“I don’t see why,” Ian spoke, giving me a lazy smile. “It’s the truth.”
I had absolutely no idea what they were talking about, and I didn’t know if I wanted to know. This was…strange.
During dinner, I was introduced to each of them. The anxious man in glasses was named Dagen, and the pale man sitting beside Koda was Payne.
Yes, Payne. Who in their right mind would name their son Payne? Didn’t seem like a name parents would ever give their children, but maybe that was the point. These guys…clearly they weren’t of the normal variety. They each had something off about them, and in spite of myself, I found they were each dangerously attractive in their own way.
I had to be careful here. This place would play with my mind if I let it. I had to be firm, be strong, keep hold of my faculties and not give into temptation. Because these guys? Oh, yeah, they were definitely tempting, and I was not the kind of girl to ever be tempted.
I had no idea why this place was labeled an academy when it seemed more like a halfway house for men who weren’t normal, but I didn’t question it. I did, however, question Lucien after dinner about something else.
The others had gone, leaving the dining hall and the mess. Lucien was getting up, and I was slow to match his pace. “There are other women here, right?” Didn’t know why I felt pressured to ask, I just did. If I was the only woman here…I wasn’t sure how that would make me feel.
Scared? A wee bit, because these were strangers to me, a bunch of strange men. And strange men were not the kind of people any woman wanted to be around for an extended period of time. Nervous? Heck yes, because I didn’t want to cross any professional line with any of them, and if the way my body reacted today was any indication of how it would be in the future, it would only get worse.
Lucien froze, glancing to me with those hazel eyes. He tugged on the bottom of his suit before saying, “You are the only one, I’m afraid.”
The only one? Surely that was a bad thing. Surely me being here would only tempt those guys—and somehow I doubted that they were the sort of men who could hold themselves back from something they wanted to take. I mean, Ian’s first encounter with me was suggesting we go and have sex. Not that I could tell Lucien about that, because I was kind of snooping around in his office, but still.
“If any of them make you feel uncomfortable, come right to me and I will take care of them,” Lucien added, sensing my unease at the whole thing. “When it comes to them, stand your ground as best you can. Do not let them pressure you or convince you of anything, Miss Fairday. You have the authority over them, not the other way around.”
Yeah, the only one above me was him.
Okay, that could’ve been worded a bit better.
I nodded. I’d have to act like an authority figure, even though most of these guys were older than me. It would be tough, and it would take work, but I’d have to learn to do it. “Do you want me to clean this up?” I asked, gesturing to the plates. I hadn’t seen the whole place yet, but I imagined the kitchen couldn’t be too far from here.
“No, leave it,” Lucien spoke. “I’ll bring you to the phone so you can make that call.”
So there had to be other people living here, not just the men who’d sat at the table with us during dinner, because if I wasn’t cleaning it up, someone else had to. Plates didn’t just vanish and put themselves away clean.
I followed Lucien out of the dining hall, and after a little while, we wound up near the entry vestibule, where I was pretty sure my clothes had been tampered with. None of the guys during dinner had looked particularly guilty, which only served to show me I had to be extra careful around them. At least one of them was a good liar.
I really didn’t think there was a phone, but to my utter shock and surprise, there was one, sitting on its receiver, atop a rounded table that hugged the wall underneath a painting of the outer building. The black cat who’d been my introduction to this place lounged near it, giving both Lucien and I a lazy yawn as it got up and hopped off, scampering away noiselessly.
“The cat’s name is Midnight,” Lucien said. “He doesn’t like most of the people here.”
Shrugging, I said, “He led me to you.”
Lucien said nothing for a while, simply staring at me. The weight of his stare made me shift my gaze to the corded phone. He must’ve realized he was staring perhaps a bit too much, coughing and saying, “Right. I’ll let you make that call. If you need anything else, come find me. My room is the first on the upper west wing. In the morning, come to my office and I’ll give you the official tour of the place, along with your schedule.” He gave me a tight-lipped smile, a strained look, as if he was holding something back, before walking away.
I watched him go, feeling a pang of something in my chest. His shoulders were broad and thick, strong and wide. That suit fit his body nicely, and for a split-second, just a quick, fleeting moment before I caught myself and changed my thoughts, I wondered how good he looked out of the suit.
Oh, yes. I definitely needed to take a cold shower—er, bath—after all that. If I didn’t know better, I’d say I was horny, which…just, no. Being horny for my boss was a disaster waiting to happen.
Stepping toward the phone, I picked it up and held it to my ear. After tossing a quick glance around to make sure I was alone, I dialed my house number. With any luck my dad wouldn’t pick up. Maybe he’d be in the shower or something, or too far away to get it before it finished ringing. I’d rather leave a message, because then I could dictate what I told him and how I told him. If he asked me questions, I feared I’d give it all away.
Give what away?
This place, how strange it was, how weird my welcoming had been, almost as if they weren’t expecting me. The clothes—both mine being stolen and the new additions in my room. How I was the only girl here, surrounded by men who looked like they wanted to eat me alive.
Color me crazy, but I didn’t think my father would like to hear any of that.
