The moon lights my path as I make my way back to the sorority, knowing full well I’m not welcome there. But I need to know why they set fire to her old room.
I shiver from the cold and quicken my pace, hoping my muscles will keep me warm enough until I get there. I yawn, still tired from the lack of sleep, but if I wait until morning, the evidence might be gone, and I can’t risk it.
When I’m finally at the building, I look up. All the lights are off, and it looks like a ghost house. Definitely no one inside. They must’ve all accepted the dean’s offer and stayed at a hotel.
Guess they won’t know I was here.
I locate the fire escape at the back of the building and jump up to grab the lowest bar. It costs all my energy to pull myself up to the second bar and latch on with my feet. But I finally manage to make it up the stairs to the second floor, where her window is.
I move along the balconies and crank open the broken-down window. The glass is already shattered with a big, gaping hole in the middle. Not something that just a fire would cause.
I push it open as far as it will go and crawl inside.
The room is ash gray, covered in soot, and the air feels like it’s been deprived of oxygen.
I cough and take in the view.
Bits and pieces of furniture remain. The mattress on the bed is destroyed, with only fringes and metal left. The ceiling is blackened, just as the wooden floor, and the desk in the corner is marked by flame. Near the small kitchenette, directly opposite of the window, a bright spot on the floor is followed by the deepest burns, in a way that reminds me of an explosive.
Is that where the fireworks went off?
I approach it and go to my knees to inspect it. I’m not an expert, but it definitely looks like it.
My eyes follow the floor, searching underneath every corner and even under the bed. There must be something here that explains why someone tried to burn it. They can’t have thought I was sleeping in this room, right?
But the longer I search, the less everything starts to make sense.
Rustling beyond the door sets me on edge.
I stay as still as possible, listening to the sounds, and I can feel my heart beat in my throat.
The door handle twists.
I fish my knife out of my bag.
The door slams open, and two boys I recognize stare right at me. My blood begins to boil.
Kai and Nathan.
“I knew I heard something. Guess it’s not a rat after all,” Nathan says. “Penelope, I’m surprised to see you here.”
I immediately step back, clutching my knife. “You’ve got some balls, Nathan.”
Kai steps sideways, his face somewhat hidden behind Nathan’s frame, making me gasp. A gnarly gash from top to bottom covers his eye, leaving him partially blind. His head remains covered in bandages, probably from the blow Dylan gave him with the gun.
But my God, he looks absolutely destroyed.
“You’re alive,” I mutter.
“Of course I am.” His nostrils flare. “No thanks to you. Luckily, the clinic downtown associated with my family took me in and treated me.”
“What are you doing here?” I rasp.
“You thought we would let you walk away after what you did?” Kai seethes.
“Stay back,” I growl, holding my knife in front of me.
Nathan laughs. “You think that will stop us? You’re alone, Penelope. No dogs to protect you here.”
“Felix is right outside the building,” I hiss.
“No, he’s not,” Nathan says. “We followed you here.”
I gasp.
They’ve been stalking me?
Fuck.
“You were stumbling about on that fucking staircase, though,” Nathan mocks.
“Why the fuck do you care? What do you want from me?” I growl.
“You and your fuck buddies scarred me for life,” Kai interjects, his face contorting.
“Maybe you shouldn’t have tried to take me, then,” I retort. “I didn’t have anything to do with your fight with the Skull & Serpent boys, but you involved me in it anyway.”
“You’re the reason Felix cut off my finger,” Nathan spits.
“So we came for fucking payback,” Kai says. “And ended up losing another one of the Phantoms along with my eye.”
“That’s on you. You came for a fight, and you got one,” I reply.
“They didn’t fucking stay away from Eve when they should have,” Kai says.
“Take my sister’s name out of your fucking mouth,” I say through gritted teeth.
He snorts. “You don’t even know what you’re up against.”
“Get out,” I retort.
When Nathan steps even closer, I clutch the knife tighter. “No. You’re here, and I want payback for my lost finger.”
“Shouldn’t have shoved that note under my door, then,” I growl. “You knew who you were messing with. Those boys protected me. They won’t hesitate to end you.”
“They’re the fucking cause of all of this fucked-up shit.” Nathan tilts his head. “You don’t even fucking know, do you?”
“Know what?”
