Page 21 of Salem’s Rise

“You’re going to have to give me more than just dramatic repetition of his name.”

“He’s, like, the most important man in town. I’ve only seen him a handful of times on campus,” she says, her eyes big and wide, still watching the door like a celebrity just walked out. “I’ve never heard of him giving a lecture in class. I wonder what that was about?”

I shrug. “Maybe he wants to be more active on campus?”

I’m not sure what all the fuss is over, but I make a mental note to add Lucien Blackhollow to the list of people I want to question about Josh’s disappearance.

I have a hard time concentrating in my other classes that day—Auditing and Financial Accounting. I’m too busy thinking about my next move. It occurred to me last night on the drive back to Salem’s Fall that if I’m going to figure out what happened to Josh, I need to start with the reason he came here.

Vanished.

The game that caught the attention of the Blackhollow Foundation and brought Josh to Salem’s Fall in the first place.

At some point, I know I’ll need to venture back to the Ashcroft Library again, the last place I heard from Josh on Halloween morning, but I still get jittery thinking about returning after what happened. Instead, I decide to pay a visit to Professor Theodore Pemberton, the faculty advisor who supervised Josh’s fellowship work. If anyone knew what Josh had been working on before he disappeared, it was probably him.

Unfortunately, his office door is locked when I arrive. A printed sign taped beside it reads: OFFICE HOURS MONDAY, TUESDAY, AND THURSDAY, 10:00 a.m.–3:30 p.m.

I check the time. It’s 3:31 p.m.

“Looks like you just missed him.”

I turn to find Rowan leaning against the wall. He wears a dark indigo-blue sweater over a crisp button-down and perfectly fitted khakis, looking like he stepped straight out of an Ivy League admissions brochure. Golden blond hair, impossibly blue eyes, and a smile full of perfectly straight white teeth.

“What are you doing here?” I ask, folding my arms and eyeing him warily. The last time we were alone, he’d been wearing a mask and holding a knife. “Were you following me?”

“I prefer to think of it as maintaining a healthy curiosity,” he says with a sly grin, looking entirely too pleased with himself.

“Hmph,” I grunt. “I guess that does sound better than stalking.”

“I know, right?”

His grin deepens, revealing dimples I hadn’t noticed before.

Shit. I’ve always been a sucker for dimples.

He looks so innocent in the light of day, smiling like that at me, I have to remind myself that he’s dangerous and best friends with the biggest assholes in school.

Except—

Well, one of my kidnappers had tried to calm the others. The guy in the zip-up fleece had argued against hurting me, and I figured he had to be the one who carried me out and got me help. Could that have been Rowan? None of it made him innocent or a good guy. He’d still been there and played a part. It just made him the least terrible of them—a little less of a bastard.

“You won’t find Pemberton here,” Rowan says. “Half the faculty have second lives downtown. Pemberton’s happens to involve charging unsuspecting tourists obscene amounts of money for antique games and puzzles.”

I glance at the locked door, then back at him. “He owns a store?”

“A curiosity shop.”

“Sounds creepy,” I say.

“It’s mostly overpriced.” He pushes away from the wall and gestures toward the stairs, lifting a light brow. “I can show you where to find him, if you want?”

I should say no. My brother learned the hard way about the danger of trusting the wrong person in Salem’s Fall. Even if I was going to take a chance on making a friend here, Rowan would definitely not be my first choice. Getting too close to any of the Heirs seems like a bad idea.

Still, I don’t know my way around this town, and Rowan does. He also knows where Professor Pemberton’s shop is. For now, that makes him useful.

“Fine,” I say. “But if this ends with another blindfold and a knife, I’m going to be deeply annoyed.”

His grin falters for only a fraction of a second. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”