Chapter 23 – — Headmaster Ashmoor, Private Notes #2
Finn’s hand is on my thigh under the table. His thumb traces circles through the fabric of my leggings. I don’t want to stop him.
“You’re beautiful, you know that?” he says close to my ear, his breath warm and whiskey sweet. I turn my head and his lips find mine.
The kiss is sloppy and tastes like alcohol. His hand slides higher on my thigh, fingers pressing into my skin, and I let it happen. Let him deepen the kiss, let his other hand come up to cup the back of my neck, let him pull me closer until I’m practically in his lap.
Someone whistles, probably Ellavee.
I don’t care about anything right now except the warmth of his mouth and the buzz in my blood and the blessed silence in my head.
His hand moves higher still, fingertips brushing the hem of my sweater, slipping underneath to touch bare skin. I should stop him. We’re in public. People are watching.
I kiss him harder instead.
“Maelis.”
Lux’s voice cuts through the haze. There’s something askew with her tone. Something sharp and scared that doesn’t match the giggly girl from five minutes ago.
I pull back from Finn, blinking. “What?”
Lux is pale. Standing next to her is a man I don’t recognize, middle-aged with a stern face and the dark-navy uniform of someone official. He glances at me briefly then back at Lux before walking away toward the bar, toward Draven and Malric.
“What’s going on?” Ellavee straightens up, the playfulness gone from her face.
“That man works for my father.” Lux’s voice is barely above a whisper. “The school is on lockdown. We have to go back. Now.”
“Lockdown?” Ellavee wrinkles her nose. “That seems dramatic. Maybe we should stay the night out here with the guys, wait until morning when—”
“Ellavee.” Lux grabs her arm. “A student has been found dead, completely drained of blood.”
“What the fuck?” The alcohol fog clears slightly. “Did he tell you who it is?”
“Senna,” Lux whispers.
“Oh shit, your blood lead.” Ellavee’s voice is grim as she stands, pulling on her jacket.
We gather ourselves quickly, the flirtatious warmth of the evening evaporating in an instant. Finn catches my hand as I stand, his brow furrowed with concern.
“Are you going to be okay?”
I look at him, his kind eyes and easy smile and complete ignorance of the world I come from. “I don’t know.” It’s the most honest thing I’ve said to him all night.
He pulls me close and kisses me again, softer this time. When he pulls back, his thumb brushes my cheek.
“I want to see you again.”
I almost laugh. He’s sweet and completely wrong for me in every way that matters.
“That was fun, Finn.” I squeeze his hand once before letting go. “Let’s leave it at that.”
His face falls slightly, but he nods, understanding settling into his features. He knows a dismissal when he hears one and takes it like a champ.
We push through the tavern toward the door. The cold air hits me when we step outside, sharp enough to make my eyes water.
Draven and Malric are already there, waiting in the snow. The girls they were with are nowhere to be seen, probably sent home when the news arrived. The two of them stand like sentinels in the darkness, breath fogging in the frozen air.
Malric spreads his arms wide, that insufferable smirk on his face. “Ladies, looks like you’re lucky we’re here to escort you safely back to your rooms.”
He saunters over to me before I can react and throws his arm around my shoulders, pulling me against his side. His grip is possessive and invasive and makes my skin crawl.
“I can even sleep over if you’re scared.” He leans down, his lips brushing my ear. “Keep the nightmares away. You know how good I am at that.”
I shove him off me so hard he stumbles back a step. “Touch me again and I’ll cut your hand off.”
He laughs like I’ve told a joke. “Feisty. I always liked that about you, but we both know cutting is the last thing you’ll be doing. You don’t cut, Red. We’ve established that. Don’t make threats your hands can’t keep.”
“Malric.” Draven’s voice is ice. “Shut up.”
Something passes between them. Malric’s smile doesn’t waver, but he takes a step back, raising his hands in mock surrender.
“Fine, fine. Trying to lighten the mood.” He turns and starts walking toward the tunnel entrance. “Let’s go, children.”
Lux and Ellavee fall into step ahead of me. Draven lingers, and his eyes find mine in the dark.
He doesn’t say anything. The look on his face says enough. Stay close. Be careful.
Or maybe I’m inventing it. Maybe I’m drunk and tired and scared and stitching meaning onto a man who hasn’t given me any. Gods know I’ve done it before.
But a student is dead, emptied like a bottle and left somewhere for someone to find, and I am walking into a black tunnel with two creatures who could do exactly that and make it look like nothing.
