I took a step toward the living room. The rats followed, their feet beating a circle around my body as they scurried faster, faster.
I walked toward the window, but the rats stayed where they were, slowing their steps. When I started back toward the living area, they picked up their pace. Almost as if…
No. It can’t be. That’s nuts. No way do the rats…
I did it again, and once more the rats churned up a storm when I turned back toward them. They were so excited I wondered if they might tear through the ceiling and drop down on us.
I fucking hoped I never met these rats, especially after the way they seem to be drawn to me…
“Hmmm.”
“Hazy—” Quinn started, but I held out a hand. He shut his mouth, a rare and welcome occurrence. I stepped around the empty coffee table and moved toward the bedroom. The feet above my head scurried ahead of me.
Warmer.
I peered into the bedroom. Last time I’d been in here, it had belonged to Trey – his trophies and ribbons hung from every shelf, documenting how he’d distracted himself from the horror of his life by stacking up achievements like a game of Jenga. Now, Ayaz’s clothes were tossed in a hamper in the corner, his schoolbooks stacked beside the bed. His opium scent clung to every surface, torturing me with memories that belonged to another time. The shelf was empty apart from a scattering of books. I went over and picked one up, knowing from the way the rats stopped moving that I’d made a wrong turn.
My throat constricted as I recognized the title. They were Ayaz’s art books. My fingers caressed the pages as I flipped through plates of Impressionists, Cubists, and Renaissance masters. There was a book on Monet that stole my breath with the vibrant color and almost spiritual devotion within such simple scenes.
Beneath the art books was a sketchbook in a battered leather case. Unable to help myself, I picked it up and flicked through the pages.
My breath caught in my throat as I drank in the details. I’d only seen Ayaz’s drawings on our history project and the sketch map he’d made of the school. These were a window into his mind, his heart.
They were beautiful. They were terrifying.
Voluptuous, naked renaissance women reclined on couches while inky black tentacles crept up their legs. Gardens of luscious flowers bloomed with human skulls that had teeth for eyes. A flying scorpion with a humanoid head. A pastel rendering of Monet’s garden being devoured by rats.
I knew what Ayaz was doing – recording the dreams the god showed him with pen and ink. Everyone in Derleth had the dreams, and they were more vivid the closer one got to the god. Ayaz was closer and more sensitive than most.
I flipped another page and nearly dropped the book in shock.
My hands trembled as I beheld a page of figures, the lines so fine and perfect, I couldn’t believe they’d been drawn by the same hand.
They were drawings of me.
In one, I bent over a textbook in class, my dreadlocks covering my face like a curtain. He must’ve drawn that when I’d first arrived at school, before Trey and Courtney put tar in my dreads so I had to cut them off.
In another, I reached across a table toward the viewer. There were papers strewn around me, and it looked like one of the tables in the library where Ayaz and I worked on our history project. My lip curled back in a scowl, but he’d drawn my eyes with these bright sparks so it was clear I wasn’t entirely serious.
In another, I had my head tossed back, my short hair feathering my face as I laughed from deep in my belly. I wondered with a pang if I was laughing at something Quinn said.
In still another, I stared out at the viewer, my eyes cruel. Fire wreathed my head, licking against my skin without burning me.
I flipped the page and nearly dropped the folder again. There I was, lying down on my stomach, my chin propped up with my palm. Ayaz had lavished attention on my face. In all of his other pictures, my gaze was intense, packed with the rage and venom that lurked just below the surface. Here, I was soft.
I was also completely naked.
“My my,” Quinn whistled from over my shoulder.
I slammed the sketchbook shut and shoved it back into the stack. “This isn’t the book we’re looking for.” Heat flared on my cheeks.
Quinn sniggered. I turned my head to the ceiling. The rats circled in front of the door to the closet.
I threw open the door. Bingo. The book lay open on the floor, notes strewn in all directions. I grabbed it up in my arms, stuffing loose papers into the pages. “Thank you, rats. Let’s go.”
