Page 148 of Endless Anger
Cursing internally, I push Foxe’s name instead; the call immediately goes to voicemail. I try again and again andagainwith the same results each time.
An unsettling sensation begins winding its way up my sternum, and I send Foxe a slew of texts asking where the hell he is.
They don’t show as delivered, and paranoia starts to set in, strangling my lungs in its claws.
Getting up from the bed, I sprint down the hall for my shoes and jacket and then run out of the dorm. As I’m leaving, I remember that Beckett gave me his number after class one day, so I scroll through my contacts looking for it and almost mow Aurora over completely.
She ducks on the other side of the door, narrowly avoiding my elbow in her face.
“Jesus, watch where you’re—” She cuts off when she realizes it’s me, and her face relaxes slightly. Blue eyes look up at me in the moonlight, but they’re not as dark or vast as I want them to be. “Oh, hey. I was actually just coming to find you. Have you heard from Foxe today?”
Skidding to a halt, I whirl around. “Haveyou?”
Confusion mars her features. “No, that’s why I’m asking. Usually by this time at night, I’m getting dozens of texts from him, so it’s kind of weird that he hasn’t tried to contact me yet.”
“Usually?” I ask, raising an eyebrow. “I didn’t know you were speaking at all.”
Pink flushes her cheeks. “It’s not what it sounds like. Since he came here with you, he messages daily. I don’t normally reply, but…”
“You like the attention.”
She doesn’t respond, pushing her tongue into her cheek.
Rolling my shoulders, I try to ignore the anxiety pooling in them. “Well, I haven’t heard from him, so if you know where they may have gone during a Curator party, I’m all ears.”
“They?”
“Him and Lucy.”
“At a Curator party?” Something strange crosses her face, and her mouth twists up as she pulls her phone out, thumbs flying. After a second, she nods, looking back to me. “Yeah, the party ended, like, an hour ago. They had people cleaning the quarry already according to Yuri and Sara-Sofia.”
“Who the fuck is Yuri?”
“A friend who was at the party. With Sara-Sofia.”
“Why weren’t you there?”
“I had shit to do.” She narrows her eyes. “Why weren’tyouthere? Aren’t you supposed to be Lucy’s guard dog or something, not Foxe?”
Grabbing her by the elbow, I drag her along as I start walking toward the Primordial Forest. “Let’s just fucking find them, all right?”
Two hours later,and we’re still coming up empty.
No one’s seen or heard from Lucy or Foxe since the Curator party broke up, and only a few people remember that she was in attendance at all. They don’t know where a handful of students took off to, noting that they’d indicated starting another party closer to the mountains, but without daylight or the layout of the forest, finding them feels impossible.
If I’d finished putting tracking devices on all her sweaters and cardigans, this wouldn’t be happening. Fuck.
Nausea hardens my stomach, a ball forming in the middle that keeps me on the verge of puking the longer we go without locating them.
Eventually, we come to a stop at the burnt gazebo, and I have a horrid flashback to the awful things that can happen in these woods. Our flashlights illuminate the area, casting shadows along the treeline.
“I think we should call someone,” Aurora tells me as she leans against a trunk, rubbing at her throat.
An icy breeze coasts through the air like a ghost passing by, making it colder than before. In the distance, an owl’s hoot echoes among the leaves, and my skin feels like it’s covered in slime, immobilizing me.
Aurora kicks a rock in my direction. “Hello? Are you listening? Don’t you think we should tell someone our cousins are missing?”
I manage to shake my head. “We don’t know that they are.”
