“We might as well head back. There’s nothing else to do here tonight.” I clung to Ayaz as the hum of the pillar called me closer. I needed to put some distance between us before I was unable to resist. I didn’t want to be sucked into that primordial vision again – I’d had enough excitement for one night.
My body ached in all kinds of good ways as we trudged back to school. As we stepped through the doors into the darkened atrium, Ms. West flew through the faculty wing and threw herself at me.
“You!” she cried, fingers like talons reaching for my throat. “How dare you drug me and violate our trust!”
Trey and Ayaz slid in front of me. Ms. West slammed against their hard bodies. They didn’t hold her back, but she couldn’t get to me.
I snorted. “I betrayyou?We’re supposed to be working together, but you were still hurting my friend. You said Zehra would be free, and I was making sure you kept your promise. As for drugging you, consider it payback for what you did to Ayaz.”
Ms. West’s eyes flashed. Ayaz stiffened as she rested a hand on his shoulder. “Such a pliant mind, so ready to believe the lies I placed there.”
So it is true. She just admitted it. She altered his mind.
Ayaz grabbed her fingers, twisting her wrist around. She yelped in surprise as he forced her arm into a hold, her back bent awkwardly over his knee, her head pointing to the floor. “Move an inch and I’ll snap your arm. It won’t heal the way mine does. But don’t worry, I’ll do far worse unless you give me back what you took.”
“Boy, I took nothing from you but your virginity, and you didn’t seem to mind that too much.”
“You took my sister! You kept her locked away from me, and you tortured her for your own amusement.” Ayaz seemed to grow an extra foot as he tightened his grip on Ms. West. His dark eyes blazed with hatred born of hurt. “You took my life and locked me away in this place and made me hurt people. And then, you took my memories – the one beautiful thing to ever come out of this hellhole, and you stripped it away.”
Ms. West gasped as he wrenched her arm tighter, but it was a gasp of triumph. “Those cannot… be restored. The erasure is permanent.”
With a howl, Ayaz shoved her hard. She skidded across the room, her heels sliding on the slick marble. She slammed into the wall and crumpled to the floor in a tangle of black fabric. A candle sconce clattered to the floor beside her, the glass bulb smashing to pieces.
The Deadmistress tilted her chin, glaring at Ayaz with defiant eyes.
“Keep them,” Ayaz whispered, his voice edged with steel. “You’ll need something to heat up your cold, dead heart in the nights to come. I’ve made new memories with Hazel and with my brothers, and you won’t take those or anything from meever again.”
At his words, Ms. West’s eyes flooded with cold realization. She no longer had control of us, and she had an inkling that we might not be entirely going along with her plan. “You’re playing with fire, Ayaz Demir, and you and the rest of your friends will burn up in her inferno if you’re not careful. I’ve waited too long and worked too hard for things to fall apart now. We have one shot at freedom, and I won’t have you messing it up for all of us with some ridiculous scheme.”
“No schemes here.” My lips formed what I hoped was an innocent smile. “We’resolooking forward to being able to walk around outside the school and hold hands like normal teenagers, until I grow old and die and these three can build a shrine to me.”
Her eyes darted between us, but the Kings weren’t giving anything away. Ayaz’s shoulders heaved – it took all his resolve not to throttle her with his bare hands.
“If I find out that you’re playing me, I’ll bemostupset.” Her voice remained calm, but the threat lurked behind it with cold precision. We all knew what she was capable of. “It won’t be you four who pay for messing this up. I’ll let the Eldritch Club destroy every student, and you can watch them all die before I force you all to impregnate Hazel to produce the next generation of the god’s children. If you truly are the Kings of Miskatonic, you will protect your subjects from the real enemy. Or else all hope is lost.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
“My nails areruined,” Courtney whined, throwing down the chisel to suck on the tip of her finger.
“Suck it up.” I couldn’t help the pleasure that crept into my voice. “You’re learning an important lesson about how the rest of the world works for their money.”
It was a week after the party, and we were back in the forest with a small group of students we trusted. Courtney Haynes would not have been top of my list, but Trey and Ayaz fought for her inclusion. Of course, she’d then immediately gone and spilled the beans to John and Derek, so they were here too, which I was not happy about. I’d rather fuck a cactus than trust those two.
We were about to embark on the most ambitious part of our plan. Zehra had made contact on her new phone. She’d found her people who could get us the documents we needed, but they expected to be paid.
Alotof money.
245 Miskatonic Prep students and 76 members of the maintenance staff needed new lives. Even without helping the teachers – we decided they could fend for themselves – we would need some serious cash to get the basics sorted. And that was before we considered how everyone would live and eat and buy plane tickets while they got as far from the smoldering remains of the school as they could get.
As I turned over the challenge of how to get our hands on mad scrilla, my thoughts had drifted back to Trey’s black card and the enormous balance it carried after twenty years of non-use. I wondered how many other Miskatonic students had money sitting in accounts and on cards they might still be able to access if only they could leave the grounds.
All it took was a whisper of a promise to Tillie, and she had a list of the most likely suspects. We’d slipped a note under each’s dorm room door.Come to the cabins after midnight on Friday night if you want a taste of freedom. Be prepared to get dirty. Don’t tell anyone else.
Of course, when Courtney heard the worddirty, she imagined something very different, which was probably why she’d told John. She showed up wearing a sparkly halter top, booty shorts, and heavy makeup, and looked completely confused when I handed her a mallet and chisel and told her to remove one of the border sigils carved into an ancient cairn.
Courtney hit the chisel a few more times, then dropped the tools at her feet and stuck out her lip in a petulant pout. “I don’t see why I’m doing all the work. I thought you said we were supposed to be a collective – equal work in, equal out.”
I rolled my eyes and pointed to another cairn a little way down the ridge. A large hole marred one smooth side. My foot rested on a stone wrapped in cloth at my feet. “Because I’ve already finished chiseling that one out of the rocks. But if you really can’t do it, you can go back to the school and forget about crossing the boundary—”
