Chapter 17
The dorm is a rustle, a clatter, a curse, and an air thick with the scent of coffee.
Three mugs are perched, stained and dripping, on my bedside table. I’ve downed one already, the second was knocked over by the frustrated throw of a shoe across the room, and I’m reaching for the third when Asta shrieks a shrill sound for the hundredth time in the past hour.
My bones cringe on instinct.
I’ve been pelted with dresses and shoes most of the morning.
I throw a braced look at her.
Still, she’s kneeling at the foot of her bed, where her ivory trunk is parted open, and she digs through all her snow gear.
“That bitch!” Her shrieks dip into vicious murmurs, then shoot back up again into a pitch that scrapes down my eardrums. “I told her to pack it! I told her three times!”
It’s way too early for this.
My stare turns dull, and it’s a fight not to roll my eyes.
I steal the final coffee from the table and sink onto the edge of my mattress. As I sip, a stormy set of eyes lures in my attention.
Serena’s smile is snakish in the reflection of the tall mirror, a derisive jab at Asta behind her back that she shares with me, and before I can snub it, snub her, she flicks her gaze back to herself.
“No such thing as good help anymore,” Asta’s murmurs flood the dorm. “Curious that Lisa’s dedication to her job has all of a sudden faded.”
That one is a jab at me.
I’m sure of it.
Well, more a jab at Dray’s dumping of her and choosing me for his fiancé.
But Lisa, Asta’s handmaid, shouldn’t be slacking off depending on who Asta is engaged to.
My words echo into the mug of coffee, “So fire her.”
Asta stills.
Serena arches a brow and turns her back on the mirror. She waits—watches.
Slowly, Asta turns to look over her shoulder at me, eyes slitted like shards of glass.
I shrug. “If she isn’t loyal in unsure times, then she isn’t loyal ever. That’s not a good dresser to keep.”
Her lips thin as she considers me then, with a silky huff, returns to rummaging through the trunk.
Serena plucks the hanger from the peg on the wall, and the cream coat billows as she unhooks it.
“There are better dressers out there, some more eager than others. If Lisa can’t follow repeated instructions, then she’s more of a hindrance than a help.
” Serena turns her expectant look on me. “Are you ready?”
I am.
Dressed, anyway.
Not in a snowsuit, because unlike Asta, I’m not hitting the slopes before going down to VeVille this Saturday morning. She’s going with Landon and Mildred, a trio I didn’t know existed until Dray showed me the video of them in the Barlow’s vineyard over the winter break.
I’m not mad about it.
A better day for me is Asta and Mildred getting stuck out there on the slopes.
Maybe disappearing forever.
Of hopes and dreams, I have many. And none have come true.
It’s a bitter thought, like the taste of the stale coffee, and I stretch my arms out over my head.
“I’ll meet you in the atrium,” I tell her.
Serena’s preened eyebrow arches.
I slide a meaningful look to the curtained bed.
The one bed shuttered by drapes, silencing the noise of the dorm, and with a made witch hidden away.
Serena’s face tightens. “Fine. Five minutes. I should stop in at the bathroom anyway. The gondolas take so long.”
With that, she stalks out, the creamy coat billowing behind her like a cloak.
I slip off the bed and move for the curtains.
Asta is unbothered, as though I’m not here at all, and she digs through small wooden chests she’s unearthed from the bottom of the trunk.
I reach my hand into the gap between the drapes and click my fingers.
The only way to knock, really.
It works.
In just a moment, the curtain is tugged aside, and Courtney’s furrowed face is poking out. “What?”
An impatient huff juts me before I push her aside, then crawl onto the mattress.
The drapes slip shut behind me.
“Do you want to come to the village?”
She pushes her glasses up her slick nose. “Aren’t you going with your new friends?”
I shrug a shoulder, leaning all my weight onto my hand pressed into the mattress and crumpled sheets. “I’ll ditch them.”
Her glasses start to slip down her nose again. “I’m still working on the article. It’s nowhere near finished and… well… You know.”
“I know what?”
“It’s different.”
I sigh. “I don’t think my being busy then my life spiralling out of control over the break, and forgetting to write you back because of that, is a good enough reason for you to ice me out.”
Her thin lips disappear.
“You weren’t too busy to write,” she says, and her words are softly spoken, almost regretful. “You just chose not to.”
The urge to roll my eyes is strong.
To fight it, I throw my gaze at the papers spread all over the bed.
Some are old articles, some are pages torn out of books, a lot of highlighted text, and scattered notes from my interview.
