Where Monsters Hide: An Academy Bully Romance (The Monster Within Book 1) Read online

  “You okay?” Sawyer asks.

  “Yeah,” I say, only now realizing my breath has become labored. “I thought I’d …” I trail off. What, exactly, had I been doing?

  “You both had better get to dinner,” Professor Waldman says, her eyes still on me. “This thing has a peculiar effect on people. It’s never a good idea to stick around it too long.”

  I try to avoid her gaze, but she’s studying me. My skin is prickling. I follow Sawyer down the hallway, away from Professor Waldman, away from the phylactery.

  I’m so glad we made it out of earshot before she remembered to ask me about the party tomorrow night, that I don’t even realize where we’re headed until we actually get there. We’ve wandered down into a trophy room, a proper trophy room this time.

  But it’s not just for trophies; there are articles from monster hunter newspapers, photographs, mementos; these ones much older than the gleaming ones in the hall. Sawyer gleefully heads off in one direction, but my attention is immediately caught by a cluster of photographs in the first case.

  It’s my parents.

  Well, not just my parents. It’s their entire class. They aren’t standing together, but each of them is unmistakable. There are other faces I recognize too. Mason Dagher, and, even more surprisingly, a young Professor Helsing. He must be a lot younger than I thought. The years haven’t been kind to him.

  “Avery?” Sawyer asks.

  I wipe my eyes. I hadn’t realized tears have started to collect on the ends of my lashes, and I don’t want him to see now.

  “Come look at this.”

  He’s standing in front of another display case, this one lined with row upon row of weapons. A plaque above it indicates that these have been donated to the school by their owners. Sawyer’s pointing at a pair of daggers; they’re black, and the blades have a sinful curve. I don’t have to ask who they once belonged to. I know, instinctively and without any labels, that these once belonged to the woman who bore me.

  I lean closer to the case. The blades have been polished, but I can still see little nicks and dents. The handles are worn from use. My mother touched these, used them. They call to me in an inexplicable, intoxicating way.

  “And over here,” Sawyer says, pointing at a long, black poleaxe. “Samson Black’s. There’s so much history in this case,” he adds. “Ancient weapons from old, legendary monster hunters.”

  My father’s weapon. He was one of them, one of those old legends. And like all legends, he eventually had to die.

  I don’t care about the others. I start searching the names on the labels, trying to find any more weapons that might have been donated by my parents. I find a few; a scimitar of my mother’s, a short-handled axe of my father’s, even a broken spear labeled used to slay the great Paris manticore of 1997. I smile and gently touch the glass case. This is the only history I care about.

  My palm flat against the glass is the closest I’ve ever been to them. I want to know who they were. I want to know what they did. Most importantly, however, I want to know how they died.

  Sawyer must see something on my face, because suddenly he’s standing by my side. He slips a hand into mine and gives it a squeeze, as if to comfort me.

  I let him, even though he’s wrong.

  I don’t need comforting, because I’m not sad.

  I’m angry.

  Chapter Eight

  Friday finally rears its ugly head.

  Piers, Owen, and Bennett seem to be getting tired of trying to mess things up for me. Their efforts have waned until this morning in PW, they didn’t even attempt to screw with the bow I tried to make. None of them told Professor Davies that I was cheating or doing anything suspicious. In the hallway, Bennett even brushed against me by accident and mumbled an apology.

  Creature studies goes by quickly and uneventfully; none of the boys throw their books on the floor or claim that I did something weird to them when the professor’s back is turned. Professor Waldman doesn’t seem to believe them, anyway. I watch them warily throughout class and end up having to scramble to copy Erin’s notes. I’m not sure whether to feel relieved, or to worry that they’re planning something huge.

  The class ends and everyone rushes out faster than usual. They all want to get their weekend started, myself among them. While I might excel in physical trials, I’m years behind everyone else in creature care and studies. Things that everyone else takes as common knowledge, like what kind of snacks to leave out for a brownie, is all new for me. I’m looking forward to taking some time to catch up before I really fall behind. I can’t afford that.

