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But time drips by, and she doesn’t answer.

There’s a soft hiss. The running lights in the hall blink out. What in the hell? A shiver wracks me and I grab the journal, scurrying into the shadowed depths of Dean Shea’s office. I hit a bookcase hard and thread myself into a corner. I can smell old leather, paper, and squeeze my eyes shut. My breath is coming so fast. I can taste copper on my tongue. What if they’ve come for me?

It’s too dark to see anything outside the thin parabola of white light cast by faraway campus outdoor lamps. I can’t even make out the desk and it’s only ten feet from me.

There’s a thin hush, not quite breathing, not quite laughter. It sits somewhere in between, a huffing, grating stream of air.

“Marcella?” My voice is the thickness of paper, easily bent and lost. The darkness eats it. God, it’s like someone sucked every particle of light from the room. I don’t put stock in ghosts—I didn’t, anyway—but people have always whispered that Preston is haunted.

Haunted by what, is the question.

There’s a great clatter outside the window and I squeak, falling to a crouch. My knee cracks against the sharp wooden baseboard and I hiss. A bird flutters past the pane, a mourning dove squealing, talons scraping over the glass as it flees.

“Oh, come on.” Laughing at my own stupidity, I palm the pulsing pain in the middle of my knee.

“Ridiculous,” I say, just to say something, to hear something over the rabbit-quick beat of my heart. It’s easier to drown out the fear when I hear how silly I sound.

And then the sound comes again, closer, hissing—hissing and reptilian, and this time with a rotting stink like turned meat. Gagging, I drop my head to my knee and bite off my bile. Fuck, what is that?

All I know is the scream of my breath and the shudder of my blood in my veins, the way it slams from head to toe and rushes in my ears. I need to—need to go. I try to crawl forward, but my knee gives another sharp twang of pain and I trip onto my stomach, knocking the air out of myself.

I drag myself forward, nails digging into the rug, but don’t get far. Something clamps, sharp and hard, around my ankles. I buck against them, kicking hard—and connect with something soft. There’s a screech as it lets go.

I flip onto my back, heaving—and stare into the shining silver eyes of a vættr. I open my mouth to scream, but a hand clamps down over my lips. I bite hard, sluicing bitterness filling the folds of my gums. The thing doesn’t even scream.

It only smiles. Smiles and leans down over me, showing me all its thousands of sharp teeth.

“Foolish girl,” it wheezes. “You can’t get away from me.”

Its hand flies off my mouth but in the space between my next breath and a scream, its fist meets my temple, and the world inks out to nothing.

THIRTYLacie

The first thing I register is the ache in my temple, the electric pain singing through my teeth where they cracked together as I hit the floor. Then, the dead tingle of my hands, the realization that they’ve been bound behind my back.

My breath catches as my eyes spring open. But I see nothing, and for a moment, panic sharpens in me like thousands of knives, my body springing into a new sweat.

“Help,” I try to yell, but my voice comes out muffled, my mouth full and dry. I’ve been gagged, and tears leak from my eyes.

Oh, god, what if this is what happened to Laurel? Therese? What if this was the last thing they experienced, too? What if they got Marcella?

Fuck.

My breath comes too fast, and I start to feel faint again, my heart clutching strangely in the inside of my chest. The darkness around me has teeth—or my insides have teeth—or I’m already dead.

I have to get ahold of myself. I’m still alive. I can still fight. I muscle around the electric panic taking me to pieces, digging down, down, down. I clasp onto the anger that got me into Columbia, that carried my boxes out of my parents’ house, that climbed the ladder into Preston’s prestigious aerie. The desperate desire to live, the rage that this is all I get: impossibly hard work, harder than anyone else’s, or else a slow slip into anonymity.

They killed Laurel.

This final reason sets me on fire. They killed her.

With a growl, I try to move again. One half of my face scrapes against something rough. Carpet, perhaps? I drag an inhale, and even though only a sip of air gets into my lungs, I realize I recognize the scent.

It’s dust and old pages.

It’s dank, mildewed halls.

Distantly, it’s the burned-cheese odor of a cafeteria.