Page 108 of Wild Fury (Fallen Royals 6)

My former roommate gasps. “Whoa. Do you know who that is?”

I shake my head.

“Professor Higgins,” she whispers. “Shit. That would’ve been totally against the rules…”

Ah, shit. But I examine the screen closer. “Wait. How can you tell?”

She points to the tattoo peeking out from the collar of his shirt. “He’s got some sort of tribal tattoo that goes up onto his neck a bit. He still works here, you know. English Lit.”

I grimace. “How long were you at the hospital?”

She sucks her lower lip between her teeth as she thinks. “Hale and I stayed until Seb’s parents arrived, I think. They didn’t get there until the next morning, after he had the surgery.”

“And then…”

“I came back, and your stuff had been cleared out.”

Overnight.

She shrugs. “Felicity is still here, you know. She switched to part-time, so she has another semester or two left. Hale graduated last year.”

There’s one person she didn’t mention, and judging from her expression, she knows it. Of course, right when I was leaving, Theo was framing him for steroid use and academic cheating. There’s no way their fraternity-slash-secret society was going to stand up for all of that.

“He transferred,” she whispers. “Someone sent a photo of him and me from the movies. You know, the date you made me go on with you. Hale freaked out and basically disowned him.”

I raise my eyebrow. “Like you stayed long. I heard you traipsing around the woods not long after I left.”

She blushes. “We got called in to help set up for an initiation type thing…”

“In the woods? Dancing around a fire pit, sacrificing a virgin?”

“Lucy—”

I hold up my hand. “Is Felicity still on this campus?”

“N-no, she’s an RA on the main campus now. Dillard Hall.”

I nod curtly and rise, stowing my camera back in its case, then in my bag. I travel light, but sometimes even this feels heavy. If Lucy Page is making a comeback, at least temporarily, I need a new phone.

Ruby doesn’t say anything as I pack up, and I get the impression she’s afraid I might change my mind and come back. A part of me does feel bad about what happened to her and Sebastian. After all, she liked him. I manipulated it to avoid a date, and then Theo extorted it.

My hand is on the door handle when she says, “He’s still searching for you, you know.”

I glance back. “Who?”

“Theo.” Her brows lower. “He hasn’t been the same since you left. Everyone says so.”

I grunt. “Thanks for the heads-up.”

* * *

The salesman at the phone store gives me an incredulous look. “You lost your phone?”

“Is this the first time anyone’s lost a phone?” I keep my tone bland. “I just need to replace it and get everything downloaded from the cloud.”

“Okay.” He takes my number and finds my account. He’s got to be an LBU student. The kid has bright-orange hair and a smattering of freckles. Tall and lanky, he might be a year younger than me. Or older. Either way, he hums under his breath as he types.

I’m sure my parents kept paying for it. One of those just in case things. Like, just in case the police are keeping an eye on suspicious behavior. Or just in case I turn up dead. They’ll be able to sleep at night because they did what they could to let me have a lifeline.

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