As I walked, various options of what to do next played out inside my head. I could hitch a ride to the West Coast. I could go across the border to Canada. Hell, I could try Mexico or Ireland or even Romania. Romania could be cool. As soon as an idea appeared, I would hold it in my head, pleased for a moment to consider how easily I could slip away from this cursed place and disappear completely, before dismissing it.
I didn’t have options. I had people that needed me – Greg and Andre and Trey and Quinn and the rest of the Miskatonic students. And Ayaz. Maybe he needed me most of all.
I couldn’t leave Arkham until I achieved what I set out to do.
They would all have this taste of freedom if it was the last thing I did.
The black smoke of the fire trailed down the valley after me, blanketing the village with stripes of darkness. I ducked from garden to garden, hiding behind flower pots and under porch swings, staying out of sight as much as possible until I found my way to the main street. I wandered into a corner store and pretended to be engrossed with a display of cabbages near the counter. When the shopkeeper turned her back to help a customer, I plunged my hand into the “Pennies for the Elderly” jar and drew out as many bills as I could grab. Right now, I needed it more than they did.
The next stop was a thrift store across the road. I discarded my grey clothes in the changing rooms and walked out in faded jeans, a black t-shirt, and an oversized black hoodie. When they came to look for me they’d be after a girl wearing the grey clothing of a Dunwich inmate. I wouldn’t give them the chance to spot me.
I couldn’t do much to change my hair right now, but the hood would hide it until I got to my next destination – Zehra’s RV. I needed to know for a fact if she survived that cave-in. If she did, we could work together to bring down the entire Miskatonic Prep institution.
If not, I was on my own. What was fucking new about that?
But first, I needed to pay a visit to my jailer.
When Ayaz and I were working on our Salem project, I’d borrowed a library book about the history of Arkham, hoping it might have information about Parris and his home. It only had a couple of paragraphs about the house, but it spent an entire chapter describing the Arkham Grand – a fancy hotel on the main street. The book even spoke about the hotel receiving important guests while rich parents visited their children at Miskatonic Prep. It would be the only establishment in the town that Vincent Bloomberg would deign to stay in. I had a hunch he’d be in town for my lobotomy – he’d probably leer over my hospital bed during the operation, relishing his victory.
Not anymore.
And there it was – the Arkham Grand. I crouched behind a flowerbed, staring up at the hotel facade. The three-story building with the Georgian columns dwarfed the surrounding shops and diners. It looked a little worn around the edges now, the paint peeling in places, the windows on the upper story streaked with dirt. Like everything Vincent Bloomberg touched, it would eventually turn to ruin.
I slunk into the front lobby behind a small group of Chinese tourists wearing “We Love Massachusetts” t-shirts and ducked into the hallway before the bellman caught sight of me. In my thrift store getup, I looked more like a hoodlum than a hotel guest, and I didn’t want them to kick me out before I located Vincent’s room.
I was just pondering how to figure out where he was staying when a loud voice boomed from the lobby. “I want an espresso delivered to my room. And not lukewarm like it was last time. The standards in this place have slipped to an appalling level.”
“Certainly, Mr. Bloomberg.” The bellman sounded harried. “We’ll bring that for you right away.”
I peered out from the hallway. There he was – the man who’d tried to convince me I was crazy, who’d tried to have me lobotomized, who’d hurt his own son in a hundred unforgivable ways just to hold on to power that wasn’t even his. Trey’s dad stood in front of the reception desk, his suit immaculate, long fingers brushing through dark hair that caught crimson highlights beneath the grimy chandelier.
I peered closer. Was Vincent Bloomberg… going grey? The sweeps of grey above his ears hadn’t been there before. His face appeared older, too – more lines around his eyes, and his cheeks had a slightly sunken quality, like he’d been losing weight.
Hmmmm. Interesting.
I remembered last time I’d seen him, when he’d come to the school to complain to Ms. West about me, he’d seemed older then, too. I thought maybe it was just the harsh lighting in Ms. West’s office. But he’d aged another ten years since that visit – changes too drastic to have happened in only a couple of weeks.