  We haven’t had any grades submitted, and my name hanging out there at the bottom of the list of new recruits is starting to haunt my nightmares.

  Still, I hang around and wait for Erin to gather her things. She takes long enough that she, Sawyer, and I end up being the last ones out.

  “Don’t forget about the party, ladies!” Professor Waldman calls after us in her singsong voice, before we can get out of there.

  “Are you going?” Erin asks as we get out of earshot. “I don’t want to go if you aren’t.”

  I’m not surprised. Erin has become my shadow; Sawyer, too, to an extent.

  I shrug. “I think so. Can’t hurt, can it?”

  Erin looks worriedly over her shoulder at the classroom door. “I guess not.”

  Sawyer smiles sadly. “You think she’d let me in if I wore a wig?”

  I snort and say he’s welcome to try. “But if you decide to try to hold onto at least some of your dignity, tomorrow’s Saturday. You can have me for the whole day.”

  “Oh?” His eyebrows raise and he nudges me with his elbow. “I could have you, huh?”

  My face gets warm.

  “You know what I mean.”

  We arrive at my dorm, and I unlock the door and go inside, Erin in tow. She deposits her books on her desk. Her eyes travel up to the empty spot on the wall where I made her take down one of the posters.

  “Avery,” she says quietly.

  “Yeah?” I put my own books down and head over to my dresser, rifling through the few things I brought for any clothes that might make sense at a party.

  “Do you like Sawyer?” she asks.

  I freeze. “No,” I say, but there’s a weird feeling in my stomach. Am I lying? Do I like him? “Even if I did,” I continue, “it doesn’t matter. I need to focus on getting through school, not pairing off.”

  “Sure.”

  “Why?” I ask, stopping again. “Do you like him?” I have my back to her, so I can’t see her face. My hands are in one of the dresser drawers. Can she see that I’m not moving? That I’m waiting for her answer with bated breath?

  “No,” she says after a while. “He doesn’t talk to me much. I don’t really think there’s a boy here that I like at all, actually.”

  I’m relieved, but I also turn to her in surprise. “Really? Not one?”

  She shrugs. “I don’t think so.” She sits at her desk and opens her notes from creature studies. Inside our dorm room with her notes and textbooks is the calmest I’ve ever seen her. She seems much more at ease studying and writing essays than doing obstacle courses or practicing with weapons. “Most of the boys here seem mean.”

  She has a point.

  I get the feeling that there was something else she meant to say, but when she doesn’t say it, I just drop the subject. She doesn’t say anything again until she catches me fighting to pull a pair of jeans up over my thighs. All these exercises are making me stronger, fast, but some of my clothes are struggling to keep up.

  Unlike me, Erin actually thought to bring some clothes that weren’t designed for killing creatures. She’s holding a frilly little dress up to herself, but clearly having second thoughts after spotting the hot mess I’m going as.

  “What?” I snap, the tightness of my jeans restricting my patience as well.

  “I thought I’d wear a dress, but if you’re wearing pants …”

  It t
akes me a second to realize what she’s asking. “Oh, don’t base your decisions after me. I’m the idiot who didn’t bring anything,” I say. “If you want to wear a dress, you should. Anyone gives you shit, I’ll punch them in the face.”

  She giggles at the joke, and I let her think it’s a joke. Who knows, with jeans this tight, I might be prompted to murder.

  And when we run into Bennett on the way to Professor Waldman’s little party, I think I might get the chance to.

  I brace for the worst, but he just avoids my gaze and gives the both of us a wide berth. Erin only relaxes after he’s well out of sight. Hopefully this means they’ve decided this whole campaign against me is pointless, but I don’t hold out much hope. It took me all of three seconds to see Piers is their leader, so until he gives it up, I have a feeling this little game is going to continue.

  Some of the professors live in town, but most of them live here at the school. Their offices are housed in the opposite wing of the main building as our dorms, so it doesn’t take long before we turn down a hall and hear the faint sound of jazz music floating down the hall towards us. Her room is in the very middle, meaning more than one annoyed teacher glances out towards the source of the commotion as we pass.

