Chapter 10

CHAPTER TEN

CAT

" S ometimes it's easier to speak to someone you're not close to," Caroline Beaumont the Second said with sympathy that was surprisingly genuine, as opposed to the practised empathy of the three therapists I'd gone through after what happened three years ago.

Not that anyone knew what had happened. Just that I'd had a mental breakdown. School pressure and exam stress, two decided. One said it was the scrutiny of being part of a renowned family constantly in the press, and they weren't exactly wrong. Being in the press, having my family name splashed over glossy magazines, was the reason I was targeted and blackmailed.

"I have my best friend," I assured Caroline, walking slowly down the path to Ford. "Honey and I are as close as sisters, and my family have been amazing, too." A lie. I hadn't told them what had happened, and clearly neither had Byron's family. If they even knew at all. Would they come to collect his body when Nightmare's barricade finally fell? If it ever fell. I didn't want my parents to worry. I was scared enough for all of us.

"That's good," Caroline murmured approvingly. "You need all your family and friends at a time like this."

People kept saying that. At a time like this. As if they were too afraid to say what had really happened. I couldn't do that, put a filter between me and what happened the night he died. I remembered it in such sharp detail that ripples of it played through my head constantly. Even now, walking down the winding road towards Ford, I saw Miz's horrible, frozen expression, his immobile body. Saw the robotic way he moved when he lunged at Byron and drove the knife into his gut.

I swallowed and shook my head hard, focusing on the snowy road. "I'm doing okay," I lied. "All things considered."

I wanted to blurt out everything that had happened, wanted to beg and scream for help, but I choked back the words. I wasn't doing okay. My brother was missing and kidnapped. My best friend was dead. My other best friend was dating someone who'd made it their mission to terrorise me. The men I loved couldn't stand to even answer my calls. Therapy would have been nice right about now. Fuck Nightmare for muzzling me—with both threats and magic.

"Well, if you change your mind and want to talk through what happened, some people find it healing to revisit an experience."

What happened. Officially, I'd been looking for Byron when he never showed to the Christmas gala, and I used the Find My Friends function on my phone, followed it across the moors, and found my best friend murdered. Any accusation that might have been placed on me was wiped out by the fact I was found screaming, clutching Byron's body in my lap. I barely remembered it—the sudden rush of figures and noise, the gentle hands of Professor Poppy easing Byron from my lap, guiding me to my feet and into a hug. I knew it had been long, long minutes until I stopped screaming. Maybe Caroline had even been there; maybe she saw me lose my mind to grief and that was why she was so determined to help.

Maybe she was just good at her job.

"It could help you heal, whenever you're ready. I'm in the park at the heart of campus if you want to chat. No pressure or expectation, just a casual talk if you need it."

"You're in the park?" I said, craning my neck to see her but blocked by the trees ringing the green space. "In this snow?"

"I know," Caroline laughed, "Very questionable life choices. I've been in love with snow since that scene in Beauty and The Beast where Belle wears the red fur cape."

"I watched that film last week," I said, my throat closing up when I remembered the way Honey had squashed into my bed with me while the Disney film played on my laptop, her sobs vibrating through my shoulder.

"I know it's for children, but I'm a firm believer that—"

She cut off so abruptly that I frowned. "Caroline?"

"Oh my god," she breathed, her voice faint, strained.

A chill went down my spine—apprehension or clairvoyance. I walked faster, my heart quickening when a loud crash came through the phone. Fuck, that hurt my eardrums. My nerves wound tighter. She'd dropped the phone.

Nightmare was there, I just knew it.

"Help!" someone screamed—distant but audible through the phone. It had to be Caroline, but her high, breathy voice sounded nothing like the woman I'd been talking to just seconds ago. Was she running? Her voice was quieter with every second. "There's a monster! Help!"

Ice filled my blood now. I broke into a run. What did she mean monster? Had something crawled out of the lake, like Nessie lurking in the loch? I pictured scales slick with blood, huge needle teeth as long as my forearm, eyes gleaming Dracula-red.

Wind threw a veil of snow in my face, blurring the campus to a smear of white. I held my arm in front of my eyes, gritting my teeth against the sharp slice of cold that made my coat feel as flimsy as cobwebs. I should have reached the park by now. I knew the campus was bigger than it seemed, but I'd been running for minutes. The cold expanded through my whole body until I shook, my fingers locked around the phone at my ear.

"Caroline?" I demanded, desperately trying to catch my breath when her distant screams cut off. They didn't steadily quiet, didn't fade out of reach—they ended abruptly, the silence raising hairs on the back of my neck.

I ran faster, breath sawing in and out of my lungs, and hissed when light bounced off the sheet of snow in front of me, blinding me. I had no choice but to slow, to squint at the path, refusing to fall like every heroine in a horror film.

"I'm not your victim," I whispered to Nightmare, and jumped when a cackle answered me.

I spun, a gasp in the back of my throat, goosebumps sweeping down my arms. But it wasn't Nightmare in all her horrific beauty; it was a crow perched on the conical slate roof of the library building. I exhaled a hard breath but couldn't banish the icy rime of fear. Nightmare was here; I could sense her. She was watching.

