Chapter 3
Dervla
The notification arrives at five p.m., slipped through the letterbox like a summons from the fucking underworld.
A cream envelope, heavy stock, no name on the front. Just a wax seal stamped with the St. Augustine’s crest. I crack it open standing in the hallway, my boots still on, bag still over my shoulder. Whoever delivered it was practically right behind me. Or waiting for me.
Ms Callaghan,
Your presence is required at the Old Chapel, 10 p.m. tonight. Attendance is not optional. Dress for movement.
The Board of St. Augustine’s University
That’s it. No explanation, no instructions beyond ‘dress for movement’, which is either ominous or insulting, depending on how you look at it. I look at it as both.
I fold the card back into the envelope and take it upstairs, where I sit on my bed and stare at it for longer than I should. Roisin’s words circle back. Come find me after your initiation. Like it was inevitable. Like everyone knew this was coming except me.
Dad never mentioned this. Not once. And Cillian Callaghan was not a man who forgot things—he curated what people knew. He built information like architecture—every brick placed with intent. So either this initiation didn’t exist when he was a student, or he deliberately kept it from me.
Neither option sits well.
I unlace my Docs and kick them off, pull the file from under the mattress, and flip through the pages until I find the section on the Board’s internal protocols.
Nothing. Not a single reference to an initiation process, a gauntlet, or any kind of hierarchical assignment.
Whatever this is, it operates outside the official structure, or so deep inside it that it’s a sworn secret that everyone takes to the grave.
I slide the file back and sit cross-legged on the bed, chewing the inside of my cheek.
My options are limited. I can refuse to go, which tells everyone I’m afraid.
I can go unprepared, which tells everyone I’m stupid.
Or I can go armed, alert, and ready to break someone’s wrist if they try anything cute.
Option three, obviously.
I place Henrietta on the bed and stand up, stretching.
Whatever this initiation is, I need fuel before I go, but not right before.
Moving downstairs to the kitchen, I root through the cupboards, looking for something to consume.
The shopping was delivered earlier, and the kitchen is stocked, but I don’t find anything I fancy.
If I have to run, I don’t want anything too heavy.
If I have to fight, I don’t want anything at all, but that isn’t an option.
“Noodles, it is,” I murmur and grab a packet. While the water boils, I potter around the kitchen, rearranging cupboards that I’d hastily filled this morning. There are hours before I have to be at the Old Chapel. Maybe I should take a quick nap after the noodles.
When the noodles are ready, I eat them sitting at the counter, staring out the kitchen window at the back garden, which is overgrown but not beyond saving.
There’s a stone wall at the far end, thick with moss, and beyond it, the dark line of trees that marks the boundary of the forest, which sits at the back of this row of houses and wraps its way around the side of the campus.
Dad would have hated the state of the garden.
He was meticulous about things like that.
I swallow the last mouthful and rinse the bowl, setting it in the dishwasher.
Upstairs, I set my phone alarm for eight-thirty and lie down on top of the duvet, fully clothed.
Sleep doesn’t come easily. It hasn’t since I found him.
Every time I close my eyes, I see the dining room.
The mahogany table. The way the morning light caught the crystal decanter, still half-full of Redbreast. And him.
I open my eyes and stare at the ceiling before I turn onto my side and try again.
A distant buzzing rouses me, alerting me to the fact that I fell asleep at some point.
A throb between my thighs makes me groan and rub my hand over my face.
I was dreaming about that guy who calls me pixie.
Idiot. But a hot idiot, and it’s been a while since I let anyone touch me.
I squeeze my legs together and then slide my hand between them, cupping my pussy as my blood gets hotter.
“Fuck,” I mumble and remove my hand, getting out of bed and stumbling to the bathroom. Shower, dress, coffee, so I can leave in time to scope out this Old Chapel.
The shower is scalding, the way I need it.
I stand under the spray and let the heat strip away the remnants of that dream.
His blue eyes, the way he towered over me, the infuriating curl of his mouth when he said pixie.
My body is a traitor, still humming with residual want, but I scrub it away with expensive soap and cold logic.
I’m not here to get wet over some arrogant prick with good bone structure and eyes you can drown in.
I’m here to find out who killed my dad and make them regret it with every fibre of their being.