  Her door doesn’t have her name on it—but it might as well. A large crochet dreamcatcher hangs over the top, and all sorts of floral designs and charms have been carved into the door. The music thumps against it in that uneven, improvised way that’s unique to the genre. I’ve never been a big fan of jazz. It’s unpredictable. I don’t like that.

  I open the door and let myself in. I’m enveloped in sound and color, and immediately very aware of how utterly underdressed I am. I want to shrink into a corner and disappear, but I have to be Erin’s shield. I straighten my shoulders and plunge into the thick of it.

  Waldman’s office has been transformed from what was once, at least I imagine, a drab little room lined with bookshelves into something out of a bohemian fairytale. There are more dreamcatchers, handwoven tapestries, rugs from Persia, and swaths of brightly-colored fabrics draped from the ceiling—mementos, I’m sure, of Waldman’s earlier travels before she settled down to teach.

  Most of the other girls, even less than I thought, have gathered around a small cluster of chairs in the corner. There’s a drink cart there, and whatever is being served looks suspiciously like absinthe. I’d recognize that color green anywhere after a little mishap the night I discovered my aunt’s liquor cabinet.

  “Girls! You’re here!” Professor Waldman sets down her drink as soon as she spots us and gets up from her armchair. “Come in!”

  I glance around. I recognize one other girl from our year, but the others must be upperclassman. One girl with short-cropped dark hair turns in her armchair, her chocolate-brown eyes flitting over me, a smirk on her red lips. She turns away promptly.

  “Hello, Professor Waldman.”

  “Oh, please—we’re not in class. Call me Eve.” She holds her hand out to me and shakes it again, her eyes filling with warmth as she offers the two of us a drink.

  Erin frowns next to me; I can tell it’s going to be difficult for her to refer to anyone in authority by their first name, let alone drink beside them. Waldman crosses the small lounge space to the drink cart and Erin and I walk toward the couch. The girl on it scoots over to allow us room to sit.

  She reaches for the absinthe, but I wrinkle up my nose and wave it away. “Maybe something a little less likely to end up with me inside one of the menagerie cages.”

  “Shame, I got it in Morocco, hunting a succubus.” She eyes the green vial like it contains the soul of the monster itself, but then sets it back. “I’ve got vodka, gin, rum, tequila, and whiskey. Pick your poison.”

  I glance at the glass the girl next to me is holding. It looks like a martini. I’ve dabbled with alcohol when Aunt Trish wasn’t around, but I’m not very knowledgeable. I rack my brain for something classy to offset the hobo vibe I’m currently rocking.

  I settle on a cosmopolitan, even though I’m not one-hundred percent what goes into it, and Erin asks for a soda.

  Waldman leaves us to hunt down a lemon peel, and I take the opportunity to give the room another good look. Aside from about the half-dozen or so of us girls here, we’re alone. It’s somehow a little sad, seeing us all together like this. I wonder how many girls applied, and then even more so; didn’t make it through the first round of the trials. I should have paid better attention.

  One female face is nowhere to be seen. Normally, I wouldn’t notice, but when there’s so few of us … it can’t be helped.

  I glance around. “I was expecting to see Professor Davies here.”

  Waldman reappears at the drink cart, seemingly out of nowhere. I jump, and Erin nearly drops the very expensive-looking vase she was admiring on the table.

  “Oh, I only invited students,” Waldman says, reaching over to scoot the vase safely out of Erin’s reach.

  The girl next to me smirks again as she takes a sip from her glass. The other girls are involved in their own conversation, leaning over the arms of their chairs; cheeks flushed and long-stemmed glasses in hand. Seems like they only came for the alcohol.

  After a great deal of shaking ice in a container, Waldman brings me a small glass full of pink liquid with a lemon slice perched on the rim.

  “Have you two met Luiza?” she asks, indicating the girl next to us as she hands Erin her soda.

  I turn to look at the girl, and she offers me a hand. “Luiza de la Cruz,” she says.

