Page 39 of Endless Anger (Monsters Within #1)

LUCY

Flipping the bathroom door lock, I slam my back into the solid surface, slap my hand over my mouth, and let out a silent scream.

What the fuck did I just do?

My legs are still tingling, partly from my sprint to the Obeliskos but mostly from the aftershocks of the best orgasm I’ve ever given myself.

Well, sort of myself.

Asher barely even had to touch me. I was on the edge from waking up with my hand in his pants, and the rasp in his deep voice paired with having his half-naked body so close and so warm proved to be a dangerous cocktail.

Needless to say, that won’t be happening again.

Slinking away from the door, I move to the sinks across from me, splashing cold water on my face. My heartbeat hasn’t slowed down at all since I fled Asher’s dorm, and I’m a little afraid it never will.

He came just from watching me. I didn’t know it could happen so easily; you hear about men lacking stamina in bed, but they always talk about it in such a negative light.

No one tells you what to do if you find his lack of control more arousing .

If I’d spent just a few more minutes in there, I’m positive we’d have gone further into the abyss of regret.

That’s why I couldn’t stay. My judgment was clouded, and I’m nowhere near ready to forgive him for ditching me. Especially when he doesn’t seem the least bit sorry.

Not to mention the weird things that have occurred since his appearance on campus. I still don’t want to believe he had anything to do with the grisly murders, but it’s hard to ignore the timing.

Knots sprout in my stomach at the thought of letting a killer touch me like that. Asher’s violent, but cold-blooded homicide? If he cares about me as much as he claims, I can’t imagine him doing it.

Which means the real killers are someone else, and I have no leads.

When I finally leave the restroom, I take my backpack and set up at a corner table on the thirteenth floor, prying open my laptop. My dorm room is inaccessible, but the campus police at least threw together a few bags with my shit, which I’ve been storing in an unused custodial closet.

Aurora thinks Dean Bauer put me up in another dorm, especially since that’s what I told my parents to keep them from visiting a second time. Not because I don’t appreciate their intervention but because I took the dean’s threat very seriously.

I’m on thin ice here. It’s best if I just keep my head low and try to graduate with my life intact and as much dignity as possible.

So what if the thought of death—the image of it, right before my eyes—keeps me up at night? It’s not really that different from the stress of school or my sadness keeping me awake instead.

At least every time I think about Celeste or that unidentified corpse, I feel like the reason is legitimate.

I start to work on my midterm project for Politics of Conservation, even though it’s not due for a while, but my mind wanders, and so does my cursor.

Professor Julie Ouellette is one of the founding family members, though currently the only surviving one of her house, and the instructor of this class .

The Delphic Pages posted a thread a few years back about how Julie’s dad, a renowned poet laureate, snapped when she was a kid, killing his wife and both his parents, and stuffing the bodies beneath the floorboards of the campus observatory’s main deck.

“Because where else would the heir to a literary empire hide a body?” Pythia had quipped.

I wind up on her faculty page on Avernia’s website, noting the decrease in course load versus previous semesters.

As a Curator sponsor, Professor Ouellette typically has a full schedule, yet the conservation class is the only thing listed outside of mock trial and Fury Hill Historical Society meetings.

In contrast, Professor Dupont—Sutton? I’m not going to call him that—has a packed calendar between theater, humanities, Visio Aternae projects, and unspecified commitments. He’s in high demand, it seems, although one could argue his schedule feels a little pointedly full.

Almost as if he’s trying to make sure his whereabouts are never in question.

Not that I have much reason to suspect him of anything, other than his being a founding family member. Those people are too entrenched in the tainted fabric of this school for me to believe they’re all innocent though.

Finally, I end up on Quincy Anderson’s faculty page; as the new head of the classics department, she only has a couple of intro-level courses listed, plus the admissions page for the Daughters of Persephone student organization.

There are pictures of her with the initiates, posing behind the Lyceum and Obeliskos where they’re renovating the campus gardens. She’s smiling in all of them, her calm aura visible even through a lens.

