Never fall asleep anywhere except your bed, she remembered laughing over. Because of course, it had seemed funny then; it had seemed ridiculous.As if I’m going to drift off in a library seething with ghosts or a lecture hall that might at any moment slip into another dimension, she had scoffed.
But she couldn’t scoff now.
She was still sitting in the window seat.
And she felt pretty sure the window seat counted as somewhere else.
In fact, she knew it must. Because as she sat there, frozen, the thing in her room lifted one impossibly long leg and simply stepped over the frame and onto her bed. As if it was no more than a footstool or a doorstep. Then it just started walking across the mattress toward her, in that same slow, effortless way.
As if it knew she couldn’t move.
She couldn’t even scream.
The Complete Compendium of Creatureshad told her to make loud noises if something otherworldly approached her. But even though this thing definitely fit that definition—even though it looked like a shadow and moved like one, too—she couldn’t get out a single sound.
And now it was upon her.
It stood over her, so tall she had to tilt her head back to look up at its no doubt terrible visage. But not for long, no, not for long because after an endless and terrible moment, it started to lean down. Its hands—tipped with claws, oh god, it had claws—reached for her.This won’t hurt, she thought she heard it say. Though she knew it lied. The coldness of its hand burned before it even laid it on her.
And then it did, and finally it happened.
She screamed.
Chapter Five
She woke with a start, sure that she would see a nightmare around her. The walls of that demon’s terrible dungeon, she imagined. All slippery, moss-covered stones scored by the nails of any number of victims. Or maybe the man himself, smiling at her with a mouth that took up most of whatever face he had.
But somehow, all she actually saw was sunlight, streaming through the curtains. The sheets pulled up around her ears. Her books stacked neatly on the bedside cabinet.You went to bed like normal and just dreamed you drifted off in the window seat, her mind informed her.
And that seemed reasonable.
Or reasonable enough that she could focus on other things.
Like the fact that it was somehow forty minutes past nine, when her first lecture was, according to her assignment sheet, at ten. It was at ten, and she was still half asleep and in her nightdress. So she flung herself through peeing and washing and dressing in a mad scramble, then bolted out the door. Down the spiral steps, into the low gray sunlight beyond, up to the main building, and then left and left again.
She got there with seconds to spare.
Though it didn’t look it once she was inside the dim and dusty-looking hall. Fifty sets of eyes all swiveled to her, like she hadturned up in the middle of a lecture by the not actually present professor. And they stayed on her, as she made her slow, red-faced way up the steps that bisected the rows of seats. She saw someone lean and whisper something to her glamorous-looking friend. Another person laughed, loudly enough that others joined in.
But she couldn’t hurry and sit down.
There weren’t any seats left. Not even next to Anaya, who was crammed between two massive brickheaded rugby playing–looking lads, one of whom she was clearly fuming at. Mina could even see why—he’d obviously just sat on the bag she’d tried to save a seat with. Anaya tried to give him a shove, and there was a hint of the yellow backpack Mina had seen on her friend the day before.
She had to gesture at Anaya not to do anything silly on her behalf, like get beaten up by someone with ears like fists. Then she put on an amused, brave sort of face to really drive the reassurance home.Everything is fine, she told herself.
Even though her situation was actually pretty dire. Every single row seemed full—until she got to the final one, and glimpsed a space with something like relief, and took a step toward it. Then the people obscuring it sat down, and she saw who she would be sitting beside if she took it.
The bane of her existence.
Just slouched there, bold as brass and so casual it was infuriating. His hair looked hardly brushed. The sweater he was wearing had a hole in it. He had gum in his mouth and seemed barely bothered about chewing it. And she could already tell that he had no means to take notes.
No bag, no pad in front of him, no pen in his hand.
Much to her irritation. She had spent a good amount of thestipend she had been awarded on the twelve spares in her satchel. There was so much paper and so many notebooks in there that her shoulder was aching already from carrying them all. And here he was with absolutely nothing. Like he wanted to make it absolutely clear how little he needed this, how above it he was.
I should be in a class far ahead of this, his entire attitude said. Then he spotted her, and it said something more.I should be far ahead of you, it seemed like. In fact, for just a second, she thought he was going to shift a bag or a coat and dump it into that spare seat. As if he was saving it for someone better and cooler and more polished—even though of course he couldn’t possibly be. Everyone was here already. If he did it, he would be doing it just to spite her.
Though was it really spite if you kind of hoped he would?
