Darkness Watching (Darkworld #1) (17 page)

“Who’s he?” I said.

“According to some second years I talked to, he’s the harshest marker in the department. Never grades anyone higher than a C.”

“Wonderful,” I said. “Are you in the eleven o’clock group, too?”

“I am,” said Alex.

Sarah groaned. “You guys are lucky. Mine’s at nine in the morning.”

“Ouch,” I said.

“As fascinating as this conversation is,” said Pete. “I’m off. I have a date tonight. It involves my cock in someone’s mouth.”

“Whose, your own?” Alex inquired.

He ignored her and swaggered out of the room.

I raised my eyebrows. “Is he telling the truth?”

“I’d guess not,” said Alex. “I think his ‘date’ is with a porn video. Does every flat have at least two freaks, or did we just get lucky?”

“God knows,” I said.

David stood up. “I have to go,” he said. “I’m meeting some people from my politics seminar. I’ll see you guys later?”

He was looking at me as he spoke.

“Sure,” I said.

Alex was still muttering about Pete. “I mean, there’s good-weird, like you two―”

“Speak for yourself,” I said.

“―and there’s bad-weird. Like him. You know, the guys in the flat upstairs are nice, normal guys, and we had to get saddled with the weirdos.”

“Got your eye on someone, Alex?” said Sarah.

“No, I’m just saying!” But she couldn’t disguise the flush that spread across her face.

“Is it Rex?” I said. Rex was one of the guys from the Literature Society. He seemed nice enough, if a little too obsessed with
Lord of the Rings.
“Didn’t he ask if you wanted to come and watch a film sometime?”

“He wasn’t asking me out!” said Alex.

“Well, if you watch all three
Lord of the Rings
films, it’d be a pretty long date!” I laughed.

“Speaking of dates, what about you and David?” she said.

I should have seen that one coming.

“We’re just
friends,”
I said.

“He’s always looking at you.” Alex grinned at Sarah, like it was a private joke.

“Really?”

“Oh, so you
do
like him!”

“That’s not what I said!”

Even with them teasing me, it was nice to have a
normal
conversation, after the day I’d had.

Tempting as it was to spend the evening conjuring lights, I was aware I’d been neglecting my friends. That evening, Sarah, Alex, David, and I went to the bar, where we played a few games of pool. Alex insisted on pairing me with David, who seemed oblivious to my embarrassment. I wasn’t sure what that signified, but I was too preoccupied to think on that one. It was as much due to my lack of concentration as to my mediocre pool skills that we lost the game, although it didn’t help that Alex was ridiculously good at it.

Claudia had invited me to join her and her friends at Satan’s Pit that night, but I’d declined. I didn’t want another late night with lectures the next day. Whatever she’d said about first year not counting toward my final grade, I was a workaholic by nature and the party lifestyle didn’t appeal to me, however much Claudia and Leo had tried to persuade me that it’d be fun. In truth, the memory of the shadow-fox was enough to quash any desire I might have had to return to Satan’s Pit.

When I returned to my room that night, I found the light still on, to my surprise. I almost never forgot to turn it off.

Feeling something amiss, I looked around. The window was open a crack, as if someone had hastily shut it, and I could smell something odd. I looked closer and saw a line of black marks on the sill that looked like fingerprints.

I opened the window farther and ran my finger lightly over the marks; it came away black, imprinted by an odd, tar-like substance.

Who’s been in my room?
I couldn’t see anything out of place, but I double-checked that my valuables were still safe. I’d been given the impression when I’d applied for on-campus accommodation that the rooms were impossible to break into from the outside; all the bolts fastened on the inside. If someone had actually been in my room, why would there be marks on the windowsill? Either way, it unsettled me.

I turned to my course reading to take my mind off it. Because of the meeting, I still needed to finish preparing my seminar work. I didn’t want to get behind already, and it seemed to me that trying to live three lives at once was a sure-fire way to get myself stressed again. The last thing I wanted was to turn back into the walking zombie I’d been at sixth form.

But another worry kept intruding. Whatever I’d thought student life would be like, breaking into a library certainly hadn’t been on my mind as one of the things I wanted to do before I left university.

aybe it was the thought of the fingerprints on my windowsill, but I slept badly the next few nights. I almost forgot to set my alarm for early Saturday morning for the hike. When I met the others in the corridor, wrapped in thick layers to protect ourselves from the cold, only Alex looked remotely awake.

“This better be worth it,” yawned a puffy-eyed Sarah.

“Sure it will.” Alex’s eyes gleamed with enthusiasm. “We’re climbing the highest peak in England!”

