Chapter 7 Diantha #2
I force myself to take a bite of my sandwich.
I haven’t eaten since my early morning muffin, and even though my headache is gone, I still feel weak after last night.
I hit play on my phone and let my lo-fi bossanova to make out/study to playlist fill my ears.
My dissertation is a couple thousand shitty words.
A poor attempt to make sense of my mother’s life.
According to my Google doc, I abandoned a paragraph about the origins of the Nazar mid-sentence.
I force down more sandwich and delete a few words.
But when a gentle guitar melody comes on, my mind drifts back to Orfeo. To his touch, the feeling of his fingers under my chin, his eyes skimming over my features.
Does he work at Hades House? He must, why else would those demons be looking for him?
Muffled laughter draws my attention back up to the wrought iron railing that travels the length of the mezzanine.
Maybe they know something…
It’s a crazy idea. Totally foolish.
And he told me to stay away.
I click back into my document, forcing myself to read half a paragraph.
But what if they do know something?
I should practice.
I yank my earbuds out and make for the bathroom before I can change my mind.
The archive’s bathrooms are empty, like the rest of the library’s basement. It seems the only time anyone ever finds themselves down here is by accident or to complete some sort of sex-in-public dare.
I lock the door behind me and lean back against it for good measure.
With my eyes squeezed shut, I try to picture the exact study table on the second floor.
The long wooden one, right at the top of the steps.
A few feet away from a cluster of lounge chairs.
The blonde girl had taken the chair farthest away from the railing, while the brunette sat facing the atrium.
Her sweatshirt was light blue, her hair in a loose braid over her shoulder.
I try to recall the sounds of their voices. Hushed whispers, airy giggles.
A familiar tingling starts in my fingers, then climbs up my arms. The pressure in my chest grows and grows, pressing down on my diaphragm, forcing me to slide down the wall until my ass meets the tile.
I focus on the image of them chatting, laughing—on the muted sunlight falling in through the glass dome over their heads, casting a wash of multicolored light over their faces…
“Shut down? They changed the entire fucking club?”
The gangly boy nods, chewing on the end of his pen. “Yup. Whole place is off-limits, according to my stepdad. They sold it to some goons from New York and no one can get in touch with the old owners. They just—poof. Disappeared.”
The brunette narrows her eyes. “No way. You’re messing with me.”
“Swear to god.” He laughs and places a hand over the Echidna coat of arms embroidered onto the center of his gray crew neck.
“Why would I lie? That was, like, the only place we could get served without IDs.” The boy shakes his head, casting his gaze off into the distance.
“There’s a lot of shit about this town people don’t want getting out. ”
“Like what?” Another boy joins them, swinging his backpack up onto the table. “You tried to fuck a TA but she turned you down?”
Everyone laughs.
“Nah, man.” He shakes his head. Looks over both of his shoulders before leaning forward. “I heard Echidna’s a portal.”
“What?” The brunette lets out a nervous laugh. “To where?”
“A portal.” He repeats himself angrily. “A halfway point between life and death, heaven and hell. A place all sorts of creatures can pass through.”
The blonde quirks a brow. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah, I’m fucking serious. It has to do with a bunch of cursed bones some French monk brought over in the eighteen-hundreds or some shit.
He insisted they bury it all under the church.
That’s when all the weird stuff started happening.
Serial killers galore. Weird societies sworn to silence and shit. Look it up, I swear to god.”
The two girls exchange looks of deep skepticism. “Yeah, okay—”
“Seriously. Pay attention, Johnson. Haven’t you noticed who walks these streets at night? Not the same crowd you see eating brunch Sunday morning.”
“So, what? You think there are just a bunch of spirits here?” the brunette asks, before turning to her friend and sharing a nervous giggle.
The boy lets out a stream of air between his teeth. “Spirits? You think a spirit broke into the Phi Mu house last year and left that sophomore dead in her bedroom?”
The table falls completely silent.
“No one knows who did it,” the brunette says eventually, in a meek half whisper.
“And you think a human tore her throat out? Dead bodies keep washing up from the Delaware River with chunks missing out of their necks. Other girls go missing and show up months later covered in bite marks and bruises with no clue where they’ve been.”
“If what you’re saying is…is real, then why isn’t the newspaper writing about it?” the blonde fires back, her cheeks splotchy and red.
Bodies washing up…
Bite marks…
He gives them a cruel, hardened look. “Same reason random fucking businesses are being bought up and no one’s making a peep.”
I slam back into my body with a shudder and a gasp, my collar drenched in sweat.
Holding on to the wall for support, I stumble over to the sink and splash my face with cold water, trying to stem the swell of sickness rising rapidly from my stomach.
A portal between heaven and hell.
I try desperately to remember what Orfeo said to me last night, but now all I can recall is the look in his eye—the glint when he held my face in his hands. Had he wanted to hurt me? Had I almost been another body washing up from the river?
My mother knew about him. She called him a handsome man.
She would have warned me.
Wouldn’t she?
My mother loved me.
Didn’t she?
I can’t stop shivering even as sweat drips down my spine. I lurch toward the toilet, unable to hold back a fresh wave of terror and sick.
I skip Bowen’s class.
I’ve never skipped a class in my life, but the thought of seeing Orfeo, sitting next to him, having to hear his voice or smell his cologne…
I need to be as far away from him as possible.
I need him to forget where I live, what I look like, how my power works.
One night away isn’t going to accomplish that, but I also need time.
To collect myself, to figure out how the hell I’m going to make it through the rest of this semester knowing I’m breathing the same air as a vampire.
A vampire who’s potentially kidnapping women, sucking them dry, and throwing them into the Delaware River.
Or maybe a vampire who’s glamouring innocent victims, abusing them, and sending them home with their memories wiped.
Maybe Orfeo isn’t dangerous—but he knows dangerous people, and his affiliations aren’t a mystery I need to solve.
I’m in Echidna for one reason: my mother. I shove aside the nagging thought that maybe she would put me in harm’s way. I shove aside the very idea that she could have conspired with some dark energy to hurt me.
That’s just the fear talking.
Dropping Bowen’s class is out of the question—no one else offers even half a chance at getting into the catacombs.
And judging by how shitty I feel right now, decoupling into the crypt using just pictures and no sense memory is completely out of the question.
Knowing my luck, my spirit would end up trapped in the home goods department of a Ross Dress for Less.
I take the long way home to make sure there’s no chance I cross paths with Orfeo or any of the other brutes trolling around town, holding court outside of Hades House. I walk with my hood up and my shoulders hunched, eyes fixed on the ground in front of me.
As soon as I’m inside my studio, I double-lock my front and balcony doors, barricading both with chairs. Then, I grab my mother’s tomes, drag them into bed, and start looking for anything I can find about vampires, about Echidna, about portals.