Is it me? I assumed that the power the god gave to the senior Eldritch Club members not only gave them their influence over others, but it also kept them young. That made sense since the god had effectively stolen life from their children via their souls. Perhaps it gave some of that youth back to their parents. That sounded insane, but it made as much sense as anything else that has happened since I came to Derleth.
But now, for whatever reason, that power was waning, and Vincent wore that evidence in his cavernous cheeks and crinkled eyes.
Something… or someone... is disrupting the god’s power.
I wondered if, despite their efforts, my time in the Dunwich Institute had been hurting the god. Did a cosmic deity respond to psychological torture in the same way it did to physical? Apart from when I saw Trey, I hadn’t felt the god’s dreams – perhaps because of my distance from the school or the drugs they’d been giving me – but Vincent’s grey hair gave me hope that I was still influencing the deity in some way.
“And a copy of the New York Times, one that’s not stained with sticky fingers like this morning’s Wall Street Journal,” Vincent barked. He spun on his heel, turning toward me. I yanked my head back behind the column, but not before he strode with purpose in the direction of the hallway.
Shit.
His room must be on this floor. If he walked past me he’d be certain to recognize me. He had to know by now that I’d escaped. That was probably what he was so pissed about.
I spied a maid’s closet and raced toward it, yanking the door open and diving inside just as his footsteps approached. I buried myself in a pile of starched linen, peering out through the cracked door, my breath in my throat. He stomped by, so close I could have reached out and grabbed him. The thought gave me a perverse thrill, but I held back. I had something worse in store for him.
As soon as Vincent’s footsteps faded around the corner, I stepped out of the closet and crept after him, pressing myself up against the wall and leaning out just far enough to see him open the door to room 6. He slammed it behind him, the BANG shattering the silence along the quiet hall.
I ducked back behind the wall, my heart hammering. I looked both ways, and seeing no one else about, I stepped out into the hall, crossed to Vincent’s door, and pressed my ear against the thick wood.
I didn’t expect to be able to hear anything, but Vincent’s angry voice carried. “She’s not dead. We would know it if she was dead. So she must have escaped.”
There was a pause before he said, “I don’t need you to explain it. I don’t give a fuck about your excuses. I just need you to sort it out. Do what you have to do. I’ll make sure you’re shielded from any fallout. But Hazel Waite must be found. I’ll have my security team call you. They’ll set up a perimeter. She can’t have got far, but we need to make certain she doesn’t leave the state.”
More silence. He was on the phone, probably to Dr. Peaslee. My knee ached and the burn on my leg smarted like fuck. I adjusted my position, crouching lower, straining to hear more as the flame inside me licked at my skin once more.
The fire became an itch inside my skin, a desperate possession by my rage that sought release though the only possible avenue – burning Vincent Bloomberg to ash.
Soon. Soon. But first I need to know what he’s saying. I need to know if Trey and the others are in danger.
Vincent barked into the pho
ne again. “That’s a terrible idea. The police will make a mess of it, and I’m not making any public appearances right now. I need this gone without drawing attention to the school. I’m a busy man, Peaslee. I’ve told you what needs to happen. Just get it—”
“What are you doing?” A voice behind me demanded.
The bellhop peered down at me from behind a stack of towels. I jumped. My shoulder slammed into the door. Inside the room, Vincent Bloomberg swore. The phone clattered on its cradle.
Panic sliced through me. I opened my mouth to make an excuse, but there was nothing I could say. The bellhop must’ve noticed my deer-in-the-headlights expression, or maybe he’d just had an earful of Vincent Bloomberg bossing him around. He pointed down the hall. “There’s a fire exit on the right. Go. I’ll distract him.”
You don’t have to tell me twice. Heart hammering, I fled down the hall and shoved open the fire exit just as Vincent’s door slammed open and he started shouting that he’d have the bellhop fired.
Chapter Six
I hit the woods on the edge of the town and accepted their sheltered embrace, moving between the trees as I headed out along the main road.
