’s eyes fly to mine at the same time that the creature’s ears flick back toward my voice.
“No!” Nick shouts, but it’s too late. I’m running and the creature is sprinting in my direction. I shift, running perpendicular to its path. Out of the side of my eye, I see it change direction to follow me.
It’s fast. Its teeth snap behind me, less than a foot away. I tuck my chin and push. Faster. Faster. A howl of pain—not mine. A heavy thud.
I can’t help but look.
Nick’s sword is buried a foot deep into the downed creature’s spine. The body shudders and spasms, the blade shaking with it. The creature’s front paws are splayed toward me. So close.
Nick had speared it mid-pounce.
A millisecond later—
“Get back!”
In one motion, the creature I thought was dead pulls its limbs in and under and springs. I raise my arms. It yelps; the embedded sword cuts its attack short. Its jaws snap, black spittle sprays through the air—I hit the ground.
My hands and arms are on fire.
Someone’s screaming.
Me, I think.
The world bleeds black, flowing like ink to the center of my vision.
The last thing I see is Nick, yanking his sword free, then driving it deep into the creature’s skull.