When we were young, I looked up to her most. She was a lot like her dad: the silent but confident type, driven and motivated to carve out the life she wanted for herself.

At one time, I attributed that assurance and determination to academics. That was part of the reason I thought coming here would be life-changing—because she had initially made it seem that way .

Turns out some people are just born with these abilities. The skills can be taught, but application is a whole other ball game.

One I’ve never been very good at playing.

It’s no secret that Quincy wound up despising her time as an undergrad; anytime she came home to Aplana, she looked like she’d seen a ghost, her pale skin somehow moon white, her brown eyes sunken and guarded.

She’d never talk about it with anyone outside her family though.

Not even me, who spent half my life harboring a crush on the entire Anderson family, though I’d never admitted it to anyone out loud, because Asher wouldn’t have liked sharing the attention.

Or me finding his family attractive, I’m sure, since he didn’t take it well when I kissed him back then either.

I glance at the office hours listed on Quincy’s page, wondering why she’s back, working under the same dean she claimed to abhor. What could have possibly changed?

Did she come here knowing her brother would be enrolling? To protect him, since the entirety of campus has some strange love-hate relationship with their family?

A photo in the bottom right of the faculty gallery makes me do a double take; I lean in, squinting at the computer screen, trying to ignore the massive knot that materializes in my throat.

Quincy, standing in the quad before the statue of Demeter. It’s an older photo and sort of grainy, probably from when she was a student. She’s next to a pretty brunette I don’t recognize, her dark gaze glued to the other girl’s face, her hands wrapped around a small gold talisman.

So small, I almost don’t notice its shape until I see the points. The tail curling around her pinkie.

A three-headed beast.

“So how much do you need before the shelter accepts a donation?”

I glance at the glass mason jar on my tabletop, then at Tag Holland, the only student to pass through my line the entire hour I’ve been set up.

A part of me wants to lie and create some sob story, but I’m raising money for the Fury Hill Animal Shelter, which is at capacity and close to picking a euthanasia date to cut down costs and free up space.

If that doesn’t appeal to someone without me needing to throw in a whole fucking show, I don’t know what else I could even do.

Personally, the thought of an open-intake shelter makes me sick to my stomach.

I understand why they exist, but having grown up with my mom’s shelters in Aplana, which have a strict no-kill policy, it’s hard for me to fathom.

Though I suppose the latter is easier to pull off when you have the disposable funds to hire adequate staff and maintain resources.

It’s not as if the government gives a single shit about these animals.

Or its people either. To them, and even Avernia alike, if you can’t directly contribute to society in a way that benefits those in power, you don’t deserve rights or equity.

Which is utter bullshit, but I digress. The government and higher education being disasters is nothing new.

Still, this is why I try to sponsor this high-kill shelter each fall during Avernia’s big Philanthropy Week, which we do in lieu of homecoming.

Frankly, despite everything else, Avernia College’s decentering of sports is still one of its main appeals for me. That and the fact that credits are nontransferable are the reasons I haven’t left.

Plus, I’d rather shoot myself in the face than let Dean Bauer think he’d gotten to me.

Even if I can feel my spirit draining with each passing day the campus murders go overlooked, as if Celeste and Frances Sweetgrass—the Curator found in my room—never existed in the first place.

It’s fucking creepy, but it is what it is, I suppose. If they won’t make a fuss about it, neither will I.

What’s the point when no one would believe me anyway?

“Technically, I can make a donation of any size. The shelter won’t say no ,” I tell Tag, watching him run a hand beneath his black wolf cut, pulling strands of hair out of the collar of his shirt.

He keeps his dark eyes on mine, listening intently.

“But I don’t feel good about throwing a hundred or so bucks their way and calling it a day, you know?

That’ll buy one or two bags of dog food and not much else.

Definitely not the robust support they need at this point. ”

Tag’s face falls. “All I’ve got is a fifty…” He reaches into his back pocket, sliding the bill from his wallet, and stuffs it into the jar. “There. Maybe once people see the first donation, they’ll flock over to you and do more.”

Doubtful. “Thanks, Tag. I appreciate it.”