“Not so fast.” A dark voice said from behind me. “That book belongs to me.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
I froze. Ayaz stood in the doorway, his jaw tight and eyes blazing.
“Is this why Bloomberg kept harassing me about my cues?” he murmured as he flicked his dark eyes between Quinn and I. Tension crackled between us like lightning. “To give you two time to sneak in here and take my property?”
Quinn stepped in front of me, shielding my body with his. “Listen, mate, I know this looks bad, but we can explain.”
“You’re right – it does look bad. It looks like you’re trying to steal from me.”
“You’ve been working on the translations.” I hugged the book to my chest, searching his eyes for some sign of the Ayaz I knew, the one who drew those amazing pictures, the one who had held me and told me I was beautiful. “Some of these are new. Have you found—”
“That’s none of your business. Give that to me.” Ayaz crossed the room in two strides. Quinn tried to block him, but Ayaz shoved him aside. He grabbed a corner of the book and tugged. I staggered back, and his hand flew off.
Ayaz raised his hand to lunge at me again, but something made him freeze. “It’s you,” he whispered, his eyes sweeping over me.
“You’ve been studying the book,” I pressed him. “What have you found? Do you know how she made you? If we find the ritual, we can reverse it—”
My words caught in my throat as Ayaz stepped forward, his fingers grazing my cheek. My heart hammered against my ribs as his touch seared me.
“They sent you away,” Ayaz murmured, his fingers floating over my hair like he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to touch it.
“Why did you tell those lies about me?” I demanded. “Why did you want me to believe I imagined everything between us?”
“You did imagine it. I don’t know you.” But his hand remained fixed over my hair.
“You do know me.” I was practically shouting now. “Don’t you remember that night in my room, the things you said, the way we made each other feel? What about the grotto? We kissed under the waterfall, and you…”
“I don’t know you,” Ayaz murmured, but he sounded less sure of himself.
“Of course you know me. You spent the first quarter of this year torturing me because you believed you might be able to save me. You became my friend. You became so much more than that. We worked on the history project about the Salem Witch Trials, and I know that you love to draw, that you’re an amazing cook, that you hate anything licorice-flavored. I know you had a sister named Zehra who wanted to free you from this hell—”
At the mention of Zehra’s name, Ayaz staggered back, his eyes wide. Quinn swooped in on him, but Ayaz shoved him so hard, Quinn hit the wall.
“Had?” Ayaz managed to get out. “What do you mean, I ‘had’ a sister? Is she dead? She can’t be dead. They promised—”
“Ayaz, honey!” Courtney’s voice called from the hall. The doorknob jiggled. “Open up. I thought we could do a little late-night studying.”
The flirtatious tone in her voice turned my stomach. Ayaz must’ve seen something in my eyes. He stared from me to the door, and for the first time since I’d met him, he looked utterly flustered. He didn’t know who to trust, what to believe.
He held my life in his hands.
Ayaz took a step toward the door. Quinn scrambled to his feet. “Don’t tell on us, mate,” he whis
pered. “Hazel knows stuff that could help us be free.”
Ayaz’s dark eyes bore into mine. I nodded. “It’s true. We think we have a way to bring you back to life, but if the teachers or the Eldritch Club find out, they’ll destroy any chance we have.”
Ayaz whirled away. My heart sank. He was going to open the door, and Courtney would sound the alarm that would bring the wrath of the entire school and Eldritch Club down on me. But instead of opening the door, he crossed to the window and shoved it open.
“Get the fuck out of here,” he growled, gesturing to the tree outside. “Before I change my mind. And I need that book back before the night of the school production or else I’m dead.”
“I promise.” With a trembling hand, I bent down and helped Quinn to his feet.
“See you, Ataturk.” Quinn swung his long legs out the window and disappeared into the tree. The branches brushed against the brick as Quinn’s bulk bent them.
“Ayaz, I know you’re in there! C’mon, let me in! You’ve been so weird lately. I just want to hang out with my boyfriend!”
