Chapter 24
Omicron Chi Lambda partied like they had invented it.
Liam helped Ellory out of the passenger seat, and her sneakers immediately flattened an abandoned water bottle that shot brown droplets of liquor into the gutter.
She had worn a mesh corset top, black with pale pink floral embroidery, and a pair of high-waisted black jeans.
Her shoulders and belly button were freezing, but Tai had assured her that the inside of the frat house would be like a furnace.
As was often the case with these things, Tai was right.
Music loud enough to make the walls tremble.
Writhing bodies slick with sweat. Alcohol bottles on windowsills and side tables.
It would have reminded Ellory of the night that she and Liam had met, but this was less of a party and more of a rager.
Just squeezing through the crowds without ending up wearing someone’s mixed drink was an exercise in patience.
Only Liam’s hand on the small of her back, the tips of his fingers barely dipping into her pocket, kept her from getting lost in the crowded, cavernous room.
A week had passed since she had unofficially joined the paper.
She hadn’t heard from Stasie, and she hadn’t reached out to Hudson, but she had heard from Liam, and his texts had pulled her from her frustrated spirals.
She had continued to scour books and search the internet for further signs of the Old Masters, she continued to watch her surroundings for looming enforcers and glitches in the Matrix, but it was nice to have Liam remind her that there was more to her life than school and murders.
She wished only that it were enough to settle her conflicted heart.
This was their second date, and Ellory still felt like she was playing a role—and she couldn’t decide if she wanted to commit to it or not.
She hardly qualified as a prize to be shown off, but there had to be a reason he took her out only in group settings.
It felt performative rather than intimate, and yet she always had a good time.
Maybe her mind was trying to ruin this for her. It wouldn’t be the first time.
They pinballed from group to group until Liam introduced her to the entire lacrosse team, all carbon copies of his build and charisma.
“This is my…Ellory,” he said, and it was only a little awkward.
Ellory knew the polite thing to do would be to correct him with a decisive label, but she also didn’t want to define the relationship because it was the polite thing to do.
Instead, she told a man who identified himself as Beau that she liked his shirt.
“Oh, thanks,” he said, beaming down at the photo of a slumbering toddler on the front. “That’s my kid. Do you want see a better picture?”
Six pictures in, Liam slipped away to find them some drinks. Eleven pictures in, Ellory’s curiosity won out.
“Do I pass muster?” she asked, winding a curl around one of her fingers. It sprang free, framing her face. “I know Liam’s dated the likes of Graveses and Mayhews, so I’m a little worried.”
Beau’s eyes flicked to her and then at something over her shoulder. He cleared his throat. “That was a while ago. Blackwood talks about you all the time.”
Joy bloomed in her chest. Still, she turned, catching sight of a woman standing near the wall with a Corona bottle in one hand and her phone in the other.
Her skin was unseasonably golden, blessed with the color of an increasingly invisible sun, and long lashes surrounded eyes the pale gray of mountain mist. Reddish-brown hair framed her face in a tight curl pattern, decorated by a silver headband that matched her sparkling long-sleeved top.
Her earrings dangled toward her shoulders, shaped like guillotines.
Their eyes met, and Ellory’s cheeks grew hot.
“Is that her?” she asked without daring to be the first to look away. “His ex?”
“I don’t want to be involved,” said Beau. “But yes. Can I interest you in more pictures?”
Ellory wandered toward the woman—the Mayhew—before he had even finished speaking. With everything going on, she had completely forgotten to track her down, and now the party was secondary, another step on the inevitable path to truth.
To her credit, the Mayhew woman didn’t pretend she hadn’t been staring.
Those gray eyes watched unblinkingly as Ellory cut through the crowd, her eyebrows lowering as the space between them shrank.
She put her phone away and took a sip of her Corona, leaving a perfect smudge of pomegranate lipstick.
“Hey,” said Ellory.
The woman smiled. “Hey.”
She introduced herself as Farrah Mayhew.
Her handshake was firm but not combative.
Her nails were painted lily pad green. She was strikingly pretty in a way that made Ellory glad she had missed the entirety of her relationship with Liam.
Independently, Farrah and Liam drew helpless longing gazes.
