Page 70 of Gothikana

He paused in the folding of his other sleeve, his eyebrows slashing down. ‘You’ve wandered there alone?’

‘I was with Troy and some of his friends,’ she told him, her eyes going to the floor at the mention of the friend who was no more. She needed to stay on track. ‘What happened then?’

He considered her for a beat. ‘Zoe disappeared. I had the Board order a search of the entire mountain. She was never seen again.’

‘So, you think whoever was at the shack is responsible for her missing case?’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t know. Even if they are, it doesn’t explain the disappearances for almost a century on the same night. And now the staged suicides.’

‘Staged?’ Corvina whispered, blinking in shock at the way the conversation shifted gears. ‘You think the suicides were… what?’

Vad took out a scrap of paper from his shirt pocket, showing it to her. It was the same note he’d shown her before, the ‘Danse Macabre’ he’d found on the roof after Troy.

‘Troy died the exact day your paper about this was due,’ he told her, his voice steady. ‘This was meant for me to find, and this makes me wonder what the fuck is happening at this school. How someone could get two sane, happy people to walk off a roof.’

Corvina watched the note in his hand, her mind racing with wisps of thoughts too smoky and insubstantial to hold onto. She rubbed a hand over her face, her head starting to hurt with all the information and all the questions it posed.

‘What about the bodies?’ she asked, trying to stick to a linear train of thought. ‘The bodies of people your grandfather—’ She trailed off.

‘Murdered?’ he stated plainly. ‘He never told me what they did to the bodies of his victims. The Slayers they buried somewhere in the woods.’

‘And those empty graves at the ruins?’

‘Fifteen empty graves for fifteen of the Slayer victims who died there but were never found.’

That was something at least. ‘What about that piano there? The one you were repairing?’

‘It was my grandfather’s,’ he told her, his teeth gnashing. ‘They liked having music with their murder.’

Corvina shuddered, remembering what they had done in that place. ‘I can’t believe we kissed by it. That’s just so… macabre.’

Something shifted in his eyes, a side of his lips curving. ‘I would’ve kissed you bathed in blood, Corvina. If I had a chance to kiss you while a thousand ghosts rose from their graves, I would have kissed you. Don’t doubt that.’

Her breathing hitched. The visual from her dream returned tenfold, him fucking her as blood drenched her hair, masked people dying by exsanguination on the sides.

He jumped off the desk, picked up the cigarette and threw it in the can by the door before stalking toward her. Corvina felt her breath catch as he took her thighs in his palms and spread her open, hiking her long skirt up, wrapping her legs around his waist.

‘Now I get to have you however I want you, don’t I?’ he murmured, half his face cast in shadows, the other in the light from the grey, cloudy dusk.

Corvina gripped his shoulders as he tilted her off balance. ‘The student-teacher rule doesn’t really apply to you, does it? You can’t lose your job because you’re… you.’

His hands went under her skirt to cup her ass. ‘It applies as long as I’m a teacher here. And I have to be one until I find out what is happening here. This castle is mine. But so are you now, Miss Clemm. I have to clean up whatever mess this is but have no doubts I am breaking a rule for you.’

Corvina rubbed herself against him involuntarily, her body hot since the dream last night. But she still needed to clear things up.

‘What didAjax mean about the old woman?’ she asked breathlessly. ‘About the purple eyes?’

His hand tugged the side of her sweater down, exposing her shoulder and the bruise she had from his mouth to the slowly darkening room.

‘At the boys’ home, this old lady Zelda, she prophesised shit about everyone,’ he told her, rubbing her bruise with his thumb. ‘She told me one day I’d see purple eyes, and when I did I had to follow it. So I did.’

Corvina frowned slightly, not understanding.

‘The boys’ home I had been in’ — he bent down, licking her bruise, making her insides clench — ‘it was called the Morning Star Lost Home for Boys before it burned down.’

‘What?’ Corvina stared at him in surprise. That was… a very odd coincidence.

‘Being who I am on the Board, I get certain access. Three years ago’ — he spoke into her skin softly — ‘I was in their database trying to look for details of my old best friend from the home. I lost him in the fire.’

---