Chapter 29 #2
I decide to cut behind one of the old academic buildings instead, taking the service path that will get me there faster.
The walkway is deserted, the sounds of campus disappearing almost immediately.
Just the wind rattling bare branches overhead and my footsteps echoing in the silence.
A prickle crawls up my neck, and I quicken my pace.
I’ve made it halfway along the back of the building when a muscular arm locks around my chest and a hand clamps over my mouth before I can scream. Something sharp and cold presses beneath my jaw.
“Don’t,” Van whispers against my ear. “Not unless you want me to open your pretty throat.”
My boots skid across the frozen ground as I claw at his arm, twisting and kicking as he drags me through a half-open chain-link gate toward a weathered groundskeeping shed.
Panic surges when I realize where he’s taking me.
I dig in my heels, but he kicks open the door and shoves me inside, past a jumble of rusted tools and an overflowing dumpster, before slamming me against the wall.
He pulls the blade from my throat and brings it between us. My breath catches on the curved blade. The ornate hilt. I’ve seen ones like it before.
A Veil ritual knife.
Fear hollows out my stomach. “What are you doing?” I yell. “Let go of me!”
A slow, hungry smile curls across his mouth, like a predator that’s finally cornered its prey.
“You actually went to see him,” he says. “How sweet.”
The suspicion arrives slowly, then all at once.
Georgina at the library, and then Silas’s text asking me to come to his room. All week, I’d been so careful not to be alone, especially at night, and the one time I take a deserted shortcut, somehow Van is waiting for me at the right place and the right moment to abduct me?
How did he know?
Van watches the question form in my face and smiles wider.
“I know Silas told you about my parents,” he says, pressing the knife into my belly until it stings.
“They’re dead because of your sanctimonious fucking father.
My family was destroyed because a Mercer couldn’t keep his hands off power that never belonged to him.
Your House was always weak. It should’ve stayed buried. ”
“My father didn’t—”
“Your father was filth,” he spits, working himself into a frenzy with every new word. “And you’re even worse, crawling out of whatever gutter the Fourth House died in and thinking you could ever belong here. You’ll never be one of us.”
His gaze moves over me with disgust.
“Blackhollow has you completely fooled,” he continues, shifting the blade, tracing the edge along my skin without cutting, teasing it. “Leading the Veil is all he’s ever wanted. He’s been setting you up from the very beginning.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“He knows I’ve been trying to kill you. He knew in the tunnels. He knew when I nearly sent you off that bridge.” Van’s eyes shine with sadistic pleasure. “You think those locks just happened to fail underwater in the harbor?”
My stomach drops.
“You—”
“You just won’t fucking die.” A breathless laugh escapes him. “So now I’m here to finish the job.” He brings the knife back to my throat again. “Silas knows that too. He supports it, even.”
“Shut up!” I wrench against his grip, the knife biting shallowly into my throat. “You’re lying!”
“I have to admit, I’m a bit disappointed how easy you made it for him.” His face twists into something ugly. “Heard you fucked him too. That’s especially sad. You let him use you. And now I’m here because he’s done playing and wants you dead.”
I go still as shock and rage burn through my terror.
Silas told him?
About us?
“You’re crazy,” I say, grasping for the one truth I cannot afford to let him touch. “Silas is my partner. He’s going to help me find my brother.”
A vicious smile spreads across his face.
“Oh,” he says. “You don’t know yet.”
Cold spreads outward from the center of my chest. “Know what?”
“That bastard.” He lets out a disbelieving laugh. “I can’t believe he still hasn’t told you. Actually…” He considers that for a moment. “Yes, I can. Keeping secrets is one of Silas’s better talents.”
“Told me what!”
He studies me for a long moment, savoring it.
“You’re never going to find your brother alive.”
The words hit me like a physical blow.
“You’re lying.”
“Am I?” The knife lowers a fraction as Van leans in, close enough that I catch the scent of mint and violence on his breath. “Ask Silas,” he murmurs. “He knows the truth. He always has.”
“The Veil has Josh,” I say, clinging to the words I need to be real. “And the second these fucking games are over, I’m going to find him.”
Yet, even as I say it, the certainty I’ve carried for months begins to crack.
A cold and terrible devastation settles in its place.
Van is holding all the cards. He has me trapped in a deserted shed where no one can hear my screams, his knife to my throat, about to kill me.
Why would he lie about this? About any of it?
He’s already won.
“Your roommate never learned to stay out of things that didn’t concern her either.
She kept digging. I had to take care of it.
” Van’s voice goes almost fond, savoring the memory.
“Silas found out afterward. It was his idea to leave her in the walls for you. He thought it might scare you off, but of course you were too fucking stubborn.” His gaze turns cold and hungry.
“She screamed rather beautifully, if it’s any comfort.
I imagine you’ll sound about the same when I’m carving you up. ”
Nausea surges up my throat as the meaning sinks in.
It was Van. He’s the one who killed Eleanor.
“You didn’t…”
“Oh, I did.” His eyes never leave mine. “And I enjoyed every second of it.”
He drinks in the horror on my face until his amusement finally fades.
“Enough conversation. I’ve got a holiday party to get to,” he says, glancing at his watch, almost bored, before drawing the knife back.
“Don’t worry, I’ll give Silas your love.
I’m sure it’ll amuse him to know you trusted him blindly right up until the bitter end. ”
He’s so busy taunting me that he doesn’t see me move. I shove both hands into his chest, putting all my weight behind it. He stumbles back, skidding on spilled rock salt before slamming into the shed wall. The knife tears free from his hand, skittering across the floor toward me.
We both dive for it.
He catches my coat and yanks me backward. My knee cracks against concrete, pain shooting up my leg, but adrenaline keeps me moving. I twist hard and kick back, driving my heel into his jaw. His grip breaks.
Heart thundering, I reach blindly for the knife again, and the carved handle seems to slip into my grasp almost like it’s been waiting for me. A second later, his weight crashes onto my back, pinning me beneath him. He grabs my hair, wrenching my head up.
Something fierce and determined rises inside me as I drive my wrist backward.
The instant I move, everything changes. The knife seems to pull my hand toward Van, drawn to him with a power that doesn’t feel entirely mine.
The blade is almost eager, as if it wants this too, and then plunges into him far deeper than I would’ve thought possible.
Van makes a strange, wet sound and rolls away.
For a moment, neither of us moves. Then he looks down at the weapon buried in his chest, right at his heart. His expression is not frightened. It is offended, as though death is a personal insult he never believed would apply to him.
“You…” he gasps, his eyes lifting to mine before dropping to the blade. “The knife…”
He pulls it free, blood pouring over his hand and spreading slowly across the concrete floor. It pools in the cracks and old salt stains beneath him while I wait for him to move again. To come after me and try to kill me one last time. To scream at me for stabbing him.
He doesn’t.
A moment later, he is dead.
I don’t remember standing or dragging his body into the corner of the shed and covering it with an old dirty tarp.
I don’t remember washing the blood from my hands in the rusted sink or finding the shed key hanging from a hook and locking it, the padlock snapping shut with terrible finality.
I don’t even remember crossing campus, the snow blinding, wind driving it into my face hard enough to sting.
Somehow, I make it to Silas’s room with Van’s blood stiffening on my sleeve and his final words lodged inside my skull.
Ask Silas. He knows the truth.