Together, they must have been devastating.
A bisexual’s nightmare. Ellory would never have gotten any studying done.
“So, you and Liam, huh?” said Farrah. “Ugh, sorry.” She ducked her head, her cheeks alight with a rose-petal blush. “Asking about it probably makes me seem like an asshole, but I can’t help myself.”
“I’m willing to abandon decorum if you are,” Ellory said. “Though my question is going to be a lot more morbid.”
Farrah took another sip of her Corona. “I’m intrigued.” But clearly, whatever Farrah had expected her to bring up, Malcolm Mayhew wasn’t it. She blinked twice, birdlike, eyebrows knitting together. “My uncle? How do you know about that?”
“I stumbled on the wrong article at the right time, I guess. Do you know much about him?”
Farrah’s mouth opened and closed. She looked down at her bottle, thumb circling the lip.
“Not really. He was my father’s younger brother.
He died here on campus.” Her wry smile returned.
“I’m a legacy student. That’s not the legacy I would’ve chosen, but at least you’re only the second person to ask me about it this week. ”
“Second?”
But even as Ellory’s lips formed the question, she knew down to her marrow what—who—had gotten to Farrah first:
“Hudson Graves.”
***
The next two hours of the party passed in a blur.
Ellory stayed close to Liam’s side, laughing at jokes she couldn’t remember and cheering at stunts that needed the intervention of the campus police.
Every so often, she would feel eyes on her, but the sensation would fade as soon as she turned around.
Farrah had left the party. Beau was playing a drinking game.
Liam crowded Ellory against a kitchen counter and kissed her with a mouth that tasted of vodka shooters and weed.
Even though she’d been drinking nothing but soda, she felt drunk on his attention.
Ellory retouched her hair and makeup in an upstairs bedroom, her skin slick with sweat.
There was a vanity mirror here, plus a desk that was laden with abandoned beer cans, makeup-remover wipes, and a snapped nail file from those who had used the room before her.
Under the lights, her dark skin glowed and the bags beneath her eyes looked deeper, like gathered shadows at the bottom of lit basement stairs.
She should have gotten Farrah Mayhew’s number before she’d left, or at least asked her more questions.
Maybe she could get her info from Liam on their way home, but that might invite unwanted questions.
She blotted her lipstick with a tissue, frowning into the mirror. Or maybe she could demand answers from Hudson, since he’d already done her work for her.
It always came down to Hudson Graves in the end.
Ellory nodded a greeting as she passed another woman stumbling in with a mascara wand held aloft.
But she had taken only two steps when a sudden flurry of cool air through the hallway drew her into another room.
This open bedroom was dark and sparsely decorated, but sheer curtains ruffled in the same breeze that offered her scant relief from the heat of the party.
She should have gone back downstairs—where she’d left Liam in the kitchen playing bartender, even though the only mixed drink in his repertoire was a rum and coke—but she felt like a cartoon animal following a scent trail to a freshly baked pie on a windowsill.
There was nowhere to go but forward. There was nothing to see but what lay at the end of that trail.
Hudson Graves glanced back at her from a balcony railing.
“Of course,” they said as one.
With his back against the handrail, his face was cast in shadow and impossible to read.
The sky was the silver blue of a swordfish, stars like spilled glitter across the dark.
This hidden balcony was barely large enough for three men of Hudson’s size, but it was perfect for the two of them; she placed her hands on the railing with almost enough room between them to open an umbrella.
Out here, the music was muted, and the night was cold.
Hudson smelled of lager and shea, with the underlying musk of long-dried sweat.
The glass door occasionally rattled, but a pleased sigh fell from Ellory’s lips as the chill wrapped around her sweaty body.
Somewhere, she heard the sharp cry of an owl.
“There are owls on campus?” she asked almost without meaning to. Trees crept like burglars toward the fraternity, trapped beyond the white-gold circle of the porch lights, but everyone else was inside. Her shoulders tightened. “Is this frat part of—”
“I’ve been to parties here before, and I’ve never seen anything strange,” said Hudson, before she could work herself into a panic. “I think there have always been owls by Warren. Owls and crows. Hummingbirds and robins.”