I don’t know how many things in this world can drink a body dry. I can name two without thinking.
Lux and Ellavee don’t know what I know. They don’t know about the night outside the dorms. Malric with his hands all over Senna and the way I pushed him off her.
I thought Malric was an asshole. I didn’t think he was a killer.
But Draven called him a predator, and he doesn’t waste words, and Malric has motive. They showed up to the bar after us, which means anything could have happened before. Malric could have drained Senna dry and that’s how he got those scratch marks on his neck before meeting Draven for a night cap.
The thought irks me as we reach the tunnel mouth. Draven’s shoulder brushes mine — accident or not, I can’t tell — and then the dark swallows us.
Lux flicks a fae light into the air. It drifts above us, casting a pale wash across damp stone and the black veins of moss running down the walls. Our breath fogs white. Somewhere ahead, water drips in a slow, uneven rhythm, and I count it without meaning to, the way I count a pulse.
Primm pads ahead, low and silent. Draven’s wolf flanks her, scouting, listening for what I can’t hear.
The three of us girls may have overindulged a bit, because we’re all stumbling along like newborn foals learning to walk.
We link arms to try to be more balanced and graceful, but it’s not really working.
Every few steps, one of us trips, and the other two have to catch her, and we dissolve into muffled giggles that echo off the tunnel.
It feels strange to laugh knowing a student has died, but maybe we are starting to get desensitized to death.
I think that’s what Ashwell Academy wants… the headmaster certainly does.
Malric leads the way, and Draven walks behind us. I can feel his judgmental eyes burning into my back, but I don’t care. I’ll get drunk if I want and make out with whoever the fuck I feel like. He has no right to stare at me like I’d done something wrong.
I start to relax a bit when we hear other students’ voices echoing in the tunnels, assuming everyone was notified to return at once. Malric leads us back a different way then we came, and we pop out one of the staff passages that opens into the main entry hall near the kitchens.
The noise hits first, voices, boots on stone, the low thrum of a castle that has not gone to sleep yet.
Torches blaze along the walls in numbers I’ve never seen at this hour.
Professor Cane stands at the base of the wide staircase with a scroll unrolled in her hands and a pen tucked behind one pointed ear, the paintbrush holding her curls up at a precarious angle. She looks unbothered by the chaos.
“Name, darling,” she calls, and I realize she’s working her way through a small line of students who came from town.
We shuffle forward. Draven and Malric have been three steps behind us since we emerged, quiet in that way that feels less like walking and more like following, and I refuse to turn around and acknowledge either of them.
Poppy has tucked herself so deep into my cloak that only one ear is visible, but every now and then she pokes her head out to peek around us.
“Lux, Ellavee, Maelis,” Lux rattles off when we reach the front, and Cane’s eyes lift. They linger on me a second longer than the others. She doesn’t say anything and marks the scroll with a flick of her pen.
“Straight to your rooms, loves. No wandering.”
“Of course, Professor.”
“Luxanna.”
Lux winces. “Professor.”
“Your hair is charming, and you smell like a distillery. Bed.”
“On my way.”
We escape past her. Draven and Malric are giving their names as we pass. I don’t look at them.
We push through the doors onto the frigid courtyard, and Ellavee turns and walks backward a few steps so she can smile at them through the closing gap.
“Thanks so much for the chaperoning,” she calls, sweet as honey. “Couldn’t have made it through a tunnel without two full-grown vampires.”
“Ellavee,” Lux hisses, laughing.
“I’m being polite.”
“You’re being feral.”
“Politely feral.”
We cross the courtyard arm-in-arm again. The snow has thickened. My head is still swimming, but the cold is doing useful work in sobering me up a bit.
“Okay,” Lux says once we are alone, “I’m going to ask, and you’re going to tell me the truth, because you’ve been weird all night and not just drunk-weird.
Senna wasn’t even your lead, and every time someone says her name, you look like you got punched in the stomach.
Did you have some secret friendship we didn’t know about? ”
I walk another few steps.
“I didn’t really know her, not the way you’re both looking at me like I did.”
“That’s not why we’re looking at you like that,” Ellavee says.
I swallow. The cold burns the inside of my nose.
“I saw Malric with her once earlier this year outside the dorms, late. He had her pinned against a wall, and she…wasn’t right. I don’t know if he was trying to bite her or sleep with her or both. He was drunk and trying to force himself on her. I pulled him off her, and she took off running.”
Neither of them speaks for a long moment. Our boots crunch through the snow.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Lux asks.