I turned from the crow and resumed running, shielding my eyes from the—

The blinding sun was smothered by dark rain clouds between one blink and the next. The snow was gone. I pulled my coat closer to myself and finally took the phone from my ear, the silence on the other end too reminiscent of my silent caller for comfort. Byron. All along, it was him terrorising her.

"Please be okay, please be okay," I breathed as I ran faster, the shapes of familiar buildings around me made menacing by the darkness cast by the clouds. I knew that was the laboratory building, but was it usually so quiet, so dark? Where were the students? There was a wrongness in the air, like the charged electricity before a storm. I couldn't get Caroline's scream out of my head.

There's a monster! Help!

I didn't like the way the sky was darkening, the first cold spots of rain landing on my face, my neck. I didn't like the silence that hung over the entire campus, like the world had stopped, like Caroline's scream hadn't been heard by a single soul. There should have been people running toward the scream, or at least away from its source. Where was the monster?

I finally hit the end of the path, rain now lashing the leaves of the trees that ringed the manicured lawn, making water dance in the two fountains. It crept under the collar of my jacket, dripped down my back until a vicious shiver wracked me.

There was no monster in the park, nothing except another raven sitting on a gnarled tree branch. It opened its beak, and I half expected Nightmare's voice to pour out of it, but it was a loud caw instead. I exhaled a breath of relief that stuttered into a horrified gasp when a dark smear on the ground caught my eye.

"Caroline?" I breathed, exploding into a run. She'd fallen across one of the winding pathways, her arms splayed at her sides. My heart fluttered with panic, fear wrapping around me like a blanket of ice. The rain drummed my shoulders as I dropped to my knees beside the counsellor, already dialling emergency services. Not 999, because Ford's End was an island apart from the UK, bound to its own laws. Instead, I went through to the small police department in the village, where the officers would rally the single ambulance run by volunteers.

"Help," I blurted when the call connected. "Someone's been attacked, she's—" I reached for her wrist to check her pulse and shrieked, scrambling backwards when I finally registered the mess of blood, pulp, and bone that had once been a woman. I should have smelled the copper in the air, should have realised the dark stain across the grass wasn't rain. The snow had been washed away around her, no footprints or hint to her attacker, but I couldn't forget her scream. Monster.

"She's in the campus at Ford," I finished after a stuttering pause. "She's hurt really badly."

A serious male voice answered me, the man sounding fifties or older. "Sending officers and an ambulance now. Is there someone nearby who can help you?"

I put the officer on speakerphone and pressed my hands to the gash in Caroline's throat. I ignored my rising dread that I was too late, and she was already gone. She'd been kind, genuine, and determined to help me. And something—man or animal or goddess—had shredded her with cuts so deep and jagged they looked like claws.

Oh god, what if they really were claw marks? She said the word monster. What if the curse had fallen, but someone was left with their monstrous Halloween form? I knew there'd been werewolves and demons, though none of the killings last month had been this gruesome.

I threw a panicked look around me, searching the park for another living soul. No students. No faculty members. Just me and the damn crow. No—there were three of them now, clustered in the trees, watching. I quickly looked away.

She's going to be fine, I assured myself. The ambulance will get here and she'll be fine.

"There's no one," I said, my throat closing up.

"Not again," I heard the officer whisper, the words low enough that I wasn't supposed to hear.

"What?" I breathed, my fear growing big enough to swallow me. I kept scanning the trees, looking for help, looking for monsters. The snow was already gone, that bit of frozen beauty driven out by relentless rain, so heavy that it slammed into the short grass and bounced back up.

"They're on their way," the officer said, as if I hadn't heard him speak. Not again. I wanted to believe he meant, not another death after the people Nightmare forced her terrors to kill last month, after Byron, but my paranoia was alive and well.

"Has someone else been attacked lately?" I demanded, my voice shrill. I pressed harder on Caroline's throat to keep the blood inside and couldn't quite ignore the fact her blood was slowing—and her entire body was shredded by claw marks and there was a place on her arm that looked like… like something had taken a bite and ripped out a chunk of her skin.

"Of course not," the officer said confidently. Too confidently. I knew a cover up when I heard one. "Ford's just had too much loss lately is all."

"Yeah," I said in a flat voice, seeing Byron jerking back with pain and resignation in his eyes, a knife buried in him, Miz's pale hand still wrapped around it.

And the worst part was I wished Misery was here. I was furious at Byron for what he did, hurt that he didn't tell me about buying his way into Ford or Nightmare's threats, and that anger only grew day by day. I should have been every bit as furious at Misery but I just—I just wanted him back.

I choked back a sob when a siren split the air.

"My partner's phoned your acting dean; she's on the way."

"Thank you," I cried, refusing to let go of the woman who tried to help me, who was one of the few kind people in this cursed place. Blood had covered my crown ring, so deep in the grooves and facets that it would be almost impossible to get it out. I knew—I'd had to clean it obsessively to get all the blood out last time. Byron's blood.

I blinked and hot tears left my face, cooled by the rain. I cast a wary glance at the crows, jumping when I saw six of them. Six was a number of magical power according to Wicca—any multiple of three was. I'd read a book about a dark, gothic lord who had six crow servants. Six because to see six crows meant death was nearby.

Fuck you, I mouthed at them. But Caroline was cut apart and surrounded by blood, and I knew even if I didn't want to admit it. She was dead.