“Figured,” the deep voice rumbles. And it is a deep voice. The voice of a man who’s smoked more than a few packs of cigarettes in his day. It’s the kind of voice that belongs to a car thief or a back-alley gambler. The cherry of his cigarette flares again as he pulls on it, momentarily illuminating the structure of his features, and I catch a lot in the brief swell of light.
His black t-shirt is at least five sizes too big for him. He’s way younger than I thought. Instead of a disgruntled, jaded professor in a motheaten blazer with patches on the elbows, this guy is young. My age, by the looks of things. He must be a student here at Wolf Hall. His dark hair hangs down into his eyes. His brows are full and drawn together into a steep frown. From my vantage point at the top of the stairs, I can only see him in profile, but his nose is straight, his jaw is strong, and he holds himself in a regal, lazy way that lets me know exactly who he is before I’ve even learned his name.
He’s one of those kids.
The arrogant, cooler than cool, silver-spoon-halfway-up-his-ass kids.
It’s part and parcel of being an army brat. You get lumped in with the privileged and the spoiled rotten on a daily basis. And you get to recognize the bad apples from a fucking mile away.
“I take it I need to find someone at reception?” I ask. Best to keep it short and sweet. As professional as possible.
The guy shakes his head, picking a piece of tobacco from the tip of his tongue and flicking it onto the gravel at his feet. “I was appointed director of the New Girl Welcoming Committee. Why else would I be sitting out here in the fucking dark?”
Ladies and gentlemen, we have ourselves a shitty attitude. Yay. Folding my arms across my chest, I descend the steps slowly, leaving my bags by the door. Arriving in front of him, I note that the stranger is at least a clear foot taller than me. Even slouching, his ass perched on the edge of the planter, legs stretched out in front of him, he’s still considerably taller than me and I’m standing at my full height. “Because you smoke like a chimney and you don’t wanna get busted?”
He flicks his cigarette, smirking coldly. Everything about him is cold, from the icy glint in his bright green eyes, to the way he drops his head back, assessing me like a mountain lion might weigh up a newborn deer. Clearly, he resents having to wait up and play Wolf Hall’s amicable host, but hey…I didn’t ask him to be my tour guide. I haven’t asked anything of him at all.
“Point me in the direction of my room and I’ll relieve you of your duties, then,” I tell him in a clipped tone.
He laughs at this. It’s not a friendly sound. I imagine scores of people have been laughed at by this boy, and every single one of them probably felt like they were being run through with a bayonet. “Relieve me of my duties?” He repeats my words back to me. “At ease, soldier. Why do I get the feeling that our parents would be best fucking friends?”
These schools aren’t always full of army kids. Investment bankers, lawyers, diplomats and politicians pack their kids off to places like Wolf Hall, too. From time to time, a harried doctor or an aid worker, who thinks caring for other people’s kids is more important than caring for their own. The students at these places come from a diverse range of backgrounds, but more often than not their parents are military.
“Look, I just got off a long-haul flight, and not the kind that had a meal service or clean bathrooms. I need a shower, and I need a bed. Can you just tell me where I need to go, and we can continue this bullshit at a later date?”
The guy tugs on his cigarette one last time, huffing down his nose. When he flicks the glowing butt off into the rose bushes ten feet away, I notice that he’s wearing chipped black nail polish. Weird. His shirt’s black and he definitely seems tetchy as hell, but I’m not getting an emo vibe from him. His boots are tan high-end Italian leather, and the belt around his waist looks like it cost more than my entire outfit.
“Through the doors. Stairs on the left. Fourth floor. You’re in 416. Good luck with the heating,” he says, getting to his feet. Without even looking back at me, he takes off, but not back inside the building. He hits the driveway, sticking his hands in his pockets as he heads away from the school.
“Hey! Where the hell are you going?” I hate that I call after him, but I need to know. I’m so intensely jealous that he’s leaving that I have to clamp my tongue between my teeth to stop myself from asking if I can go with him.
“Hah! Like I board here,” he tosses over his shoulder. “Oh, and don’t worry, New Girl. We don’t need to continue this bullshit later. Keep your head down, keep out of the way, and you’ll have a decent chance of surviving this hell hole.”
It could just be that I’m tired, and it could be that I’m hating Wolf Hall already, but that sounded distinctly like a threat.
2
ELODIE
The inside of Wolf Hall looks like someone tried to recreate Hogwarts from memory but got it really, really wrong. There are dark alcoves everywhere I turn, and none of the angles in the place are plumb. I feel like I’m walking through some sort of trippy Escher nightmare as I make my way through the austere, wood-paneled entrance way and head for the broad staircase on the right-hand side. I check hopefully for an elevator, but I already know that such a thing would be an impossible luxury in an old building like this.
The place is silent as the grave.
I’ve been in plenty of old houses before. They creak, and they groan, and they settle. But not Wolf Hall. It’s as if the very building itself is holding its breath, peering down on me and casting judgement as it observes me reluctantly wrangling my suitcase up the first flight of stairs. The place didn’t look that tall from outside, but the stairs never seem to fucking end. I’m panting and clammy by the time I hit the second set of stairs, and by the third, I’m openly sweating and laboring for breath. Through an ancient door with frosted glass panels, I find myself staring down a narrow hallway straight out of The Shining. A dim light overhead flickers ominously as I drag my bag over the dusty, threadbare runner that covers the bare floorboards, and I mentally tick off all of the ways that a person could die in a haunted-ass place like this.
I notice the brass numbers screwed into each of the doors as I pass them. Normally, there’d be colorful stickers and name plates tacked onto the wood—little personalizations that help the students make their rooms feel like home. Not here, though. There isn’t a sticker, photograph, or poster in sight. Just the dark, depressing wood, and the gleaming, polished numbers.
410…
412…
414…
416…
Great.
Home sweet home.
I open up the door, glad to find it unlocked. Inside, the bedroom’s bigger than I expected it to be. In the corner, a double bed has been made up with crisp grey sheets complete with military corners. Only two pillows, but I can live with that. Against the wall: a large chest of drawers underneath a grim looking painting of a gnarled old man, bent double against a howling blizzard. Such a weird choice of subject matter for a piece of art. Technically, it’s good. The brushwork is so fine and precise that it could almost be a photograph. The content’s miserable, however, and inspires a sense of hopelessness that feels crushing.