Page 3 of Bone to Pick
Nolan bobbed his head. “Probs a serial killer, too. Nobody has sculpted cheekbones like that without using them to lure unsuspecting undergrads to their death.”
“I guess.” Beck stuck her phone out the window and snapped pictures of the darkened cabin. “This is gonna get me street cred with all those fuckers in my Sonnets class who have crushes on him.”
Toru snickered. “That’s everyone on campus, babe.”
My friends collapsed into drunken laughter behind me. But from the house itself, there was no response whatsoever. No light, no noise, no angry professor storming out in his smoking jacket, ascot, and pipe like I would have expected from the haughty know-it-all who was gonna take over as head of the English department when Professor Burton retired next semester.
“This gonna take much longer?” Steve demanded. “I’ve got another pickup back on campus.”
“Uh…” A hint of sobriety nudged my subconscious, and my resolve weakened. “You know, Steve’s right. Maybe we should go.”
Toru scoffed. “Nuh-uh. You’re not going anywhere, Porter.Performance. Piece.”
“Exactly,” Beck agreed. “Frantic-mad, remember?”
“Failed you into a whole ’nother semester of college, bro,” Nolan chimed in. “Underno circumstancesare you leaving until the seething, roiling vortex of your fury has been unleashed upon his head! Don’t let the hot ass fool you. The man is hellfire incarnate.”
Someone in the car murmured, “But it’ssucha hot ass,” with a plaintive whimper. I couldn’t disagree.
“Seriously, guys,” Steve insisted. “I gotta get back, or I…”
“Right,” I muttered, ignoring whatever was happening in the car. “Okay.” I refocused, calling up Sonnet 147 like a good little drunken English major, in case that might summon my quarry. “Thou art as black as hell, as dark as night!” I called into the… well… dark night.
“Awesome, bro,” Nolan approved. “You’re killing it! Listen, Steve says we have to pay a hundred extra if we delay him anymore, so we’ve gotta jet. But you keep doing what you’re doing. Vent that vortex, baby! Good luck and godspeed!”
“Wha—?” Before my mouth could catch up with my shocked and still-sloshy brain, the SUV’s headlights backed down the long-ass driveway to the windy mountain road and disappeared into the night.
“Shakespeare didn’t use the wordthou. He saidwho,” a deep, vibratey, and oh-so-calm voice said from the front porch of the cabin. “If you must quote Shakespeare at me, Sunday, do it properly.”
I whipped around, nearly losing my balance in the process, and found none other than mynemesis, Dr. Theodore Hancock himself, braced against one edge of his doorframe in the dark. Instead of his usual button-down and trousers, he wore thin gray sweatpants—nghh—and a Hannabury T-shirt. His short, brown hair—always ruthlessly tidy in real life—was a sleep-rumpled mess, and his dark-framed glasses were a little crooked. He almost,almostlooked like a normal person, rather than what he actually was: the human embodiment of sex and poetry and evil all rolled into one drool-worthy package.
“Did I… wake you?” I asked stupidly.
Did evil villains need sleep?
Dr. Hancock tilted his head. “Mr. Sunday, it’s two in the morning on a weeknight. Yes, you woke me. The question is,why?”
“Why?” I stared at him blankly. That was a really good question, damn him. It was bad enough that he was good at poetry. Why did he have to be so good at questions, too?
He huffed out a breath. “Yes,why. What are you doing in my front yard?”
“I…” I began.Strong start, Porter. “Well, I…”
Dr. Hancock ran a hand through his hair, and his biceps bulged out at me like one of those magic-eye 3D images.Boing. The whole world spun.
“I came here…” I started again. “Because I needed to tell you…”
Dr. Hancock leaned further against the open doorframe like he had all the time in the world and crossed his feet at the ankles. His verybarefeet.There was something oddly vulnerable about seeing him like that, with no armor on at all. He looked almost… touchable.
I tried to stand a little taller, but it seemed that all of my muscles had frozen solid in the cold because I forgot how to move. I parted my lips to deliver my frantic-mad hate sonnet, but saliva pooled in my mouth, making speech impossible. I tried to breathe deeply and remember my purpose, but my throat constricted in a funny way that made breathing tricky, too.
As I lurched helplessly toward Dr. Hancock, the words that flashed through the Tilt-a-Whirl in my brain weren’t from a Shakespearean sonnet but a line from another poet entirely.
I have a bone to pick with Fate…
Then I bent over and hurled tequila-soaked potato skins into the darkness.
ChapterTwo
