Page 35 of Merciless Prince

“Two weeks after that, my toothbrush went missing, and it never turned up. It was so strange. I spent a whole hour looking through my bathroom the day after I noticed it wasn’t there, because I figured I probably just moved it and forgot all about it, but it was just… gone. I had to get a new one.”

“Someone stole your toothbrush?” Cori said, wrinkling her nose. “Why would anyone do that?”

“No idea,” I said with a shrug. “Anyway, I didn’t think it was worth mentioning to anyone because it was such a minor thing. I mean, it’s just a toothbrush.”

“Fair enough.”

“Then something else happened...”

I briefly ran through the story of the 3 a.m. email with the video of me sleeping and the phone call with the live stream of my dorm shot from outside.

Cori’s hand shot to her mouth. “Oh my god, Shay. Why the hell didn’t you tell me about this when it happened?”

“The dean convinced me that I made the whole thing up.”

She looked scandalized. “Are you fucking serious?”

“It made sense at the time. Remember when I used to get those nightmares in high school, and I’d wake up and see horrible things that weren’t there?”

“Yeah, when you fucked up your ankle.”

I nodded. “I thought it was just that again, so I got my doctor to give me some sleeping pills.”

“Right. The dean still sounds like a total asshole.”

“He wasn’t that bad. He increased the security presence around our building just in case, and I guess I can’t blame him for not believing me. The email and call log completely vanished. It was so strange.”

“No shit. This is crazy,” Cori muttered, shaking her head.

“There’s more.” I cleared my throat and leaned forward. “Last week, after the whole SNS thing, I went back to my apartment to take a shower. I was really upset, for obvious reasons, so I convinced myself I was just losing my mind, but… I think I saw something.”

“What?”

“When the bathroom got all steamy, I saw some words on the mirror. It said: ‘keep your mouth shut’ in huge letters. But then it was totally gone a minute later.”

Cori’s forehead wrinkled. “I don’t know if that’s possible,” she said slowly, like she was starting to worry that I might be unstable. “If you write something on a steamed-up mirror, it stays there until all the steam is gone, right? Or for a while, at least.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought too,” I said, nodding vehemently. “That’s why I thought I was losing my shit. But yesterday, I went and googled it. Turns out there’s a trick you can do. If you use a certain type of soap to write a message on a mirror, it’ll look blank until the room steams up. Then the message will be super visible. But within a minute or so, the steam on the mirror dissolves the soap, and it all drips away.”

“So then the mirror is blank and gets fully steamed up like nothing was ever there,” Cori said, nodding slowly. “Wow.”

“Yeah. So I’m not going nuts after all. This stuff is really happening to me.”

“But… why? Who the fuck would break into your apartment and do all this sick shit to you?”

I sighed and looked at the leaf-strewn ground in front of us. “Someone who wants to drive me insane and ruin my life.”

“You totally need to call the cops,” Cori said. “Do you have any idea who it might be?”

I set my lips in a tight line. “Yes. I don’t have any proof, so I doubt I can go to the police, but I’m 99% sure I know who it is. Let’s just say it’s a certain someone who’s done everything he can to worm his way into my life so that he’s always close to me, and—”

Cori cut me off again with a lifted palm. “Say less, babe. I knowexactlyhow to get the evidence you need to prove that this asshole is stalking you.”

I stared at her, taken aback. “You do?”

“Yup.” She whipped her phone out again. “I know this guy who’s basically an NSA-level hacker. I can pay him to dig up shit on anyone.”

“How do you know a guy like that?” I asked, wrinkling my forehead.