Chapter 1

Two Months Earlier

Rain glided down the car windows, teardrops zigzagging in a frantic, senseless pattern I identified with a little too closely. I'd been frantic all morning, my anxiety at a hundred percent, and it had only grown as we'd driven two hundred miles from Harrogate to a Scottish village whose name I'd only learned last week when the acceptance letter dropped through my letterbox.

I felt sick by the time we drove onto the ferry and sailed from Portpatrick to another village so tiny even a google search didn't bring up results: Ford's End, home of the prestigious Ford School of Medicine—our end destination. It was an island halfway between Scotland and Ireland and every bit as grey, dismal, and wet as I'd expected. You'd think the university being as prominent—and wealthy—as it was, it'd have constructed a bridge so we didn't have to travel by ferry. Apparently not.

I sighed, watching the downpour, my stomach winding tighter. Weren't rainstorms supposed to be bad omens? Every horrific event in every book I'd read seemed to begin with a rainstorm. At least it wasn't a thunderstorm. In gothic books, thunder and lightning meant a dark stranger would appear at your window, or you'd hear a mysterious tapping at your bedroom door. And then get haunted, turned into a vampire, or murdered. Or all three rolled into one delightful package.

"I'm getting out," Honey, my eternally optimistic best friend said, her blue eyes wide with excitement and a near-permanent smile curving her cheeks. "I want to explore."

I gave her a strange look, making sure she saw me look from her, to the rain outside, then to her, and back to the rain.

"Don't wander too far. We should be close to Ford's End," my dad, Orwell Wallison, warned from the driver's seat. He had one hand on the steering wheel while another adjusted the gaudy feathered hat he insisted on wearing because it added an air of prestige.

"Do take an umbrella if you're getting out, Honey," my mum, Clarissa, said, turning in her seat to give my friend a warm look. Mum's name was one everyone in the medical field would recognise. Hell, she wrote one of the books on our syllabus. She was thrilled I was going to Ford, where she herself studied medicine, but less pleased I was getting a medical degree to become a vet. "And consider doing a little rain dance to keep the gods happy."

I could have pointed out rain dances were to summon rain but I just tucked a smile between my cheeeks and watched Mum fondly. Both she and Dad had been raised in conservative, rich families, and when they met in their late twenties they entered a delayed rebellious phase where they both adopted a hippie lifestyle. It had lasted just long enough for them to have me and my brothers before Dad cut his long hair and moved on from the bohemian lifestyle. Mum very much had not moved on.

"Sure, Mrs. W," Honey said with a double thumbs up. Knowing Honey, she might actually dance in the rain just to avoid letting Mum down. We joked we were sisters separated at birth, with the same love of making people happy, the same fear of rejection and failure—but she was the extrovert version to my introvert.

Honey might not have been Mum and Dad's biological child, but we'd all grown up together—me, Honey, and Byron, my as-yet-silent best friend who stared gloomily out the window beside me—and they were every bit their children as me, Virgil, and Zoltan.1

"I'm getting out, too," I said impulsively when Honey cracked the door open, rain driving its way across the leather seats onto the dark-wash jeans I'd worn with a soft cream jumper. Comfort clothes, because today was going to be a nightmare of anxious proportions. I needed fresh air, needed to walk, to do something to burn off my nerves. Mum opened her mouth, but I smiled knowingly and said, "I've got an umbrella in my bag."

I also had pepper spray and a rape alarm, because I'd read far too many horror stories that took place at college or university, and just because Ford was full of medical students whose workload could only be described as insanity, that didn't mean they wouldn't find time for hobbies. Some people took up cardmaking, some people hit the gym, others were serial rapists in their spare time.

Mum called me disillusioned, her cynical sunshine. I couldn't fathomwhy.

"We're gonna be fine, Cat," Honey said brightly, slinging her arm around my shoulders when I stepped onto the unsteady ground of the ferry and shut the door behind me. Byron wasn't budging; he rested his chin on his fist and stared at the frothing sea. He was supposed to be flown into Ford's End by helicopter, but he'd shown up at our house in the middle of the night with his bags packed and sadness in his eyes. He'd argued with his parents again. Dicks. Honey and I had tried everything to get him to talk for the five hours we'd been in the car, but his reticence was here to stay.