“Why everyone wants that fucking diary.”
My eyes widen.
He knows about the diary?
And who is “everyone”?
Kai laughs. “What’s the point in telling her? She won’t give it to us.”
“Give you what? The diary?” I scoff. “Over my dead fucking body.”
Kai crosses his arms. “See? Told you.”
“Why the fuck do you want it anyway?” I ask.
Kai dangles a piece of singed paper in his hands. A paper I recognize all too well because it’s the same color as the pages in my sister’s diary. “So we can burn all of it.”
They burned my sister’s room … for a single page of the diary?
Anger seeps into my bones, causing me to lash out. And I charge at both of them with my knife. “Give me that fucking page!” I scream, slicing into the air with my knife because both of them keep dodging my slashes.
“Whoa, look at this.” Nathan grabs my wrist and stops me in midair. “So much fucking violence from such a small girl.”
“Let go of me!” I squeal.
“No, I don’t think I will,” Nathan says. “You deserve pain after what you and your buddies did to us.”
“I didn’t do shit!” I scream. “Where did you fucking get that page?”
“Oh, this?” Kai dangles it around like a carrot. “Found it underneath her bed just minutes before you crawled in through the window.”
“Give it to me,” I snarl. “It doesn’t belong to you.”
“No, but you know what did belong to me?” He steps closer until he’s right up in my face. “My fucking eyes. And you took one of them away from me.”
“You have your dead buddy to thank for that,” I retort. “He provoked Dylan by speaking about my sister.”
Nathan twists my arm, and Kai grabs my throat. “Don’t you fucking see it? All of this fucking violence points back to you and your fucking sister. You don’t even know what the fuck you’re messing with.”
“Then fucking tell me,” I reply.
Nathan snorts. “You think we can? We’d be killed before we could tell even one fucking soul.”
I frown. Killed? By who?
Kai’s fingers dig into my skin. “Enough. No need to tell her anything she doesn’t need to know.”
Nathan leans in too, whispering into my ear. “Should’ve taken my warning to heart, Penelope. Now you’ll follow in your sister’s footsteps.”
That’s fucking it.
I kick Nathan in the balls and shove my head back so hard it lands right into Kai’s nose, making him bleed.
“Fuck!” he groans as he grabs his nose while Nathan crumples with pain.
Not one second do I wait before I slice behind me. Right through the hem of Kai’s shirt, I jam the knife straight into his belly.
“Oompf …” He sinks to the floor as I pull back my knife.
Nathan charges at me with his fist, but I narrowly avoid it and jump him instead. I wrap my arm around his neck, holding the knife right at his throat.
“Don’t fucking move,” I hiss.
He swallows against the blade. “You’re going to regret this, Pen. You don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into.”
“I doubt it,” I scoff, and I force him to turn around and face Kai. “Give me the fucking page, Kai. Or I swear to God, I’ll kill him right in front of you.”
His eyes burn with fire. I know how much they care about their fucking buddies. The houses are ride or die with their own. And there’s nothing they won’t do to save them.
Kai struggles to breathe as he pushes the burnt paper my way. “Fine. You wanna die?” he gurgles. “Go ahead.”
Die? What the fuck is he talking about?
Kai’s eyes slowly begin to roll into the back of his head. “I can’t breathe …”
“Penelope,” Nathan rasps. “Let me go.”
“Then choose. Follow me, or save your fucking buddy,” I growl, and I push him forward, then grasp the paper off the floor.
Nathan goes to his knees in front of Kai as I run to the door. Right before I close it, he turns to look at me. “Burn it and run.” I don’t know why it doesn’t just feel like a threat, but a warning. “Do you hear me?” he growls as I shut the door and bolt through the hallway to get away from them. “It’ll destroy you!”
Felix
In the dark, I lie awake. Always waiting. Always watching.
My bed is clammy. Cold and hot at the same time. Sweat rolls down my back.
The door opens.
I close my eyes and hide under the blanket.
I can’t ever sleep.
Footsteps patter into the room, and my heart begins to quake.
It’s coming.
Again and again.
Just like it does every night since my last birthday.
But I don’t want it to.
All I want is to call out.
Leave me alone. Leave me alone.
And scream.
In the middle of the night, I sit up straight in the bed, drenched in sweat.