I stand under the spray until my skin is pink and my head is clear, then towel off and pull on black leggings, a fitted long-sleeve black top, and my most broken-in pair of Docs—the ones without the bells.
If they want me to dress for movement, I’m not announcing my arrival with a fucking jingle.
I tie my hair up into a tight bun on top of my head, so there’s nothing to grab.
Then I tuck Henrietta into the waistband at the small of my back, pull the top down over her, and check the mirror.
I look like I’m going to commit a burglary. Perfect.
Coffee is black, fast, and standing up. I place the mug in the dishwasher, then check my phone. Nine-fifteen. Forty-five minutes to find this Old Chapel and figure out the lay of the land before anyone else arrives.
The night air hits me when I step outside, and it’s colder than I expected.
April in the West is a liar—warm in the sun, vicious after dark.
The streetlights along the redbrick road are sparse, casting pools of amber that barely dent the darkness between them.
I move quickly, keeping to the left side of the road where the shadows are thickest, my silent Docs eating up the pavement without a sound.
The campus at night is a different beast. The honey-coloured stone turns grey under the moonlight, and the ivy on the buildings looks less charming and more like something trying to consume the walls from the outside in.
I pass the empty quad and cut through the south cloister, where my footsteps echo off the vaulted ceiling before I force myself to walk lighter.
Old habits. Dad taught me to move quietly before he taught me to read.
According to the campus map, the Old Chapel is behind the Hennessy Building, through an archway and down the path that runs along the east boundary wall.
I find the archway easily enough. Beyond it, a gravel path stretches into the dark, flanked by ancient yew trees whose branches knit together overhead like a canopy of gnarled fingers. No lights here. None. Whoever designed this walkway wanted it to feel like a descent, and it bloody well does.
I slow my pace and let my eyes adjust. The path curves to the right, and then I see it.
The Old Chapel is exactly what the name promises.
Old. Not the quaint, heritage-listed kind of old, either.
This is the kind of old that makes you understand why people believed in angry gods.
It’s a squat, stone structure with a bell tower that’s lost its bell, narrow arched windows set deep into walls that must be three feet thick, and a door made of blackened oak with iron rivets the size of my fist. The whole thing sits in a clearing, surrounded by trees on three sides and the boundary wall on the fourth, as if the campus grew up around it and then quietly pretended it wasn’t there.
I circle the building first. Always know your exits.
Dad’s voice is steady in my head, the way it always is when I need it most. There’s the main door, a side entrance on the south wall that’s been sealed with a padlock that looks rusted shut, and a narrow window on the north side that’s been boarded up but badly—I can see gaps where the wood has warped.
Three ways in, one reliable way out. Not ideal, but workable.
I check my phone. Nine-thirty-two. No one else is here yet, or if they are, they’re better at hiding than I am at finding. I tuck myself into the shadow of a yew tree about twenty metres from the main door and wait.
At nine-forty-five, they start arriving.
Dark figures in robes moving down the gravel path in silence, like a procession of ghosts who’ve done this before and know the choreography. I count them as they pass. Six. They file through the main door without speaking, and the warm glow of what looks like candlelight spills when the door opens.
Then, the path is empty again. I haven’t moved. My thighs are starting to cramp from crouching, but I hold position because something feels off. Someone is watching me.
I stand up and turn around slowly, feet planted as I sense rather than see the presence.
“Shouldn’t you be inside with your friends?” I say.
There is no reply, except for the sound of leaves crunching under a boot.
And then he looms into view.
“Ugh,” I spit out. “You. I might’ve known you’d have something to do with this shit.”
“I don’t have anything to do with it,” he says, mildly, his accent whispering over me, giving me goosebumps.
Two more guys appear, flanking him. Both enormous and built to kill. Panic hits my insides, but I don’t move.
“So why are you here then?”
“Let’s just call it moral support,” he says. “I’m Aidan O’Connell, by the way. This is Cormac Byrne and Declan Finnegan.”
I take in the trio, all as good-looking as the next. Cormac has dark hair and dark eyes, while Declan has light brown hair and lighter eyes, although it’s hard to tell in the light of the moon.
“Well, thanks. But I don’t need the support.”
“You will,” Cormac says with a feral grin that does something hot to me that I don’t like.
Without another word, I turn on my heel and cross over to the door, opening it with a flourish and stepping inside the Old Chapel.