Page 91 of A University of Betrayal

Thump.

Rhinoceros

Tony Morales

My head jerked toward the stairs, where the noise had come from. My stomach tightened.

Oh, God.Was there someone here who hadn’t expected to find the owner of the house? And nowIwas here.Alone...

I was about to shout outHello,but I remembered what always happened to people like that in the movies.

But who could it be? Was Mum expecting someone? Or maybe she hadn’t heard that I was there? Had her car been outside?

It could be anything. And I idiot decided to find out.

I wasn’t comfortable at all as I climbed the carpet-covered stairs and my whole body seemed to rebel against it.

Alarm bells rang inside me as my headache returned.Oh, please…

Ever since Alarik had given me thenice-smellingtea, I had been in a strange mood. I got attacks of headaches as soon as something upsetting happened, and I wasn’t sure what that meant. But right now, it felt like the pills I’d stopped taking before the attack and vowed never to take again.

I crept on, and it occurred to me too late that I could have taken something with me so that I wouldn’t be at the mercy ofwhateverwas running through Mum’s old house. But it was too late to...

“Bay, I heard something.”

I jerked my head around and spotted Julian standing at the bottom of the stairs, his hair a mess as if he’d run here.

I gestured with my finger for him to be quiet, but he didn’t seem to want to listen to me and stormed past me, up the stairs.

I caught his scent in my nose. He smelled good, like cologne, a little woody. He hadn’t smelled like that before.

When I realized in which direction my thoughts were drifting, I shook my head and took the last steps of the stairs to hurry after Julian. He disappeared into the room where...

Crap.

“Julian, don’t.”

I hurried to catch up to him and stopped. A cool breeze blew through my hair.

As I watched Julian rush to the open floor-to-ceiling window and glance out, I noticed he was tense.

“What is it? Have you seen anyone?”

He continued to turn toward me and his look didn’t bode well.

“Someone unfamiliar was here, and it looks like he was quick enough to disappear unseen. And the smell is already gone, too.”

I looked around and the thought that someone could have been rummaging around in my mother’s secret room scared me.

How had the person got in here in the first place? Hadn’t Mum locked the door? Anyway, the front door had been...Shit.

“The person must have come in through the front door... It was open when I arrived,” I remarked, looking around the room for any changes.

The photo was back in its old place, only without the glass. Mum must have cleaned up the mess I made back then.

And there it was again, the guilt. I should never have entered that room. On the other hand, I would never have found the letter from my literature professor to my mother...

“Then either your mother has given the house key to other people who have been snooping around here, or the person knows how to break locks.”