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“Right.”

Grabbing a blazer from the back of my closet and slipping it over my button-down, I plant a kiss on Lacie’s lips. “Listen, lamb, I’m going to go poke around campus a little. Just as an insurance policy.”

Lacie wraps her arms around my neck, pulling me back in for a deeper kiss. When we separate, she murmurs, “I think I know you well enough that I won’t be able to convince you otherwise, will I?”

I give an empty smile. “Alas, you won’t. But I’ll be back. I want to make sure I wasn’t a part of this. You can stay here if you’d like. Hang with Lovebug over there.”

Bellatrix yowls as though she’s never been fed in her life. Lacie laughs, but her eyes are troubled. I turn to go, but she catches my hand with hers. Her lips press into a bloodless line. “You’ll be careful?”

It hurts to lie to her. “If only for you.”

I pull the door closed behind me and wait until I hear the dead bolt clunk in the lock. Shouldering into my overcoat and tucking my hair inside so it’s not quite so recognizable, I head down the hall.

The reading period plus the murders have zapped Preston’s energy clean away. There’s no music, no beer in the hall, no undergrads giggling in the bathrooms. Only the sallow quiet so common on the fringes of panic. When I step into the quad, it’s blanketed in heavy white, the air crackling cold. Low clouds scud in front of a pale gray sky, hinting at more snow.

Drawing my tongue across my lips, I stare at the Gothic ring of buildings. The chapel’s sharp head pierces the sky, a bus drawing through the campus drive, wheels sighing over ice.

So quiet, so dangerous. I’ve learned this place hides its secrets under a heavy fog of normalcy, but the closer I get, the deeper in I go, the worse it is.

Closing my eyes, I make a decision based on vibes alone: the chapel.

Too soon, I’m standing in front of the church’s oak doors, propped open with a rock for churchgoers, though not enough to chill the air inside. Gathering my resolve, I step through.

Why am I so afraid of this place? Churches make me uncomfortable, that I grant, but fear? This is an emotion I’m not used to. Ever since Lacie, I’ve been more and more afraid of the outcomes of my actions.

Damn, being besotted with a mortal does have its drawbacks.

The entrance of the church smells heavily of frankincense and myrrh, the floral whiff of poinsettias on the altar and boughs of juniper wrapped around the central crucifix. Christ stares at me across the church, his eyes languid with exhaustion.

I turn away, closing my own eyes. I came here on a whim, but now I feel nothing other than revulsion.

A sharp internal pain punches me in the ribs and I hiss, falling to a knee.

The fog in my mind recedes as though cut by lightning, and I see something: a misty, panicked face. A dribble of blood on stone.

Oh, what the fuck. Grunting, I haul myself up one of the Gothic stone columns, arms shaking with effort. What is happening to me matters very little, because now …

Now I know where I have to go, and I’m going to hate it.

It’s not the graves beneath the church. It’s the spiral staircase rising into the sky.

Gritting my teeth against another lance of pain, spitting frothed bile onto the flagstone floor, I drag my rebelling body toward the tiny pine door belying its usage. A gold cross hangs above a little lettered card reading BELL TOWER.

My fingers graze the iron door handle, and I force myself to grip. Every step brings me closer to a truth I don’t want, to something my own mind hid from me.

A shattering, earth-bending pain, quicksilver fast and shiv-like, pierces behind my left eye. It moves inside of me, writhing and crawling. I grip the handle for dear life with a screech, dark sweat beading along my brow. My head is a cymbal clash of agony, the pain a drumbeat over and over, quicker and quicker.

Get it out getitoutgetitout.

My nails grip my face and squeeze. I just need to—I just need to get it out get it out get it—

Screaming, I dig into my skin toward the thrashing darkness. Blood spurts over my hands as I slip beneath my mask, peeling against sinew and capillary.

My skin comes away with a heady suck, but just as my fingers graze the wriggling end of the writhing monstrosity beneath, it stops. The pain ebbs to a slow ache, and I’m on the floor, my skin peeled from my skull.

Grunting as I grind my teeth, I stand on shaking legs, pressing my face back into position.

What don’t they want me to know? What the fuck is going on?