His lips twitched with the faintest hint of a grimace, but he stepped back to let me in and closed the door behind me. As I walked over to his desk, I scanned the room as quickly but thoroughly as I could, just in case I’d missed something here the last time. If anyone had continuous access to that locked basement area, I had to think it’d be the dean.
My gaze settled on an aged wooden box at the corner of his desk. It was so small I hadn’t paid much attention to it during my furtive nighttime search—it obviously didn’t hold any kind of records. But from the lines and joints that marked its surface, it appeared to be a puzzle box, the kind you could only open with the right combination of movements and pressure points. The kind of place you might hide something small but important if you’d rather not keep it on your person?
Or just a diversion that had nothing to do with the school’s main mysteries?
I couldn’t get away with poking at it right now. I sank into the chair across from the desk and waited while the dean took his spot on the other side. He didn’t bother to sit down. Did he think he was going to intimidate me like that? I leaned back in the chair, shifting to make myself more comfortable.
“One of my roommates is sick,” I said. “She’s too weak to even get out of bed. She’s officially enrolled and all that. I haven’t seen any of the staff doing anything to help her.”
Wainhouse showed no sign of surprise. “I assure you that Miss Savas’s condition is being monitored, and we’ll attend to her as is necessary.”
Such warmth and compassion. I eyed him. “I’ve gotten the impression all of you don’t necessarily mind when the students aren’t feeling well. I mean, hell, you have a class that’s basically for poisoning us and one for shooting arrows at each other. Is this a kind of extended punishment because she didn’t perform exactly to a professor’s liking?”
“We prefer not to discuss any student’s status at the school with their peers for the sake of privacy,” the dean said. “If Miss Savas wishes to share her personal situation with you, I’d imagine she’s capable of doing that.”
“Not if she thinks she’ll get in even more trouble.” I waved my hand toward the front of the school and the gate beyond it. “She can’t even get to classes anymore. Why don’t you let her just go home?”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible.”
I pushed forward in my seat. “Why not? What’s the point of this place, anyway? Do you just get off on making people miserable? What have any of them done to deserve this?”
Dean Wainhouse’s face stayed impassive. “As I said, we don’t discuss students’ personal situations. As to the running of the college, that’s within our sole discretion. We are quite satisfied with the results so far. Is that all you had to complain about?”
He asked the last question as if I’d been whining like a petulant child instead of raising major concerns about my classmates’ well-being. I should have known this wouldn’t get me anywhere.
I shoved back the chair and stood up. Anger burned in the back of my throat, but I couldn’t see any point in letting that out either. What could I say to him? He didn’t care what I thought of him or his school. I couldn’t even claim that assholes like him would get what they deserved in the end, because I’d seen plenty of assholes get off scot-free.
I didn’t manage to keep my mouth completely shut, though. “Everyone has a weak spot.”
A glimmer of a smile crossed the dean’s lips. “And that applies to you as much as it does anyone. Have a good day, Miss Corbyn.”
That was a threat if I’d ever heard one. I walked out fighting a shiver, just as Jenson came sauntering down the hall toward me.
He glanced at me and then the office I’d emerged from, and his mouth tightened at a crooked angle. “Did you figure you’d get anything useful out of him?”
His tone wasn’t as mocking as it’d often been before. I hesitated, weighing my response. Something had shifted in the tension between us over the last few days. The last time I’d talked to him, after deciding I wasn’t going to take anything he said seriously, he’d responded to my calm retorts with an attitude that had started to feel more playful than accusing.
And then he’d taken off as if I’d slapped him in the face. It’d been pretty weird all around, really, but it suggested there was more going on behind those bright blue eyes than he’d shown earlier.
It was becoming pretty clear there was more going on with everyone in this school than I could assume from initial impressions.
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” I said warily. “Leave no stone unturned. And whatever other clichés apply.”
The corners of his eyes crinkled with momentary amusement that I didn’t think I was imagining. It disappeared a moment later with a shadow that crossed his face.
“When are you going to learn to let it go?” he said, his voice so gentle that I blinked at him, half expecting to realize I was talking to someone else altogether.
“Let what go?” I said. “People are getting hurt. I still don’t know what happened to my brother. I know it pisses you off that I’m here, but I can’t just walk away from that.”
“I— That wasn’t—” He made a strangled sound, as if I was somehow being unreasonable. “Just look at how things have gone so far. Think about what they’ve already put you through. Do you really think it can’t get worse?”
“Of course not,” I said with rising irritation. “I’m taking that chance. Which is up to me, by the way.”
“And I’m so sure you’re going to save us all. You’re never going to find him. He’s gone. Why do you think I keep telling you that you should go too?”
“Because you’re a jerk who doesn’t know how to keep his opinions to himself?” I retorted, taking a step closer to him. “Where’s Cade gone? If you know what happened to him, why don’t you tell me?”
Jenson’s expression wavered and then hardened. “I just know he’s gone,” he said. “Why can’t you listen for once?”
“I might when you give me a good reason to.” I spun around and stalked toward the front door. I still had another ramble through the woods to make, and at least I had a small hope of getting some kind of useful answer there.
Maybe it was Delta’s soft but ragged breaths in the bed next to mine, or maybe it was my frustration that I still felt so far away from Cade after all the time I’d spent here—including another fruitless wander through the woods—but the college’s atmosphere was especially eerie that night. In the darkness, a burst of sobs carried through the wall from the room adjacent to ours. The roof creaked. A thump sounded outside, close enough that it might have been just beneath our window. The moaning howl rose up, mournful and ghastly as ever.
I pulled my blanket over my head like Delta had, but the sounds trickled in anyway. Every exhalation turned the air around me uncomfortably humid.
At least an hour must have passed without me getting any closer to sleep when someone in the room let out a choked sound.
At first, peering through the darkness, I couldn’t make out which of the beds it’d come from. A breath hissed through gritted teeth, and then Violet sat up, shoving off her covers. She slipped across the room and out the door, favoring her right leg with a more prominent limp than I’d seen before.