by Stella Hart
I went over to the door and opened it a crack. Laurel and Ruby stood there with pale, drawn faces.
“Hey. What’s wrong?” I asked, opening the door wider.
“He’s back,” Ruby choked out. “It’s happening again.”
“Who’s back? What’s happening?”
“They found two girls hanging in the quad. All sliced up,” Laurel said quietly.
“He’s back,” Ruby repeated, eyes wide. “The Butcher is back.”
12
Alexis
My jaw dropped. “What?”
“She’s being dramatic,” Laurel said, arching her brows. “Obviously, it’s not the Butcher, because he died ten years ago, but there is a copycat killer out there.”
Ruby grimly shook her head. “I honestly can’t believe it. It’s so crazy.”
I stepped aside to let them come in. “What happened?” I asked, heart hammering.
“I woke up when it was still dark,” Laurel began. “There were lights and voices outside my window. I got up to take a look, and there were cops swarming all over the place. Apparently some frat guy went for a jog across campus just before five, and he found the bodies in the quad.”
“There are still cops everywhere,” Ruby added. “They woke me up too.”
“Are there any details yet?” I asked.
Laurel nodded. “Someone made live threads on Reddit and Twitter. They get updated every few minutes. It’s a lot of speculation, though, seeing as it only just happened.”
“What do they know so far?”
“Two young women. Probably killed elsewhere due to a lack of blood at the scene. Strung up on branches. Gutted and eyes gouged out.”
Ruby held up her hands. “See? Butcher.”
“Butcher copycat,” Laurel said, brows rising.
I swallowed a lump in my throat. “God, those poor girls,” I murmured. “Do they know who they are yet?”
“I heard a policeman talking about it when I walked past earlier,” Laurel said. “They’ve only identified one body so far. Apparently it’s a girl who went missing from Avalon City a few weeks ago.”
“That’s exactly what the old Butcher did—kept victims alive somewhere for weeks before slaughtering them,” Ruby added softly, pulling her arms tight against her chest.
“Why didn’t we hear anything about the missing girl?” I asked, brows knitting.
“She was homeless,” Laurel replied. “One of her street friends reported her missing, but I guess the cops didn’t take it all that seriously. The media didn’t pick up the story, either.”
Ruby sighed. “I feel like such an ignorant bitch for saying this, but I honestly didn’t even know we had homeless people on the island until now.”
“We do,” Laurel said. “There’s over three hundred thousand people up in Avalon City, and then there’s all the smaller cities and towns as well. Over half a million people altogether. It makes sense that some people fall through the cracks.”
“It just seems crazy to me that an island packed with millionaires and billionaires would also have people who have absolutely nothing at all,” Ruby replied. “Like, how can they even survive here?”
“With great difficulty. But that’s just the way the world is right now,” Laurel said. “It’s fucked up.”
“That poor girl.” Ruby shook her head. “I can’t imagine how scary it must’ve been living on the streets. And then, instead of getting help from anyone, she got killed by some psychopath. She never had a chance.”
“Yeah. It’s horrible.”
“Do you know if they’re evacuating the campus?” I asked.
Laurel shook her head. “I think classes will probably be canceled for the next few days to stop people from tramping all over the quad, but I doubt they’ll cancel the whole semester.”
“But it’s not safe.”
“It is now. They’re tripling the number of security guards on campus, and there’s going to be a huge police presence too.”
I chewed on my bottom lip as I rooted around my closet for some clothes. “I just need a minute to get dressed,” I said to the girls before heading into the bathroom.
Truthfully, I needed to splash my face with cold water and take several deep breaths.
As terrible as it was that two innocent people were dead, this incident could prove to be a breakthrough in my dad’s case. If these latest killings turned out to be the real-deal Blackthorne Butcher and not a copycat like they presently assumed, that would be proof that my father was innocent all along. He couldn’t possibly have committed both sets of murders, because he’d been dead for a decade.
It raised a lot of questions, though.
If it was the real Butcher, why was he back now? Why did he wait ten years between the killings? Was he going to strike again? Was he targeting anyone in particular?
“Hey, what happened to your sheets?” Ruby called out from my bedroom. “There’s blood everywhere.”
I poked my head out of the bathroom. “Sorry, I was about to take them off when you started knocking. I got my period in the middle of the night and woke up to that.”
“No need to apologize,” she replied. “I never know when mine is coming. Last week I got it right in the middle of a lecture. I was so embarrassed.”
“Sucks, doesn’t it?” Laurel said. “I don’t know what’s worse—the blood or the cramps.”
“Right now, it’s the cramps,” I replied with a grimace, laying a hand on my sore belly as I stepped out of the bathroom.
“Magnesium is good for cramps,” Ruby said, tilting her head. “Do you have any nuts in here? Or chocolate? They have magnesium in them.”
“Yeah, I have chocolate,” I said, gesturing to the giant box my mom gave me a few weeks ago.
“You should have some now. It’ll help.” Ruby padded over to the box. “I might take some too, if you don’t mind. Stress eating sounds like a good idea right about now.”
