Page 21 of Marrying My Professor

She snorts. “Whatever he wants. That boy basically runs most of the campus, and he normally only messes with girls from the Aurora Club. I know this because I have been trying to fuck him since freshman year.” She pops a kernel, chews, watches me. “Which makes me deeply curious why he talked to you. No offense, honey—you are stunning—but this is completely out of character.”

I ignore the last part and focus on the piece that actually hooks me, because it sounds like a secret society. “Aurora Club?”

Georgia settles, pleased to have an audience. “Rumor time, baby. The Aurora Club is the girls’ side of the old Veritas pipelines—or that’s what people say. Not official, of course. It’s not a sorority you can rush. It’s an inheritance kind of thing. The daughters and granddaughters of the right names. Legacy ladies. They host charity teas and terrible poetry readings and ‘intimate salons’ where everyone dresses like a Vogue spread. They’re nice to your face and could dissolve your social life with a group chat if they felt like it. They’re supposed to be the female counterparts, to the boys’ side of things.”

“The boys?” I prompt, as I slide over to grab a box of goobers and dump three shakes worth into my mouth.

“The Veritas Order,” she says, dropping her voice like the walls could be informants. “Not just any club. It’s the club. People have died trying to get into it. No offense.”

“None taken,” I wave a hand, casual on the surface, while something inside me tightens. Georgia doesn’t see it. She can’t. To her, Brandon is a headline that faded last year. A tragedy neatly labeled and filed away.

To me, he is absence. He is the unanswered question that wakes me up at night. He is the wrongness of a story that never fit.

According to everyone else, Brandon committed suicide. No homicide. No foul play. A sad, isolated decision.

I don’t believe that for a second.

Brandon would never have left me like that. He would have said something. Anything. We told each other everything—every ugly thought, every dark impulse, every fear we didn’t trust anyone else with. If he was spiraling, I would have known. If he was in danger, he would have warned me. He loved me too much to disappear without a word.

Georgia holds up a finger. “First, the Dominion’s Sons. They’re predators. Internships in D.C. before their twenty-first birthday, staffer badges stacked like poker chips, last names that open doors you and I will never even see. Government boys.”

Brandon had been nervous about politics near the end. Said the wrong people were interested in him. I’d told him he was being paranoid. Stupid me.

Second finger. “Then there’s the Bacchus Brotherhood. Don’t let the fancy name fool you. They’re the pipeline to vice. Parties you only hear about because someone lost a life. They know every back door in the city and how to disappear a problem—your problem, or you, if you’re not careful.”

My eyes perk at this information because the Bacchus Brotherhood just made it to the top of my list. Brandon’s death seemed to be so open and shut, with no police investigation. It’s almost like it didn’t really happen, and a part of me thinks the Bacchus Brotherhood had something to do with that.

Third. “Ashen Serpents. They look like nerds, but they are masters of manipulation and information. They become doctors, coroners, data wizards. Fixers.”

Doctors. Coroners. The autopsy flashes through my mind—the clean language, the lack of questions, the speed with which it had all been wrapped up. This feels like a huge cover up that took at least three of the fractions to organize.

Fourth finger, a little shiver of a smile. “And last but not least, the Sovereign Bastards. Beautiful, polished monsters with enough money to buy all of Europe. That’s where our favorite boy Welsey is a part of, or that’s the rumor at least.”

Money. Silence. Influence. Enough to make anything go away.

She drops her hand and tucks the blanket around my knees, maternal for a second, grounding me back in the room. “All that’s rumor, of course. No one ever admits to anything. On paper, they’re just ambitious boys with lots of connections.”

“And the Aurora Club?” I ask. “You said they’re legacies.”

“Yeah, but they’re just the girls.” Georgia says. “Pretty. Powerful. Surprisingly boring—until they’re not. There are not many rumors about them.”

“And you think Klaus is Welsey?” I say, connecting the two conversations and moving away from the new information, not to raise alarms that I am so interested.

“Klaus wishes he was Welsey,” she counters, amused. “Or maybe the other way around. Depends on the day you ask me.”

“You’re very funny” I deflect, which is technically not lying. “You don’t have to worry about me trying to get with Wesley.”

Especially not with a certain broody professor in the back of my mind.

“I don’t think that’s true,” she says, picking up a handful of popcorn. “My spidey senses are tingling, and I think you have a date coming any minute now.”

I nudge her with my shoulder. “You watch too many superhero movies.”

“I watch just enough,” she bumps my knee with hers. “Listen to me. Veritas boys? Aurora girls? This place loves its myths, and for the most part they are myths.”

“For the most part?” I repeat.

Georgia grimaces. “Well rumor has it you can join one of the fractions of the Veritas, but it’s like super impossible. Last year, some kid tried to join and died.” She shrugs, stealing some of my goobers. “But that’s just rumor because there are no reports, no dead body. Just some new transfer student who said he saw a dead body with a blue patch on it that said Veritas.”