†
I force my feet to keep moving, careful not to stumble as I fly down the stairs. My vision wavers-fogged at the edges. Anxiety? Fear? I can't tell, and I don't have the luxury to find out.
It's 7:58, and the first floor is already suffocating with bodies-bright-eyed, dressed, buzzing with the morning's order-whereas I'm still in last night's party dress.
What happened?
One minute I'm saying "Good night, Abel". The next minute-morning!
No dreams, no waking up in sweat, no clawing at the sheets with tears. I just slept.
My first full night sleep in three years.
But where relief should be, there's a dread building its nest there.
My eyes scan for room number 172.
When I find it, I also find a note resting on the door in crude, jagged letters:
"I'm screwing your girlfriend. Fuck off!"
There's only one soul arrogant enough to pen down drivel like this.
He has deep brown hair, hazel eyes that laugh at you even when his lips don't, a wallet that bleeds itself dry on women and whiskey, and a personal vendetta against anything resembling a dorm rule.
It isn't Abel-hell, no.
It's the devil he shares a room with.
I hammer my knuckles into the door.
"Luther!"
His name rips out of me with the violence of a last breath.
This is a life or death situation-Abel is the last shadow I saw last night, and if this is going to make sense, the thread runs straight through him.
I strike again, harder.
"Luther! I know you're in there-"
The door sighs open, but only enough to see half his face. Sweat slicks down his temple, tracing his bare shoulder like heat's own handwriting.
He tilts his head, voice slow as if tasting my name.
"Jessica?"
"I need to see Abel," I say, each word carved with steel. "Now."
He breaks my gaze, turning as though to seek silent approval from someone inside.
"Abel's not here," he says turning back to me.
My brow lifts. "What? It's too early-where's he gone?"
A slow curl of his mouth. "I don't know... maybe church, maybe class. One of the two."
I nod, but the motion is hollow. God help Abel if he's at school, because I won't set foot inside a church-not the holy ground I swore would never taste my shadow again.
"Jessica?"
I turn, meeting his eyes. "Thank you, Luther-" The words snag in my throat as I really look at him.
"What?" He asks.
"Since when do you wear lenses?"
He arches a brow. "Since today?"
"Well..." I turn to leave. "Blue is not your colour."
He lets out the smallest of smiles before the door closes between us. I wait until the passage empties, then blink myself into the janitor's closet at school.
I hurry out of the closet, mistakenly bumping into a chubby lady carrying a mop and a bucket.
Here we go.
"Mrs. Keepe," My smile stretches into something sheepish. "Good morning."
She doesn't return it. Instead, her eyes sharpen.
"You are a witch."
I scoff under my breath, forcing the corners of my mouth to stay up. "You have to stop saying that-"
"You are a witch-"
"Okay." I shoulder past her.
"You will burn in hell!"
Her voice lashes at my back, but my steps only quicken. I'm nearly running when the classroom door comes into view, and then I'm bursting through it like something's chasing me.
"Abel!" The name tears from me, rattling the walls, startling not just the room but the very air inside it.
Every head turns. Mid-sentence, mid-breath, mid-note-they all freeze. All eyes pin me, drinking in my wrinkled dress, my wild breathing, the undeniable wrongness I've dragged into their orderly morning.
"Has anyone seen Abel?!" My voice cracks on the edge of desperation.
"Who are you?"
The voice came from the man standing beside the board-hands deep in his pockets, gaze steady, unshaken. No confusion in him, only a flicker of surprise.
I take him in.
Bald head gleaming under the fluorescent light. Shoulders so broad they threaten the seams of his rolled-up sleeves-whether he's choking the fabric or it's choking him, I can't tell. I don't care to imagine what's below the waist.
His name is scrawled in chalk behind him: "Professor Graham."
I murmur it aloud, tasting the sound.
"Hey." His voice snaps like a whip, jerking me back. "Who are you?"
Without thinking: "My name is Jessica."
The words hang there, and then the realization hits-hard enough to knock the air from me. "Oh, no..." I groan.
The curse is already spreading its roots into him, into anyone who heard. So I rip myself backward through time, pulling the thread of the moment backwards-past Mrs. Keepe, past Luther, past the pounding flight down the stairs-until I land, gasping in the instant I woke up.
≈≈≈
First, I wake with a jolt, my pulse hammering against my throat.
It isn't the usual nightmare-the one where I relive the moment my baby was killed. This is worse. This time, it's my hands that hurt him.
"It's a dream..." My voice shakes. "It's a dream... Breathe..."
I can't calm my nerves, I can't force my brain to relax and I can't simply make my heart stop pounding against my ribs.
"It's just a dream..."
But it doesn't look like a dream!
If it is, then why do I taste copper on tongue? Why do I still have goosebumps from where he held me?
I drag myself out of bed to the mirror.
My gaze lingers on my cloudy eyes before it drops to my mouth and stops.
"What? No...no...no, please no..."
There's dried blood on my lips, which I'm sure isn't mine.
"Abel."
I think my heart is going to rip its way out of my chest now.
My nails dig into my chest as I try to make sense of what happened.
But I find anything!