She grabbed a chocolate wrapped in orange foil, unwrapped it, and lifted it to her mouth. Then she lowered her hand. “Actually, I shouldn’t. I’ve been avoiding dairy because of my skin. Whenever I have it, I break out.”
“I’ll have it,” I said, holding my hand out. “Might as well test out this magnesium theory of yours.”
As I popped the orange cream chocolate into my mouth and chewed, Laurel glanced up from her phone, eyes wide. “They just updated the live news thread. They’ve identified the second body. Apparently the victim’s cousin heard about the case and called to check with the police because the family hadn’t heard from her in weeks.”
“How can they identify people so fast? When they have no eyes, I mean,” Ruby said. She twisted her lips in a grimace. “Sorry, that sounded awful.”
“No, I get what you mean. It’s hard to identify them by sight when they’re so mutilated,” Laurel said. “But this girl had a very distinctive strawberry birthmark somewhere, and the cousin described it to the police.”
“So who was she?”
“Her name was Claire Reilly. She was a Blackthorne student,” she said, looking down at her phone. “Apparently her parents hadn’t heard from her since she started college, but they didn’t report her missing. The cousin said it was normal for them to go for weeks without contact. I guess they weren’t very close.”
An invisible fist took hold of my guts and squeezed hard. “Did you say Claire Reilly?” I asked in a hollow voice.
“Yes.”
My legs suddenly felt too weak to hold me. I sat down on the end of the bed and put my head in my hands. “I knew her,” I said, voice barely above a murmur.
“Oh, shit.” Ruby sat next to me and lay a hand on my shoulder. “I’m so sorry. Were you friends for long?”
I shook my head. “We met on the first day here, but then she stopped answering her phone and door. So really, I guess I only knew her for a few hours. But she was really nice, and I loved hanging out with her. I thought we were going to become good friends.”
/> Laurel sighed. “That sucks. I’m sorry.”
I wiped away the tears gathering in the corners of my eyes. “When she stopped answering me, I thought she just found other friends or dropped out. I had no idea…” Sorrow rose up in my throat, threatening to choke me. “No idea someone had taken her.”
“It’s so horrible,” Ruby murmured, rubbing my back.
I sucked in a deep breath and looked up at Laurel. Something awful had just occurred to me. “When did you say her parents last heard from her?”
“The last time she contacted them was when she arrived at Blackthorne,” Laurel replied. “Also, one of her professors just made a statement saying she never went to any classes. So she must’ve been taken by the killer on one of her first days here.”
A cold, heavy feeling settled in my stomach. “It’s my fault,” I whispered.
Her brows wrinkled. “What do you mean?”
I told the girls about the incident from my first night at Redstone Hall—the noises I heard from Claire’s dorm, and the weird way she spoke to me when I went to check on her.
“I left her there,” I said, wiping away more tears. “I assumed it was her Tinder match with her, and I thought she was just acting weirdly because she was embarrassed. But what if it was actually the killer with her? What if he was holding a knife to her back and making her say stuff to get rid of me?”
“Don’t beat yourself up. You couldn’t have known,” Ruby said. “Honestly, if I were in that situation, I would’ve assumed she had a guy over too.”
“Me too,” Laurel added. “How could you have possibly known that there was some psycho in there with her? If that’s even what happened to her.”
“It’s really not your fault.” Ruby squeezed my left hand.
Laurel frowned and tilted her head slightly to one side. “Hold on… you said you heard a knock on her door, right? A while before the other sounds.”
“Yes.”
“And there hasn’t been any sign of a break-in at her dorm, has there?”
“No.”
“That means she knew her killer. She let them in when they knocked. She might’ve even left with them without too much of a struggle, thinking she could talk her way out of it.”
“Holy shit. You’re right,” I said, sitting up straight. “Even if she didn’t know them, she must’ve at least seen them as someone she could trust.”
“Exactly. Why else would she open her door to someone knocking in the middle of the night?”
“So… what you’re saying is, the killer could actually be the guy she was talking to on Tinder?” Ruby asked, forehead wrinkling.
“Maybe, but not necessarily.” Laurel looked at me again. “You need to tell the police about this. It could be really important.”
I bit the inside of my cheek as I considered it.
If I went and spoke to the police about everything I’d seen and heard that night, they’d want to interview me about it. Then they’d probably dig into my background afterwards, just to see who I was, and that would reveal my true identity as Peter Covington’s daughter. Once that happened, I would probably become the number one suspect. After all, I was supposedly the daughter of the Blackthorne Butcher.
On the other hand, like Laurel said, my information could help the case. It could give the police a suspect to pursue—like Claire’s Tinder match, for example—or help them establish a precise timeframe of her abduction.
I couldn’t neglect that just to save my own ass when it might end up making the difference between the police solving Claire’s murder and not solving it. That would make me a selfish asshole of epic proportions.
I took a deep breath and decided on a compromise. I could call in all of my information on an anonymous tip. Tell them I lived somewhere on the floor above, and that I was frightened about coming forward properly in case the killer decided to come after me next. That way the police would get their information, and I’d get to keep my identity safe.
“You’re right,” I said. “Is there some sort of tip line I can call?”
Laurel nodded. “I’ll get the number for you.”
