Page 21 of Bound By Fury

She takes a deep breath, and I ignore the way her eyes well up. “I know you will, kiddo.”

When she finally drives away, I’m relieved; and for some reason that makes me sad. Sadder than I already am, I guess.

The campus is more expansive than I realized. Tucked behind Biltmore Hall, stone-pebbled pathways weave between dense crops of tall trees, still summer green, and patches of tightly maintained, perfectly lush grass.

As we walk, admiring the ornate ancillary buildings and the hedge maze bright with multicolor roses, Daisy points to the head of a bronze statue peeking up from the center.

“That’s Cornelius Biltmore, the gem tycoon who started this place. Or actually it’s a statue of Corny with this big-ass wolf. He was apparently obsessed with them. Hence the mascot.” She points at a kid passing us. They’ve got on a gray BMA Mountain Wolves T-shirt. “It’s a little quirky, but if you rub his paw before finals, you’ll have good luck.”

I smirk. “I’m not even sure how to process that.”

“Yeah, everything about this school is absurd, you’ll see,” she says, laughing.

“Hm, I guess I always thought I knew this place better than I did.”

“You’re from around here?”

“Nah, not really. I grew up coming to Earnest in the summers to spend time with my grandma. We’d go to Lee Chapel for town hall meetings, and I’d run around the other side of campus. You can actually see parts of the school from the garden of her house.”

“You sound like Malachi and Lucas—they’re the new headmaster’s kids. They act like they grew up on campus and not like they only started staying in the dorms last year.”

My cheeks heat at the mention of their names, but I flatten my expression. For some reason I don’t want her to know I know them. I want to start here with a clean slate.

So I change the subject. “Jesus, I forgot how ginormous this place is,” I say, shielding my eyes against the sun as I tilt my head back to look at the top of Biltmore Hall.

We’ve stopped to sit on a bench. When students pass, their attention lingers on us. Maybe it’s because I’m the new girl, but I know the fact that we look so different from everyone else doesn’t help. Thankfully two drops of blood in the snow are better than one.

“Huge and old and haunted,” she says, nodding.

It’s like someone has jabbed a white-hot poker into the center of my belly.

“Haunted?”

“You grew up here, and you don’t know it’s haunted?”

I shrug. “I’ve heard… things. But it’s all nonsense. Scary kid stories.”

She gnaws on the corner of her thumbnail, smoky eyes staring straight into my soul.

“Come on,” she says, sliding off the bench and grabbing my hand.

We pass the sports complex and the arts building as she talks.

“In the late 1800s, the Biltmore family, having drained the piedmont of gold, came to the mountains with new ventures in mind. The Blue Ridge is rich with other precious gems and metals, and textiles had begun to boom in North Carolina. Looking for an estate through which to funnel their massive wealth, the Biltmore family decided this was the perfect place to do it.

“Problem was, there were already people here. A small Black community. In an effort to show good faith, the Biltmores offered the men jobs unloading train cars or in the picking rooms down at the cotton mill. But then the family wanted to buy the locals out of their land so they could keep building their estate, and the community wouldn’t budge.”

“Small town drama,” I say wryly. “Spooky.”

She chuckles. “Well, this drama caused a lot of issues and tension, especially because the Biltmores wanted to knock down this historically Black school… but it was also the home of the Lee Valley Witches.”

Groaning, I stop and cross my arms over my chest. “Really?”

“What?” she says, her voice tinkling like wind chimes.

“The Lee Valley Witches is the oldest, dumbest legend in this town. I thought you were gonna tell me something new.”

This time she laughs for real. “If you already know everything, why’d you let me prattle on like that?”