It rang three times before he picked up. Darn it.
“Hello?” his voice was confused, probably because he didn’t recognize the number calling.
“Hey,” I said, curling a finger through its cord. “It’s me, Felice.”
I heard him sigh loudly on the other line. “Felice, I was expecting you to call earlier. Did something happen? What phone are you calling from?” Father was worried about me, but I knew it was only because of what I’d done. He didn’t want another repeat, especially with me being so far from home. If something happened, he wouldn’t be able to run to save me.
“I’m sorry,” I said quickly, hating how guilty I felt. “After I got here, things kind of got away from me.” Hah. That was certainly one way to put it. “I’m calling you on the Grimmstead line because my phone doesn’t have any service here.”
“No service?” my father echoed. “That’s bizarre.”
“I know. I probably won’t be in touch with you as much as you’d like, so I’m sorry.” God, I sounded like a bumbling idiot when I spoke to my father. What made it even worse was the fact that I wanted to impress him. Being his only child, with mom gone, it was hard. I felt like I could never live up to his expectations.
“Are you sure you’re going to be okay there? I worry about you, especially after—”
I really didn’t want to hear him say it. Anytime he said it aloud, it made it real. Of course, it was real whether he spoke about it or not, but the longer I went without saying it aloud or thinking about it, the less the memories haunted me.
But then…they didn’t really haunt. They danced around in my head, almost too gleefully. What made me feel even worse was that they were not bad memories for me.
“I’ll be fine,” I told him, meaning it.
We talked a bit more after that. I explained to him what I’d be doing, that my boss seemed nice, blah, blah, blah. Felt a little awkward talking about it in the middle of the front lobby, but no one was around to hear. At least, I didn’t see anyon
e.
I hung up after we said our goodbyes. Through the windows, I could see that night had fallen, a world of black outside. Now the lighting inside the academy was even eerier, with less natural light. I crossed my arms over my chest as I headed up the grand staircase and went down the hall that led to my room. I might’ve zoned out a bit, replaying my father’s and mine’s conversation in my head over and over, but mere moments before I was about to turn into my room, I spotted a shrouded figure down the hall.
My feet stopped, and I stared. The temperature of the air around me dropped significantly, and when I exhaled, my breath left me with a puff of white. A chill crawled up my spine as I stared at the figure further away.
“Hello?” I spoke, uncertain and wary. He was in shadows too much for me to see who he was—or what he was doing here, thirty feet from my room. “Hello?” I said again, watching as the shrouded figure turned around and started walking away.
No. No, I had to find out who he was, because this was just too creepy.
I thought about asking who he was, what his name was, but I knew he wouldn’t stop for me, so instead I picked up my pace and began to go after him. The shrouded figure almost glided down the hall, an effortless sort of movement, almost like he wasn’t walking, like he wasn’t walking on his own two feet. Kind of like a snake, how it slithered, never picking its body up off the ground to get momentum.
I passed half a dozen doors that were closed, the air continuing to grow colder the further down I went. Just when I thought I was catching up to someone, the figure gained speed. And, color me crazy, but it felt like the further I walked down the hall, the longer the hall was. Like the hall had a mind of its own, stretching out in front of me, elongating and growing as if it was this living creature and not a castle-like mini-mansion.
“Wait!” I called out, but the figure didn’t wait. To my utter disbelief, the figure gained even more distance away from me, sharply turning left when the hall ended. Once he was out of sight, I ran.
Yep. I actually ran. Like, full-out sprinted, which was hard to do in this dress.
Gym was never my strong suit, and wearing this dress? Only made even the most basic of movements harder.
When I made it to the end of the hallway, I nearly rammed myself into the stone, trying to turn where the figure had turned. It…it was a wall. There was no additional hall that this led to. There was just a wall, not even a door.
But how? How could he have disappeared like that?
My heart beat wildly for a whole new reason, and I felt stupid as I touched the wall. The stone radiated a coldness that seeped into my bones, chilling me to my core. My palms touched nothing but normal stone, and I was so confused. So confused my brain couldn’t even come up with an explanation for what I saw.
This place was making me go crazy, and it was only day one.
I could’ve sworn I saw someone…my mind would never make something like that up, would it? The mind could surprise you, it was true, but that was too real to be fake.
“Felice” a gentle male voice called out, and I abruptly yanked my hands off the wall, hoping I didn’t look too stupid as Koda strolled along. “Are you alright?” He was the one closest to my age, and he seemed genuinely kind, but still, you never could know.
Besides, how did he get here? Was he watching me, following me?
Was this the one who’d messed with my clothes?
“I—yes, I’m fine,” I said, tossing a quick glance at the wall. “I just…I thought I saw someone walking down here.” My mind replayed the recent memory, and still as I replayed it in my head, I couldn’t see how it’d happened. “In fact, I would’ve bet my life on it.”
Koda gave me a smile. This smile was not sleazy like Ian’s; this smile was the kind of cute, dimpled smile that I would’ve fallen for during my high school years, and even years before. The kind of boy-next-door cuteness that made you think about him all of the time, desperately wishing he’d ask you to dance at homecoming, when you’d gone stag on purpose.
