Their GPS died three miles outside of Ashwale. It was not a low battery situation or a signal issue. It has just stopped. The little red dot that had been faithfully guiding Eloisa Bennett and her aunt through four states and two bad rest stops stopped working, leaving nothing but a blank screen and the sound of rain hammering the windshield.
"Auntie Jo." Eloisa stared at the phone. "The GPS is dead."
"I know." Aunt Jo didn't even glance at the screen. She kept her eyes on the road, both hands on the wheel, her jaw set in that particular way she had when she was pretending not to be nervous. "It always does that near Ashwale."
Eloisa turned slowly in her seat. "Always?"
"Just watch the road signs."
"You've been here before and you didn't tell me this was a no-GPS town?"
"Eloisa."
"That's not normal, Auntie Jo. Normal towns do not stop GPS from working. Normal towns work with GPS for safety.
"Eloisa, please" Auntie Jo lashed out.
She kept shut and kept her dead phone close in her boson like a dead phone would mean anything for safety.
Outside the window, the Pacific Northwest was doing its absolute most. The Dense forest pressed right up to the edge of the narrow road, old trees, the kind that looked like they'd been there since forever. Fog hung low, thick and heavy between the trunks. The sky was a specific shade of grey that meant it had forgotten what sunlight looked like.
Eloisa had grown up in Phoenix. She was from a place where the sun was aggressive, personal and everything was the colour of a sandy soil.
This was the opposite of that.
"It is very…" She searched for the word while turning her neck to look around"…atmospheric."
"It's beautiful," Aunt Jo said firmly, in the voice of someone who was from being confident about their decision.
"It looks like every horror movie ever made."
"It looks like the Pacific Northwest."
"Same thing Aunt Jo, same thing"
Aunt Jo sighed, she was the woman who had raised her niece since she was nine and was very tired. "Just give it a chance, okay? a real, thoughtful one, not an Eloisa chance where you decide in forty-eight hours and spend the rest of the year being proven right about it."
Eloisa wanted to argue with her but she pressed her forehead against the cold window in the car instead and watched the trees pass as her Aunt Jo drove.
Give it a chance. Right.
She'd been giving things chances for the last three years. A New city after another new city, following Aunt Jo's research grants like a kite follows the wind. Austin, then Chicago, then Baltimore, and now this. Ashwale, Washington, places with populations that were just enough to be suspicious.
She'd stopped unpacking her boxes all the way in Baltimore. It felt optimistic in a way she couldn't afford.
The town appeared suddenly, the way towns do on roads like this, one moment there was nothing but forest, and then there were buildings. Colonial architecture, old brick, a main street with actual lamp posts. A harbour somewhere in the grey distance, the smell of salt even through the sealed glass windows. There was even a school.
Even from the road, Ashwale Academy was something. Gothic stone, ivy so thick it looked structural, a clock tower that rose above the treeline like it was watching for something. The gates were iron, elaborate, and very tall.
"That's where I'm going," Eloisa said flatly.
"That's where you're going." Aunt Jo replied.
"omg, it looks like a haunted castle."
"It is a prestigious institution"
"A prestigious haunted castle."
"with an exceptional academic record and full scholarship provision." Aunt Jo pulled up to a gate. "Which is why you are going to walk in there tomorrow with your chin up and your attitude in your pocket."
Eloisa looked at the gates.
"Sure," she said.
She didn't sleep.
That wasn't unusual, she hadn't slept properly in months, ever since Baltimore, but Ashwale made it worse. The cottage Aunt Jo had rented was at the edge of town where the trees rattled and the forest at night was loud. It wasn't cricket loud. It was something else. There were movements, sounds she could not pick up
Twice she could have sworn she heard something that was almost, not quite, a howl.
She plugged her earphones in and stared at the ceiling until 3am, then gave up and watched the fog shift outside her window until it got light enough to call morning.
8:47am.
Day one of Ashwale Academy.
The hallways smelled like old wood and something faintly sweet like cinnamon. Students moved around her in clusters, talking and laughing, and she stood just inside the main entrance with her schedule in one hand and her bag strap in the other, and did a very calm, inner assessment of the situation.
"Okay, New school. You've done this before. Four times. You know the drill.
Step one: find your locker.
Step two: find your first class.
Step three: do not make eye contact with anyone who looks like trouble."
She was consulting the locker number on her schedule when she walked directly into something solid.
It wasn't a wall, walls weren't warm, and it didn't have the ability to grab her arm to stop her from falling.
She looked up.
The boy looking back down at her was,a lot. That was the only word her brain produced for approximately three seconds. A lot. Beautiful brown skin, tall, broad-shouldered, dark jacket, the kind of jaw that looked like it had been carved by someone who took their time. Dark hair is going in several directions all at once. Eyes, amber, pale, almost golden, like honey that were fixed on her. He was just looking at her,
So why did the air feel different?
"Sorry," Eloisa said, because one of them had to. "I wasn't watching where I was going."
He didn't say anything for a moment. He just kept looking at her with that unreadable expression, and something shifted behind his eyes, something that looked almost like surprise, which was strange, because he did not seem like a person who was surprised by things.
"New student," he said.
"That obvious?"
"You're holding your schedule like a map."
She looked down. She was holding it like a map. She folded it in half immediately and shoved it in her bag. "Eloisa Bennett"
"Caden Ashworth."
He said it with the expression that people say their names when the name means something in a place, like it was information she'd need later, as it came with a warning attached that he wasn't going to give her instantly.
" Ok, cool," Eloisa said, because what else do you say to that?
The corner of his mouth moved but it was not quite a smile.
"Your locker's that way," he said, and he nodded left down the hall. Then he walked away, veiny hands in his pockets, and the crowd parted for him so naturally like it was normal around there.
Eloisa stared after him for two seconds. Three.
"Okay. Step three. Do not make eye contact with people who look like trouble."She said to herself once more.
She looked left, walked down, and found her locker. She dialled the combination and it opened on the first try, which felt like the first thing in Ashwale that had gone normally, and then she looked inside and found a single white card, small and unmarked, sitting on the empty shelf.
She picked it up.
On one side, in handwriting, so precise it looked almost printed,
"You should not have come here."
Eloisa stared at it in confusion.
Then she put it in her bag, closed her locker, and went to find her first class.
She found the classroom. She found a seat, in the middle row, the seat of someone who wanted to be invisible without trying too hard. She got out her notebook. She was normal. She was fine.
She did not notice the boy in the back corner until the teacher started talking.
He wasn't doing anything noticeable. That was almost the problem,he was too still. Dark hair, pale, sharp-featured in the specific way that made some people look cold instead of handsome, and somehow managed to be both.
He was looking at the front of the room, or pretending to because when Eloisa's pen rolled off her desk and she bent to pick it up, she glanced back and he was already looking at her. He didn't look away. He just held it, for a very still moment, then he looked back at the board.
Eloisa faced the front of the class.
Her pen was in her hand but she didn't remember picking it up. She looked outside the window in a daze and the clock tower outside the window chimed.
It chimed thirteen times.
She counted it. She was certain but nobody else seemed to notice, or maybe the clock was faulty.