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“Stay away,” he said again—almost growled. Then he was gone, allowing the door to slap shut behind him.
17
The echo of the door slam seemed to wake me from some kind of trance. I jumped and blinked, feeling a little like a mouse that has escaped the cat. My heart was still hammering in my chest and the key around my throat was jerking—almost tugging me towards the door that Griffin had disappeared through.
After him—go after him! it seemed to be shouting…almost pleading.
“No,” I told it, speaking aloud as I put my hand over it to quiet it. I had a sense that I had barely escaped. I’d be a fool to call him back again or go after him.
And yet, that was what my foolish body, as well as the key, wanted me to do. Why did I feel so drawn to the tall, foreboding Nocturne? Did I have a death wish?
My legs felt shaky and weak, like spaghetti, as I forced myself to turn away from the dark hallway and go back to one of the broader main thoroughfares of the school.
That had been close—too close.
But close to what?
I felt like I had more questions than answers as I wandered blindly until somehow I found myself inside the cavernous Dining Hall again.
I stood there in the deserted dimness—clearly there was no point in lighting such a huge space when nobody was in it—and wondered why I was there. Oh right—the dungeon—I was looking for the dungeon. I had been meaning to find someone and ask them the way before I had run into Griffin and acted like some kind of a masochistic rabbit that wanted to be eaten by the fox…
This is stupid. I’m not going to find anything in here.
I turned to go but just as I did, I heard someone calling my name.
“Megan? Megan is that you?”
Turning, I stared into the gloom of the Dining Hall—someone was calling me—a familiar voice. But who? The voice was female, anyway, so at least I knew it wasn’t Griffin, whose voice was deep and silky and completely masculine.
“Megan, down here!” the voice called again.
I walked cautiously deeper into the Hall and then I saw something really weird.
It was Emma who was calling me but she was calling me from the floor and all I could see was her head.
“Oh my God,” I whispered, feeling sick. Had someone beheaded her and now her ghost had come to haunt me? The idea would have seemed ridiculous only a day ago but after everything I had seen and experienced my first day at Nocturne Academy, anything seemed possible.
“Emma?” I whispered, taking a step closer even though I really didn’t want to. “Is that you? Did someone hurt you? Do you…” I swallowed hard. “Are you here asking me to avenge you?”
It was the only reason I could think of that her ghost—or rather the ghost of her head—would suddenly appear to me like this, calling my name.
“What? What are you talking about?” the head demanded. And then suddenly it was more than a head. Emma’s neck and shoulders emerged from the floor, followed by the rest of her torso. She was dressed in a nightdress and a comfy looking furry pink bathrobe belted at the waist. And as the rest of her came into view, I saw that she was wearing fuzzy pink bunny slippers with long, floppy ears to match
Definitely not ghostly attire.
“Whew!” I put a hand to my heart, which was thudding like a jackhammer, though the key had finally quieted down. “I thought you were a ghost for a minute! Where did you come from?”
“From the dungeon, of course,” she said, frowning. “And why would you think I was a ghost?”
“Well, I mean all I could see was your head and it’s so gloomy and dark in here and after everything I’ve seen today I just thought—”
“You thought I had been killed horribly and my disembodied ghost head was asking you to avenge me?” Emma put a hand to her mouth to stifle a giggle.
“Well, I’ve had a really crazy day,” I pointed out a little defensively. “At this point, anything seems possible.”
“I get it,” she said kindly. “My first day here was pretty overwhelming too. But still…a ghost? Avery’s going to die laughing!” She giggled again.
I found myself laughing along with her—more in relief than because I found it genuinely funny. I felt light all over. My body was reacting as though I’d just had a narrow escape—a brush with danger—and I found that the laughter coming out of my mouth was ever so slightly hysterical. It might have been because I was glad I’d been wrong about Emma being a ghost…or maybe it had something to do with my encounter with Griffin.
“I didn’t know the entrance to the dungeon was located in the Dining Hall,” I finally managed to say. “I’ve been wandering around forever trying to find it. I even ran into—”
