Chapter 9
nine
Present Day
Scalpel firmly in my hand, I slice through the brachial plexus, severing the nerves while being careful to preserve the subclavian artery.
“That’s it, right?” Ellis asks, too loudly.
“Shh! I don’t want to damage this. I’ve got hold of it.” I pinch the vessel to hold it up, showing it off.
“It’s not like she’s alive anymore.” Ellis glances at me from across the slab.
“Are you ready for me to stitch?” Evie Lynx asks as she holds up the suture kit.
I nod toward Ellis to tag and label what we found. “You’re not even in this class with us.”
Evie slides her butt onto a stainless-steel counter in the basement of NU’s medical school and rolls her eyes. “You’re not in gross anatomy with the baby doctor students, either, Scout Turner.”
I huff a breath over my mask. I’m not wearing it for sterility. I just like pretending I’m in the operating room. And the smell of formaldehyde has a strange way of making me crave bacon.
Ellis, Rowan Greaves, and I formed a clique early in the semester to get ahead in our undergraduate anatomy class. Did I use my mom’s connections to get into the basement of the medical school? Yep. We get to explore the cadavers after the first-year medical students have had their exams.
Knowing I’ll be in their shoes in a couple of years, and that I’ll be a surgeon in several more after that, it makes pulling favors worth it.
“Why are you here?” I ask Evie with a sharp glance.
She shrugs, white-blonde ponytails falling over her shoulders. A feral grin crawls over her red-painted lips. “For fun.”
I’m not even sure how Evie and I became friends. One day at a Greek gathering, she slipped her arm through mine and said, “Hey, I’m Evie. Your new friend.” And that was that. No getting away from her.
I like her. And I don’t like many people. And many people don’t like her. She tags along whenever I’m into something she finds morbidly fascinating. Like dead bodies, apparently.
“And I had to come because I heard that Miss Prissy Scoutsville got a tattoo.” She slaps both of her cheeks as if she’s aghast, dropping the suture kit onto the floor.
Ellis flashes a glare at me as if she’s jealous I told Evie and not just her.
“How did you find out?”
“Oh… My ex told me.” Slipping off the counter, she grabs the needle and thread.
“Your ex?” Was she dating Apollo?
“Nico Griffin.”
My cheeks flush with embarrassment. How much did he tell her? That I blew his brother while he used his machine on my clit?
If she knows, she’s not giving anything away.
Rowan clears his throat and flicks his gloves into the trash bin. “Are we talking bodies or tattoos, ladies? Because I’m here to ace the exam. Not gossip.”
He’s a dick. None of us likes him. But he usually gets the highest scores and has some killer mnemonics and flashcards I copy.
“We’re studying—”
“We’re talking about her tattoo, ya dork,” Evie says at the same time I speak up.
Rowan’s brown eyebrows stitch together, and his face darkens as he glowers at her. Mumbling under his breath about next time, he grabs his backpack and heads out.
Ellis snorts with laughter but continues to tidy up the mess we’ve made.
I rip off my mask and gloves, then peel down my jeans to show Evie. She bends to get a closer look.
“Very nice. He does great work!”
“You dated Nico?” I ask, hoping she’ll tell me how much she knows about what happened when I was in the chair.
“I mean, we all fucked for a few months. My girlfriend at the time, and me and him. Then I got bored with them, but they’re still fucking, I think.” She shrugs like it’s not a big deal, and when she stands, there’s a nefarious sparkle in her big blue eyes. “I’ve moved on.”
I think Evie moves on quite quickly to a lot of things. Like cadaver lab.
Ellis eyes me carefully. Too carefully. Maybe she has something she wants to say in private. I turn around to wash my hands and gather my things.
With a clear change of subject I know will work, I ask, “Is Sigma Lambda Psi ready for Thriller Thursday?”
Evie’s eyes grow devilish. “Of course. We’re going to win. We always win Thursdays. Sorry, girls. We’re getting the Lunar Chalice this year.”
Ellis scoffs. “Fat chance. We’ve got a plan. Omega Nu Epsilon may not have won a Thursday before. But we’re ready this year.”
It’s unusual to hang out with someone from a different sorority. But I can’t seem to get rid of Evie. She sticks to me like a burr in a sock. And I never know when she’s showing up or not. For as outlandish as she is, she can be quite sneaky, too.
We gather our bags and coats, aiming for the door. I flick off the light in the bright white-tiled room, then make sure we hear the click of the automatic lock.
“So I wasn’t going to say anything… Not with him in there,” Ellis mumbles.
Evie dives her head between us and loudly asks, “What are you talking about?”
Ellis flushes pink. “Um, I was just saying to my best friend that I heard the Pairing Oversight Tribunal is going to appoint me to a Viscount.”
I stop cold. “No way! You found out already?”
Sophomore sorority sisters occasionally receive their letters, the assignments to vow the rest of their lives to a senior fraternity member.
But it’s more common for seniors. It used to be that the Board of Trustees and the president of the university made such decisions.
Now, with the new leadership, we have a POT to decide our fates.
“I guess I’m lucky.” She points toward the stairs, and we deviate that way, heading to the first floor.
“Lucky to get to marry someone good? Or…an asshole?” My stomach twists with worry for her.
“I don’t even know if he’d want a civil marriage after the vow ceremony in the cathedral. Only that I have to swear fealty to him for the rest of my life.”
“Caliphylla, goddess of life,” she and I mutter under our breaths. It’s our house’s god, who’s supposed to bless our unions. Not that I believe in that. But still.
If it’s all real, I don’t want Ellis to miss out on a blessing.
Evie chortles behind us. “Goddess of life. Vows. What a joke. You realize they’ll be fucking whoever they want.
” She waves her hand at the groups of students clustered around the doorway to the building.
“But cheer up. You’ll still get shared among the guys.
If he’s got a small dick? You can fuck his brother. ”
I blink heavily. “Yeah. What Evie said.” Sarcasm drips from every word.
But by signing up for Greek life at Northview University, that’s what you agree to. And it felt very pre-determined that we would all attend, since our parents did. As if we didn’t have another choice.
“I guess I’ll be rich. So that’s nice.” Ellis muses a bit, finger tapping her chin as the winter air slaps our faces on the steps of the medical school north of the main campus.
Evie tugs on a hat and swirls in a circle. “I’ll catch you later, Scoutie.”
And just like she appears? She vanishes into the dark.
“So, confess.” I avoid a patch of ice on the sidewalk. “Who’s your appointed? Your soon-to-be victorious Viscount?”
Ellis sighs and stares forward. With a grimace, she finally says, “Rowan Greaves.”
My eyes grow wide. “Wow! Did not see that coming.”
Her head drops, and I understand why she’d be devastated.
Ellis sighs as if she’s releasing centuries of pent-up smoke from her lungs. The air crystallizes around us as we stroll toward Omega House.
“Rowan’s not that bad.”
Her eyes bug out. “You can’t be serious. He’s a menace. And…” She glances behind us, her eyebrows lowering. “Don’t tell him I said this. But I think he’s gay.”
“Me, too!”
“Shh!” She stops and spins around.
“What? Is he here?” I ask, looking in the same direction. The cemetery behind the Cathedral of Seven Moons, where we have our appointed ceremonies, is dark. Very dark. “I don’t—”
I freeze.
Cold strikes my skin like knives.
A shadow flutters in the January midnight breeze, long fabric whispering once before it vanishes.
“Who was that?” Ellis whispers.
My heart pounds hard against my ribs, and I answer her with honesty.
“I have no idea.”