From the flicker of disgust that curled Ayaz’s lip, I could sense that hanging with Courtney was the last thing he wanted. Hope bloomed in my chest. He didn’t want to be with her. So why was he? And before, when he nearly touched me, he seemed so confused about me.
Glimmers of hope lit up inside me like fireflies.
“I didn’t do this for you,” Ayaz hissed as I swung my body over the sill. I tossed the book down to Quinn and wrapped both hands around the branch to steady myself.
“Good.” I leaned forward, so my lips just grazed the side of his mouth. Sparks shot through my body. “You should do it for yourself.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
I scrambled down the tree and jumped from the lowest branch. As soon as my feet touched the grass, Quinn and I bolted for the forest before anyone saw us.
My chest burned and my breath came out in ragged gasps by the time we reached the steps leading to the pleasure garden. But we had the book safely tucked under Quinn’s arm. And I had something even better – I had Ayaz.
Something about the way Ayaz’s body reacted when my lips brushed his told me everything I needed to know. He hadn’t recoiled. Heat surged up from inside him and rushed across his skin, drawing me to him. Deep down inside, Ayaz remembered me, even if he didn’t know why he remembered me.
He’d had something done to him, probably by Ms. West. She’d once said she could alter memories. She tampered with Ayaz’s mind so he believed himself when he said he didn’t know me, and yet some part of him recognized the connection we shared.
What had he started to say about Zehra? Had they used her against him in some way?
That tiny flame of hope inside me flared bright and bold. Quinn handed me the book and went down into the garden first to check if anyone was around. After a few moments he called up to me, and I followed him to the tunnel. He had a torch, so I didn’t use my fire. I hadn’t shown Quinn yet – I didn’t want to see him afraid.
As we clambered through into the darkness, he wrapped his arms around me.
“We did it, Hazy.” Quinn’s lips grazed my cheek, sending a charge of heat through my body.
“Yeah.” I buried my face in his shoulder. My chest heaved from the running and the fear. My fingers rubbed against the leather cover before I shrunk away. I’m touching Parris’ skin. That’s never going to not be gross.
“You okay?” Quinn’s hands tightened on my back. “I know Ayaz—”
“He saw me,” I whispered into Quinn’s collar. “I think his memory has been altered, and that’s why he’s acting like he is. But something inside him recognized me. He’s still in there, Quinn. We just have to make him realize it.”
Quinn tapped the spine of the book. “Maybe there’s something in this skin sack that’ll bring back the real Ataturk.”
“Maybe.” We walked in silence until we came to the end of the tunnel. I pushed open the mirror and we ducked out. I knocked on my old door. Trey flung it open and ushered us inside.
“Got it.” I spread out the book on Trey’s bed, flicking through Ayaz’s pages of notes and translations.
Trey yanked the pages from my hands. He tossed them on the bed in a messy pile and smushed his body against mine, his kiss dragging up the darkness from inside me and smothering it with his own. The flame inside me danced at his possessive touch, even as I tried to wriggle out of his embrace.
“Fuck, I hate this shit,” Trey muttered into my neck as he crushed me under the weight of his fear. “I was worried.”
“Yeah, well, we were fine.” I managed to extract myself and grabbed the book. I flipped open the cover and spread the rest of Ayaz’s notes out in a fan across the bedspread. “Now we’ve got work to do.”
“What’s this?” Quinn asked, bouncing on his bed. He lifted the blankets to reveal a roll of clothes stuffed underneath.
“The teachers came by to check we were in our beds, so I made it look like you were asleep,” Trey said.
“You need to improve your sculptural skills. I’m not this fat.” Quinn yanked out rolled-up slacks and socks and tossed them at Trey. A pair of his boxers hit Trey in the face. Quinn fell on the bed laughing. Trey pounced, putting Quinn in a headlock until Quinn slapped the wall and begged for mercy.
I rolled my eyes, even though seeing them joking around together like normal teenagers made me happier than I ever could have expressed. They’ll look after each other once I’m gone. “If you’re all done being idiots, we can get to work.”
