Page 38 of Twisting Beauty

I kept replaying the conversation in my head even as I arrived at college the next morning, trying to decide whether I had found the first safe person in this school or simply made a fatal mistake.

The uncertainty stayed lodged under my ribs, needling at me all the way to class.

The lab was the coldest room in the building.

Metal surfaces, stone floors, air scrubbed of anything warm or living and left with only the antiseptic bite of preservative. The kind of cold that got into the bones and set up residence.

Formaldehyde hit the base of my throat the moment I walked in, heavy and sour, and with it came the twang of guitar strings skittering through my skull, distant train whistles, and that high needling xylophone note driving itself behind my left eye.

Eight sheeted forms lay on the dissection tables, white fabric pulled smooth over the shapes beneath.

Horror dropped cold through me. There were dead bodies under every one of them, waiting for us to peel the fabric back and touch them.

I kept my face still, drew one careful breath through my mouth, and made sure I did not pull too deeply on the preservative stink.

I could do this. I only had to get through one day, one class, one hour at a time.

I took the back corner station, tucked behind the last table, half-shielded by the stone pillar, the least visible point in the room. I just had to keep my head down and survive the next fifty minutes.

Powell was seated at his desk, marking papers. “Second years,” he called out, not bothering to look up. “You should already know what you’re doing. So get on with it.”

My stomach turned over as I glanced around for clues. Rua might have been a second year. But I most certainly did not know what I was doing.

Jason, a gangly, nervous-looking boy with a permanent slouch, slid into the station beside mine before I’d finished processing that thought. Jason, who had handed me a pen without being asked on the first day when mine had run dry. Jason, who had not once joined in the laughter when Aoife made snide comments about me.

He set his bag down, pulled out his notes, and gave me the small nod of someone who had no agenda beyond getting through the class.

Something in my chest loosened by a fraction. Two of us bluffing. At least I wouldn’t be doing it alone.

The door swung open.

Every head in the room lifted. Lorcan walked in, late.

Even Powell glanced up but he made no comment. He just averted his eyes. God, even the teachers here were scared of him.

Lorcan’s gaze scanned the room, then locked on me. His expression didn’t shift. He just started walking toward me.

The cold arrived in my stomach before he’d crossed half the room.

He stopped at my station and brought his hand down on the instrument tray beside Jason’s with a sound that was barely audible and somehow absolute.

His eyes drilled into Jason. “This one is mine.”

Fear crossed Jason’s face and I could almost see his rapid arithmetic of what pushing back against Lorcan Lasair would actually cost. He picked up his books and bag, gave me one apologetic look I had no time to return, and slunk away.

Coward. But I didn’t blame him.

Lorcan pulled on his gloves and arranged his instruments, his gaze burning into my profile as I avoided his eyes.

He drew back the sheet.

The dead body lay gray-skinned and slack. The smell of preservative thickened as the flesh was exposed, chemical and dense, and the xylophone note in my skull spiked before grinding into something lower.

Dear God, what were we expected to do to it?

Around me, other students hunched over their tables, making cuts into their cadavers.

Revulsion rose so fast it turned my mouth dry. No. I couldn’t do this.