Page 62 of The Devil We Crave
The thing about obsession is that it doesn't really ask your permission. It just moves right in, rearranges the furniture, and declares itself a permanent resident. And at some point—somewhere between memorizing her schedule and her habits, knowing which hand she uses to masturbate with, and stealing pairs of her panties from her laundry basket—I stopped having any interest in evicting it.
12
YELENA
“That fucking snake skeleton…”I shudder.
Galina and Arianna laugh as we all traipse across campus toward the academic buildings together.
“People get so creeped out by John!” Galina giggles. “I think he’s cute.”
I turn to her, making a face. “John?”
Ari rolls her eyes. “Long John Slither,” she grins. “It’s…kind of his nickname.”
Our current topic of conversation is rating the creepiness factor of the four clubhouses. Personally, I love living at Morvaine. But a lot of people, including Galina and Ari, consider it to be hands-down the creepiest place on campus, just because…well, okay, it’s a haunted-looking mansion in the middle of the woods.
I get it.
But me, I’m more weirded out—by a mile—by the former library where the Ouroboros Society lives.
It doesn’t justlookcreepy. Itiscreepy. I mean, it’s literally a two-hundred-year-old former library and natural history museum that sat abandoned on the edge of the woods for like forty years until some extra-generous former Ouroboros Society member footed the bill to have The Atheneum made livable.
But “livable” isn’t the same as “would live there”. The library part is fine, I suppose. But the museum part? Gives me thecreeps.
The place is still full of old displays of taxidermy animals, animalpartspreserved in formaldehyde, various bugs and plant samples behind glass. And the abso-fucking-lutelycreepiestexhibit is the full-sized skeleton, forty feet long, of some prehistoric snake that's suspended from the cavernous ceiling when you first walk in.
Aka: Long John Slither.
Galina laughs. “Hey,youlive in the Disneyworld Haunted Mansion. I don’t understand how you sleep there.”
“Like ababy,” I grin. “Because there’s no Jurassic Park snake guarding the front door.”
“Yeah, just restless spirits of the undead,” Arianna snickers. “Waybetter than an ancient skeleton of something that doesn’t exist anymore.”
I laugh with them, partly to cover the nervous shiver that ripples down my spine. Truth be told, Ihavebeen a little rattled since I saw that lipstick message on the mirror in the locker room.
LEAVE THE DEAD WHERE THEY LIE.
I mean…obviously. Because that’s fucking freaky.
For a while I expanded my potential explanations to include the drama department. Galina is peripherally involved with some of the shit that goes on over there, and I can safely say—with love—that theater kids are fuckingweird.
But no. Damiano’s room was ransacked, and whoever did it left a note calling him out for stealing police evidence written with the same lipstick and in the same handwriting as the one in the locker room. It was no accident that I walked in there and saw that.
That message was meant for me.
As if I'm not already on edge enough, waiting for Achilles to jump out from behind every corner.
To grab me.
To whisper “good girl” into my ear and get me mortifyingly turned on in a ridiculously short amount of time.
To chase me, or order me to hand over my panties to him… God, I stillcannotbelieve I did that.
I’ve also been a little on edge being on campus with so many people from the Drakos and Kildare families, ever since Angelo Santoro boasted about building vertically on the building he and my dad bought. DadpromisedAres Drakos that there’d be nothing looming over Dimitra Drakos’ estate. And then his own business partner goes off the rails and makes an announcement like that?
Achilles, clearly, wasn’t too happy about it. I’ve managed to avoid crossing paths with Lochlan and Ronan Kildare, so all good there. And Ihad beenavoiding Selene and Isadora Drakos, but then I ran into them yesterday and they were really coolabout the whole thing. They said they totally understood that it was beyond my control, and no, they held no grudge against me.
