AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My stomach turns over. That is the last thing I would ever want to do. It’s been months since the last time. This can’t happen.Not now. Not ever again.
“Pike?” Quinn’s voice draws me out of my head.
I switch my phone off and look up at her once again. She’s pulling on her navy blue blazer and letting her dark, golden blonde locks fall in effortless waves around her shoulders.
“Yeah?”
“You never listen to me. No one ever does!” she declares in that dramatically high-pitched Queen’s English accent of hers.
I get up from her bed and pull my blazer on too, before walking over to her and throwing my arms around her neck.
“I am listening to you, Harlot. I’ll be there, but I can’t promise you anything. Let’s go and have dinner, I’m feeling ravenous.”
Quinn’s dark eyebrows shoot up. “Dinner? Are you staying for dinner? You never do.”
I nod and hook my arm with hers as we leave her room. “I am.”
I cannot possibly tell her that I’m only staying for dinner because I’m dreading the idea of going home. Even though I love Quinn and she would die with my secrets, my situation is revolting and I try to escape it as much as possible when I’m here at school.
We leave Thales and move across the quiet quad. In the dying light of evening, I glance up and see a veil of silvery blue mist descending from the mountains and slowly approaching the black woods surrounding the school.
Tonight is bound to be fun, but the uneasiness growing in my abdomen is unmistakable and I can’t deny that some part of me feels afraid.
11
PIKE: CHAPTER XI
Now
The taste of Dom Perignon lingers on my tongue as we stagger through the narrow, eerily vacant hallway.
It’s almost midnight and I’m tempted to take the entire bottle back to Quinn’s dormitory and drown myself in its sweet nectar, but I cannot.
Quinn had already promised the others that we would purloin the best liquor we could from Mr. Derricot’s private supply in the French History class.
According to Quinn, the consumption of alcohol is forbidden to not only students but the faculty as well at SCU.
So, if Mr Derricot were to find that he was indeed missing a bottle of very precious contents, he wouldn’t be able to report it without receiving serious repercussions from the Academy.
The darkened underground passages of Aristotle Tower are endless and narrow with draughty ceilings that creak when it storms.
The invitation Quinn had gotten earlier had also instructed us to bring along something of value, preferably stolen. In this case, it’s Dom Perignon.
I open another door that leads into another passage that directly joins us with the Anaximander Tower. Passages and secret rooms are plenty at SCU.
Dark, twisting spaces where silhouettes hide in sadness. Sometimes you can hear them: the whispers, the cruel cackling and the haunted whimpers.
This part of the tower is darker than usual and a heavy, musty scent hangs in the air along with countless cobwebs.
“Are you sure it’s this way?” Quinn asks as I walk ahead of her and step on something that crunches underneath my boots. I don’t want to know what that is so I do not bother looking.
“Yes,” I say. “It’s not that hard to find if you read that booklet about the hidden passageways of St. Charles.”
There’s a booklet, a handbook of sorts for the new students and if you were clever, you’d quickly pick up on the secret passages and hideouts that only a few students knew about from years back.
“Now why would I read it when I have you?” Quinn grins as she laces her arm with mine.
As per the secret handbook, I lead Quinn through an archway and a few minutes later we are travelling another narrow passageway.