I'd win him around, though. I just had to find some popcorn on this island.2

"Define fine," I murmured, giving Honey a sideways glance as she wrangled me around the car and towards the railing. There were five other cars making the crossing, full of medical students or Ford staff. A broad-shouldered blonde guy leant against the railing a few paces away, staring into the churning sea. His clothing screamed I have more money than God, but who didn't? There were no scholarships to Ford, and God forbid anyone's family be struggling for money behind closed doors. If the students found out, they'd be ripped apart.

Honey squeezed me closer, her cerulean eyes glowing with excitement. "We're gonna nail school, get the highest grades in all our classes, have a butterfly-worthy social life on the weekends, and graduate in three years as total medical badasses."

I couldn't hold back a snort, a smile curving my lips even as rain sluiced down my long brown hair, the frizz it summoned out of control. "Butterfly-worthy?"

"Butterfly-worthy," Honey confirmed fiercely, her face splitting in a beaming grin when the fog on the sea parted, for just a second, to expose the island we were sailing towards—towering and rocky, with a sprawling village that followed the curve of its roads, a dense woods that hugged the edge of the island and swept up to the top where several bigger buildings clustered, a spire currently attempting to puncture a heavy grey cloud. "We're in our social pupae stage right now, but by the time we graduate, we're going to be beautiful social butterflies."

"I'm going to take pupae as a compliment and not punch you in the tit," I said sweetly.

"Hey, pupae is a compliment. Have you ever seen them? Wriggly little cuties."

I wrinkled my nose. Nope. Definitely not. "I feel like we're about to get shipwrecked on the Island of Dr. Moreau."

"Ooh, that's appropriate," said Honey, who'd never read the book where the mad doctor cut apart animals and humans to make twisted mutants. She threw me a wink. "Maybe this doctor will be one of our professors."

"Looking at the place," I drawled as the fog swallowed the view again, "I would not be surprised."

Now we'd foundsolid ground, the island was growing on me and the adventure of it all was starting to hit, making my stomach flutter with giddiness. The nerves were still there, but my curiosity took over when we landed on a jetty at the base of Ford's End and drove onto a beach road ringed with heavy, dark green trees. I peered out the window at the woodland we passed, Dad's car taking a small, winding road through the village to the top of the island, where Ford School of Medicine hulked at the top.

Byron hovered by my side as I climbed out and surveyed the school grounds.

It still gave me haunted island where we're going to be vivisected energy, but there was something a little Indiana Jonesy about it with the trees around us, like we'd travel into the woods and find a secret cavern with a priceless golden statue.

Ford was split into seven different buildings, all arranged in a rectangle around a park that boasted not one but two fountains for reasons that weren't quite apparent at first glance. Benches and old oak trees were dotted around the park, and there were already people sitting on them, presumably second and third years. Topiaries had been carved to resemble Ford's sea serpent mascot, the newest thing about this place—everything else had a history and weight to it.

"She certainly didn't waste any time," Byron said with his first smile of the day, his blue eyes warm as he watched Honey where she stood off to the side, flirting with the broad-shouldered blonde guy from the ferry.

"We're social pupae-ing," I told him, and patted his arm when horror crossed his tanned face, his understanding far quicker than mine had been. "We're going to evolve into beautiful social butterflies—yes, you too," I insisted when he began to object. "We'll be talking to people, going to parties, making friends—you should make your peace with it now," I told him sympathetically.

"Good god," he breathed, only half joking.

I snorted, bumping my shoulder into his. "We'll get through it. Introverts unite." I held up my fist and he bumped his against it.

"Safety in numbers, I like the way you think, Cat. What are we waiting here for anyway?"

Dad appeared out of nowhere and slung his arms around both our shoulders. "Patience, children. Someone's coming to take your bags from the car and show you to your new digs. Did I use that correctly? Tannie taught me it."

"Flawless usage of the word digs, Dad," I assured him, excitement and curiosity beating my nerves even deeper into submission as I smiled. Dad always had a way of making the worst problems feel like nothing to worry about, and I needed that comfort right now. Because looking at the historic grey buildings around me, their windows watchful and contents unknowable, the largest building spearing the sky with its spire, the university sprawling and wide… I was a little daunted.

"Did I slay the house down boots?" Dad asked, ultra seriously.

"You slayed, Dad," I agreed, and wondered if he'd continue to watch RuPaul's Drag Race now I'd left home and Zoltan—Tannie—had returned to his own uni.