“Thanks. My phone is almost dead, so I’ll use one of the payphones in the lobby downstairs,” I said. My phone wasn’t dead, but I didn’t want to risk having my number traced.
“While you do that, we’ll go and get some coffee,” Ruby said. “Do you want one?”
“Sure. I’ll have whatever you have,” I said.
The girls left my dorm to head to the nearest café. I went down to the lobby on the ground floor of Redstone Hall and made a beeline to the payphones they kept on one side for students who didn’t have access to a cellphone.
Twenty minutes later, my tip had been called in, and the girls were back with giant takeout cups of coffee. We went back up to my room to drink them and make a plan for the rest of the day.
“Even though classes are canceled, we should still study,” Laurel said. “We have that exam coming up next week for Intro to Critical Thinking.”
Ruby made a face. “Ugh, please don’t remind me.”
“She’s right,” I said. “It sucks, but we really should study. Is the library open?”
Laurel nodded. “I think so.”
We grabbed our notebooks and pens and headed for the library. Before we went to our usual spot on the top floor, we headed for the stacks on the third floor to find a book our professor had recommended for midterm exam prep.
As we slowly trudged across the floor, my head began to spin, and the hall seemed to grow narrower. Darkness engulfed me like quicksand, and I felt myself sinking into it.
“Alexis, are you okay?” Ruby asked, grabbing my arm to stop me from falling.
“I feel really weird,” I muttered, blinking rapidly. “My head felt like it was spinning for a few seconds, and everything went all dark.”
“Sounds like you need more coffee,” she said, lifting her brows. “Too bad we aren’t allowed any food or drinks in here.”
“Are you going to be okay?” Laurel asked, peering at me.
I took a deep breath and nodded. “Yeah. Ruby’s right. I’m probably just tired. Or maybe I’m losing a ton of iron because of my period, and it made me dizzy for a second.”
“We should get burgers for lunch later,” she said. “They have iron in them, right? Because of all the meat?”
“I guess,” I muttered. The thought of food made me feel sick.
“Then we’ll do that. It’ll make you feel better.”
We stopped walking as we neared the end of the floor so that Laurel could check the exact call number for the book we needed.
A light above our head started swinging madly, like there was a strong breeze blowing through the library. Then it started turning on and off.
“Holy shit.” I took a few halting steps backward, eyes wide as the library flashed with bright light and then filled with darkness.
“What’s wrong?” Ruby asked, frowning.
“You don’t see that?” I said, gesturing at the flickering light.
“See what?”
I gaped at her. “The light keeps moving and turning on and off. It’s like there’s a poltergeist in here.”
“Um… it looks fine to me.” Her forehead creased, and she pointed above us. “You mean this light here, right?”
The floor was suddenly plunged into darkness again. I whirled around, trying to place my friends in the gloom. They’d completely disappeared.
The light flashed on again, and I found myself looking down a narrow passage between the stacks.
There was a person at the end, dressed in black. A hood covered their face, and one hand was high in the air, brandishing a glinting knife.
I screamed and collapsed to the ground in a panic, crawling backward.
“Alexis!” Laurel crouched beside me, suddenly visible again. “What’s wrong?”
“Look!” I choked out, pointing between the shelves. “You don’t see him?”
“See wh
o?”
A librarian hurried toward us, eyes narrowed. “Excuse me!” she said sharply. “What’s all the screaming about? Are you aware that this is a library?”
“Sorry. Our friend saw something,” Ruby said.
The librarian’s face softened as she saw the state I was in. My eyes were bulging like mad, and my fingers were splayed out in a fan against my chest as I hyperventilated on the carpeted floor.
“What did you see?” she asked.
With shaking fingers, I pointed toward the stacks. “There was a man in there! He had a knife!”
“Did you two see him?” the librarian asked, looking at Laurel and Ruby. They shook their heads.
“I swear I saw someone,” I babbled, still pointing at the narrow passage. “He was right there. The lights were going crazy too, flashing on and off.”
“That passage between the stacks is a dead end,” the librarian said, brows knitted. “If there was actually someone there, he’d still be there now, or else he would’ve exited right where we’re all standing.”
“I’m telling you, I saw him.”
“I’ll go and check,” she said in the same soothing tone a person would use with a child throwing a tantrum about a monster under their bed.
“Don’t,” I pleaded. “He’ll hurt you!”
She ignored me and stepped down the passage. Once she made it to the end, she turned around and walked back to us. “See? No one there.”
“But…” I shook my head, eyes wide. “There was someone there. He had a knife.”
Sympathy flickered in her hazel eyes. “Look, I understand that everyone is very scared and upset right now,” she said. “These murders… they’re truly awful. The shock of it has probably made you very jumpy. But there’s nothing there. I promise.”
“Thanks for checking for us,” Laurel said quietly. Her cheeks had turned bright pink.
“You’re welcome, but I’ll have to ask you to leave if I hear any more noise coming from down here,” the librarian replied before walking away.
Laurel and Ruby turned to help me off the floor.
“What’s going on, Alexis?” Ruby asked.
“Are you kidding?” I narrowed my eyes. “Why did you lie to her?”