Why didn’t you burn him?
I turned the question over and over in my mind as the fire blazed beneath my skin, flaring up and dying away as my anger at Vincent, at my own actions, waxed and waned. When that bellhop startled me, the fire dropped its possession of me. I took his offer of escape without hesitation because he was innocent, and I didn’t think I could set Vincent alight without hurting others inside the hotel.
Controlling the fire was more than just pointing it in a direction. I had to master my emotions or more innocent people would be hurt.
But is anyone truly innocent? The fire bit back at me. I didn’t have an answer for that. All I knew was that Vincent Bloomberg was still alive, for now, and that meant I was still in danger.
No cars passed me as the road narrowed and started its climb up the peninsula, but I didn’t step out from the trees until I came to a sign that read, “Arkham Camping and RV Park.” Hopefully, this is the place.
A path sloped down toward a small stream surrounded by a few dilapidated RVs and a couple of tents. A woman slumped in a beach chair in front of her tent, her eyes vacant as she peered down into the stream, a limp fishing line fixed between her legs. The place was eerily quiet, apart from the faint sound of David Bowie singing from behind one of the locked RV doors.
As I passed by the David Bowie RV, I noticed a small Turkish flag in the window of a battered Airstream parked under a bent oak. My heart skipped. This must be it. Not knowing what I’d find on the other side of the door, I knocked.
No one answered.
I cupped my hands against the glass window and peered inside. Everything looked dark and static. The shadows remained silent and still. “Zehra?” I called, knocking again. “Are you in there?”
Nothing. My chest tightened. I remembered the cave-in, the way the ground rumbled as a rock shelf collapsed, blocking the cave entrance. Zehra was supposed to be there, but she wasn’t. Did she just not show up, or was she trapped behind the stones, or had something else happened to her…
“Zehra, it’s Hazel. I need to talk to you. I need to know what happened at the cave—”
“She’s gone, kid.”
I whirled around. The fishing woman stood behind me, leaning against a cane made of driftwood. Green eyes swept over me, no longer vacant but sparked with intelligence. “She hasn’t been back to that RV in several weeks.”
Several weeks? My heart plunged further. I knew why. I’d waited and called for her after I discovered the cave-in, but Zehra hadn’t come… because she’d been there already, in the cave, waiting for me. I’d kept myself awake all night hoping Zehra had been delayed somehow, that she’d escaped deeper into the tunnels and found a way out. But if she hadn’t come back here…
Finding her RV had been a long shot, but I pinned so much hope on it. Zehra was the only one who could do something with the information I had. The keys we’d cast for Ms. West’s laboratory were probably long gone. I’d left them in the lockbox on the cave – I supposed I could go back to look for them, but not right now. Fuck that. If I could have spoken to Zehra and found out the name of the woman she’d contacted, then we might have had a chance…
If the Eldritch Club hadn’t killed her in that cave-in.
I squeezed my eyes shut, willing the rage to simmer down. Burning down Zehra’s RV wouldn’t help bring her back. And there might be something here that could help me.
How long was I inside the Dunwich Institute? What had happened at the school since then? Were Greg and Andre okay? What about Trey and Quinn and Ayaz? I needed to know.
Angry tears pricked at the corners of my eyes. Zehra didn’t deserve to die like that. She had been on the run since she was a teenager, because she was the only student to ever escape Derleth. She’d only just found her brother. She was a fucking cool person and I’d wanted her as a friend. I’d never had a girlfriend before. And now I never would.
Yet another innocent person, dead because of me.
I shouldn’t have come here.
No. Don’t do that. Don’t wallow in self-pity. You didn’t kill her. Vincent Bloomberg did, somehow.
I didn’t believe for a single moment that cave-in was an accident. I left the phone on the coffee table in Trey’s room. On it, the text message I sent to Zehra, telling her to meet me and when. Maybe they had that trap laid for years. Maybe the god was the one who shook the earth and made the stones fall, or maybe Vincent had dynamite. But either way, they’d killed Ayaz’s sister to stop her getting the information I had.
