Chapter 4
Weak early morning light strikes my closed eyelids, painting the space in a dim grayness.
For a moment, I’m cozy and content, wrapped in my blankets and curled in the hollow at the center of my mattress, carved into the foam and springs from however many bodies have slept here over the years in Branwick Hall.
The distant sound of water running somewhere in the old building, with the accompanying creaks and groans from the pipes, is a lullaby as familiar as the tapping of the rain against the partially open windows and the old copper gutters.
Branwick was the original president’s mansion, and it still feels more like a home than any of the other residence halls, particularly up here in the former attic.
Chessa and I have a corner room, so my bed is under one of the window gables, and Chessa’s is under the other, perpendicular to mine.
Her side is a random, chaotic collection of clutter, while I like to be able to actually see the floor on my side.
Still, we make it work most of the time.
She readily admits to being “a barely reformed slob,” but she’s tagged me with control issues because I make my bed every day.
I mean, she’s definitely right. But not because I pull the sheets up.
The air seeping in from outside smells cold, crisp, and damp. Snuggling in deeper under the covers, I might have drifted off again, lulled back to sleep, but the memory of last night chooses to resurrect itself with full force, like a bowling ball to the face.
Oh, God. Happy’s.
Devon and his mysterious announcement, whatever that is. Lennie needing Daan to drive her home because she was so upset. And Carter, disappearing without a word after a spectacle that probably only reinforced his resolve to stay the hell away from all undergrads, including yours truly.
That, at least, is probably for the best. It was never going to work out anyway, with who I am. We were only going to tangle ourselves up further, causing more pain, more possible destruction.
But it doesn’t feel for the best. It feels like surgically removing my heart while I’m awake. Without any anesthetic.
I groan aloud, pressing my face into the pillow belatedly to muffle the sound. Then I crack one eye open, expecting to see Chessa launching her own pillow at me for waking her up so early.
Chessa’s bed is a messy tangle of covers and clean laundry she hasn’t put away yet, but she’s not in it.
I close my eyes with relief. Chessa’s out for her morning run already. And that’s good because I’m not sure I’m ready to talk about everything. Or anything.
I need more time. Maybe more sleep. Everything is better with more sleep.
I frown, though. For as early as it likely is, I actually feel all right. Oh, not emotionally. Emotionally I’m the wreck I always am, but physically, other than a slightly stuffy nose, I feel good. Like, really good.
Too good.
Distantly an alarm bell begins to ring in my head. My eyes snap open, and I take stock mentally. I’m wide awake. Energetic. Satisfied. The perpetual gnawing of hunger at my core is absent.
No. Sated.
In a specific way that I haven’t felt in years.
I launch myself upright in bed, hand flying to my face and that stuffy nose. My fingers come away sticky with blood. A nosebleed.
Shit. Shit! That’s only happened twice before—three times, if you count the other half of the Ferris wheel couple, which was truly an accident. Always when I’ve fed past the point of fullness.
You mean when you killed someone. The little voice in my head sounds dazed, happy instead of biting and angry as it usually does. Sucked them dry. Devoured all their life energy. Did what you were made to do, as a first-generation child of Death.
Chessa. I rip the covers off of me, half falling in my hurry to get to my feet. This is my worst fear coming to life—to death—that I would in a state of hunger and emotional uproar lose control and feed without meaning to.
But once I’m up, it’s clear that Chessa’s not on the floor between her bed and the piles of textbooks or curled up in the corner by her overflowing closet, all gray-faced and filmy-eyed, staring up at the ceiling.
The room is truly empty, and Chessa’s running shoes and neon pink jacket, usually left by the door, are gone. She’s really not here.
I bend over, dry-heaving in relief, my stomach roiling. After a moment, though, the nausea fades, and I drop back onto my bed, trying to work out what’s going on.
If Chessa is gone and presumably fine, how am I full?
Maybe from feeding off Devon last night? That had been a burst of bitterness, a wallop of power. And from someone like me, another child of the Old Ones.
But no, I hadn’t felt this good when I went to bed.
Chessa had gone back out to meet some friends at a fraternity party, but I stayed in, curling up with my laptop and Friday Night Lights until I dozed off.
