Page 66 of Roses & Ruin

The door bursts open, and a tall, skinny, young-looking girl with giant round glasses stumbles in, arms full of papers and books and a thermos of coffee, looking flustered.

“Hey guys, sorry, sorry.” She barely makes it to Julian’s desk in time before everything spills out of her arms across the surface. She turns to us, adjusts her glasses. “I’m Abigail, your new TA. Sort of a last-minute thing. I won’t be late from now on…probably.” Abigail gives us a charming smile. I’m so shocked, it takes me a second to register what she’s said. She’s our new TA?

Where the hell is Julian?

“Okay, so, let’s see what you guys have done so far.” Abigail pulls out her phone and scrolls her screen. I raise my hand, but she’s frowning down at what she’s reading. I decide to just speak.

“I’m so sorry,” I call out. “But, um…do you know what happened to Julian?”

“Huh?” Abigail blinks up at me for a moment. “Julian? Yeah! Good quesh, good quesh. To be honest, no clue. I think he dropped out, maybe?” She frowns down at her phone again. “Okay, can someone pull up the syllabus? I’m totally lost.”

Abigail’s voice fades into the background as my chest tightens, dread pooling at the bottom of my stomach. Maybe he did just drop out. People do it all the time. Look at Remy. Though…okay, bad example.

But hadn’t Julian told me how much he wanted to impress Professor Brown? It feels super arrogant to think that Julian being gone has anything to do with me.

But…like…does it?

A memory from a couple of days ago returns to me. In the haze of Hayden’s and my insatiability, I’d forgotten about the glimpse of the man who looked exactly like Julian standing in the alley at Hemlock Cove, watching me with dark eyes. But that was just a vision. A figment of my imagination.

Right?

Something huge and black throws itself against the window. The slam is shockingly loud, shattering the classroom into chaos. My nerves are immediately stripped raw—I feel like I’ve just shoved my hand into a socket.

“The hell was that?” Abigail screams as the entire class jumps to their feet. Panting, heartbeat ricocheting around my ribs, I join the others slowly approaching the impacted window.

There’s a spider web of cracks in the glass and, sending horror through me, a bright smear of blood. The feeling of dread turns into something urgent, spurring me on. I sprint out of the classroom and down the hall, wanting to see what hit the window.

Maybe it’s just someone playing a prank, I think. A painted brick. A water balloon filled with rocks and paint.

These all, of course, sound impossibly ridiculous.

A cold, eerie snow has started to fall when I spill out of the building. The days are getting shorter.

The noose of time is tightening.

A few students have already gathered around something on the ground, their faces grim and unsettled. When I get closer, they wordlessly step back to make room for me. A girl with wild black hair is squatting on the ground. When she looks up, I’m surprised to see it’s Charlie. She looks up at me, her eyes filled with fear and confusion.

“It just, like, dive-bombed into the window, man. But what I wanna know is…” Charlie drops her eyes back to the ground. “Why’s his neck look like that?”

I follow her eyes to where the corpse of a large black raven is still twitching. Its blank eyes are open, its spindly legs frozen in contorted angles. But it’s the way its neck has been twisted nearly completely off its body that is truly disturbing, bent at an almost perfect ninety-degree angle from the rest of its body.

“Super fucked-up, man.” Charlie rises to her feet and joins my side. I can’t stop looking at the dead raven. “Haven’t seen you in a while, Rose. You doing okay?”

“Uh-huh,” I say, swallowing hard. God. Maybe it came at the window so fast, its head just twisted around a bunch?

“Good, I’m glad.” She pauses. “You haven’t seen Bianca around, by chance, have you?” I wrench my eyes away from the little corpse to look at Charlie. She’s twisting her nose ring, smiling, but there’s an undercurrent of concern there, and none of her usual levity.

“I haven’t,” I admit. “Sorry. Is she okay?”

“Yeah,” Charlie sighs. She pulls her top lip between her teeth. “I introduced her and Chris, and they really hit it off. But I haven’t heard from either of them in a few days.” Charlie rolls her eyes. “I just hope he didn’t convince her to elope or start a singer-songwriter duo, because he is a fucking terrible singer.” She massages her forehead. “Anyway. Good running into you. Nae and I are down for more pub nights.” Her eyes drop uneasily to the bird. “This fucking campus, man,” she mutters before walking away, her eyes unfocused and distracted.

I look down at the raven.

It’s just a coincidence. The fact that Julian’s missing. The creepy moment in Hemlock Cove.

You have no idea what danger you are in, said the palm reader.

I look up at the skeletal trees, all the naked branches, and a thin blade of dread slides down my spine.