“You would.” Sabrina gives me a dirty look.
Meg presses her lips together as if to keep from smirking. “How do you even know about that?”
“When it comes to Sutton, I know everything.”
“Oh, butI’mthe stalker.” Meg rubs her hands over her knees, rolling her eyes. “I’ll have you know, the garbage incident was to look for a paper of mine he said he lost. He literally sanctioned my access.”
“Whatever helps you and the new girl sleep at night.” Sabrina gives me another once-over, disdain coloring her features. “How many homework assignments did you forget today?”
“I think we should give Elle a break, you guys,” Percy interjects.
“Yeah,” Lexington says. “It’s hard enough being a founding family member without having to keep up with all the bullshit happening around us on top of it.”
“Oh, please.” Meg snorts. “The founding families are not an oppressed class.”
“That’s true, but there are very few of us at Avernia. I’ve been in Fury Hill my whole life, and I’m still trying to adjust to the expectations and scrutiny. And I don’t have a curse attached to my last name, unless you count Lethe’s.” He looks at me thoughtfully. “Do you ever feel like you’re being watched?”
“Not this again,” Percy groans. “I’ve told you, dude, if ghosts are real, they’re not interested in haunting humans. They have more important things in the afterlife to attend to. The only people terrorizing Fury Hill are the weirdo vigilantes who killed those girls last semester and left their sigil on every flat surface they could find.”
“A sigil?” I probe.
Percy’s face flushes, and he runs his fingers through his platinum-blond locks, his light brown eyes creasing at the corners. “Well, only first responders and the deanactuallygot to see the crime scenes, but a few fellow tech-theater majorswere in the Curators last semester, and they swore on their lives that the group was being framed by Death’s Teeth. Said they’d overheard stuff aboutthree-headed beastsand names written in blood.”
“Death’s Teeth has a habit of leaving their calling card whenever they commit some kind of crime,” Lexington adds, propping his legs up on the chair ahead of him and reclining slightly in his own. “I guess they want to make sure we don’t forget they exist or something. Usually, the crimes are boring shit like vandalism or public indecency, but the names of the accused are never released, and no records are ever taken down.”
“Pythia reports it though,” Meg notes. “That’s the only reason we know about Celeste and Frances from last semester. Others have gone missing before, and no one mentions them again.”
“I bet Pythia’s someone in the administration,” Percy says. “Not Bauer, I don’t think he’s smart enough, but someone else. Someone with firsthand knowledge and protections.”
Ahead, Sabrina cackles. “A faculty member? You think they have time to chase gossip and make a fuss online about it?”
“Sabrina’s the Visio Aternae treasurer,” Lexington says to me as if she’s not even here. “She thinks she knows things because she’s constantly up Professor Dupont’s ass.”
Her eyes narrow at him. “That’s not the only reason, but I don’t need to explain myself to you cretins.”
“Anyway,” Percy continues, tossing Sabrina a lingering glance when she turns to the front before he drapes himself over Lexington’s lap, stretching his arms on the backs of their seats. Lexington threads his fingers through Percy’s short hair, and I briefly wonder what the extent of their relationship is. “So the main ghosts on campus are the possibly at-large murderers and probably the students who killed themselves on the thirteenthfloor of the Obeliskos centuries ago. We think there are some in the dorms too. Erebus and Rad Hall to be exact.”
“Oh, and whatever’s hidden beneath the Apollodorus,” Meg adds. “Some people say you can get to the caves through the basement.”
“Don’t forget the forest,” Lexington adds.
My palms grow sweaty.
“Too many people go missing or die on campus every year for there to benoghosts,” Lexington says. “Eventually, that sort of bloodshed becomes a part of the setting, right? Isn’t that what the whole Anderson curse is about?”
The three of them fall silent, and when they look at me, there’s an added weight of unease pressing down on the center of my chest, making it difficult to breathe.
It feels a lot like drowning, and that image brings with it the memories of my last time in the Primordial Forest and the eyes that have graced my nightmares ever since.
Still, I force a smile. “Look, I’m just here to get my degree. I’m not interested in ghosts or curses.”
Several rows ahead, Sutton appears from behind the stage curtain, instructing the students to take their seats as more file in.
He doesn’t glance in my direction at all. Not even a voyeuristic peep.
I don’t know why that bums me out so much.
As the exit doors are pulled shut, Sutton pulls an apricot from his pants pocket and takes a bite. He focuses his attention on a rolling chalkboard, cleaning the debris from a previous physics class with a rag.