(I never know if I want to sleep with Kyle Chandler’s Coach Taylor or have him scold me about my grades, but that’s par for the course for me.)
The girls next door, Darby and Mena, maybe? Technically I’m probably only a few feet away from Mena when they’re both in bed on opposite sides of the wall, but it’s a wall. I’ve never been able to—
A scream, thin and piercing, rises up from outside, slipping between the bottom edge of the window and the sill with the sound of the rain.
I go still, ears pricked to pin down the location of the sound.
Behind me. Coming through my window, not Chessa’s. The side of the house, then.
I scramble across my bed toward the window at the head of it, searching for the source.
Outside, everything is misty and gray with fog and rain turning to possible sleet.
But three stories below my window—in what used to be a garden full of Mrs. Branwick’s prize rosebushes and is now a sculpture garden filled with those smooth river rocks and a half-dozen metal and stone works of art—I catch a bright flash of color: neon green jacket and yellow running tights.
A girl with a long dark braid dangling down her back paces back and forth on the running path that curves past the sculpture garden, her hand pressed to her mouth. Not Chessa, thank God.
But Not-Chessa is staring at something closer in, nearer the building.
Already dreading what I’ll see—I’m not full for no reason, now am I?—I redirect my attention down at a sharper angle.
Directly below my window, a body lies sprawled on the rocks. Not sprawled, that implies some degree of, what, laziness, contentment maybe?
This is more cracked and smeared, like a raw egg on a flagstone kitchen tile.
It’s hard to see all the details in the dim early morning light with the fog and rain, but light hair covers the girl’s face.
She’s on her stomach, and her arms are stretched out to either side, as if she made a belated attempt to catch herself.
Blood extends outward from the body on her right side, as if it’s an impact spray from landing on her belly.
Her neck is bent wrong, too far backward, almost as if she’s staring up at me over her shoulder through the cloud of hair.
Strawberry blond hair. Cut shoulder length, and wavy now in the rain, in a way that would never have been allowed during life.
My breath catches painfully. No, no, no. I start to back away from the window instinctively, almost falling off the edge of my bed.
But not quite fast enough to miss a brief clearing of the fog, and the resulting glint of a chunky aquamarine ring on the hand resting on the stones.
Oh, Lennie.
I bolt for the door, not bothering to stop for shoes or a jacket.
Branwick is full of centuries-old character, including tight staircases and sharp hallway corners, making it impossible to get anywhere quickly. It feels like decades before I reach the side door and shove out into the garden.
The cold gritty sidewalk, covered in rain turning to ice, tears into the soles of my bare feet, and I slip to a halt just a few feet from the body.
From Lennie.
The view is more detailed, more graphic down here.
One of her ankles, still in a leopard print ankle boot, is caught on a tiny sculpture of a begging squirrel.
Lennie’s head is misshapen under the covering of her hair, and the angle of her neck is more dramatic up close and just so wrong.
Blood is trickling onto the rocks still, seeping out from her mouth and her eyes and beneath her body.
Last night, she was so upset and I didn’t even try to apologize … oh, God.
I cover my mouth with my trembling hand, fingers tingling.
Worse, though, is that parts of Lennie, chunks of red, purple, and gray that are organs or other insides are now outside splattered across the smooth surface of those rocks. How is that even possible?
I turn away, bile rising in my throat.
“Help, someone help!” On seeing me arrive, Not-Chessa, the runner, seems to break out of her shock. She tries to shout, her voice hoarse. She points at Lennie’s body, seemingly completely unaware of the phone strapped to her shaking arm.
I draw in a deep breath, pulling myself together. “Call 911!” I jab a finger at my arm in roughly the same place where the girl’s phone is strapped to her arm until her blank face registers comprehension.
Not-Chessa blinks at me strangely and then backs away. But she’s fumbling for her phone in its pouch, and that’s good enough.
The combination of rain and sleet pours down on me, soaking my hair and my sleep shirt and shorts. Shivering, I cross the tiny patch of damp and freezing grass to stand at the edge of the garden, toes curled against the cold. Hot tears, though, run down my face. Oh, fuck, Lennie.
Is this my fault? Because of the fight last night? Because of Carter? Had she come here to jump so I would know that it was because of me?