Dark Nebula (The Chronicles of Kerrigan) (29 page)

She tried to focus on the painting behind
Devon
’s father, the room
now
spinning.
Breathe
,
girl, breathe.
“Sir.” Rae
ran her tongue over her dry lips
. “
I
-I
’m not sure wh
-wh
at you’re trying to imply.
Devon
and I are friend
s–
”

“Please!” He snorted
, his eyes shooting towards the window again
.
“
I see the way he looks at you and the way you
can’t take your eyes off him
.
You two are playing with fire
,
and we know what happened to your parents when they took that route.”
The fear
receded
just a bit, enough for a lick of anger to enter the mix. This particular argument was a sore point with her.
Yeah, they made me.
If he resented her parents’ union, he must also resent her very existence, which to Rae, was just plain rude.
The dean must have sensed that she had worked up the gumption to strike back. He
held his hand up in the air to stop
her
from replying. “You’
re bot
h young.
Go
find someone,
anyone
,
but my son.”

“Sir–
”

“Stay away from my son, M
is
s Kerrigan
,” he hissed. “
This is not a request
!
I’ll remove him from
Guilder
if I have to.
” He stood, his chair creaking in protest against the abrupt movement. “
I’ll not mention this again. Good day.”
He
hit the remote and
the door
behind them
swung open.

Too stunned to say anything, Rae surrendered and
fled the office.
I’m
never
going back
to that
stupid, round
room
!
Nothing good ever came from her visits there. Rae raced back across the campus, straight up the stairs of Aumbry house and directly into her room. She had an almost instinctual need to hide, like a wounded animal going to ground.

Chapter 1
6

Disclosure

T
he weather changed overnight.
Dark, dreary clouds full of rain and cold
drifted
i
n
by the wind
.
What had felt like India
n summer turned into
instant
bitter
wint
er
.
Rae spent the weekend in her dorm room, not bothering to answer the door when
any of her friends
knocked.
She
needed time
alone
to think and decide what to do about Dean Wardell
.

There had been no contact from
Devon
.
The only e
-
mail she
had
received
came
from her uncle.
Argyle had bought a desktop computer and was making
an
effort
to learn
how to use it.
He wrote a short message, saying he looked forward to seeing her at Christmas
and
Aunt Linda
thought it
would be
lovely
if
she brought a friend.
Molly was more than welcome
to come to
New York
.
But
, he warned
in italics
,
please no
tatù
s
in front of Aunt Linda
.

When Monday morning arrived
,
Rae debated feigning illness but knew it would only bring more people to her door.
Going to class
would be
easier, even if it mean
t
forcing herself
to face other people. The one thing that made leaving the room seem not quite totally unbearable was that over the weekend, it had become clear and Dean Wardell had not told anyone else about his conversation with her. If he had, the news would have spread all over campus and there’s no way she would have been left alone. That meant that all the knocks on her door, and kind entreaties to come out were due solely to the fact that her friends cared about her.
Unfortunately,
it
didn’t really make her feel better.

What difference
w
ould it make
if friends
are
worried about me
?
I can
’
t
mention
Dean Wardell
’s
threat, nor
can I
talk about
me
and
Devon
with anyone but
Devon
--
and
, well,
maybe Julian.
But both of them were gone and
since
she hadn’t
heard
anything from them since the dance, who knew when they’d ret
urn
?

Sighing,
Rae slipped her rain jacket on and headed out
of
Aumbry
House
’s main
door
s
.
She
timed
it perfectly
:
e
arly enough for class
, but too late for breakfast.
It allowed
her to avoid her classmates
at the tables in the cafeteria. She
had
no
appetite
anyway
.

She slipped into the Oratory, pleased to be the first one there.
The Grand Roo
m always made her feel better
.
The Tudor decorations from the dance had been taken down, but the room still held its ancient appeal.
Remembering her feelings as she
had
danced with
Devon
, s
he walked
along
the edge
of
the black and white marble floor,
tracing
her
hands
along the carvings on the wall.

Three quarters of the way down the
far
side, her fingers snagged on a loose piece of wood.
She stopped to push it back into place,
and
jump
ed
back
when a soft rustling noise
disturbed
the silence of the room
.
Timid, she glanced b
ack and blinked in surprise
.
A secret door
had
opened and a gust of
musty air
swept past her.

