“What?” The brunette lets out a nervous laugh. “Towhere?”
“A portal.” He repeats himself angrily. “A halfway point between life and death, heaven and hell. A place all sorts of creatures can pass through.”
The blonde quirks a brow. “Are youserious?”
“Yeah, I’m fucking serious. It has to do with a bunch of cursed bones some French monk brought over in the eighteen-hundreds or some shit. He insisted they bury it all under the church. That’s when all the weird stuff started happening. Serial killers galore. Weird societies sworn to silence and shit. Look it up, I swear to god.”
The two girls exchange looks of deep skepticism. “Yeah, okay?—”
“Seriously. Pay attention, Johnson. Haven’t you noticed who walks these streets at night? Not the same crowd you see eating brunch Sunday morning.”
“So, what? You think there are just a bunch ofspiritshere?” the brunette asks, before turning to her friend and sharing a nervous giggle.
The boy lets out a stream of air between his teeth. “Spirits? You think aspiritbroke into the Phi Mu house last year and left that sophomore dead in her bedroom?”
The table falls completely silent.
“No one knows who did it,” the brunette says eventually, in a meek half whisper.
“And you think ahumantore her throat out? Dead bodies keep washing up from the Delaware River with chunks missing out of their necks. Other girls go missing and show up months later covered in bite marks and bruises with no clue where they’ve been.”
“If what you’re saying is…is real, then why isn’t the newspaper writing about it?” the blonde fires back, her cheeks splotchy and red.
Bodies washing up…
Bite marks…
He gives them a cruel, hardened look. “Same reason random fucking businesses are being bought up and no one’s making a peep.”
I slam back into my body with a shudder and a gasp, my collar drenched in sweat.
Holding on to the wall for support, I stumble over to the sink and splash my face with cold water, trying to stem the swell of sickness rising rapidly from my stomach.
A portal between heaven and hell.
I try desperately to remember what Orfeo said to me last night, but now all I can recall is the look in his eye—the glint when he held my face in his hands. Had he wanted to hurt me? Had I almost been another body washing up from the river?
My mother knew about him. She called him ahandsome man.
She would have warned me.
Wouldn’t she?
My mother loved me.
Didn’t she?
I can’t stop shivering even as sweat drips down my spine. I lurch toward the toilet, unable to hold back a fresh wave of terror and sick.
I skip Bowen’s class.
I’ve never skipped a class in my life, but the thought of seeing Orfeo, sitting next to him, having to hear his voice or smell his cologne…
I need to be as far away from him as possible.
I need him to forget where I live, what I look like, how my power works.
One night away isn’t going to accomplish that, but I also need time.