“The truth is, when you’re back home… in your world, we don’t matter anymore, James and I. We never have.”
That strikes me.
I lift my moody gaze to her, but I have no response for her—nothing to say back to that.
Because maybe she’s not wrong.
“Look.” Her clammy hand flattens on mine, but it’s rigid, awkward, and it feels like there’s a bit of oil slicking that palm. “I’m grateful for the interview. I needed this. This article will position me better after graduation. I’ll be taken seriously.”
My insides twist.
James is the superior twin.
His print is respected, coveted, and now he’s shown the whole senior year just how good at it he is.
Courtney, not so much.
It makes sense now, why she has always been pushing for it, for me to spill our secrets, to reveal the unknown behind the veil she’ll never step through.
But worry bites at me, too.
“You have to be careful, Courtney,” I warn her. “You can’t just go around exposing the aristos, the Covens of Europe, not more than this. This article will have consequences—mainly for me. But the next might get you into trouble. Just know your limits.”
Know your place.
Her smile is tight, unconvincing.
Her hand slips away from mine.
Fleetingly, I think to wash my hand before heading to the atrium, because I’m certain that oily sensation is from Courtney rubbing her face so much, then touching me.
“I have a lot to do,” she says, and it’s nothing short of a dismissal.
I consider her.
The sheen on her bumpy forehead, the glisten down her nose, the thinness of her lips. I see a friend of a decade, but a stranger, too.
Courtney might have been around me at Bluestone, but maybe we never were friends.
To her, I might have been a door.
A way in.
Someone to let her peek inside…
For her articles.
A sigh deflates me before I slip out of the curtains and let them fall back in place behind me.
Asta isn’t in the dorm anymore, but the disaster of her rummaging is strewn around the room.
I head down to the grand parlour—but I stop on the way to rinse my hands.
I wash them of Courtney before I head into the grand parlour, and I spot my brother coming down the stairs from the other dormitories.
By the look of his outfit—black chinos, a tan sweater, boots, and a woollen coat—I suspect he’s joining me and Serena at the village, not headed to the slopes with Landon and Asta.
Mildred sort of invited herself along with them.
I pretended not to listen as I waited in the queue for the coffee station, but I heard every word behind me.
I heard Asta and Landon make their plans, then Landon spent a few minutes trying to convince me to join them. But after Serena announced she’d rather she and I go to the village, that’s when Mildred chimed in.
“I’ll go with you—if there’s room for one more.”
I’ve never heard her so softly spoken before, a mouse, a ghost, like if she makes herself too obvious then everyone will get spooked and run away from her.
I hope she feels as isolated as I always did.
I hope it hurts.
Oliver waits for me at the door.
As I approach, he pushes it open for me.
His unwelcome voice comes in a tired murmur, “I hear you and Dray are getting close.”
I throw a withering look at him as I march out into the corridor.
He shadows me. “Shared drinks and cigarettes in an alcove. Not the sort of courtship often seen among the aristos—but I suppose he has to start somewhere with you.”
“You almost sound put out by it. Isn’t this what you wanted?”
“Pardon my tone. I mean to praise you. Father is impressed by the reports of your behaviour—and the consistency of your mediocre grades.”
I can hear the smile in his words, but I don’t look over my shoulder to check.
“Still snitching?”
“Never stopped.”
I take the sharp turn down the final length of the next corridor.
Oliver follows at my heels. “I do hope it continues.”
The smell of breakfast lures me in—but I won’t be eating in the mess hall this morning.
Still, it floods my mouth more the closer I get.
I swallow. “Your snitching?”
“Your behaviour,” Oliver corrects. “While it’s impressive you haven’t fallen apart yet or done something catastrophic in the ultimate act of self-destruction, I do know you. I’m concerned that, if you are on the verge of crumbling, you won’t come to me before you act.”
Finally, I do look back at him, and it’s with a smile of filth. “I would rather confide in Mildred about my feelings. And what I do with Dray is none of your business.”
Oliver cuts in front of me and, with a grip firm on my arm, pins me in place.
“It’s entirely my business,” he says, and his emerald eyes burn down at me like green flames.
“You need to be careful, Liv. Rumours are running around about you and Harling—about you being seen together in London, at the museum, at the park…”
His jaw tenses, like the mere reminder of my date with Eric fills him with a fiery storm.
The breath utters out of me.
My insides are pulling down and down, the dread weighing too much—because I had no idea anyone saw us at the park.