CHAPTER 52 #2
He let out a huff and shrugged. “I don’t know. I’d like to think not, but his family has such a morbid history. Murder is definitely in his genetics. He had a brother that went missing, too. It’s like their whole family is a string of conspiracy theories.”
I knew the story behind his brother, and I’d seen the pain in Devryk’s eyes when he’d told me about him.
It was only out of curiosity that I asked Briceson, to see what the student body had conjured about that piece of his past, as well.
“Then, you think Bramwell Senior was also behind the mass suicide.”
“It’s documented in the study that he injected those women with something. Something that messed with their heads. Do I think he drowned them himself? Maybe not. But I do believe he’s the reason they’re dead.”
We finally arrived at the dreaded stretch of woods.
A chilling prickle palmed the back of my neck, as the two of us walked in the darkness.
Different than the feeling I got walking from the subway at night back at home.
There, I was one of hundreds walking the street at night.
A random. Here, an attack seemed more intimate. Personal.
The brief copse opened to the lawn of my dorm. “Well, I guess this is where we part ways, huh?” I asked, pulling the wallet that held my ID card from my bag.
“Yeah. Hey, don’t mention to Mel that I told you that stuff about Jenny.”
“Okay. Can I ask why?”
He glanced around, as if she were anywhere within earshot, and stepping toward me, he lowered his voice. “She’s really sensitive about speculation. She and Jenny were close. In her mind, Bramwell did it.”
“She really has it in for the guy, huh?”
“I guess. Wasn’t always that way, though.
There was a time she went on and on about him, like every other student who’s smitten with the guy.
But then Jenny went missing, and she all of a sudden pulled out the pitchforks.
Like I said, it’s not as if he doesn’t have a history to suspect him, though. ”
“Yeah.” Funny how I felt the opposite–that there wasn’t enough for me to condemn him. “Anyway, I’ll let you get to your dorm. Goodnight.”
“’Night.”
I jogged up the staircase and threw back the door to the residential staff checking ID’s. I exhaled a sigh as Mel flicked her fingers, impatient for my ID card.
“C’mon, Vespertine. I’ve got fifteen minutes before I can hit the sack.”
From my wallet, I tugged my card, holding it out for her to scan me in.
“Midnight Lab, huh?” she asked, handing it back to me.
“Yeah. Just getting back.”
“You walked?”
I glanced toward the other staff member scrolling through his phone, seemingly uninterested in our conversation. “Briceson walked me home.”
“Surprised it wasn’t Spencer,” she said bitterly.
“I’ve distanced myself from him a bit. You were right.”
She rolled her eyes. “When am I wrong, though?”
Perhaps I should’ve been as bold and outspoken about Spencer drugging me, too.
My situation was a bit more complicated, though.
Inquiries would’ve led into deep examinations that would’ve pointed to Professor Bramwell’s involvement that night.
Having Gilchrist on my back was bad enough.
She hadn’t said anything more about my test score, or cheating off Spencer, so perhaps she’d decided to drop the accusation.
Maybe it was as Bramwell had said–not enough evidence to prove it.
However, I couldn’t help but wonder, if I had come forward with the accusation against Spencer, made it public, as Mel had, would she have lied for him again?
Made me look bad to prove her point that I didn’t belong?
As I stepped past Mel, she gave a quick tap to the other staff member’s shoulder. “Hey, I’m going up now. You got the last few minutes?”
“Yep.”
I stepped inside the elevator, and she followed after. The moment the doors closed, she turned to me.
“What’s going on with you and Bramwell?”
As the elevator lurched into motion, she pressed the stop button, halting our ascent.
A surge of panic locked my muscles. Elevators had always freaked me out, just the thought of getting stuck in one, but old elevators, in particular, terrified me.
I kept my eyes on that button, while she stared at me expectantly.
“There’s nothing going on.”
“Please. I’m not stupid. I’ve seen you leave his lab at night.” Considering the back entrance to the lab was tucked behind Emeric Hall, she’d have had to be spying on me.
“Are you following me around, or something?”
“Does the thought of that worry you?”
The bottom line was: she had no proof of anything. Bramwell’s lab was like a fortress, so what the hell was I doing cowering to her like a frightened schoolgirl, anyway?
I had grown up with worse than Mel. I’d been approached by those far more dangerous.
I reached for the elevator button, and when she grabbed my arm, I threw her off me and shot her a look of warning that must’ve been pure death, with the way she backed away.
Once the elevator lurched into motion, the clamp of anxiety over my lungs loosed itself. “What I do is none of your business.”
“I’m only warning you to be careful. It started out as obsession with Jenny, and–”
“You. Were you not attracted to him once?”
The elevator dinged, and the door opened to the empty corridor of my floor. When she didn’t answer, I stepped out of the carriage and turned to face her.
“Yes. I found him attractive once. Then I learned that the good professor is actually a monster. Watch yourself, Lilia.”
The doors closed.
* * *
I pulled up the picture I’d snapped on my phone of the Cu'unotchke skull and zoomed in on the sharpened teeth again.
Curious, I logged into my Dracadia Library account on the laptop, and clicked on the Adderly Memorial texts.
Scrolling through pages of history on the Cu'unotchke tribe brought me to a picture of a young girl with long black hair and dark eyes.
It had been taken in the early nineteen-hundreds–about the time when the tribe had been mostly wiped out.
Two of her teeth had been replaced with black stones, which was interesting in itself, but when I zoomed in, something else caught my eye.
The buttons of the doll clutched in her arm.
Frowning, I zoomed closer, noting one of the buttons appeared to be a small, misshapen metal button with an iron cross etched into it.
Scrambling out of the chair, I dashed toward the closet and removed the small wooden box that held all of my found trinkets and lifted the small button I’d noticed wedged in the door my first night here. I returned to my desk and studied it against the one I’d zoomed in on.
The same button.