I deliberately avoided looking at the ledge where I’d sat with Quinn as I scooted around the edge of the pool. Behind the grotto, a set of narrow steps cut into the rock, leading up into the woods that surrounded Derleth Academy. It was how most of the students accessed the pleasure garden – those who didn’t know about the secret passage.
Without the lantern to hold, I had both hands free to steady myself as I scrambled up the rocks, pressing my body into the side of the cliff. My legs trembled with vertigo as I climbed above the grotto. The moon reflected in the pool below – a lidless eye watching me from the deep. It made me think of the horrible dreams I’d been having about the malignantthinghiding in the hole in the middle of that shadowy cavern. But dreams couldn’t hurt me, and Iknewwhoever was searching the forest for me didn’t have my best interests at heart.
“Hazel, Hazel, don’t go up there!”
The boys ran through the pleasure garden, faces tilted up at me, moonlight catching on their handsome features. But they didn’t follow me up the steps. Trey sounded so panicked, it spurred me on.
It’s about time Trey Bloomberg learned what it’s like to be afraid.
My nails scraped against stone as I scrambled over the top. The boys disappeared from sight. The steps gave way to a rocky path that circled through the trees on the edge of the cliff. I clambered around the rocks, heading in the direction of the lights but trying to stay low and not step directly into the beams. I had to know for certain it was me they were looking for – that I reallywasin danger from all sides. The trees grew thicker and stood straighter as they sloped up toward the school. Lights bobbed and ducked through the trunks, and voices called out to each other. They weren’t worried about being quiet. On the surface, this was every bit a concerted effort from the faculty to search for a missing student.
To search for me.
I’d locked the door to my room behind me. There was no late-night inspection at Derleth, and students frequently flouted the ‘no sleeping over in other dorms’ rule. Ayaz and I had come to the pleasure garden via the secret passage, so they had no way of knowing I was out of the school. So why did every staff member seem to be out here, hunting through the woods? Why did they care where I was? They’d never cared before.
A beam swept across the path only twenty feet in front of me. I dived into the trees, my heart thudding in my chest. At least two people were nearby, talking in hushed voices. Footsteps crunched in the dead leaves. A branch snapped.
Keeping low and stepping on the twisted roots where I’d be less likely to make a sound, I darted between the trees, trying to get close enough to hear their conversation. A vein of rock jutted up from the dirt, bending the trees outward as if they shied away from it. Ancient stratigraphy pushed up from below to form a low shelf and a scattering of large, cone-shaped rocks, like the towering dolmans of a Neolithic temple.
I made my way toward the formation, letting the smooth stone beneath my feet muffle my footsteps. I crouched low behind one of the craggy stones, listening. In the still night, even their whispers rang clear.
“We’ve checked the entire eastern wing, Headmistress,” Professor Atwood said. “Hazel’s not there.”
“She can’t have gotten far,” Headmistress West snapped. Flashlight beams bounced across the grounds. “Alert the maintenance staff. Send them down the peninsula to guard the road. That girl cannot be allowed to leave the grounds alive.”
Her words were a shard of ice, thawing the fire inside me.
That girl cannot be allowed to leave the grounds alive.
If I’d wanted evidence, I had it now. But what could I do? Where could I go? For the first time, the helplessness of my situation washed over me. There was no one I could trust at this school. I had no family, no one to call for help. Even if I did make it down to the town of Arkham, what good would it do? The police wouldn’t believe anything I told them. “The teachers are trying to kill me, Officer.” Yeah, right. I hardly believed it myself.
Something brushed my ankle. I spun around, my heart leaping into my throat. Quinn’s face peeked out from between the rocks. He held out a hand to me, fingers reaching, grasping at air.
“Trust me,” he mouthed.
Trust me.
Something invisible reached through the air between us – a flare of heat that sizzled against my skin. I flashed back to the gymnasium, where Quinn dragged me to safety before those shadowed things got to me. In a surge of heat, my body remembered the brush of his lips against mine and the times he’d let his guard down around me and had been more than Quinn the tormentor, Quinn the trickster.
The beam of a flashlight flickered across the rocks, just above my head. The voices drew closer. It wouldn’t be long until they were right on top of me.
Whatever Trey, Ayaz, and Quinn are involved in, they’re trying to help me.
I think.
Maybe.
Ihope.
It was all I had to go on. But it was better than being caught by Headmistress West.
I reached out and took Quinn’s hand. A pulse of heat flared up my arm. I allowed Quinn to pull me under the ledge. We slithered through a narrow gap and dropped down into a pitch-black cave. My ass cracked against wet rock as I slid and skidded down a steeply sloping rock face. Just as my feet slammed into flat rock and I wrenched myself upright, a flashlight beam passed over the entrance several feet above my head, flickering through the space without penetrating it.
“I’ve got her,” Quinn whispered, one hand circling my wrist, the other resting protectively against my hip, radiating warmth through my clammy skin.
A match struck. A moment later, a lantern burst into flame, illuminating Trey’s face. He appeared stricken. Dirt smudged along his cheek, humanizing his too-perfect, too-pretty features.
“Hey, Meat,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “You’ve decided to trust us.”
