Page 81 of Virgin Sacrifice

By the time I met Autumn at our favorite coffee shop on campus, the rush of confronting Locke was fading, and I was in desperate need of a caffeine fix if we were going to get some serious studying done.

I grinned when I saw her waiting there for me. While Autumn’s mood may have been suffering lately, her fashion sense had not. It had yet to snow here, but she had still chosen to go full après-ski bunny in spectacular fashion. She had paired a soft white and silver cashmere cowl-neck sweater with a pair of buttery lavender-gray leggings that she wore tucked into a pair of authentic Moon Boots in pure white, complete with silver detailing to match her sweater and signature jewelry. Her auburn locks were curled and piled up in a high ponytail. Sipping on a hot chocolate, she looked as though she had just stepped into the chalet after a long day of hitting the slopes.

Autumn looked to see me approaching, and her face lit up.

“Hey there, you finally made it,” she said with an enthusiastic smile that warmed my heart. This girl, with her earnest heart and bold fashion sense had become the bright spot I didn’t know I needed in my life.

“Sorry I was late, Professor Dickhole wanted to speak to me again,” I groused, sliding into the seat across from her. Autumn frowned, pushing the second cup of hot chocolate she had ordered in my direction.

“Drink,” she ordered sternly. “Peppermint hot chocolate makes everything better.”

I took a tentative sip to avoid burning off my tongue and was rewarded with rich chocolaty goodness, followed by a sharp bite of peppermint. I let out a happy sigh. Hot chocolate might not have made everything better, but it didn’t hurt.

“What did he do today?”

“Oh, you know, accused me of stalking his cousins,” I replied casually, with only a hint of bitterness in tone.

“Seriously?!” Autumn exclaimed, drawing the attention of tables seated around us. I had long come to accept that the girl had no volume control. At least this time, she wasn’t yelling out embarrassing information.

“Yes, he told me, and I quote ‘my cousins have far better things to do than trawl for the scholarship trash.’”

“I would think he would have been more upset about you stabbing Nixon in the hand,” she said contemplatively.

“It was barely a puncture wound,” I pushed back. “I don’t think you can really call it stabbing.”

We had had this argument before.

Autumn rolled her eyes at me. “Only you could stab a Blackwell and live long enough to downplay it.”

I shrugged. “Nixon got what he deserved. Maybe next time he’ll think twice about where he puts his hands.”

It was doubtful, although I had been seeing less of the twins, so maybe it had gotten through to him.

“I don’t understand how you can be so cavalier about the two of them stalking you. Even if they aren’t, like, really hitmen or assassins or whatever you call it, they still give off total psycho killer vibes.”

She wasn’t wrong. And as someone who had been raised by a killer, I was probably too comfortable with the idea of murder compared to the average person. There were a lot of different reasons someone killed. I tried to only judge those with poor ones.

“Enough talk about the Blackwells,” I said, reaching into my bag to fish out my books and laptop. “Between the twins and Locke, the whole family is taking up way too much of my mental bandwidth, and I have finals to survive before anything else.”

“Ugh.” Autumn grimaced. “Do we really have to study?”

“Well, my scholarship depends on my maintaining a 3.8 GPA, so maybe you don’t but I do,” I said firmly but not unkindly.

“Fine, fine,” she huffed, pulling out her own bedazzled laptop, and we set to work.

We settled into a quiet lull, and the clatter of our typing faded into the background noise that was punctuated by the occasional increase of chatter in the coffee shop.

After about an hour, hot chocolate long since gone, Autumn pretended to dramatically slam her head down on her keyboard.

“Can’t . . . fit . . . in . . . any . . . more . . . knowledge,” she moaned, making me laugh.

I’d missed hanging out just the two of us. When the body parts started arriving and people started disappearing, Aaron had used it to insert himself more and more into our lives. Sometimes it felt he was constantly hovering around us, and while Autumn might have appreciated his overprotective nature, it continued to rub me the wrong way.

“I need to grab something with more caffeine than the hot chocolate. Let’s take a break. Can I get you anything?” I asked.

Autumn was well aware of my scholarship status, and she had a sneaky habit of trying to pick up small things for me here and there, like the hot chocolate earlier today. It was hard for me to accept at first, and from anyone else I would have rebuffed their kindness. But Autumn was, well, Autumn. While I could never match her level of generosity on my current budget, I could absolutely get her a coffee.

“Nothing for me, please. If I have caffeine now, I’ll be up all night and I need to be up early for class tomorrow.”

---