Chapter One
Trix
“I’m looking for my brother.”
I said the words under my breath as the gate closed behind me, as if I needed to rehearse them—as if the statement hadn’t been running through my mind for the entire two days it’d taken me to get here. The wrought-iron bars clanged shut with a finality that made my nerves jump. I glanced back, half expecting to see chains and padlocks had magically sprung up to seal my way out.
The gate still looked as ridiculously foreboding as before, tall and black with imperious twists rising along the arched top, but no unexpected barriers had sprung up. I studied it a moment longer anyway. Something strange was going on here at Roseborne College, or I wouldn’t have trekked all this way to begin with. But considering how stealthily the strangeness had crept into my life, I couldn’t count on concrete proof falling into my lap within thirty seconds of arriving.
The cab I’d gotten out of had already taken off, the growl of its engine fading beyond the thick stone wall. I’d spoken to six drivers before I’d found one willing to come out this far. The college sat at the approximate intersection of No Place Much and Nowhere. I hadn’t seen another building along the increasingly sketchy road in at least half an hour.
Gray clouds clotted in the sky overhead. Damp air and a sickly sweet rose scent closed around me. A massive rosebush scaled the wall on either side, the leaves and brambles so tightly intertwined that I could only make out the stones beneath right where they met the gate, but only a smattering of deep red blooms broke the swath of green.
Whatever gardeners they had looking after this place, they were doing a crappy job. A healthy plant would have boasted ten times that many flowers at least. I’d seen more bloom on the sickly little thing I’d nursed back to health in the Monroes’ backyard than showed along the entire stretch of wall around me.
Add that to the list of this school’s crimes. It’d swallowed up my foster brother, and it abused rosebushes. For a place with “rose” in its name, that should count as two crimes in itself.
I clutched the strap of my backpack, adjusting its weight on my shoulder, and then turned my attention to the building up ahead.
The sprawling Victorian mansion loomed over the vast lawn, three stories of faded red brick and protruding gables. A turret sprouted up haphazardly on one side. It was a far cry from the squat concrete buildings where Cade and I had spent most of our school years, that was for sure.
The image trickled up of watching him make this walk almost a year ago; of sitting rigid in the back of the Monroes’ junker Oldsmobile, willing down a cry of protest, while he stepped farther and farther away from me.
And then he’d turned for one last wave with that crooked grin of his, and I’d been socked with a twisted mix of relief and guilt, as hard as if he’d punched me. It wasn’t me he wanted to leave, the gesture said. All our plans were still in place.
But only because he had no idea what I’d done.
None of that mattered if I didn’t find out what had happened to him since then. I squared my shoulders and marched up the gravel path to complete my mission.
The rose scent chased after me on the cool spring breeze. When I was about halfway across the lawn, the mansion’s main door opened, and three figures stepped out onto the porch with a creak of its boards: a guy and two girls, all of them looking to be around twenty like Cade.
One of the girls glanced my way and let out an audible sigh, as if the mere sight of me offended her somehow. It probably did. She was wearing jeans and a scoop-neck top like me, but her jeans were form-fitting and her blouse had the gleam of silk. I was all baggy on the bottom and basic cotton on the top, with a fraying tear across one of my knees. Miss Blondie might also have taken issue with my hair in its current artificial orange brilliance.
Of course, what really made the look were the black combat boots I’d spent months saving up for a few years back as my sixteenth birthday present to myself. They made exactly the right statement: Mess with me and prepare to get stomped on. I was tempted to pull out my matching leather jacket just to see how much more I could horrify her. Or maybe tug up my left sleeve and see if she liked the vine tattoo that decorated my skin from mid-forearm to bicep.
The other two students with her wore posh clothes like hers, the guy in trim slacks and a collared shirt with a starry-sky print that should have looked cheesy but somehow became cool because of the confidence in his stance. The same confidence turned his quirky looks attractive rather than just interesting. His nose had a small bump to it as if it’d been broken and never set quite right, and his square chin should have been a little much for his otherwise soft jaw, but it was hard to imagine any combination of features working better than those did.
He said something to the girls with half a smile and swiped his hand through his light cinnamon-brown hair when they twittered. As he ambled toward me, his eyes narrowed.
“Why don’t you turn around and head right back out while the getting’s good?” he said in a coolly nonchalant voice, motioning toward the gate. “You don’t really think anyone here is going to want you around, do you?”
Interestingly attractive and a total jerk. What else should I have expected at a school so exclusive no one I knew had ever heard of it before Cade’s scholarship offer had shown up in the mail?
I cocked my head and narrowed my eyes right back at him. “You don’t really think I give a shit what you want, do you?”
He shrugged, seemingly unfazed. “I’m just saying you’re wasting your time. Whatever you’re looking to get out of this place, it’s not here.”
“Somehow I’d rather not just take your word for that,” I informed him, and marched on by.
The girls murmured to each other as I passed them. I only caught the words “never learn” and nothing else. What did they even think I was here for? Was their hostility simply because I didn’t fit the typical new student vibe and that pissed them off? As if I even wanted to be here at their gothic nightmare of a school.
I tramped up the porch steps and across the creaky boards to the front door. It swung open at my tug. With a clench of my jaw, I stepped into the dim space on the other side.
The massive foyer was lit by a large, circular chandelier gleaming overhead, but the dark wood paneling that covered every wall sucked up that light. A crimson-and-gold Persian rug sprawled several feet across the polished floor to a broad staircase. On either side of its base gleamed matching suits of medieval armor, massive shields braced in front of them. The stairs split at a landing halfway up and veered off in opposite directions toward separate wings of the building.
On the first floor, arched doorways led to first-floor hallways beyond the staircase; another doorway at my right opened into a sitting room with a cluster of Victorian sofas, although no one was sitting in there right now. At my left, a closed door held a brass sign etched with the words Main Office.
The rose smell had followed me inside. Here, it was cut by a hint of something stale, like old clothes that had been shut away in an attic for decades. My nose itched with it.
I turned and rapped on the office door, figuring that was my best starting place.
A tall, almost spindly man answered my knock. He peered down at me over his hooked nose with piercing blue-gray eyes, his silver hair slicked back from his forehead as solidly smooth as if it’d been sculpted onto his head. Even his pale skin had a silver sheen to it, as if his advancing age had started to leach all the color out of him from head to toe. His dark gray suit matched perfectly.