Page 30 of Virgin Sacrifice

She wasn’t wrong, so I fished around in my pocket looking for my key, relief filling me when my fingers wrapped around it right away.

“I’ll be super fast, just give me a minute,” I replied, pushing the heavy metal door to the mail room open with Autumn following quickly behind me.

My unit was tucked away in the back corner, and I half expected to find my mysterious stalker lurking in front of it as I turned the corner.

Of course, there was no one there, although the sigh Autumn released told me she had been on edge as well, and I made my way down the row to my mailbox.

That was when I noticed it.

“What’s wrong?” Autumn whispered behind me, nerves creeping back into her voice, and I realized I had stopped suddenly in front of her.

Understanding rushed through me, and I hurried over to my mailbox, shielding it from her view with my body.

“Nothing,” I lied. “I just had a moment of school panic. Couldn’t remember if I had forgotten to turn my last Japanese assignment in.”

I discreetly flicked the cheap sticker off the front of my mailbox and watched as it fluttered to the ground before casually stepping on top of it.

“Oh my God, I get those all the time,” Autumn replied, as I opened up the metal locker and retrieved my mail.

“Just last week I woke up in the, like, middle of the night terrified that I had overslept and missed my Marketing 101 exam.”

“It’s the worst,” I said, flashing the letters in my hand to let her know that I had gotten what I came for. We headed back to the main lobby before taking the elevator up to our floor.

“Luz,” Autumn said when we reached the doors to our rooms, “I’m really glad we talked about everything today.”

“Me too,” I replied sincerely. As uncomfortable as it had been, it had felt good in the end.

We split up and said good night before heading in.

Once I had locked the door, I made my way over to my bed before slipping off my Reeboks and turning them over to inspect the soles.

There, stuck to the bottom of my shoe, was the small sticker.

It was cheap and sparkled with a sort of holographic design. It looked like you could get it at any Dollar Store or find it in any teacher’s craft cupboard. And had it been any other sticker, on anyone else’s locker, it probably wouldn’t have stood out in the least.

But it did, at least to me.

A cute, sparkly little heart sticker.

Chapter fourteen

Luz

I didn’t tell Autumn about the sticker. For all I knew, someone put it there by accident and it was pure coincidence that it happened to be a heart. At least that was what I was trying to tell myself. The alternative was that I was attracting creeps at an alarming rate.

It was the following Tuesday, and I’d been planning to grab a quick lunch with Autumn before facing off against Locke Blackwell for the first time since the course drop date had passed. So, I was surprised when Aaron and his friends, Melody, a pretty blonde biochem major he often hung out with, and another third-year student named Hale, also joined us. Still, it wasn’t too bad. The four of them lost themselves in idle chatter, leaving me to enjoy my cold noodle salad and crispy roll as I ran through this week’s ECON200 readings in my head.

“You know, we never decided what we were going to do to celebrate your birthday,” Autumn said casually. To be fair, I was surprised that she had let it go for this long already. I suspected her timing was deliberate and she was counting on Aaron and Melody to hound me into going out to celebrate.

“Like I told you,” I said dismissively, hoping to avoid it becoming a thing, “I’m not a big birthday person, and I don’t really want to celebrate.”

“Wait, when’s your birthday?” Melody asked, oblivious to my desire to drop the subject.

“November second,” Autumn replied before adding, “she’s a Scorpio.”

Melody raised one eyebrow at Autumn but nodded along as though she understood what that meant.

Across the room, I spied a flash of dirty blonde hair, and I zeroed in on a tall guy, my nerves firing up as I prepared myself for another encounter with the Blackwell twins.

---