Quinn’s body tensed. “Where?”
“They arrived just a few minutes ago in the same car. We saw them from the window of the library. They’ve just gone into the headmistress’s office.” I couldn’t tear my eyes from Trey’s frozen figure, standing in the atrium, staring at the space his father had occupied only a moment ago.
Quinn ran a hand through his hair. “This is bad, Hazy. They don’t just show up here like this. Especially not Gloria Haynes. She’s only been to the school a handful of times.”
“Then we’d better find out why they’re here.” I tore my eyes from Trey and turned to Quinn. “You still know how to access that passage you told me comes out in the headmistress’ office?”
“Of course.”
“Then let’s go.”
I didn’t have to tell Quinn twice. He led me back to the library, down through the stacks to an ancient computer station. Hardly anyone used these computers – there was no internet allowed at Derleth, so what was the point? Hopefully, it meant we wouldn’t be discovered.
Quinn pressed a panel on the wall, and a small section sprung open, revealing a gap between just wide enough for one person to squeeze between the walls.
“It’s a tighter squeeze than you’re used to,” he said, giving me a gentle push towards it. “Or maybe not. You’re still a virgin, after all.”
“I’m not a virgin,” I snapped.
“Of course you are. The girl I fingered under a blanket had obviously never had an orgasm. If you aren’t a virgin, then you need to kick the guy’s ass because he clearly didn’t do his job properly.”
“I am so not having this conversation with you now.” I glared at Quinn as I slipped into the passage, grateful the darkness would hide the flare of heat in my cheeks.
Quinn was right. It was a tight squeeze in the passage. I shimmied through the narrow space. One one side, rough stone scraped my arms. On the other, my fingers drummed against the drywall.
I crawled on my hands and knees, listening to snatches of conversation on the other side of the wall. Teachers talked in hushed tones. Coffee cups clattered together. We must have been somewhere in the faculty wing.
Quinn’s arm crossed my shoulder, pointing to a t-junction in the tunnel up ahead. “Take the right turn.”
I did. As I crawled along between the walls, Ms. West’s voice echoed through the wood paneling. I stopped short. Quinn’s head knocked against my ass.
“Ow.” Quinn rubbed his head. “Give me a signal before you put the brakes on.”
“Shhh,” I hissed. I knelt on my knees and pressed my head against the wall.
“—you don’t have control of this school, Headmistress.” Vincent Bloomberg was saying.
“We’re perfectly in control,” West responded. I imagined her behind her oak desk, that satisfied smile playing across her lips.
“Then why is my board of directors demanding I hire a woman as my CFO? Why did Damon lose a council seat to a black man? Why is Gloria being eviscerated in the media for her use of rare animal fur?” Vincent’s voice rose.
“Why do I have lines around my eyes?” Damon added.
“We’re all seeing some signs of age. The creature’s power is waning.” Vincent again. “Four students a year is not enough.”
“Mr. Bloomberg, Mr. Delacorte, Mrs. Haynes, with all due respect, we cannot afford to be imprudent. Our system has been carefully considered. What you’re asking is impossible. Even finding four orphans who meet the criteria is becoming more difficult. Everyone is so connected these days – there’s a social media trail to navigate. The students won’t come with us until they’ve seen evidence. At some point, not even you will be able to keep what happens here a secret.”
“Which is why we need to move on our grand design as soon as possible,” Damon said. His voice had the same gentle cadence as Quinn’s – easygoing and suave, but frightening because I knew it hid a monster. “We’ve been waiting twenty years, maneuvering the Eldritch Club into positions of influence. Surely by now our god has the power he needs to break free of his cage.”
“We cannot be hasty with these things—”
“I’ve had enough of this,” Damon sneered. “You’ve been pushing back on this for years, Hermia. According to you, we’re never ready. I want to know why. I want a timeline.”
