Page 47 of Switching Graves

Her mother took from my family. Each day I spend standing before her and her ignorant peers is another day closer to ensuring Divina Carmichael pays for every way she’s destroyed my life. I wake up eveey morning with a new sense of purpose and a pep in my step that never existed before.

There’s quite a bit of mystery surrounding the woman claiming the Carmichael legacy. Inconsistencies that stack up against her each day.

Those purple eyes. The offputting vibes. Then there’s the detail about her not knowing Ravenshurst is for the gifted.

It drives me mad if I think about it too long.

So, I take every opportunity I can get to humiliate her before her peers.

I grade her assignments on a skewed scale—one that will undoubtedly hack her near-perfect GPA to pieces.

I toy with her when she tries to confront me about it.

It’s exhilarating and fresh.

She’s activated a side of me that no other woman ever has without even realizing it.

My plan to poke and prod at her shiny little armor until it’s filled with nothing but knicks and scratches has worked handsomely. She’s absolutely tortured by the concept of not being liked, specifically by a superior. I did enough digging into her school files to learn that she thrives on outside approval.

I’ve decided that regardless if I have the right woman or not, I’m going to continue with my games. She is very clearly tied to Dovina Carmichael in some personal way. Her suffering will still affect my nemesis in the end. But I’ll keep her secret close to my chest until I decide how to leverage it against her. Nothing has excited me this much in a very, very long time and I’m not ready to spoil it.

By the time I’m through with her, she’ll be begging for me to kill her.

And I will. Happily. Eagerly.

For my mother.

For my father.

And most of all, for Bane.

26

Sonny

Iarrive back at my dorm after my Saturday morning psych lab to find a black velvet box sitting outside the door, neatly wrapped with silky silver ribbon. A lavish, floppy bow adorns the top with a tag hanging off the side that has Poppy’s name hand-scribed in beautiful cursive.

Glancing around the empty hall, I look for any clue as to who could have left it. No other door has one sitting before it.

Is this some sort of prank?

It takes me a few beats of contemplation until I hurriedly unlock my door and grab up the box, carrying it inside before someone catches me with it. I make it as far as the couch, and then I’m ripping the ribbon off and showing the lid to the floor. A silver envelope sits atop a mess of black silk with a wax seal holding the envelope closed. Once I shove my nails into the wax to get it peeled off, I find an invitation sitting inside.

“What the hell?” I mumble to myself, dropping the invitation to peel back the soft fabric in the box, revealing an ornately decorated, golden face mask. With careful hands, I grab itup and examine the filigree from all sides, surprised by the impressive weight of it.

There’s no way this is real. What kind of university would throw an event that encourages students tohunteach other?

And a masquerade? Come on . . .

No, it has to be a prank. That’s why no one else had boxes waiting for them.

There’s a knock on my door, startling me so badly, the mask slips through my fingers and crashes to the floor. I snatch it up and throw it back onto the couch like it’ll bite me if I hold it for too long, mumbling a string of curse words as I rush to answer the door.

“Hey, we were going down to dinner and—” Ava greets, stopping when her eyes land on the box still sitting on my couch. “Ooh, you lucky bitch!” she squeals, inviting herself through my door. Holding up the invitation for Beatrix to see, her mouth pops open. “Look what she got.”

“Damn,” Beatrix says, waving to me as she passes through the doorway with much more consideration than Ava.

“So, you know about this? It’s not some weird joke someone’s playing on me?”

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