Chapter 7 #2
I turn to find Rowan leaning against the wall.
He wears a dark indigo-blue sweater over a crisp button-down and perfectly fitted khakis, looking like he stepped straight out of an Ivy League admissions brochure.
Golden blond hair, impossibly blue eyes, and a smile full of perfectly straight white teeth.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, folding my arms and eyeing him warily. The last time we were alone, he’d been wearing a mask and holding a knife. “Were you following me?”
“I prefer to think of it as maintaining a healthy curiosity,” he says with a sly grin, looking entirely too pleased with himself.
“Hmph,” I grunt. “I guess that does sound better than stalking.”
“I know, right?”
His grin deepens, revealing dimples I hadn’t noticed before.
Shit. I’ve always been a sucker for dimples.
He looks so innocent in the light of day, smiling like that at me, I have to remind myself that he’s dangerous and best friends with the biggest assholes in school.
Except—
Well, one of my kidnappers had tried to calm the others.
The guy in the zip-up fleece had argued against hurting me, and I figured he had to be the one who carried me out and got me help.
Could that have been Rowan? None of it made him innocent or a good guy.
He’d still been there and played a part.
It just made him the least terrible of them—a little less of a bastard.
“You won’t find Pemberton here,” Rowan says. “Half the faculty have second lives downtown. Pemberton’s happens to involve charging unsuspecting tourists obscene amounts of money for antique games and puzzles.”
I glance at the locked door, then back at him. “He owns a store?”
“A curiosity shop.”
“Sounds creepy,” I say.
“It’s mostly overpriced.” He pushes away from the wall and gestures toward the stairs, lifting a light brow. “I can show you where to find him, if you want?”
I should say no. My brother learned the hard way about the danger of trusting the wrong person in Salem’s Fall. Even if I was going to take a chance on making a friend here, Rowan would definitely not be my first choice. Getting too close to any of the Heirs seems like a bad idea.
Still, I don’t know my way around this town, and Rowan does. He also knows where Professor Pemberton’s shop is. For now, that makes him useful.
“Fine,” I say. “But if this ends with another blindfold and a knife, I’m going to be deeply annoyed.”
His grin falters for only a fraction of a second. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I level him with a flat look.
“I’m sure you don’t.”
“Come now,” he says, grabbing my arm, his smile returning, easy and bright. “Lots to see!”
Twenty minutes later, we arrive in downtown Salem’s Fall.
It’s only early September, but Salem’s Fall is apparently unwilling to wait for October.
The air has already changed, surrendering to the coming season with surprising speed.
Narrow cobblestone streets wind between crooked storefronts painted in rich autumn colors, their windows crowded with candles, crystals, old books, and enough black cats to populate a small kingdom.
Pumpkins line the doorsteps. Strings of orange and black lights twinkle and flutter overhead, while skeletons lounge on weathered wooden benches as though they’ve been waiting all year for someone to notice them.
Tourists are everywhere. A family in matching witch hats poses beneath a banner advertising the upcoming annual “Downtown Salem’s Fall Equinox Celebration”—whatever that is—while a group of teenagers gathers around a street performer dressed as a seventeenth-century fortune-teller.
The woman waves her hands over a smoking brass bowl and announces that one of them will soon betray the others.
Based on the horrified expressions around her, she may have just destroyed several friendships for a measly ten dollars.
“Wow. You people really commit to the theme,” I say.
“You heard Lucien today in class.” Rowan glances over at me, amused. “It’s our duty as citizens of Salem’s Fall to embrace the town’s history.”
I frown. “If you say so. This place gives me the creeps.”
“Give it time. Salem’s Fall grows on you.”
“So does mold,” I say.
He laughs, and I hate to admit I kind of enjoy the sound. It’s rich and easy, the sort of laugh that draws people in without trying.
I also hate that he’s right. In just the short walk from campus to Gallows Street, I can already see the appeal of the town. It is quite charming in its own spooky weird way.
I visited Salem’s Fall once as a child, one of the rare times Josh managed to convince Mom to take us somewhere fun for the weekend.
We came in the off-season when it was cheaper.
The town was still decorated with pumpkins, though there were sunflowers too.
They called it “Summerween.” Josh dared me to touch a fake severed head in a shop window while Mom laughed in a way I almost never heard at home.
I smile at the memory.
“Careful,” Rowan says. “Looks like you’re already starting to enjoy yourself.”
“Temporary lapse in judgment.”
His eyes meet mine, warm and amused. “Those tend to happen around me.”
I ignore the small, unwanted flutter in my stomach and focus instead on the path ahead as we turn down a narrow street. Maple branches arch over the road, their leaves just beginning to turn colors along the edges.