“You don’t commune with the god every day, as I do,” Ms. West’s tone was sugary and patient, as though she were speaking to a child. “I tell you, he is not ready—”
“It’s that girl, Hazel Waite,” Quinn’s father snapped. “You said you’d removed her threat with your agreement, but it appears our stalwart Ms. West is under the little whore’s spell.”
“As I’ve already explained, the agreement stops Hazel from hurting herself, and by extension, our god. But I have not as yet determined what it is about her that causes the adverse reaction in our deity. She underwent the same processing as our other sacrifices, and yet the more her mind slipped toward oblivion, the more our god shrunk from her. She now knows this, which is unfortunate. She’s wily and unstable. It’s imprudent to make a move until we understand more.”
“Have you really been trying?” Damon declared. “You’ve allowed her influence in the school. And we wonder why our power is waning – a crack whore criminal dares to wear our mark.”
“I did not know this,” Ms. West’s voice was small. “Who told you that?”
“We have eyes and ears at this school, Hermia. What we’ve seen lately concerns us. The very fact that you bargained with this girl instead of destroying her shows just how weak your leadership has become.” Vincent’s curt tone gave me shivers. “I never should have agreed to a woman in a man’s role.”
“No man would have the stomach for what I do,” Ms. West said. For the first time during the conversation, her voice rose in volume.
“Then do your job. Find out what makes Hazel Waite different and get her out of our way. Damon and I saw her at the Halloween party, acting as though she was the Queen of this school. She’s already found a way to cheat our god of two of his sacrifices. She needs to be put back in her place.”
“I can’t touch her when your son has taken a shine to her.” There was a hint of triumph in Ms. West’s voice.
“My son?” Vincent seemed genuinely surprised. “That makes no sense. He let her take the initiation and made that ridiculous show at the dance, but that was just for my benefit. Trey may act out but he would never demean himself by fraternizing with the likes of her.”
“I can only confirm what I’ve witnessed,” Ms. West said. “Your son has been doing a fair share of fraternizing. He sits with Hazel in class. She holds court at their table in the dining hall and attended Eldritch Club parties. She was even seen by one of the other students leaving your son’s room late at night.”
A fist thumped against something hard.
“And he’s not the only one,” Ms. West simpered. “Ayaz Demir has been working awfully hard on a history project. They’ve been studying in his room. Every night. With the door firmly locked.”
Something made of wood splintered. Geez, someone’s having a tantrum. “What kind of bordello are you running here?” Vincent boomed. “Ayaz should not have been paired up with her. This is ridiculous.”
“I have it on good authority Trey was the one who allowed her and her two friends to take the initiation and wear the mark,” Damon added. “There are students who wish to see the old order restored but are too afraid of Trey to cross him. Now, if Quinn were allowed to—”
“Your son is an even bigger problem.” Gloria Haynes spoke for the first time. From her husky voice, I guessed she kept that slim figure of hers by eating nothing but drywall and smoking a couple of packs a day. “Quinn Delacorte has been telling other students this Hazel is his girlfriend.”
“He wouldn’t!” Damon’s voice boomed. “I’ll tear his throat out with my own hands.”
Quinn tensed. I squeezed his hand. Not if I stop you, you fucking ab
user.
“Silence!” Ms. West boomed.
A chair scraped back. I imagined the Deadmistress standing up to her full height, her black skirts sweeping around her ankles, looking every bit a villainous Morticia Addams. “I have been the steward of this fine establishment for twenty-three years. I gave my life to babysitting your spoiled brats in the name of our god, of our mission. I have sat in this very room more times than I can count and listened to you undermine my every decision. I must ask, when am I to receive my reward?”
“You of all people know the greatest reward is service to our deity,” said Damon.
“I do, and I’ve been serving faithfully inside this prison while you’ve all been enjoying your power in the outside world. I was promised that after ten years I would be able to leave this place,” Headmistress West leveled. “That deadline has come and passed, and yet I am still here, still repeating the same infernal lessons and chaperoning inane Halloween parties. What good is this power if I am cannot wield it?”