Byron suppressed a smile despite his grumpy mood, but then his attention snagged on something in the distance. He assaulted my arm with rapid taps. "Oh my God, it's Lurch from the Addams Family."

"Byron, don't be unkind," Dad chided, and then choked on a laugh at the same time my eyes flew wide. Shit, By was right—it really did look like Lurch. Walking out of the massive double doors of the biggest building was a man who had to be nearing seven feet tall, with papery-white skin, a square face, and massive shoulders that made the blonde guy Honey was flirting with look like a stick drawing. He wore a black coat almost to the floor and a blocky hat, like he'd stepped out of a Victorian novel.

"Staff and students stay in different buildings, right?" I asked, probably being unkind but unable to shake the prickle of unease that formed behind my shoulder blades.

"He's just a very tall man," Dad said, shaking his head and squeezing my shoulder. "No need to be frightened. Besides, the bigger a man, the more luggage he can carry. Remember that when you're shopping for husbands, Cat."

I rolled my eyes but despite the hulking giant making his way across the park towards us, I couldn't keep a smile off my face. "I'm here to study, Dad, not to find a husband."

He wasn't deterred. "Good place to find husbands, a medical school."

"Mum found you at a charity gala," I drawled, giving him a snarky look.

"And Honey's mum found Godfrey at Cambridge," he pointed out.

I smiled, remembering the stories Honey's parents told, of her heir to a Fortune 500 company father getting the shock of his life when the wild child he'd fallen in love with at college went on to become a vicar.

"Chances of me attracting a billionaire are dismally low, so don't get your hopes up," I drawled. They tended to go for glamorous women with flawless blonde hair, tanned skin, and petite bodies to die for. Not tall, almost-too-curvy girls with dull brunette hair, lips bitten red, glasses, a permanent wince, and fingers that wouldn't stop spinning a ring around and around and around my finger.3

We fell silent when the hulking man reached us, his shadow cast far.

"Where are your bags?" he asked in a deep voice like a rockslide. Chills went down my arms, but I kept in mind what Dad had said. He's just a tall man, nothing to be afraid of.

"Over here in the car," Dad replied, overly friendly to make up for Byron and I not quite managing to avoid staring at the man. "Orwell Wallison, nice to meet you, old boy."

"Doyle," the massive man replied in a grunt, following Dad back to the car.

"He's cheerful," Byron remarked quietly, leaning his shoulder into mine. "Chances of him murdering us in our sleep?"

"High," I murmured. "Oh, look who's deigned to grace us with her presence again."

Honey stuck her tongue out at us, jogging back to our side. "Don't be sulky. I only left you for ten minutes."

Byron slid a canny look at her. "Did you get his number, at least?"

Honey wiggled her phone at him, her face lighting up. "Of course I did. What kinda girl do you take me for?"

"A chatty one."

She reached across to poke his shoulder.

Mum appeared out of nowhere, making us all jump.

"Jesus," Byron hissed, earning another poke from the vicar's daughter. "I didn't know you could teleport, Mrs. W."

Mum smiled sneakily, wind batting her dark hair around her face. "There's a lot you kids don't know about me. I could be a secret superhero. Dr. Strange eat your heart out." She touched my shoulder. "Ready to go inside?"

I sucked in a slow breath and nodded, trying to hold onto my curiosity when nerves spiked. The faster I went into my new room, the faster I could get the lay of the land, and the less scary it would be. The unknown was terrifying; I'd learned a long time ago that not knowing was what scared me. Once I'd been to a place, met a person, accomplished a task—whatever gave my anxiety power—it lost its control over me.

I turned my ring around and around my finger.

I'd been terrified of going to high school, but after a few weeks it was as ordinary as primary school. This would be no different. Even if it was bigger. On an island in the middle of the Irish Sea. Completely isolated. With a dozen times more pressure and families rooted in old money and new technology. Sure. No different.

I glanced down at my ring, a spiky gold crown encircling it to remind me of my inner bad bitch, and that I could rule anything like a queen, even my own panic. Tannie's words, not mine.

You're not anxious, you're a queen and a bad bitch.

"I'm ready," I lied, and followed Mum, Dad, Honey, Byron, and Lurch—sorry, Doyle—into a three-storey grey building to our right.

The back of my neck tingled, and I could have sworn someone was watching us, but when I glanced back to the park no one was looking our way.

I shook my head and let the door fall shut behind me.