Chapter Nineteen
Trey and Quinn and Andre went back to classes and pretended everything was normal while we waited for word from Sadie about Greg. Trey had been clever, waiting until he was on senior study leave to look for me. They had a week off classes to prepare for exams, so no one noticed he was missing.
I hid downstairs in their rooms, studying Rebecca’s book and eating whatever cold leftovers they could sneak me from the dining hall.
The first third of Rebecca’s book was in her hand, and that was the section I focused on. The remainder of the book appeared to have been added to over the years with diary entries and spells from women descended from Rebecca’s line, until the very back where the last entry was dated from the early 2000s. I started with Rebecca’s entries, but they mainly repeated history I’d obtained from Zehra’s files, with some added occult mumbo-jumbo thrown in for good measure.
I could barely focus on the task I’d set myself because I was so worried about Greg. I would read a couple of pages before my desperation to find Greg would get the better of me. Only I couldn’t walk around the grounds looking for him and risk being seen, so I had to sit down and keep reading.
Is he okay? Is he truly safe? Is Zehra with him? How can we find them?
It didn’t help that the rats were going nuts. It was like they knew I’d returned and were determined to make themselves known to me, just in case I could’ve somehow forgotten them. Every time I moved across the hall to Andre’s room and back again, they followed me. They circled above my head, their awful scritch-scritching pounding inside my skull.
Being invisible did have its benefits. Even though Ms. West had to know I’d escaped from Dunwich Institute, there were no additional security measures at the school. As far as I could tell, she wasn’t concerned with locating me. In fact, from what the guys told me, she was barely attending to her duties as headmistress at all. I suspected I knew where she was – hidden away in her new laboratory location communing in secret with the god or doing something horrible to Greg. Or Zehra.
If we found the laboratory, we found Greg. And I had an inkling of where we first needed to look.
I didn’t bother telling the boys what I planned to do. They’d either refuse to let me go or insist on going with me. I couldn’t risk either of those outcomes – I wouldn’t put them in any more danger to find Greg. Besides, after three days of hiding in Andre’s room while they went to classes, I had serious cabin fever.
As soon as they headed up for breakfast, I hid Rebecca’s book behind the desk, picked up the hammer and chisel we’d used on the bricks, stole out of my old room and snuck through the secret tunnel.
I emerged into the pleasure garden, keeping low to the ground as I crept along the path toward the rotunda, trying not to let the memory of what Quinn and I had done there distract me from what I had to do.
Trey’s reaction to my fire prickled against my skin. I wondered if that’s why the students liked to party here, around the grotto. Maybe they felt safe near water. Maybe their brazier was a way for them to try to control their fear, to cage and conquer it – the way Vincent and Ms. West tried to cage me.
I planned to head to the cemetery. That was where the dead Miskatonic students had been brought back to life. They’d had to dig themselves out of their graves. That wasn’t an insignificant amount of work to bury so many students. There had to be some clue there that explained how Ms. West did what she did, and maybe where she’d taken Greg. It was worth a shot.
I hoped I’d find answers.
I hoped I wouldn’t find a grave with Greg’s name on it.
As I picked my way through the narrow path and emerged at the rear of the rotunda, a sound reached my ears that turned my stomach to ash.
Voices.
Students laughed and chatted as they crowded beneath the rotunda. I’d been so absorbed in my thoughts I hadn’t seen them until I was practically on top of them. I dove into one of the overgrown garden beds, shielding myself behind a Grecian statue choked with weeds. I lay in the dirt at the bottom of the garden, my fingers grasping for the knife handle sticking out of my boot. I tried to silence my pounding heart as I strained to hear any sign they’d heard me before I dared raised my head.
I tugged the knife free, feeling the reassuring weight of it in my palm. Slowly and silently, I rolled over in the bed, covering my body in the vines, camouflaging myself in the wasteland of a garden that once was. I bent my head toward the edge of the bed and peered over the edge – listening, watching.
Voices talking. Laughing. Kids sprawled around the grotto, passing a liquor bottle and bags of chips between them. I recognized monarchs. Courtney, John, Tillie, Amber. Nancy shifted uncomfortably in her spot sandwiched between Paul and Barclay. And…
Ayaz.
He lounged against a broken pillar, the same one Quinn had braced me against during our wild boning (boning? Urgh, Quinn said the worst things sometimes) the other night. Courtney snuggled under Ayaz’s arm, looking like she belonged there. My fingers tightened around the knife, fantasizing about sticking it into Courtney’s neck.
With his free hand, Ayaz held a pipe to his lips and took a deep drag before passing it to John. His features transfixed me until I caught the topic of conversation.
“…Mommy says that the entire institution burned down,” Courtney drawled, her long red nails clawing at Ayaz’s arm as she tried to twist around to kiss his cheek. “Can you believe it? The official story is faulty wiring, but no one believes that. Hazel was soobviouslyderanged, and her mother died in a fire. She could have killed so many people! I don’t feel safe knowing she’s out there somewhere.”
That bitch. She had a part in locking me up, and now she’s over there feeding Ayaz more lies.The urge to wrap my fingers around Courtney’s throat and squeeze crept all the way up my arms.
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Ayaz said in a bored voice. “She probably died in the blaze.”
“We’d know about it if she was dead. Aren’t you afraid she might come after you?” Courtney twirled her fingers through his hair. “She had all those delusions about being in love with you, remember? She might be coming back to claim you as her own. She’d probably threaten me because I got you now.”
“She wouldn’t dare,” Ayaz growled, and the venom in his voice turned my stomach. No matter what happened now, I knew that Ayaz believed in this version of events. He was lost to me.
“We should get back to class,” Tillie punched Ayaz playfully in the arm. “I won’t have my salutatorian status ruined because you lot wanted to get high.”