Trey wiped dark hair from his brow and scrambled across to help me, while Quinn went back to tossing his clothes around the room.
In a rare display of thoughtfulness, Trey had snuck down some cocoa from the dining hall. He warmed it on the radiator and passed it around while we turned each page carefully, searching for something, anything, that would help us.
I noticed now that Ayaz had added notes and circled things that hadn’t been marked before. His notations seemed confused, erratic – like he was trying to figure out some puzzle between the pages. Whatever they’d done to his memory must’ve messed him up real bad.
I swear that you won’t have to wait much longer for answers, Ayaz. I swear that I will give you back what was taken from you.
The next day was a Saturday, so Trey and Quinn didn’t have class. Apart from meals and lacrosse practice, Trey stayed inside with me the whole day, poring over Parris’ book. Quinn paced around the room annoying us until Trey threw a book at him.
Quinn rolled his eyes as he pulled a leather jacked over his school blazer. “I’m going for a walk.”
“You shouldn’t run off,” Trey glowered from the desk. “We’ve got work to do here – you could be helpful.”
“I am being helpful.” Quinn slammed the door behind him.
I worried about him all afternoon while Trey fumed beside me. He returned long after dark, sweat slicking down his brow and wet leaves clinging to the hem of his slacks.
“You dropped this, Hazy.” He tossed something on the bed.
I picked up the object. It was the molds we’d made of Ms. West’s lab keys. Most of the soap had dissolved, but the metal keys were still perfectly intact. “Where did you get this?”
“In the lockbox in the cave,” Quinn slumped down on his bed with a self-satisfied grin. “I can’t believe you never thought to go see if they were still there. I went down to see the cave-in for myself. There’s a sigil on one of the stones – I think it’s the type that’s designed to call those gross shadow creatures that were in the gym and that Courts used to attack Hazy in the cave.”
The god’s servants. “I bet that was how the Eldritch Club got to Zehra so fast – they sent those shadows after her. But the god said they will obey me now, so hopefully we don’t have to worry about them.” I reached for my phone to text Deborah. “I can’t believe they were still there. You’re right, we should have checked immediately. This key is just what we n
eed to get Deborah into Ms. West’s lab, if we could find it. Sadie said Ms. West moved her lab from the icehouse.”
“Confirmed,” Quinn grinned. “I checked the icehouse myself as soon as I found these. No lock on any of the doors anymore. Apart from a couple of old freezers, it’s completely cleared out.”
I whomped him across the head with a pillow. “You shouldn’t have done that alone! But yes, thank you for finding the key.”
“See.” Quinn gave Trey a pointed look. “I was being helpful.”
“For once in your life,” Trey muttered.
I rubbed soap off the key with the edge of my hoodie as I texted the news to Deborah. “Do you think this will work in the new lab?”
“She probably changed the lock,” Trey said.
“With what?” Quinn shot back. “It’s not as if anyone at this place can just drive down to the hardware store.”
“Don’t be stupid. We get deliveries here all the time. Otherwise, where would we get fresh food and new pencils and shit.”
“Can we maybe stop bickering about it and get back to searching for something that’ll help…something like this.” I jabbed the page in excitement.
Most witches or magicians favor the cat as a familiar, due to their superior intelligence and predatory nature. Other animals such as bats, crows, and lizards are also common. The familiar carries the secrets of the witch and may even be used as a conduit for their power. Some witches have even, upon death, passed their souls into their familiars.
A powerful magician may choose for their familiar not one creature but many – a herd of malleable minds akin to those of the humans they seek to control. The rat, therefore, makes the perfect such familiar, as they think and act in a form of hivemind reminiscent of the human sheep who have not yet woken up to our true position in the cosmic hierarchy. Rats make the perfect spies, the ideal servants, and the most loyal soldiers. However, one must be careful to remain on their good side, for they have been known to consume the flesh of a magician who treats them unfairly and asks of them more than they are willing to perform.
Possessed: A reverse harem bully romance (Kings of Miskatonic Prep Book 3) Page 16