Checking over her shoulder to make sure no other students had come
in;
she turned her attention to the secret compartment
.
Unable to resist, she s
tepped into the
short,
narrow opening.
Presuming there would be some sort of light, she
reach
ed
for a switch or something to make the darkness disappear.
She couldn’t find anything on
either side of the tiny door,
so she
used the hum of Molly’s tatù and
flickered
her fingers towards the ceiling.
She
breathed a sigh of relief when an antique, brass light flickered on.
The ornate light had once been oil but someone over the years had wired it
for electricity
.

Rae stepped
farther
into the
space
, the musty, stale air
not near
ly
as strong
as
it had been
since
the door had first opened
.
The room was quite large, probably the size of her dorm.
She harrumph
ed
when she saw the Tudor bed,
fit
for a king, on the far side of the room.
All the furniture also matched the same pattern with King Henry’s royal emblem carved in each.
She slapped her foreh
ead when she remembered
Devon
joking about King Henry building a private bedroom
for his personal use back when
Carter
had
appeared from a different hidden
door
.

A pang of guilt reminded her
that
she shouldn’t be inside
here
. S
he slipped back out,
wondering how
Carter
managed to squeeze through the other door with his
tall frame
.
As she reached for the loose piece of wood on the wall, she
snapped
her fingers to
extinguish
the light.
She spun
round to
check if anyone had seen her and
relaxed
when she realized the Oratory was still empty.
She
traced her fingers
over the detailed scene trying to remember
something about this
picture that
would set it apart. It
looked so similar to all the others.

She walked back along the same wall, trying to spot other
tiny
pieces of jutting wood.
They were impossible to find.
She reached the second corner of the Oratory and
still
hadn’t found another hidden room.
The she noticed it, another tiny piece of wood standing out. She started to reach for it.

Rae jumped when a
cold
hand squeezed her shoulder.

“There you are!” Mo
lly’s
voice bounced
off the walls and floor
like a shout
.

Startled, Rae
reached for Molly’s hand and
accidentally
sen
t
a strong shock between the two
of them.
Molly hopped back,
surprise
written across her face
.

“Sorry.” Molly
laughed, shaking her wrist. “I
figured
you heard me come in.
” She blew on her hand.
“
Remind me not to sneak up on y
ou, ever.
I think that shock of
yours is
three times
stronger than I can do.
”

“I’m so sorry
,”
Rae gushed
.
“Are you alright?”

“Fine, just feels like I caught a baseball in my bare hand.
Good thing it was me. If you
did
that to someone else, you’d probably stop their heart.”

Rae glanced at the tiny piece of wood sticking out.
It seemed so obvious to her.
“I must’ve been lost in my own little world.”

Molly patted her arm.
“
I did
n’t see you all weekend
—
and you’re
pale.
Everything okay
?”

Rae shrugged, in no mood to lie or tell the truth
, but she knew Molly wouldn’t let it be. She had to come up with something
.
“
Maybe I’m
coming down with
a bug
.
I felt exhausted all weekend and didn’t feel up
to
breakfast this
morning
.” Rae figured
that would
stop Molly’s tirade of questions before they started.
She hoped.

“Are you pregnant?” Molly crossed her arms over her chest.
She leaned in and sniffed Rae.

“No
!
” Rae swatted at Molly’s no
se. “That’s impossible and for the record, you can’t bloody smell if someone’s pregnant.”

Molly shrugged
and stepped back
. “I’ve got an aunt who can tell if someone’s knocked up just by
smelling
them
.
She says pregnant wome
n have a certain glow about them, a tenderness
and they smell radiant
.
She says she’s guessed as many pregnant people right as she’s guessed wrong.
I didn’t think you could be, but I figured I’d ask anyways.”

Rae couldn’t help it
.
S
he laughed.
It was adorable that Molly didn’t realize the flaw in her aunt’s logic.
Crazy Molly could brighten anyone’s day
without even trying.

“
Don’t know why you’re laughing, but good.” Molly slipped her arm through Rae’s and dragged her towards the
center
of the room.

“I got here early and was checking out the carvings.”
Rae had to show Molly the hidden room. It was too cool to keep a secret.
She giggled, knowing what Molly would want to do with the room.
About to show her best friend the tiny piece of misplaced wood,
she stopped when three students came rushing in from the rain.

It would have to wait for another day.

That evening Rae returned to her room after studying in the library. Someone had slipped a note under her door. She didn’t recognize the hand writing on the envelope so she opened it
cautiously
and checked the signature.