Page 12 of Into The Darkness

Coming from working at the library all morning, I opened the apartment door to Maddy jumping up and down with a girl I didn’t recognize.

“Ember, just the person to join us.” Maddy squealed, grabbing me into one of her hugs. “This is my friend Beatrice.”

The woman standing at our little kitchen island was much shorter than Maddy and me and couldn’t have been taller than five feet. She had cropped black hair and was wearing a long skirt and cropped top.

“Hi.” I waved awkwardly while setting my pink backpack down in my room.

“What are you doing?” Maddy stopped, then gave me a quick up-down.

“Uh, what do you mean?” I asked, not understanding what she was referring to since I just walked in.

“It’s Saturday, you are coming out with us tonight.”

“Oh, right.” Pressing my sweaty palms to my jeans, I’d hoped she would have forgotten. “I had a long day at the library studying, so I don’t think that I am—”

“Nope.” Maddy stood in our kitchen with her arms crossed over her chest. “Not going to fly with me. You have barely been at the apartment all week, and if you’re not in class or at your internship, you are studying. You need a break.”

“You deserve one,” Beatrice added.

“I never was a big party person in high school,” I confessed while looking at my muddied Keds. Partially because my dad was crazy protective, but the other part because I didn’t want to be. That lifestyle didn’t appeal to me.

“So what? We aren’t in high school anymore.” I looked back up and bit the inside of my cheeks. She had a point. When I’d come to college, it was to get away from my dad and the life I had growing up, to try something new. I didn’t want to throw myself into another pit of loneliness, especially since it was the first week of school. Yet every time Maddy asked me to hang out, I’d say no and be a recluse, hanging out in my room; things needed to change.

The one downfall to this was that I knew my dad had people following me because I’d gotten glimpses of them as I walked around campus. Maddy knew I had an overprotective family, so I didn’t want to share this with her, but it would be hard for me to escape them.

“Wait, Maddy, you gotta tell her where we are going. Maybe that will convince her.” Beatrice nudged Maddy as they poured an extra shot of alcohol.

“Oh my God. How could I forget?” I raised my eyebrows at them, then shoved my hands into my pockets while Maddy ran to the living room.

“She gets very excited about this,” Beatrice warned me in a low whisper, and we both let out a faint giggle.

Maddy stood in the room with her hands waving in the air as she recounted the events of the day. She was sitting in the apartment this morning after I left, drinking her coffee, when there was a mysterious knock on the door.

“I ran to open it, thinking it was Ember staying here to keep me company.” I narrowed my eyes at her, and she laughed. “Anyway, this fancy black envelope that was addressed to me and Ember—”

“Wait, me?” I asked. “Let me see it.” She ran to her room and pulled out the most beautiful invite I had ever seen. It resembled a wedding invite.

How the heck was I invited to the Den? Going wasn’t an option after being warned by my dad and Walsh. Who knew Maddy and me enough to invite us by name?

This had to be a mistake. There was no way I was invited to my dad’s archnemesis’s fraternity. My stomach gurgled, and it wasn’t because I was hungry. The anxiety rolled through me, but I was desperate not to let it show. I wanted to keep this façade going.

“Wow, this is really cool, but I can’t go.” I wasn’t even going to think about how I could explain to Dad and Walsh that I somehow got an invitation to the Den. “My brother would kill me if I went. He is part of the Alpha fraternity, and their bitter rivals are the Den, so I have been completely banned from attending.” I looked over at Beatrice and offered her an apologetic smile.

The only thing I knew was that one day every spring the two fraternities battled it out. I didn’t know what it entailed except that Dad was not allowed on campus that day nor were any of our guards. He would pace while having hushed conversations on his phone, then Walsh always came home the next day, and we didn’t speak for a solid two days afterward, as he stayed hidden in his room.

“They will never even know. It’s a masked party the Den is known for throwing every year so that they can scope out who they want on their rotating roster,” Maddy added.

Theywouldknow because they would follow me there. I’d have to find a way to leave the apartment in disguise. I needed some sort of diversion because once I was out, the masks everyone would be wearing would keep my anonymity.

“Ew,” Beatrice chimed in. “So much for feminism.”

“When you are as attractive as the members of the Den, all your feminine morals vanish. They are the villains we were warned about, which left us curious.” Maddy tossed her red hair over her shoulder before walking over to our window. “When my last roommate vanished, they said she was in the woods partying with the Den and was caught in the crossfire between the two fraternities. Somehow, the rival they have goes far deeper than just college frats.”

“What?” My mouth was agape. That had to be the reason my family didn’t want me near the Den. It also probably had to do with what happened during that day in the spring when Dad wasn’t allowed on campus.

Although, none of this adds up to me. Why would anyone want my father, who is just in a family business, to get wrapped up in this? I felt stupid for never questioning it when I was at home, but now that the pieces were laid on the table, it’s like I was seeing clearly for the first time—and I didn’t love the picture in front of me.

“Yeah. This is only a rumor and was never proven to have any truth, but Isles is like a haven for the two frats. If you somehow see someone of the opposite brotherhood outside of Isles, including the woods, then it is game on.” An eerie chill coursed through my body. I’ve seen a lot of fucked-up things in my life, things I’d expected to read about or see in movies, yet I was being told Isles held a world of underground secrets to it. Part of me wished I’d picked a college I could live a normal life in.

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