Page 10 of Tricky Girls

I scrub hard at my face, splitting the knuckles on my hand again.

I’ve already exorcised one demon tonight, now another pops up like a fucking Hydra.

I flex out my hand, watching the blood well up like jewels.

Hazelhurst is known for its ghosts, but I hadn’t thought it would be the living haunting the living.

Tilda…

How long has it been? Nine years, ten?

A whole decade for the hate to fester, and oh, Jesus, has it ever festered. I’m green with infection, pus oozing from every pore.

I cross to the window, craving solace from the silent pines, their shadows deeper than even mine.

It’s not safe for that girl around here. This sickness is infectious.

If she’s on their course she must be in her second year. I’ve gone a whole year without knowing of her existence here.

Maybe it was just a twist of fate, a cruel gift. A trick on Halloween night.

Her outfit—

I close my eyes, swallowing against the vision of her black bodysuit and torn up tights.

A skeleton. How fitting for the creature who massacred my future, who took it all from me before it could even begin.

How could she not remember?

Her face is a permanent brand behind my eyelids. Same beguiling green eyes, same long hair.

Still pretty.

My breath fogs up the glass, obscuring my vision of the castle in the distance. My throbbing knuckles help to ground me, and I rub my thumb over them to make them bleed just that bit more.

Yeah, it’s not safe for her here.

Maybe she’ll fade back into obscurity now, known only on the lips of Elly and Haz as some rando course mate.

It’s a nice thought but scabs have a way of becoming reinfected once they’ve been picked.

Staring out over the gently swaying pine trees, I know in my blood I’ll be seeing Matilda Kingston again—and soon.

CHAPTER 4

Tilda

I find it incongruous sometimes, sat with my phone and my uni-issued tablet and talking about future technologies, whilst ensconced within a 10thcentury castle which loses electricity any time there’s a strong wind.

The lights in the vaulted stone ceiling are dim, rivalling the drizzly day outside, and made more so by the curtain of hair I keep over my face. I didn’t get a chance to wash it this morning and it still stinks of the body spray I spritz for Fright Night. Keeping my gaze firmly away from Natasha who sits two seats down, I pick at my black painted fingernails.

It felt wrong walking the ten minutes to our tutorial without her. We left our rooms at the same time, and I was sure she wasabout to say something, but one look at her patched-up face and I turned and fled.

I thought I’d feel angrier in the light of day. It’s probably the hangover, the queasiness in my belly stopping me from feeling much other than sad. Ryan wasn’t wrong last night—I hadn’t liked him much at the end and had been idly concocting up ways to dump him, but then he went and didthat.And they hadn’t even seemed sorry, as though my feelings were of no importance, like I am of no importance.

He chose someone else last night, they both had, and that’s what’s twisting my heart the most.

My own mother chose me once, a long time ago, then never again since.

---