“Your father’s just kidding,” Mom laughs.
Dad’s dark brow pinches. “I’m only kidding until you get a boyfriend, at which point I’ll be posting Laz up in your fucking closet to keep an eye on you.”
Mom laughs and shakes her head. “You’re insane, you know that?”
He turns to wink at her. “Insanely in love with you, princess? Yes.”
I groan when they start to kiss.
Yep,nauseatinglycute.
After I finish sayinggoodbye to my family, I head over to Montclair Gymnasium. I’ve never been much of a gym bunny, but last semester, I started using some of the machines to stretch before I went running. From there, I realized that I really liked the free weights.
I put in forty-five minutes with the weights, do some stretching, then go for a run around the campus perimeter. It’s still light out, so I put headphones in as I head along the gorgeous cliffside path that winds past The Spire and the ruins of Fort Hawthorne before circling back to Montclair Gymnasium, since they have a divinesteam room and sauna. Twenty sweaty minutes afterthat, I hit the gymnasium showers to rinse off.
I’ve wrapped a towel around myself and am padding back over to my locker when a scream lodges in my throat.
Icy prickles dance across my body and a sharp chill drags up my spine as I gape at the mirror above the row of locker room sinks.
Written across it in what looks like cherry-red lipstick is a message:
LEAVE THE DEAD WHERE THEY LIE.
What thefuck.
I towel off and get dressed in a blur, my gaze darting repeatedly to the words written on the mirror. I mean, it could just be some weird college prank, or maybe related to the Initiation Trials, even though those aren’t for a few months.
But still.
What?
I glance at the message once more before I rush out the door, mention it to the front desk, then bolt across campus to the comfort of Morvaine Manor.
I’ve barely closed my bedroom door behind me when there’s a banging knock on it that almost makes me scream again. I open the door, trying to calm my racing pulse.
“Damiano?”
He pushes past me before I can say another word.
“Uh, hi? Hello?”
My not-cousin ignores me as he comes to a stop in the middle of my room, glancing all around.
“What’s going on, Dame?”
He draws in a slow breath and turns to face me. It’s only then that I see the grim look on his face.
“Nothing amiss in here?”
I frown. “N…no? I mean, I just walked in, but…” I look around and shrug. “I think it’s all good?” My face shadows. “Why, what’s?—”
“Someone ransacked my room,” he growls. “And they left me this.”
He hands me a page torn from what looks like yesterday’s print edition of theHawthorne Herald.
My heart drops through the floor.
Written in lipstick are the words “STEALING CRIMINAL EVIDENCE IS A NO-NO…”