Then I hear it.
Someone.
“What the fuck do you want?” I growl.
There’s a sharp intake of breath and then scurrying feet. I turn to see a blur of pink tulle. It’s the Davenport girl. The basket case.
I saw her earlier. She was dressed in that same pale pink tulle dress, her dark hair softly curled. She looked like a doll fresh out of the package. At the Parents Weekend picnic, she sat dutifully on a blanket beside an older woman while three sharply dressed attendants flitted around at their beck and call.
Everyone at St. John’s whispers about Lainey. She’s fragile. Small. Thin. The kind of quiet that scares the shit out of people. Is she lonely or is she haunted? I’ve heard the jeers about her, the sick shit people say even though she’s just a kid.
I feel bad now that she was the one I yelled at.
Of everyone at St. John’s, she deserves my wrath the least.
Chapter Four
Lainey
I want this day to end. Having to endure my grandmother being here on campus was like having to entertain the Queen of England all afternoon. She came early and stayed late, peppered me with a thousand questions. Who are my friends, and which classes do I prefer, and don’t drink tea in great gulps, and for god’s sake, stop slouching.
When her Rolls-Royce pulled off down the Cyprus-lined drive, I wanted nothing more than to curl up in bed with a good book and a mug of hot chocolate, but when I returned to my dorm, I found a sign pasted to the door.
GO AWAY.
Blythe does this every now and then, essentially kicking me out of my own dorm. Usually it’s only for a few hours, though once it was for an entire weekend. I slept underneath a table in the library and had a backache for a whole week after.
When I saw her note earlier, I stood outside my door for a minute, letting the inconvenience of it all sink in. I needed inside my dorm. At the very least, I wanted to change out of my ridiculous dress. My grandmother sent it to me last week with clear instructions to wear it for the luncheon today. I felt like a five-year-old on her birthday, so pink and frilly. Worse, the fabric was itchy as hell.
I sighed and let my forehead hit the door.
“READ THE SIGN!” Blythe yelled.
I pinched my eyes closed and tried to keep myself from screaming back at her. There’s no use. I’ve gone down that route. I’ve told a teacher, told an administrator, told the headmaster. It always winds up making my life worse in the end. Why can’t adults understand that? I don’t want them to bring Blythe into their office for a stern talking to—I want them to kick her out of St. John’s altogether.
It wouldn’t matter though. A new, worse version of her would crop up in her place. Oh god, the horror of that almost makes me shiver out of my skin. If I were Catholic, I’d do the sign of the cross at the thought.
As I walked away from my dorm, I did so while wishing she’d contract some incurable, horribly disfiguring STD. Is that too much to ask of karma?
With nowhere left to go, I headed to the library because I didn’t feel like getting my head chewed off if I interrupted Blythe and her partner again. Silly me, I ended up getting my head chewed off anyway.
I didn’t even notice Emmett was in there when I first arrived. I was going back to the spot where I like to study, where the books are so dusty and forgotten that I’m more likely to run into the Ghost of Authors Past than another living person.
I was still recovering from the shock of seeing him there, one aisle over, sitting on the floor with his back to the stacks and a whiskey bottle dangling between his bent knees, when he shouted at me.
“What the fuck do you want?”
I leapt a mile in the air.
I should have kept running until I was out of the library, but I only made it three aisles down before I panicked and took solace within the stacks.
Even now, my heart is still lodged halfway up my throat. Tremors run through my hands and fingers.
I’ve been dropped into a horror movie.
“I know you’re in here,” he says, his voice eerily devoid of emotion.
I stay perfectly still, waiting for him to make the first move.
Time slows to a crawl. I’m kicking myself for not finding a better hiding place.
For a few long seconds, my heartbeat thunders so loud it’s all I hear. My chin trembles. Then, I focus in on him: the heavy clink of his whiskey bottle as he sets it down on the parquet floor, the rustling of clothes as he stands, the ominous tap tap tap of his soles as he slowly starts to hunt me.
“Montre-toi…montre-toi…où que tu sois.”
I don’t understand his French, but I recognize the sing-songy cadence of his taunt.
Come out, come out wherever you are.
Though I wish I could stay frozen, I have no choice but to gather courage, turn around, and peer between the books so I can see what he’s doing. I watch as he comes to the end of his aisle and looks both ways before turning right, away from me.
I clench my jaw, sick of the trembling.
“There’s no reason to be scared,” he tells me, his words smooth as butter.
So then why do I feel on the brink of tears?
“Do you think I’m some kind of monster?”
He keeps walking away, in no hurry at all. He gets to the end of an aisle, leans over to peer down it, and then, upon finding nothing, continues on. His search is lazy; he knows there aren’t many places I could have gone.
I’m a sitting duck if I stay where I am. He’ll turn back, come this way, and find me.
Ignoring my racing heart, I start to take a step when he takes a step, using the sound of his walking to disguise my own. My goal is to make it to the rear exit of the library, the one that leads to a dark, safe corridor.
I’m almost past the first hurdle, slinking to the end of my aisle when he suddenly pauses and turns back, no longer walking away from me.
I freeze.
“You know maybe I’m the one who should be scared, alone in a library with Lainey Davenport. If the rumors are to be believed, I might not make it out of here alive.”
Embarrassment washes over me, but not for long. Anger follows, so much pent up from the shitty day I’ve had. First my grandmother, then Blythe, now him.
“You know you don’t help yourself when you do things like this, lurking in the shadows, acting as if you’re mute.”
“I’m not,” I snap impulsively.
His head whips in my direction, his gaze meets mine through the bookshelves, and his mouth curls into a fiendish smile.
“Ah…there you are. Petit de la souris.”
I watch him warily as he approaches, wondering what his plan is, worried he’ll suddenly realize our respective roles: lion and lamb.
My hands ball into fists as he walks to the aisle just before mine and turns in, stopping once he’s right in front of me. I feel my heart pound down in my stomach as the books that separate us get tugged away one by one, tossed carelessly to the ground, until his suit-clad chest is fully visible through the gap.
Then, slowly…he bends down so we’re eye to eye.
For a brief moment, we merely look at each other across the top of the empty shelf.
I’ve never seen him this close before. He’s cast in shadow, but he might as well be cast in bronze, a beautiful boy with sharp cheeks and hard angles and mean eyes. His is the body the devil would take if he wanted to walk the earth.