“You’ll have no reward if you don’t rein in the students,” Bloomberg said. “Starting with my son.”
“And mine,” added Damon. “And sort out the Turk while you’re at it. He never should have been allowed here in the first place. If I’d known my son would be schooling with a terrorist—”
“Watch your mouth,” Vincent warned.
“What’s up, Bloomberg? Can’t deny you’ve got the Middle East on your payroll?” Damon smirked. “But back to the topic at hand – those boys cannot be allowed to ruin this for all of us because they can’t keep their dicks in their pants. I expect swift and decisive action.”
My fingers tightened around Quinn. He squeezed back.
“As much as I hate to admit this, the boys are not the problem,” Gloria Haynes said. “It’s the girl, Hazel. She’s a boil infecting this whole school. Hermia, I demand that something be done or I’ll be removing my generous patronage from Derleth Academy.”
“Good. We don’t want your kind here, anyway,” Vincent snapped. “This place turned to the dogs as soon as we let in new money.”
“My money is just as good as yours, Vincent,” Gloria shot back. “In fact, it’s better, since my heir hasn’t squandered my fortune on a failed startup.”
“You take that back!” Vincent thundered. “It wasn’t Wilhem’s fault the market shifted—”
“Sit down, Vincent. Now, Gloria,” Ms. West cooed. “Let’s not get carried away. We greatly appreciate your donations to this school, and—”
“I’ll deal with Hazel Waite,” Vincent’s voice dripped with menace. “I’ll find leverage. She’ll fall into line.”
Ms. West snorted. “You’re not equipped to deal with this. She’s an orphan. She has no family. Over the first quarter she has shown remarkable resilience to the torments of her fellow students. She has no attachments, no weakness to exploit.”
“You underestimate my resources. There’s always leverage. You just haven’t been looking in the right places.” I imagined Vincent standing up, buttoning his immaculate suit jacket and indicating the meeting was over. “You focus on regaining control of this school and making sure those boys of ours toe the line.”
Chairs scraped. The Eldritch Club members left the office, murmuring their secret plans to each other. Quinn and I remained in the dark tunnel, clinging to each other as the weight of their words locked us in place.
Vincent Bloomberg was coming for me, with the entire force of the senior Eldritch Club behind him. How the fuck was I going to deal with that?
Chapter Twenty
I found Trey in an empty locker room, the same place he went to collect himself after his father yelled at him on the lacrosse field the day he’d injured Quinn’s eyes. He sat on the same bench, staring at a row of empty lockers, his cruel mouth set in a firm line, his hands clasped so tight the knuckles had turned white.
I sat down on the bench beside him. “Hey.”
He grunted.
“I saw your father whisper something to you. I’m guessing he wasn’t inviting you on a fishing trip.”
“He wants me… nay, he commanded me to remove the three scholarship students from the Eldritch Club,” he said. “Or I will be removing myself.”
“Can he do that?”
“He’s a senior member.”
Vincent’s cruel words echoed inside my head. “Are you going to do it?”
“All my life I’ve tried to please him,” Trey said, still staring ahead. His voice sounded far away. “Nothing is ever enough. I’ll always be a failure in his eyes. My brother, Wilhem, he can do no wrong. Quinn would say the sun shines out his asshole. Even Ayaz – the poor Turkish kid my father only brought to this country for PR reasons – gets more respect from him than I ever did.”
“I don’t know what that’s like,” I said. “My mom was happy with anything I did.”
Almost anything.
“You’re lucky,” he said.
I snorted. “Is that the Trey Bloomberg, heir to the Bloomberg fortune, telling me that I’m lucky?”
“I’m not the heir anymore,” he muttered.
“But you’re the oldest. You share his name. Is that the way it’s supposed to go?”