Not that I had much experience with that. I didn’t. Not really…
“You should be careful saying things like that around here,” Koda warned, his green eyes flicking to the wall I’d just touched. His face was clean-cut, dimples showing his amusement even when he wasn’t grinning outright. The black hair resting on the top of his head was just long enough to run your fingers through and tug on while…
Okay, yet another thought I had to kill immediately. What the heck was wrong with me?
“Why?” I instantly shot back. That was a cryptic thing to say. So far, it seemed like that was everybody’s favorite thing to do around here: sling around cryptic comments and see who had the best one. I wasn’t letting any of them get in my head—at least, I’d try not to.
Koda’s emerald eyes slowly drifted back to me, and it was a long while before he spoke again. Too long. Like he had to think for a long time about what he was going to say. “This place isn’t like other places.”
Another cryptic answer, and I wasn’t about to take it.
“What do you mean by that?” I asked. I already knew it wasn’t like any other academy out there, but the way these people talked about this place…it was almost like they believed Grimmstead was its own person.
Well, there was Lucien Grimmstead, so I supposed there had to be a long lineage, but still. This place, at the end of the day, was just made from stone and mortar. There wasn’t anything special about it, not really.
It was creepy, yes, but any old building with endless hallways would be creepy.
“Your fears have a way of coming to life here,” Koda whispered, turning his face down and to the side. Shadows caught his features, and for a fleeting moment, he wasn’t the smiling, dimpled Koda he’d been all throughout dinner. He almost looked like someone else entirely, cold and serious, calculating.
My breath refused to leave my lungs, at least until Koda returned those green eyes to me and smiled again. That was…that was almost too weird.
“There’s something about these old halls that make you see things,” Koda spoke, smiling at me. Those dimples had a way of making you at ease and disarming you, but maybe that was the point. Maybe that’s why he smiled so much, so you wouldn’t suspect him of anything. “I’d hate for you to fall prey to it.”
Prey. Felt like an odd word to use, especially in this sort of situation. He almost emphasized it a bit too much. I didn’t like the way the word fell upon my ears.
“I won’t,” I told him, meaning it. “I’m not prey.” And I wasn’t. This wasn’t National Geographic. This wasn’t hunt or die. This was simply Grimmstead Academy, and these fools kept going on and on about it as if it held some ancient mystery, when in fact it only held criminals and lost souls.
I would not let any of these men intimidate me or make me feel like prey. That was a promise I made to myself as I walked away from Koda, returning to my room. As I closed the door, I locked eyes with him.
It was only for a moment, but I saw it.
Darkness. Pure and utter darkness lingering in his eyes. Even the happy-go-lucky Koda wasn’t a safe person to be around.
Once the door was closed and firmly locked, I let out a harsh sigh. No one was safe here. It almost made me want to pack up and go home. There wouldn’t be much to pack, anyways.
Almost.
Chapter Five – Payne
Blood. The life essence of all that breathed. Every animal and every human alive had it, and most of the time, it was red. Maybe that’s why I found it so fascinating. We all needed it, and yet sometimes it was freely given. Sometimes it was taken. Sometimes, if your body was hurt, you lost too much to go on.
Really, everything came down to blood.
It was everything to me. My weakness. My strength. My addiction and my hobby. If I could paint a picture using nothing but blood, surely it would be a spectacular sight, something every museum and art hall would want to get their hands on.
It would be a lie to say
the moment I saw her, I did not wonder how her blood looked.
I did. I wondered it immediately, and I thought about it a lot that night, and even the morning after. She was with Lucien getting a tour of the building, being told where to go and where not to go, and I sat in one of Grimmstead’s many studies, waiting.
Hours ahead of schedule, but I couldn’t wait.
It felt like I’d been alive for so long I’d lost my sense of purpose, and the only thing that got me through the endless days here was thinking about blood.
I didn’t know whether I’d classify it as an obsession. I supposed we all had our secret obsessions here. Koda and Bram had their peace and chaos constantly at war. Ian fought with himself and the fear of morality. Dagen and his erratic ways, his incessant paranoia always telling him that someone was going to find out his deepest, darkest secrets. I was certain Lucien had his demons, but he kept them close to his chest.
We’d told Felice Fairday that there were others in Grimmstead, and that was true, but Grimmstead did not let everyone out. Sometimes when this place took you, it took you and swallowed you whole; it never spit you back out.
I did not know whether that made us lucky or unlucky.
I was the only one who was not ashamed at my weakness, because my weakness was also my strength. I did not hide who I was, did not put on a mask and pretend to be a smiling, kind man. I was always who I was, and that would never change, not even with her addition here.
And, know this: now that she was here, she would never not be here. Such as it was with Grimmstead. This place took what you knew and turned it upside down and inside out and left you wondering just what the hell had happened.
I’d found it interesting for a while, and then I realized just how fascinated I was with blood, so I turned my focus away from this place and its history and onto more…mortal subjects. It was difficult finding animals on the property. The weather had to be good and Grimmstead had to let them in, but when it did, I always found them.
Grimmstead Academy: A Villainous Introduction Page 5