“Yes, for retribution. And for the god of our house. The mansion is abandoned—no one owns it, as far as we know.But it’s said to be haunted. Officially, we play the ghosts or spirits that night. The sisters are our vessels, the bodies we need to inhabit to gain life or some shit.”
“I’ll put some life into a few of them,” Lex Lynx, one of the freshman, says, licking his lips. Laughter ripples—nervous, because no one’s sure when Lex is joking. He’s not.
“So that’s the thing. If you getdistractedand go for too much prey or spendtoo longwith them? The other fraternities will have a shot.”
“I thought the point was tagging them,” a sophomore asks.
“That’s secondary. The main thing is to get a tagged girl to the basement. Tagging and smearing our color paint on their necks is just how we mark them asDelta’sgirls. You can tag them in several ways.”
“Come on their tits!”
“On the face!”
“Bukkake!”
A riot of suggestions erupts about various ways to ejaculate on the women once they’re caught.
I wave my hand, and the conversation stops. “Any way you get come on them, then smear our color paint on them marks the prey as ours for the taking. But thegoal, gentlemen, is to capture her and bring her to the basement before she makes it to the attic.”
The looks on the freshmen’s faces seem confident, so I have to warn them. “Seems like a simple game of hide and seek, right? It is. The sisters get a head start to hide. We count down. But the real challenge comes when select officers and alumni judges release smoke bombs.”
Men squirm in their chairs.
“Here’s where most of you screw up: the floors fill with thick clouds at timed intervals. They release it section by section. When the gas hits, the girls bolt. You lose track. You panic. People start fighting, taking precious time away from grabbing the sisters.”
A wide-eyed newbie raises a hand. “So…gas masks?”
“Yes. For us. Not the prey.”
Nicky interrupts me with the specifics. “The mansion has three floors and the basement. Our job? Drag as many girls tagged downstairs before they reach the attic. The fraternity with the most girls in the basement, marked and fucked…inanyhole, wins.”
I nod. “Correct.Deltawins by numbers. The sororities win if more of their members survive long enough to make it to the top.”
Beckham bites his lip. “So itishide and seek.”
“Hide and seek,” I confirm. “In a condemned mansion. Full of blind corners. Smoke. Glass traps from last year still stuck in the walls. Structural hazards. Rival houses with vendettas. And a moon phase that makes every asshole on campus think he’s invincible.”
Silence.
Then Nicky asks, “Any other stupid questions before we pray none of you die?”
I clap my hands together.
“Good. Next agenda item.”
As soon as the meeting ends, Moses Graves hovers behind my shoulder like he’s been rehearsing his approach for hours.
Good. I like the kid. He’s hungry.
I jerk my chin toward my office, and he follows me there.
He obeys instantly. I drop into my beat-up leather chair, the one that squeaks every time I breathe, and lace my fingers together like I actually belong in this job. My trousers are perfectly pressed, expensive as hell. I brush a piece of lint off one leg to keep my hands busy.
Moses stands awkwardly until I nod at the chair across from me.
“Sit.”
He folds into it stiffly, elbows on his knees, dark twists falling across his forehead as he stares at the floor. Kid’s nervous. Not about getting into trouble. Aboutbeing seen.