But without the warmth to keep me comfortable.
It takes me a moment to gather my bearings as I blink rapidly.
Did I fall asleep?
That never happens, not in a million fucking years.
Not without the drugs or the alcohol.
But her scent …
I turn to look.
Penelope.
She’s gone.
Frantically, I throw the blankets off and look around the room. “Penelope?”
No response.
I run to the bathroom and check there, but she’s nowhere to be found.
Fuck.
She’s gone.
I storm out of the room and head straight for Dylan’s room. She has to be there. He wanted to sleep with her so fucking badly, I just know he tore her straight from my bed.
I’m seething as I slam open his door, inviting myself into his room. “Where is she?”
Dylan’s snoring half naked on his bed, and he jolts up. “Huh, what? What are you talking about?”
I throw his blanket off him to catch him in the act, but no one is in there with him.
What the …?
“Where is Penelope?” I growl.
He frowns as he leans up. “Jesus, Felix. I thought she was with you.”
“She’s gone,” I say, looking through his room, tearing it all apart.
“She’s not here,” Dylan says.
I open the bathroom door, but she’s not there either. “Then where the fuck is she?”
“I don’t fucking know, okay? Stop destroying my room.”
“What’s this fucking noise?”
I look up. Alistair’s standing in the doorway with his arms folded, casually yawning.
“Penelope is gone,” I tell him.
He frowns. “Huh? But she said she’d go back to your room.”
My pupils dilate, and I lunge at him, grasping him by the shirt. “You took her from me?”
“No. She came to me on her own,” he replies, grasping my hands. “Release me.”
“Where is she?”
“She didn’t want to sleep, but I told her to go back to your room. I don’t know where she went after,” he says. “She seemed shocked by the diary, though.”
“What?” I frown. None of this makes sense.
“Apparently, a page is missing,” Ali says.
My grip on his shirt loosens, and he tears away, patting himself down.
Why would she leave the fucking building when she knows those Phantom fuckers are out there?
Unless …
“Eve’s old room.” I shove past him, heading out the door.
Fuck. I should’ve known that diary contained something important. It just wasn’t in the fucking book anymore, but lingering in her old room.
Like a secret meant to stay buried.
Or found … by a particular someone.
“What? Why would she go there?” Dylan shouts, following me through the hallways to the stairs. “The whole place burned down.”
“That’s where Eve kept the diary. She’s looking for that missing page.”
I grab a pair of clean pants from the stack near the laundry room along with some spare shoes and put them on before I head out the door.
I have to find her.
I bolt out onto the street and go straight for the sorority house, the scent of burning ashes penetrating my nostrils as I get close. The doors have been taped off and sealed shut, but I know she’s in there.
I go to the back where I find a ladder that’s down.
Bingo.
I jump up and climb to the top, where a window at the far end of the balcony has been pushed open, the glass shattered. I walk toward it, but when I look inside, no one’s there, and the door has been left wide open.
The floor is tinged in blood.
Someone was here.
Fuck. I missed her.
I race back down the stairs and rush back to the frat house. Instead of Dylan’s car, I put on my helmet, grab my motorcycle from the garage, and race off the property. She has to be on the school grounds somewhere. There’s no way she got away that quickly.
I drive around the campus, searching for her, ignoring anyone who calls me out for driving on my motorcycle this late at night. But I don’t fucking care who wakes up from the noise. I need to fucking find Penelope.
Where is she, goddammit?
I cross the campus all the way to the forest. Near the cliff, I spot a small glimmering cell phone shining in the dark.
Penelope.
I race toward The Edge and come to a stop, then hop off my motorcycle.
She’s sitting at the very ledge of the cliff, her feet dangling into the air.
Fuck.
I pull out my phone and text Ali and Dylan the location.
“Penelope …” I tear off my helmet and put it on the seat. “What are you doing here? Why did you run off in the middle of the fucking night?”
She glances at me over her shoulder, but her solemn eyes bring a chill to my spine.
“Why didn’t you fucking tell me the truth?” she rasps, her voice laced with anger and bitterness.
I frown as I step closer, confused. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I went to my sister’s room to find remnants of her diary that she tore out.” She holds up a piece of paper with Eve’s handwriting on it, written in the same style as the entire diary. “You broke up with her.”
