Otherworldly Bad Boys: Three Complete Novels (63 page)

“Teagan?” said a voice outside.

I recognized it. “Go away, Harper.”

“You didn’t come to rehearsal,” he said. “You didn’t answer your phone. We worked around you, but it was tough. There are only three scenes your character isn’t in.”

Was he trying to make me feel guilty? If so, he’d succeeded.

“Are you okay?”

Damn it. I stalked across the room. I opened the door a crack. It was only Harper out there in the hall. No one else was there. “Hi.”

“Teagan?” He looked concerned. “You don’t look good.”

Maybe I hadn’t showered lately. “Sorry.”

“Let me come in.”

Come in? I considered. Harper wasn’t part of Scales and Fangs. He was just a guy who didn’t know anything about what was going on. He was probably safe. And I was so lonely and frightened. I opened the door a little wider. “Okay. Come in.”

He slid by me into the room.

I checked the hallway. No one else was out there. I shut the door, locking it.

“Teagan, what the hell is going on?”

I bit my lip. “What do you know about Scales and Fangs, Harper?”

He furrowed his brow. “Why?”

“Do you believe in... magic?”

“Seriously?”

This was ridiculous. I shut my eyes. “Never mind. You know what? You should probably go.”

“No way. I’m worried about you. What’s going on with you? I mean, first, there are all these rumors about you and Professor Alexander, and then he just disappears.”

“Disappears?”

“Yeah, he left town. And Professor Bancroft’s my faculty advisor for the play now.” He folded his arms over his chest. “Are the rumors true?”

I hung my head. “Oh, Harper.”

He let out a breath. “Whoa.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Were you with him the whole time?”

“We weren’t—It wasn’t exactly like that.” I twisted my fingers together. “I tried to stay away from him. He tried to stay away from me, but...” I shook my head. “Anyway, that doesn’t matter. Because he’s working with them somehow. And they’re going to do something to me.”

“Who is?”

“Scales and Fangs.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“I know. I sound crazy. Hell, maybe I am. Maybe I’m losing it. Maybe I imagined all of it.” I sat down on my bed. “Maybe it runs in the family.”

“What do you mean?”

He hadn’t run away yet. That was something, wasn’t it? “My mother came to Thornfield College twenty-one years ago. She was fine before she got here. But when she got home, she was completely out of her mind, and she was pregnant with me. No one knows what happened to her. The doctors say she was always schizophrenic.” I gripped the headboard of my bed. “So maybe that’s it. Maybe I’m finally losing it, just like she did. Or...” I looked at him. “Maybe they did something to her. Maybe they’re going to do it to me too.”

Harper didn’t speak. He looked at me, and I could tell that he was trying to get his thoughts together. Probably, he was thinking that I was a nutcase, and he was trying to figure out how he’d get away from me. “That true? About your mother?”

“Yes,” I said. “I never thought that anything bad happened to her here. I just figured that she was already crazy underneath everything and that stress or something brought it out of her. But you know what? She’s obsessed with snakes. She draws them all the time. All over the walls. My aunts used to try to wash them down, but not anymore. So they’re everywhere. She draws snakes everywhere.”

Harper sat down next to me. “Did she ever say anything about Scales and Fangs?”

I shook my head. “Most of what she says doesn’t make sense.” I rubbed my face. “She always writes, ‘Don’t scream, Angela’ all over too. I always thought she wrote it because it’s what my aunts would say to her. Sometimes she’d go through these fits where she’d just yell and yell. And Aunt Libby would come in and say, ‘Don’t scream, Angela.’”

“Your mom’s name is Angela?”

I guessed I’d left that part out. “Yeah. She’s afraid. She’s always afraid that people are coming to get her. She’s so paranoid.”

“You think Scales and Fangs did something to your mother twenty years ago,” he said. “You think that’s why she’s obsessed with snakes. And you think they’re the ones who told her not to scream.”

I nodded. “Yes.” He’d explained it so concisely. “Does that sound crazy?”

“A little bit.”

“Of course it does.” I started to get up.

“Wait.” He grabbed my arm and pulled me down next to him again. “It also sounds like maybe there’s something going on here. You’re obviously freaked out, and I’ve never known you to think anything crazy before. So, I think this is worth checking out.”

“You do?” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’ll help you.”

“But Harper, you don’t know how crazy this gets. They did something to me, and I can’t leave or even call my aunts or do anything without... this pain in my chest.” I gestured. “It takes over everything. It hurts.”

“Okay,” he said.

“Do you believe me about that?” I said. “Do you believe that they could do a spell or something? Some kind of magic to keep me here?”

He hesitated. “I don’t know about that. But I do think that if they hurt your mother, they’re capable of hurting you. So... we just need to find out more information.”

“About a secret society.”

“Well, I guess that is going to make it tough, isn’t it?” He cracked a smile.

I smiled carefully. “Are you humoring me? Do you really think I’m crazy?”

“I don’t...” He got up off the bed. He walked over to my window. “I like you.”

“Harper—”

“Oh, no trust me, I got the Carter memo. I know you don’t like me back.”

“I
do
like you, I just don’t—”

“Maybe it means I’m a little bit...” He looked at me. “I’m on your side. That’s all that matters, okay? I want to look out for you. I don’t want anything to happen to you. Does that make sense?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“Good.” He crossed the room and bent to kiss me on the forehead. “They have old college newspapers in the library. We can go and look at them tomorrow. See if there’s anything in there about your mother.”

I looked up at him. “Thank you, Harper.”

He shrugged. “Not a big deal.”