“I’ve never even been hiking before,” said Sarah. “I’ll be miles behind.”

“You’ll be fine,” said Alex.

The morning was cold and grey, the slate-coloured sky a mass of thick clouds. The minibus waited for us at the edge of the student village.

I ended up sitting next to David on the bus. He dozed off on my shoulder once or twice; as he told me, someone had sabotaged his motorbike the other day, so he’d been up half the night fixing it.

“That’s why I’ve got oil all over my hands,” he said, showing me his blackened palms and fingertips. “It’s been stuck to me for days.”

A jolt shot through me as I remembered the marks on my windowsill the other night.
Surely not
―

No, that was stupid. What reason would David have to break into my room? Couldn’t I even trust my friends?

Just ask.

“Did you see anyone come into my room the other day? My light was on and the window was open when I came back. I know I didn’t do it; I’d have remembered.”

“Huh? You think someone broke into your room? I didn’t see anyone.”

It couldn’t have been him, then
, I thought, relieved. He looked genuinely puzzled..

“Someone broke into your room?” said Alex.

I explained about the fingerprints on my windowsill.

“Terrence,” she said, instantly. “Was that after we went to complain about him?”

“Nah, it was the night before,” I said.

Our attempt to get Terrence to take responsibility for the mess in the kitchen had been ineffectual; he never answered to the cleaner’s knocks, and, in the end, the college secretary helpfully told us to talk to him ourselves. Alex had yelled after her, “If he murders us, I’m holding you responsible!”

Alex interrupted my musings with a shriek. “Deer!”

I looked up in time to see a small, lithe shape dart past the minibus.

“Wow!” said Sarah, leaning over. ‘I’ve never seen one in the wild before!”

“We get them all the time,” said Alex. “Perks of living in the countryside! My house isn’t far from where we’re going, actually.”

“Must be nice,” said Sarah. “Wish I’d had my camera out.”

“I’ve seen them a couple of times,” I said, remembering the summers I’d spent at Aunt Eve’s cottage in Windermere. “But we sure don’t get them in the city!”

We were in the Lake District now; I could see the snow-capped mountains dominating the skyline. We drove past lakes of crystal-clear water reflecting the peaks above. Puffy, white clouds dotted the blue sky, and the sun shone brightly, belying the freezing temperature. Even wearing three layers, waterproof trousers, and a thick hiking jacket each, Sarah and Alex were still shivering. Though I couldn’t feel the cold, I couldn’t fathom why the hiking leaders were wearing
shorts.

There were about thirty of us in total, ranging from us newbies to the clearly seasoned hikers. Apart from my flatmates, I didn’t recognise anyone else. The leaders consulted maps and planned routes, whilst Alex bounced impatiently on the balls of her feet.

“Calm down, Alex!” I said. “Save your energy for the hike.”

We divided into groups, the hard-core hikers trekking off first, while the newbies and Alex, who said she wanted to keep us company, waited for the signal. Finally, one of the leaders shouted, “Let’s go!”

I discovered in less than ten minutes that I was about as unprepared for this as I could possibly have been. The ascent was not only steep but also uneven; we had to clamber up stones jutting out of the cliffside, clinging to whatever we could to prevent ourselves from falling. We crossed foaming rivers via precarious stepping-stones―all the more tricky when wielding a camera, determined to catch every stunning view of the sprawling valleys and towering peaks. Far below, the sun shone on fields of autumn colours, red, yellow, and green, dotted with clumps of heather and bracken.

I tried to keep pace with David, even though I barely had breath to spare to talk. David told me in detail about his motorcycle difficulties.

“Why’d you bring it to uni?” I asked. “Aren’t you worried it’ll get stolen?”

“The security around the village is pretty tight. Stuff rarely gets nicked here. Haven’t you noticed?”

“No,” I said honestly. “I haven’t seen any hidden cameras or anything.”

“They’re pretty well-concealed. They’re one of the reasons I wanted to live on campus here.”

“It’s convenient, too,” I said. “Did you say your brother came here?”

“Yeah, he graduated last year. Why?”

“I was just wondering how you heard of this place. It’s not in the league tables, is it? No one else in my sixth form had heard of it; it was kinda weird.”

“My dad came here, too,” said David. “I guess it’s kind of a family thing. Even though they wanted me to go to Oxford originally.”

“Really?”

I remembered what Claudia had said about this place attracting people with a connection to the Darkworld, but several people from the same family could like a place without anything sinister being involved. It didn’t mean they had anything to do with the Venantium…