  “Avery Black.”

  Her eyebrows raise. “Black,” she repeats, thoughtfully, tucking a strand of short hair behind one ear. She’s got to be an upperclassmen—third year, probably around twenty. She looks like a girl who’s gotten a couple hunts behind her already.

  “Black,” I reply firmly. “Yes. And before you ask, yes, it’s the Blacks.”

  She smirks, takes another sip of her drink, and leans around me to shake Erin’s hand. “And you?”

  “Erin Singer.”

  “Singer.”

  Erin frowns. “Y-yes.”

  “Now that’s a name I’ve never heard,” she says. Luiza crosses her legs and tugs the hem of her skirt over her knee. She’s wearing a tight-fitting, sleeveless red dress and matching pumps.

  Even sitting, her legs look a mile long. Her makeup has been applied with a steady, experienced hand; the wings on her eyeliner are perfectly even and her lips somehow look naturally bright red, even though I know that’s her lipstick.

  If she wasn’t a hunter of things that go bump in the night, she could be a model. A model with broad, deceptively muscular shoulders and reflexes like a cobra ready to strike, apparent from the way she reaches out with lightning speed to catch that same vase when Erin nearly upsets it a second time as she sets down her soda.

  “I don’t know of any Singers,” Luiza says, still looking at Erin like she’s about to gobble her up in one bite.

  “You must not listen to a lot of music,” I say dismissively, and I take a sip of my drink. It’s way too sweet. Maybe I’m more of a whiskey girl.

  Erin giggles beside me, and I glance at her.

  “You’re funny,” Luiza tells me. Her gaze shifts to me over the rim of her glass.

  I don’t reply. Waldman goes back to another armchair and picks up her drink.

  “Luiza’s in her third year here at Saint M. She started when she was seventeen. Top of her class.”

  “Maybe not top. You’re too kind, Eve.” Luiza gives Waldman a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes.

  Waldman smiles delightedly back. The moment Luiza grows distracted by the other girls and gets up from the seat, Waldman swoops in to take her place beside me. She glances over at her other girls almost conspiratorially before she turns back to whisper at me.

  “Avery,” Waldman says quietly. “Do you mind coming with me for a moment? I have something I want to show you.”

  I glance uncertainly at Erin, but s
he’s busy looking under the drink cart for a straw.

  “Sure,” I say, setting down my drink to follow her behind her desk to another door.

  “This is my storage closet. I think I might have some things in here that’ll interest you.” She puts a finger to her lips and I eye her as she opens the door, her hands fumbling a bit with a separate key. I wonder how much she’s had to drink, and what she could possibly want to show me that she doesn’t want to show everyone else.

  Behind the door, there’s not so much a closet as a small library of miscellaneous yet carefully categorized objects. The shelves are filled with strange things; floating objects in jars, an assortment of meticulously-labeled claws in a case, mementos of hunts past. She leads me straight past all this to the most elaborate shelf at the very back of the room.

  Small metal urns like the one containing the djinn occupy a nicely-carved wooden bookcase, though none are as large or decorative. Each has a little card in front of it bearing the name of a monster. Waldman proudly runs one hand across the top of a jar, as if it was a precious child.

  “These are my phylacteries,” she says.

  “You have your own?”

  “Every monster hunter worth their salt does,” she replies, turning it over in her hands. “Only some creatures can be captured in spirit, but really, when it comes down to it … they’re the only ones worth hunting.”

  I wonder if my parents had any; and if they did, where are they now?

  “What happens if you break a phylactery?” I ask, eyeing some of the jars sitting closer to the edge of the shelf.

  Waldman lets out a nervous laugh, but then quickly sobers. “It would escape, of course,” she says. “Which is why I have to keep this room here under close guard. Only my most special students get to see my treasures.”

  There has to be at least three dozen of these jars. Everything from small water spirits to demons are labelled and neatly filed away here in the closet for safekeeping. Professor Waldman has taken the look on my face for rapture, not concern, and has gotten a glassy-eyed look of her own.