Chapter one
Laurel
The fraternity house rises before me, elegant columns and white brick. Peaked slate-gray roof with twin chimneys. The resemblance to the White House is unmistakable and no doubt intentional. A sign stands on the manicured lawn, lit by floodlights, like a monument.
Ashford House
Established 1813
The same year the university, and the town, were founded.
Of course it was. Everything about this place reeks of legacy, wealth, and secrets. The students who live here reportedly own this small college town. They run it with an iron fist, controlling all illegal activities. Drugs, gambling, guns. Rumor says their power bleeds into lecture halls, boardrooms, even the police station. At least, that’s the whispered gossip I’ve picked up in the month I’ve lived in the town of Ashfordville, my own personal hellscape.
Now here I am, standing on their doorstep about to deliver half a dozen pizzas.
Pepperoni and pineapple.
Gross.
Although lights blaze in all the windows, no one answers when I ring the doorbell and knock repeatedly. Nothing. The silence inside stretches thin and strange. A glance at my watch shows it’s just past ten at night. Frustrated, I blow a piece of wavy brown hair out of my eyes and adjust the baseball hat over my head. I pull it low, after I’ve tucked my ponytail up in it. I’m not trying to hide that I’m female, but I’m not trying to announce it either. This job is the only thing keeping me in college and keeping my father fed. It’s risky, taking me into shady neighborhoods and tangling me with questionable people, mostly men who stare a little too long, but the tips and gas money make up for it. Barely.
From somewhere in the vicinity of the backyard I hear a commotion. Male voices yelling, chanting. Loud and combative, almost like they’re egging each other on in a fight. Probably some dumb frat ritual where they scream at pledges and chug beer until someone pukes.
Idiots.
With a sigh, I turn my sneakers in that direction. Gravel crunches as I trudge across the side yard, shifting the pizza boxes, which have started to burn the bare skin of my arms. Sweat slides down my neck, slow and ticklish, before vanishing between my breasts. It’s summer, the air so thick and humid that I’m in cutoff shorts and a faded T-shirt bearing the pizza shop logo.
The Saucy Slice.
Real classy.
I round the corner and jerk to a stop, unable to process the grisly tableau before me. The backyard is a large rolling lawn bordered by neatly trimmed hedges and ancient oak trees, their branches draped with Spanish moss that hangs down like nooses. In the center of the yard is a rectangular pool with a long diving board, the kind my mother used to warn me away from. “You’ll break your neck,” she’d said.
There’s a full moon tonight. I noticed it earlier, glowing yellow, heavy and bloated. It’s by moonlight that I see them clearly. Boys. Or men, I guess, since most of them are college students like me, in their late teens and early twenties. At least thirty of them stand shoulder to shoulder in a perfect circle around two figures in the center of the lawn. One is an adult man with salt and pepper hair slicked away from his temples. He has three teardrop tattoos at the corner of his eye. He lays on his back with his mouth agape and limbs splayed, but I barely notice that. I’m transfixed by his eyes. Like two marbles, they stare glistening, open wide, at the night sky above us.
Lifeless.
A second figure straddles the dead man, but as I watch he rises slowly, straightening to his full height. He’s my age, maybe a little older. The kind of face you’d expect to see in a glossy admissions brochure with his sharp cheekbones, strong jaw, and thick lashes framing cold, unreadable eyes.
He’s coveredin blood.
It coats his hands, slick and shining. It streaks his black leather jacket, spatters his arms, drips from his hair in dark, sticky rivulets. A long, serrated knife dangles from one hand. Even bloodstained, the blade has a sinister gleam that turns my spine to ice. A wordless scream leaves my throat, and my hands go numb, dropping the pizza boxes. Cardboard hits concrete, pizza slices flying everywhere, smearing grease and sauce on the ground like a second crime scene.
The sound draws the attention of the men. Every face pivots toward me in eerie unison, and I feel it, an invisible shift in the air like I’m prey breaking into a clearing full of predators.
Even though they all stare at me, it’shimI can’t tear away from.
The boy with the knife.
His eyes lock on mine, so frigid and devoid of emotion he appears as dead as the man before him. There’s no warmth in that gaze. Only ruin.
I run.
Chapter two
Laurel
My sneakers, with their thin soles and frayed laces, slap against the pavement as I tear down the street, my breath coming in short, panicked bursts. Before my life had gone to hell, I’d run track, played on the school tennis team, and even been a softball pitcher. I hadn’t done any of those things because I was athletic.God, no. I did it because I thought they would look good on my college applications. The same reason I tutored at the school where my dad had worked. The only after-school activity I did for my own pleasure was the five hours a week I spent volunteering at thehospital.
