Page 11 of Malice in e minor

“Yes, but aside from the portrait in Faustus’s office, no one has met him before. There are rumors he likes to patron sometimes. I wouldn’t ask them because they are super dicks, but I heard he’s the reason Immortal Nightmare blew up and the reason they disappeared and ended up here. It’s all rumors because the guy is a total ghost. I’m just a lot nicer to the costume shop manager than everyone else. She’s older than dirt, hilarious, and loves gossip. You tell her the current drama and she’ll spill about decades old drama.”

“But he’s not that old!”

Cullen just shrugged.

“I’m sure there’s someone in the music department with gossip.”

“There’s not. All the violin teachers are here to work. You’ll get an advisor, but they aren’t going to trash talk the person who pays their checks.”

“Heads up. Immortal Nightmare is staring at you,” Rue said.

“What are they doing? Even Misha is here and he never comes to the dining hall,” Cullen whispered. “Girl, don’t look!”

“It’s a knee jerk reaction when someone tells you you’re being stared at!”

“You don’t want to make eye contact with them,” Rue said. “Cullen and I have rehearsals with Misha. He’s nice. He’s the least intense of the three, but it’s like it breaks him any time someone tries to be his friend because he knows they are using him for his fame. A few of us have convinced him we aren’t like that. Orion and Azriel mostly ignore everyone unless you upset Misha.”

“They aren’t going to abuse her, are they?” JaToya asked.

“They won’t lay a finger on her, but they don’t have to. They have just as many connections as Dr Faustus does. Everyone has a theory about what they are doing here and some of them are really crazy, but Faustus has a vested interest in keeping them here if they aren’t here because of Luca. Once he announces they are here, it would bring prestige and money to him and the school. No, they won’t physically hurt you, but if they want you gone, you will be,” Cullen said.

“And they keep looking over here,” JaToya growled. “The rest of you might not be able to make eye contact so they don’t destroy your careers, but my boss loves me and I suck at art. I need them to look into these big browns and know I can fuck them up back from a bubble bath.”

She really could. I was dying to know why Immortal Nightmare was slumming it in grad school instead of touring the world because I had a feeling it had something to do with me being brought here within weeks of final exams. A lot of this didn’t make sense at all.

Immortal Nightmare were brilliant artists, and they were all beautiful men. I didn’t want their attention on me, but it felt like I really needed to figure all of this out.

And possibly get the hell out of here.

Ihated the dining hall. There were too many people in there and they ate too loudly. If I ate anything from the dining hall, they packed it up to go for me so I could eat it in my room. Azriel and Orion knew this, but I knew they wouldn’t ask me to be here unless it was important.

I just didn’t think this was important. Orion was bored and Azriel had his eye on a new conquest. We all hated this place. Adoring fans were great, but only with an orchestra pit separating them and us. We wanted to create and perform. We’d earned that. There was always something new to learn as artists, but no one here could teach us that.

Still, she was very pretty. It was weird she was here weeks before finals, but we were all weird. Some of us were more eccentric than others and a lot of us took pills for it. I know I did.

Johann was a sycophantic arse kisser who hated his job, even though the alternative was much worse. He did what he was told. Instead of dragging me to the dining hall, we could just find Topher and ask him why she was here. He didn’t bother us much, but he was always lurking around the students. I didn’t care what name he was going by now. We all hated him, but we could spend five minutes around him to ask.

I was trying to focus on tuning out all the noises that bothered me. Azriel and Orion were staring pretty hard while they threw out theories. The kind of stare you could feel on the back of your neck.

Her whole table knew. The new girl was ignoring us, but her friend was boldly staring Azriel and Orion down like she would unleash the fires of Hell herself if they did anything to her friend. Orion filled us in that the tall, strong one was just helping her friend get settled in. Honestly, she might be scarier than Azriel when he was in a mood.

“There are multiple people we could get answers from instead of having a staring contest with her friend. The new girl can’t grow her nails out because she’s a musician, but something tells me if you even chip that black nail polish, her friend is going to fuck you up,” I said, rubbing my forehead.

It was so noisy in here and I was about at my limit. We had a bunch of groupies sit around us. They all had a favorite. When we performed, we were all on stage. I was dancing, of course, and I brought in other dancers, but Orion had his grand piano up there with me and was giving just as much of a performance as I was. Azriel managed to make painting look like dancing. Most people were looking at me, though.

The students sitting next to us were talking about us like slabs of meat and they didn’t care if we could hear them. Orion had locs down to his waist. He’d been growing his hair a long time, and he took good care of it. They were loudly talking about pulling it. Then, they completely switched topics about me in tights and were wondering how big my cock was under my dance belt. We could hear everything and they didn’t care.

I needed to get out of here. I wasn’t even eating. I stood up with the intention of bolting out of here. Why did they make me do this? Except I wasn’t paying attention to anyone and ran straight into the girl who was looking at us like she would murder us if we messed with her friend.

I expected them to yell. I just knocked that girl right on her arse. I needed to stay and help her. Fuck me. I couldn’t be in this place a second longer. They didn’t yell. Harlowe, the new girl, was staring at me with a furrowed brow.

“Are you okay?”

I must be a total mess. She asked me that when I just knocked her friend over. Everyone was staring and I couldn’t handle it. They probably thought I was a complete idiot. The new girl tripped and spilled her coffee all over herself. I had the feeling she did that on purpose. Azriel and Orion swooped in and we got the fuck out of there.

“Sorry, Misha,” Azriel said. “You’re right. There were plenty of people we could have asked without making you do that.”

“I think the new girl dumped coffee all over herself to distract everyone from Misha so we could get him out of there. The floor wasn’t wet and there was nothing for her to trip over except those head stomping boots and something tells me she could dance in those just fine.”