I slumped against the screen door. The handle caught against my waistband and flipped down. The door swung open, sending me toppling inside.
“She left this open?” I glanced back at the woman, but she’d wandered off to check on her fish, cackling under her breath.
I peered around Zehra’s home. Her bubbly personality came through on every surface, from the bright green and yellow flags strung across the kitchen to the half-finished crossword puzzle on the table. I pulled open drawers and cupboards, shifting through bright plastic bowls and cups and a mountain of books – art history, medical journals, popular novels in English and Turkish.
I sucked in a breath between my teeth. Zehra had left everything in a jumble, like she’d be back any moment. Her life – frozen in time. Because of Vincent, she’d never got to have a real life. She’d outsmarted assassins and lived under the radar when she should have been batting her long eyelashes at besotted guys in college.
Ayaz. She’d done all this for Ayaz.
Now she was gone, and it was up to me to pick up where she’d ended. Even if it ended up destroying me, even if it broke me into a million pieces, I had to save the boy who tried to doom me.
At least there were things here I could use. I pulled open drawers, inspecting neat piles of warm clothing – leggings, thermal sweaters, woolen socks. Boxes of condoms torn open (at least she’d been having some fun). I stuffed clothes into a backpack, adding candy bars and packets of ramen noodles. A hunting knife. A torch. Underneath her bed, I found a small, locked leather suitcase.
What’s this?
The combination lock had four rows of letters. I tried the word AYAZ. It opened with a click, revealing a stack of articles, academic papers, scribbled notes, old books, and what looked like occult drawings. A handwritten letter on top caught my eye.
If you have possession of this case, I am dead. That sucks, but I hope at least I made a beautiful corpse and no one brings me back as a zombie, like they did to Ayaz. Here is all the research I have on Rebecca Nurse and her magic and what went down at Miskatonic Prep. Please, use it to help my brother.
I spread out the documents on the floor, holding each one up and trying to discern its significance. Zehra had made it easy, sticking Post-it notes in the books to highlight certain pages and writing her notes across
the documents.
Zehra had been tracing the family lineage of an occult practitioner named Rebecca Nurse – particularly along the female line, which couldn’t have been easy since history didn’t exactly keep accurate records of the lives of women. From what I could make out, Rebecca left Parris’ coven and Arkham somewhere in the 1750s. She seemed to move around a bit – there were records of her appearing all along the west coast. Rebecca wrote occult pamphlets about souls as magical energy and how magicians could manipulate them, which she distributed through underground networks. Zehra had two of the originals in the box, their corners torn, the yellowed paper crumbling to the touch. According to the receipts also nestled in the box, she’d paid a pretty price for them. Zehra had even more pages photocopied and bound together, but of course, beyond identifying the sigil I’d seen in the cave, I didn’t understand a word of it.
Rebecca was arrested at least three times on suspicion of witchcraft and blasphemy, although acquitted. She died along with twenty-five in a fire that consumed a church in the settlement of New Cambridge.
Fire. The flames always seemed to follow me.
Rebecca had two daughters who both married. I ran my finger down pages of Zehra’s loopy handwriting as she traced both family trees. I flipped right to the end of her pad and found a page of eleven names – all women, all with birthdates in the last sixty years, all alive and living in the United States. The descendants of Rebecca Nurse.
Darkness fell as I read until my eyeballs scratched against my lids, fighting against the dying light. The bottom of the box contained material about Ms. West and Miskatonic Prep – internal hospital memos about disturbing trends with flatlining patients, followed by garbled witness statements about strange things going on in the morgue. I read the dismissal letter for Ms. Hermia West, where she was promised ‘neutral references’ should she be employed by another hospital. I saw minutes of Miskatonic Prep board meetings, where Ms. West’s qualifications were discussed in-depth and it was decided to offer her the Headmistress’ job. I saw evidence from the Teachers’ Association that those qualifications were fabricated. Hermia West had never trained as a teacher.
Possessed: A reverse harem bully romance (Kings of Miskatonic Prep Book 3) Page 4