* * *

The librarian had been giving us funny looks the whole time we’d been in the library. It was starting to freak me out to the point where I was considering asking Harper if he’d noticed it too. Maybe she was some kind of Scales and Fangs spy trying to keep me from trying to get away again.

Not that there was much chance of that. If I tried to leave, they hurt me. It was that simple.

“Here’s the next one,” said Harper. He gestured to the microfiche in front of us.

I scanned the article. “Another recital, huh?” I hadn’t even known that my mother was a singer, but she’d been pretty active in the music department at Thornfield during her time here. “Does it say anything different than the other articles?”

“Nope. Stunning voice. Beautiful presence. Yadda yadda.”

I sighed. “This isn’t getting us anywhere, Harper. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I like knowing more about my mom. But it’s not helping us find out if she was actually hurt by Scales and Fangs or not.”

“Well,” said Harper, “that’s probably not going to be in the school newspaper.”

“So, why are we looking here?”

“I don’t know. It was a place to start.” He sighed. “Look, there’s only one more article that mentions her. You want me to pull that up?”

“Why not?” I shrugged. “Look, I’m sorry if I sound ungrateful. I really appreciate what you’re doing for me.”

“I wish I could do more.” He flipped through the microfiche.

“What’s this one?” I said.

“Um, it’s an article about secret societies,” he said.

I sat forward. “What?” The headline read, “Secret Societies a Campus Menace?” I began to scan the words. It was a piece about what students thought about the existence of Scales and Fangs. My mother had been quoted as saying that she thought Scales and Fangs was a unique aspect to Thornfield, and that it only brought more prestige to the college. I pointed it out to Harper. “That sure makes it sound like she was a member, doesn’t it?”

He shrugged. “Well, it proves she didn’t hate Scales and Fangs at one point, anyway.”

I bit my lip. “Actually, she couldn’t have been a member. You have to be twenty-one to get in, and my mother left Thornfield when she was nineteen.”

“That rule about being twenty-one is recent,” said Harper. “Last five years or so. I think they use alcohol in their initiation ceremony or something, and they were worried about the bad press.”

“So, she could have been a member?”

He shrugged. “Could be, I guess.”

I chewed on my lip. “Can we get a copy of this article?”

“Sure,” he said. “They have microform printers over there, but they only accept cards, not coins. You got money on your Thorncard?”

Thorncards were our ID cards. We could put money on them as well and use them like credit cards all over campus. I pulled mine out of my pocket. “I don’t think so. Do you?”

He shook his head. “I bought scantrons with mine yesterday. But I can put more money on—”

“No, don’t be silly,” I said. “I’ll do it.” I got up. “Be right back.”

There was a machine by the librarian’s desk that could put money on the Thorncards, kind of like a reverse ATM. I dug out a few dollar bills and slid them into the machine. It told me to insert my card. I did.

“You’re Angela’s daughter, aren’t you?”

I whirled.

The librarian was close. She glanced around the library, as if worried that someone was watching us.

“You knew my mother?”

The librarian nodded. “I went to school here back then. I remember her. You look just like her. I overheard what you and that boy were talking about. Scales and Fangs?”

I nodded.

She lowered her voice. “I think they had something to do with her accident.”

“Accident?”

She looked around again. She moved closer to me. Her voice was barely a whisper. “They found her out in the woods. She was curled up, naked, and terrified. Something happened to her. She was never the same after that.”

“What happened to her?”

“No one knows. She couldn’t talk about it. Too upset. But it was right around the time of year when Scales and Fangs does their initiation. And everyone knows they do it out in those woods.”

“So you think they hurt her.”

“I don’t know what I think,” said the librarian, casting another wary look around. “But I do know that she isn’t the first girl to be found like that. There was another girl, probably fifty years ago. She didn’t go to the school, but they found her out in the woods. Look it up. You’ll see. Scales and Fangs, I wouldn’t put it past them to be doing something satanic. Your mother and that other girl, they got away, but I bet anything that they’re the exception. That secret society is probably sacrificing virgins underneath the full moon. Who knows how many they’ve killed.”

I gulped.

“You be careful, girl. You look just like her.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

“You said she sounded a little crazy,” said Harper, opening the pizza box he’d just brought upstairs.

I was hunched over his laptop, sitting on the extra bed in his dorm. “I sound crazy too, though. I have to check this out.”

“You want pepperoni or mushroom?”

“Mushroom.” I scrolled through the search results on the internet. “I think she’s right.”

“About sacrificing virgins?”

“Well, I don’t know about that part, but I think she’s right about there being other girls.”

“Really?” He handed me a paper plate with a piece of pizza on it and peered at the computer screen.

“Yup. See, here’s the girl she was talking about from fifty years ago.” I pointed at the article. “It says she was found running naked through the woods, all scratched up and terrified, and that she was too freaked out to speak.” I took a bite of pizza. “And then, open the other tab.”

“Hold on,” said Harper. He was still scrolling through the first story. “What do you think happened to this chick?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “They couldn’t even figure out her name. They probably sent her to an insane asylum or something. I mean, this was fifty years ago. What else could they have done?”

He clicked over to the next tab. It was an even older news story. This one was simply a scan from the original paper. “Jesus! How long ago was this?”

“Almost ninety years ago,” I said. “It’s another girl, found in the woods.”

“Yeah, I see that.” He got himself a piece of pepperoni pizza and chewed thoughtfully. “And you think they’re connected.”

“They’re all the same,” I said. “Naked girls being found in the woods. What are the odds?”