No memory.
Just me digging my fangs into his neck, holding him in place as I drink him dry.
"Breathe... Breathe... He's not dead..."
It's not working! Nothing is fucking working!
"I need to see him."
I race down the stairs, bare feet, breath ragged in my ears.
I have to see him. I have to make sure last night was nothing but a trick of my mind.
Because if what I fear is true... if the nightmare wasn't a nightmare at all.
Then Abel is already dying.
He's already granting my wish. And I can't-I can't let him do that.
"Luther!"
I hammer my fists against their door, voice cracking.
The door groans on its hinges.
My fingers fly to my back before knotting them together, lips pressed to a razor thin line.
If it's Abel-the night tilts in my favor.
But if it's Luther...then the first thing through that door will be that vile nickname, dripping from his mouth.
"Jessica?"
His voice sounds hollowed out, ragged and bone-tired. But of course it is-the note on the door is a knife to anyone's peace.
"I need to see Abel. Now."
But Abel isn't there, so I blink to school, into the damp breath of the janitor's closet straight into Mrs. Keepe.
If I act sweet, harmless, and human enough, maybe she'll tell herself that whatever she saw before was only a trick of the light.
"Mrs. Keepe. Good morning."
Her glare is all winter, the same frost she's skewered me with ever since the day she caught me blink into class.
"You're a witch."
Ugh. She's never stopped saying that.
Mrs Keepe has been sweeping these halls longer than I've walked them, and there's a child growing inside her-an innocent thing I would not wish to see grieve as I once did.
If not for that child, all it would take is the lightest pinch to her cheeks... and her inside would spill out between her lips in a crimson tide.
"Mrs. Keepe, you have to stop saying that-"
"You are a witch-"
"Okay."
I cut her off before she can spit any more of her venom, because if I let her finish, I might forget she's pregnant.
Her voice chases me anyway, shrill and impossible to unhear.
"You'll burn in hell!"
"Later,"
I tell myself. "I'll deal with her later. "
For now, I can't bleed focus-and I certainly can't make room for distraction.
I shoulder through the next door and into Abel's class.
"Abel! Has anyone seen Abel?"
The room freezes, over a thousand pairs of scholarly eyes blink at me, but I have no patience left to feel ashame.
"Abel Fury!" I press forward,
brushing past the professor's startled attempt to speak.
"Tall as a mountain, clean-shaven, broad shoulders-dangerously handsome," I throw into the silence. Still, nothing.
"He's a philosopher like the rest of you, fond of the quaint little notion that God exists?"
I let my gaze rake across each of them, one by one, until the silence begins to taste like a dare.
"No one?" My exhale is supposed to loosen something inside me, but it doesn't.
"Well... Isn't that disappointing."
I turn and head for the door.
"Hey-"
Professor Graham began, but I raised a single finger, cutting the sentence from his throat before it could breathe.
"I know you're curious," I say very softly, "but trust me... you're safe now."
I leave without waiting for his answer, shutting the door behind me and letting my spine sag against it, as if that alone can keep me from collapsing.
After a series of laughter, ripple questions and mocking banter seeping through the walls of the class, professor Graham continues his class as though nothing happened.
I only notice the tears after they fall. If he's not here...then he's got to be in church, right?
"Shit."
I press my palm to my forehead, as if I might press the truth back into hiding.
"What happened?" The words slip out. "Did I do this?"
Flashes from the night before bleeds in.
His face under the colored lights...him standing close enough that I could count the beats of his pulse.
And then those stupid , foolish, careless thoughts; That someone or something would take him out for me.
Did I do this...Have I hurt him?
"Where are you, Abel?" My voice cracks, splintering on his name. "Where could you have gone so early?"
"Jessie?"
Naomi's voice rolls in from the far end of the hallway, carrying the uneasy chorus of Rita and blabber mouth Beatrice behind it.
I don't bother wiping my tears.
What's the point of wiping them if they're just going to keep falling?
"Jessie," Rita calls, drawing closer. "Please, tell me why you're still in your party dress. And where's your-"
She stops dead when she's near enough to see my face.
"...shoe?"
Naomi's breath catches. "Is that... blood?"
Beatrice reaches for me, her palm landing gently on my shoulder.
"Jessie, are you okay-"
"It's your fault!"
I slap her touch away like it burns. "If you hadn't run your mouth about my pills and nightmares for the world to hear, he wouldn't have known and he wouldn't have tried to help!"
"I- I'm sorry... I was only trying to help."
"Help?"
My laugh is dry and bitter.
"By shoving me under the bus? Yeah, thanks for that."
She narrows her eyes.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"You talk too much, that's what!"
"Whoa, whoa..." Rita wedges herself between us. "Girls-what exactly are we rallying behind here?" Her eyes hook into mine.
"Jessie, what's going on?"
I swallow against the lump forming in my lungs.
"I'm looking for Abel... I think I might have hurt him, but I can't find him anywhere."
"What?" Naomi murmurs.
"Oh no, Jessie..." Rita groans, tilting her head back as though pleading with the ceiling.
"What have you done to the poor boy now?"