“I can’t be his heir. I was the oldest once, but I’m stuck here and my dipshit brother passed me by. He got to drop out of university, become a founder, run his tech startup into the ground, and get a job and a corner office at Daddy’s firm. And as far as the outside world knows, I’m dead.” Trey rubbed his head with his hands. “It’s so fucked up, Hazel. All the kids who go here… it’s too convenient. Dad got me out of his way so he could groom Wilhem to take over the business. Damon Delacorte got rid of the only person standing between him and his sadistic tendencies toward his wife, Tillie’s parents saw her as a chess piece they could maneuver into a better social position. She’s been promised to me since birth.”
“I can’t believe your parents arranged your marriages for you.” Trey nodded. “That’s medieval levels of bullshit.”
“You don’t know the half of it.” Trey laughed without mirth. “All the Miskatonic students are more valuable to their parents dead than alive. And Courtney…”
“What about Courtney?”
“I think her mother saw her as a threat. Courtney was younger and hotter and she had a talent for design. She had a huge following on LiveJournal. She would have become one of the earliest online influencers. Then the next thing, she’s tragically killed in a fire.”
My heart hammered in my chest. “Spell it out for me, Bloomberg. What are you saying?”
Trey glanced toward the door, as if checking we were alone. He reached across and grabbed my hand, knitting his fingers in mine. “No one else knows this. No one’s ever talked about it. Maybe they all think it, but I doubt that. Everyone is far too wrapped up in their own shit to see.”
“To see what?” I whispered.
“That we were the first sacrifice,” Trey choked on the words. “That it was no accident we were killed in that fire.”
My stomach twisted. If that was true… Their parents sent them to this school knowing they’d be sacrificed, all so they could get their hands on the power of the god. They did all this to keep their place in the world.
Fuck.
If what Trey said was true… I literally stared into the face of hate itself, and nothing that Great Old God had thrown at me compared to the horror of what their parents had done.
Good old human evil tops interdimensional cosmic deity yet again.
If it’s true.
I knew a thing or two about trauma, and dying in a fire then being brought back from the dead wins the prize in the ‘who’s more fucked up’ lottery. This cruel, remote King was still processing that dark shit. No wonder Trey was so detached, so driven to keep repeating the same year with the same result. If he kept pretending he was King of Kings at this school, then he didn’t have to face what was really going on.
I remembered those words he�
�d scrawled across the college prospectus in his room. NO FUTURE. NO HOPE. NO TOMORROW.
I rested my hand on Trey’s, squeezing his shaking fingers. “I believe you, but do you think there’s a possibility that you’ve convinced yourself this is true because you hate your father that much?”
“You’re right about one thing,” he spat. “I do hate him.”
“And with good reason. Quinn and I just snuck through that secret passage and listened in to their conversation.” I told Trey everything I remembered of what we’d overheard, about how the god’s powers were waning outside the school, how Ms. West was getting impatient for what she saw as her reward, and how his father was going to find leverage on me, whatever that meant.
Trey rested his head in his hands. “Fuck.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
“Hazel.” He turned to me, and his amber eyes swam with tender regret. The Trey Bloomberg who gripped my fingers like he was holding on for dear life wasn’t the same as the cruel King who’d tormented me. Soft heat glowed in my chest. For the first time, he lowered his perfect rich bad boy facade, and behind it was the same chaos that lurked inside me.
“I’m here.”
Trey rubbed a finger over my knuckles, and it was one of the most tender things I’d ever felt. He let out a long breath. “I’m so sorry they chose you. I’m sorry because I let you make that stupid fucking deal. Mostly, I’m sorry for making your life here so miserable before.”
Whoa. An apology. I didn’t expect that. “Were you that cruel to all the scholarship students?”
“I learned from the best.” Trey looked away again. “No, I wasn’t. At the party… I was holding you over the edge. I wanted the others to think I was going to drop you, but I made sure I held you tight. I was never going to drop you. We knew that hurting you hurt the god. Ms. West told us to lay off, but we thought if we pushed a little further, we might be free. But then your body went limp. You wanted to die and I…” he gulped. “I know I did that. I broke your spirit. It was what I was supposed to do, but I hate myself for it and I know I can’t ever make it up to you, but…”
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