Page 20 of Artifice

Instead, she quickly scanned her messages again to see if Tevin had any updates for her. She didn’t see any.

Tevin was hiking today, trying to mingle with more people in town to see if they might know something helpful. Maybe he hadn’t had time to do more research yet.

Olive paused when she realized where she was: the doorway she’d seen the student peering out of yesterday.

Right now, the door was closed.

Was anyone inside?

“You don’t want to be put in there,” someone said beside her.

Olive turned and saw a girl, probably fourteen, with black hair and deathly white skin staring at her.

“What is that room?” Olive asked.

“It’s the Quiet Room. That’s where students go when they need to rethink their decisions.”

“That doesn’t sound like fun.”

“It’s not.” The girl’s gaze darkened. “You have to stay in there until you learn your lesson.”

Olive sucked in a breath at the thought. “Have you ever been in there before?”

“Just once. Now I know I need to do whatever I can to not end up in there again.” The girl nodded at another door in the distance. “Sorry, but I gotta get to class before I get in trouble.”

The girl scurried away.

When she was gone, Olive glanced at the door to the Quiet Room again.

She scanned the hallway and noticed no one was in sight.

Drawing in a deep breath, she walked toward the room.

It was probably locked, she told herself. But her curiosity got the best of her.

She paused and reached for the handle.

Swallowing hard, her fingers wrapped around the cool metal.

When she twisted, the handle moved with her.

The room was unlocked.

After another moment of hesitation, Olive pushed the door open, her lungs frozen as she waited to see what was inside.

CHAPTER 11

The room was small, perhaps ten feet square, with walls painted an institutional gray.

What stopped Olive wasn’t the size or the color, but what lined those walls.

The walls were padded and had several restraint cuffs secured to metal brackets at different heights. One set hung at adult height, but the others—Olive’s stomach twisted—were positioned for someone smaller.

A teenager. Like Colin.

She stepped farther into the room, her breath catching at the dark stains on the padding in one corner. The air held the acrid scent of bleach barely masking something else—sweat and fear. A single overhead light cast harsh shadows across the floor, illuminating scratch marks near the baseboard.

“This isn’t therapy,” she whispered.