Page 21 of A University of Betrayal

Reflexively, I reached for my cell phone because I had to try to reach Larissa. But there was no cell phone.

“We had to take it away.”

“What?”

The woman kept a straight face.

“You’ll get it back, no need to worry. It’s downstairs in the kitchen.”

I wanted to ask if that had been necessary, but instead, I asked something I hadn’t even thought about until now. “Where’s my mother?”

She looked at her gold wristwatch, which looked as if she had stolen it from a grandma, which I could well imagine from this woman. “She went grocery shopping thirty-two minutes ago. She should be back soon.”

Mum was fine.

I breathed a sigh of relief. As I did so, I realized that I hadn’t breathed in at all.

“Excuse me. I’ll go down now and let the Domini know we’re starting in an hour.”

“Starting? With what?”

Rebecca Harlow pulled her glasses down and raised her eyebrows. “With the rite of passage.” My expression must have changed from questioning to horrified. “If you hadn’t woken up today, we would have had to wait a month. But the phase of the moon is very fitting, even if it is more daring.”

“More daring?” I whispered, terrified.

How could this woman make me feel so much antipathy for the Quatura?

She pushed back her glasses. “You shouldn’t worry unnecessarily anymore. Put on something more… decent.” She looked down at me, slightly disgusted. “Because you lookterrible.”

Wow,how could anyone be so kind? What did she expect? That I would jump out of bed likeAmerica’s Next Top Modelafter three days without being conscious? I was neither Larissa nor any model.

She smiled sweetly as if she had just given me the nicest compliment in the world, and I felt the urge to give her my middle finger, just like Larissa always did.Damn it,I needed my best friend. Without her help, I was lost here. But she was gone, and no one seemed to care about finding her again.

I felt the panic and a stabbing feeling of loss in my stomach.

“We leave in twenty-three minutes.” With those last words of smugness, the woman disappeared through my bedroom door and downstairs, just as strangely as she had appeared here. And again, I heard her footsteps as if they were right outside my door.

“What the hell?” I asked myself quietly, taking a minute to process everything.

I had to find a way to help Larissa. She couldn’t be dead. I didn’t want to believe that. If anyone had a strong will to survive, it was Larissa.

So many times, we had been chased or even attacked, even seriously injured, by strange men in Sacramento. Larissa had defended us over and over again. While I’d stood by like a helpless hamster and let everything happen to me, she’d been there, beating the crap out of the guys.

There was only one problem: this time we were dealing with more dangerous creatures,supernatural beasts.I could only pray that she was still alive, because why hadn’t they just left her there and disappeared like they had done to me?

Nothingin Blairville seemed to explain all the strange things going on, so I decided to get up. I threw back the blanket, which crashed into the wall with a little too much vigor, and swept down all my picture frames.

Confused, I looked down to the floor, where – thankfully – everything had landed on the soft comforter, then to my hands. I spotted so many details that I hadn’t noticed before. The tiniest pores, the scar from my childhood that I had thought had healed completely. I held my arm up to the light and looked at the fine hairs, whose structure was now clearly visible. Then another strange thought occurred to me.

I jumped up and rushed to the mirror, a little too fast, because I suddenly found myself directly in front of my reflection. My body felt much more energetic, more agile. Probably because I had been so unwell that I had forgotten what it felt like to be healthy.

The thought that it could be different again in an hour because I was once again at the mercy of this witch torture, made me shudder.

My gaze wandered to my reflection, and a feeling of joy overcame me when I saw that I had gained weight again and my hair had become fuller. Even my complexion seemed to glow. I couldn’t stop myself from smiling.

But it made no sense. How could I have gained weight if I hadn’t eaten anything? Why was I feeling so well? Where was all the pain?

I was turning away from the mirror when I spotted a yellowish glow, so I turned back to the mirror to reassure myself that I hadn’t imagined it. I examined my eyes suspiciously. There was nothing there. The left one shimmered turquoise, the right one blue, as always. The sunlight must have reflected unusually yellow in the crystal lamp above my bed.

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