"I don't know," I admit softly. "I think I had a nightmare last night. Abel came to help... and I might've bitten him in the process."
Her eyes sharpen.
"A love bite?"
"Will I look this worried if it was?"
"So? I don't see what the big deal is... It's just a bite."
"It's not just any bite!"
"Okay, so explain."
I let the air leave me slowly, almost afraid it won't return.
"Look, Rita, I don't have time for this... I just need to find Abel first, and make sure he's alright."
"Let's ask Luther."
Naomi, quiet until now, speaks without looking at me.
"What's the point?" I mutter. "I already did." My gaze drifts in Luther's direction.
"You have?" Rita's brow lifts.
"When?" Naomi asks.
"Five minutes ago?"
The truth slips out without thought, and then two matching frowns close in on me like a verdict.
"I mean... fifteen minutes ago? Maybe twenty? Twenty-five? I don't know."
"Well...that was twenty-five minutes ago," Rita declares, seizing my arm.
"Come on. We're asking him again."
"Luther!" Naomi's voice cuts through the hallway, sharp enough to turn heads. She drags a sulking Beatrice behind her.
"One moment, please!"
He strolls over, with that lazy confidence he wears like cologne.
"Good morning, ladies," he greets, but his eyes land on me and stay there. "Pea Pea-what's that on your lips?"
I tilt my chin up. "Drop the question and just tell me if you've seen him."
His brows flicker. "Who's 'him'?"
"Abel," Naomi and I say together. Beatrice, suddenly voiceless, just blinks.
Luther's laugh is a slow, amused roll.
"In school? Nah. No way I could've seen him."
Naomi tilts her head. "And why's that?"
He shrugs, "Because I left him at home before coming here."
I blink. "What? You can't be serious."
He nods. "Yeah... Abel has a fever, so he couldn't come."
Rita folds her arms, turning to me with that steady, accusing glare.
"Wait, hold on... didn't you tell me he'd gone to class?"
The corner of his mouth bends and a soft chuckle slips out.
"What do you mean? This is our first conversation of the day."
Naomi turns to face me now too.
I shake my head slowly.
"No... you're wrong, it isn't. And when I knocked earlier, it isn't what you said."
He plants his hands on his hips.
"Knocked? How could I have seen you? And even though I did, I'd say the same thing."
Rita exhales, long and so deep I feel it graze my skin.
"Okay..." I say softly, shaking my head. It takes two to tangle. Someone's definitely playing dirty and there's only one way to find out.
I lift my gaze, ready to peel his mind open, but before I get that far, something else stops me.
"Wait... you took it out?"
His brow disappears into his head. "The blue lens you wore earlier."
His hands fall slack on his sides, then his head tilts with that maddening mix of arrogance and mockery.
"Blue lens? Why would I want to wear those? Girls worship my eyes, they etch them into the dirtiest pages of their novels. And what-you think I'd trade them away-for a blue lens?" His brows knots. "Pea pea... are you sure you're alright?"
"I wonder," Rita shakes her head.
"Listen, I know you think I'm lying, but there's no reason to. Abel has been stuck with him since forever. When he skips class, it's for one reason-rapture is taking place and he wants to catch the first flight. But today, he's sick-and he's probably still on that couch."
With a slow nod, I turn to leave.
"Hey, Jessie, where are you going? Where are you going?!"
I drag my palm down my face.
"Jessica, you idiot," I mutter under my breath.
"How did you not see that it was a glamour?"
How could I have missed such an obvious detail?
I walk back into the janitor's closet, scanning the area before blinking back to my complex.
When I reach Abel's door, I strike it once, then twice.
"Luther! Luther, come out. I know you're in there!"
The door yawns open with a sickening slowness.
"I told you before... Abel isn't home."
His voice is lower, so low I can barely hear anything
"You know, I was worried," my breath breaks. "Fuck that-I'm still worried... about you."
He swallows.
"Why are you worried?"
I take a careful step forward.
"It doesn't feed on flesh and blood...it survives through energy and it feeds on it until there's none left...and after there's none, then it feeds on the flesh, slowly until it's nothing." I blink away the water blurring my visions.
"It's sucking the life out of you... The venom. It will slowly kill you if It remains inside you." "Where are you?"
He blinks too, very slowly.
"I'm right here."
I shake my head, my voice breaking into a whisper.
"No, you're not... In fact, I'm speaking to myself right now. So tell me-tell me how to find you. Tell me where you are."
His head tilts back into the room, just as he did before.
"Tell me where you are, Abel..." I tip my head slightly to the side.
"Please...?"
At last, his gaze finds mine. Then his lips part.
"Roof-"
In the blink between heartbeats, I'm on the rooftop.
The cold wind hits me first, followed by the smell of heat and iron.
And there he is, sitting on his knees, bare skin slick with sweat, chest barely moving. I see the black map of my venom crawling under his skin-branching up his neck, lacing across his back, burning its way through his veins.
And he's fighting it. He's trying to sweat the virus out like some fever-born ritual.
"Abel?"
I drop to my knees, hands trembling as I lift his chin.
"Abel..."
"Jessica..."
He mumbles, then his body falls forward.