Page 15 of Switching Graves

What are the odds of us being caught? If we keep this just between the two of us, could we actually pull it off?

A smile slowly spreads across her lips as she realizes the direction of my thoughts.

“We can do this. It’s always been you and me, Sonny,” she pushes, just to get me past that final, doubtful thought. To remind me who has always had my back.

Sucking in my bottom lip, I turn toward the window, away from her victorious expression. “This is insane.”

Poppy slides across the workable toward me, hooking her arms around my neck. “I knew I’d get you on board,” she shouts in a hysterical laugh.

“I haven’t committed to anything,” I yell over her squeals, pushing her off me.

“You will,” she assures, completely unaffected by my rejection.

Even without me saying it, she knows she’s already won.

5

Raze

Present day

“Admissions are down another 14 percent this year. A quarter of our first-years are transfers that we practically had to beg to come,” Dean Hatchcroft complains into his lunch.

Professor Gildbright sits ramrod straight in the seat across from me with a pen poised against a legal pad. The muscles around her eyes appear tight and focused, as if she’s ready to write a note for him at any given moment.

I made the mistake of eating in the courtyard today instead of my office, giving in to a rare moment of lonely weakness. The instant they each sat their trays down on my table, I realized what a grave mistake that had been.

Welcome Week begins in two weeks, kicking off another academic year and adding chaos to these beautiful, haunting grounds. Aside from a few students in early enrollment programs, the campus is mostly empty. It’s the only time of yearI get to enjoy it in the daylight without being irritated by the entitled Ravenshurst legacies.

I despise this place.

As a native of Nocturne Valley, Ravenshurst University was considered the untouchable kingdom. A place we could admire from afar, but never attend. To this day, only a small, hand-selected few are able to work on the school’s grounds, and they’re sworn to secrecy over what they witness here. The rest of us were told nightmarish fables about what happened to those who crossed the iron gates without permission.

How the Midnight Syndicate would catch us and make us pay in gruesome, horrible ways.

Of course, they were always tales spun to keep the divide between the town and the school that funds it, so no one looks too closely at the dealings of our so-called leaders. To stamp their powers down until they’re practically nonexistent, because allowing us to use our gifts may compromise the elite they were trying to indoctrinate.

Unfortunately, I’m one of the exceptions to their rules.

I’m living the nightmares.

In fact, Iamthe nightmare.

I’m not a legacy of the university—one of the handful of chosen families who are allowed to practice. My ancestors were just as forbidden from walking these grounds as any other Nocturnian. In fact, the Whitlocks are not gifted in any way.

But the Syndicate struck another deal with my father in exchange for our silence over what was taken from us.

The promise of a bright future for one child as repayment for the theft of another child’s future.

We begged him not to agree. Bane deserved far better. He deserved justice, and we needed more than a gag order and a false sense of hope to grieve him.

I hated him when he agreed to their terms and made sure to remind him of it every single day.

Part of the agreement included my induction into the mysterious, deadly society the moment I became of age and taking over for him. One day with those people was all it took for me to understand why my father made the choice he did.

It was because they didn’t offer an alternative.

We either played by their rules, or we lost our lives as tragically and painfully as Bane had.

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