Page 92 of Serpentine Valentine
“This is it,” Quinn said, excitement ripe in her cultured voice. “Mina Pallas exchanged bribes, for fuck’s sake! This changes everything. It’s the justice you and the other women deserve.”
And it was.
Written right there in black and white.
Combined with testimony from the Delta Alpha victims, Taya, Rhea, and even Professor Strong, this article was the iceberg we needed to take down the entireTitanic.
So why was I sitting there in the quaint pub feeling hollow as a reed?
“Where did you get this information?” Quinn asked, clicking through emails, the blue light of the screen giving her smooth skin a sickly cast.
“My––” I choked off what I was going to say because Luna wasn’t my girlfriend. Had she ever been? Whatever we were to each other, it was over now. “A friend.”
Quinn side-eyed me. “A friend close to the president, obviously.”
I inclined my head, my nails clicking against the side of my mug of Earl Grey.
She sat back in her chair to study me properly. “You know, we should call a press conference for the morning I publish the article, Lex. This will blow up in Acheron’s face. A scandal the likes of the ‘Varsity Blues’ admissions scandal and the sex scandal at Harvard a few years ago. Only this one also involves a group of vengeful women led by a girl in an actual snake mask…” She laughed, but it was a bitter little hiccup. “Hell, they’ll probably make it into a Hollywood blockbuster starring Margot Robbie.”
I winced. “I’ll be glad for the publicity, but only because things need to change. Acheron is a dream to so many women. It shouldn’t turn into a nightmare when they set foot on campus. The story doesn’t need to be sensationalized. It’s bad enough as it is.”
“Hey,” she soothed, reaching over to pat my hand and rolling with it gracefully when I instinctively pulled it out of reach. “I understand, Lex. This is real life. This is journalism. I promise I take this very seriously.”
I nodded because too many things were in my throat to speak, like a badly clogged drain.
Quinn had Bryn’s sensitive gaze but a thin, expressive mouth. She studied me, and her mouth wobbled like a child’s hand-drawn line. “You’ve lost a lot to this place. You’ll feel better when we’ve taken some of it back.”
I nodded again because what could I say?
My victory against the nightmares that haunted me was looming on the horizon and the only thing I could focus on was Luna. Because the truth was, the light of victory seemed dim compared to the light she’d brought into my life.
“Are you ready for this?” Quinn asked, a little sharp, a general reminding her soldier to be ready for war.
I sucked in a deep breath, curled my hand around Luna’s folded note in my blazer pocket, and nodded. “I’m ready.”
Dawn pouredacross Acheron’s autumnal campus like skimmed milk, the light pale and thin with the coming winter, the sun a silvered icon in the cloudy sky. The air was cold enough to sear through my lungs and plume in the air from my warm mouth as I walked through the empty quad on my way to Hippios House. The grass crunched with frost beneath my loafers, and the soft drizzle of rain limned my hair and tweed blazer in fuzzy wet. It was pathetic fallacy, the mimicry of the afternoon I’d first connected with Professor Morgan on this very path when I’d dropped my books, and he’d deigned to pick them up.
A shiver climbed my spine, painful as ice picks against each vertebra.
My sisters had wanted to go with me, at least as far as the wooden door to the warm hall, but I’d forced them to stay away.
The hero in the myths I loved so much always completed the final mission alone, and today was the day I was wrapping up all the loose ends of my past so I could finally face my future.
The door creaked as I pushed it open and hot air rushed out to embrace me. It smelled of damp stone and coffee grounds, the early-bird professors caffeinating themselves as they began morning preparations for classes. Professor Morgan had always been an early riser—in his office when it was still dark and quiet outside. It had surprised me back then, but it didn’t now. Predators were usually creatures of the night.
His door was closed when I stopped before it, but I could see the stripe of light glowing at its base, and the sickening fragrance of jasmine tea seeped from beneath it. I fought the urge to gag, pressing a firm hand against my stomach as I sucked in a deep breath. The newspaper rustled under my arm as I adjusted my stance, shoulders back, chin canted high. I wasn’t religious, so I couldn’t pray for strength, but I believed in history and mythology and all the strong women of the past. I channeled fromthem then: Joan of Arc, Cleopatra, Artemis, Harriet Tubman, Marsha P. Johnson, Ruth Bader Ginsburg. All the women who’d faced their fears and championed their causes and been examples to every woman ever after. I was just a girl, not worthy of immortalization, not without her flaws. But this was my crusade, and I was going to bring it all to a crashing close.
I knocked on the door in time with my heart against my rib cage, and when his voice called out to enter, I thought for one wild second that I might die right then and there of fright.
Don’t go in there, my sanity screamed.Run, run, run.
But I wouldn’t, because if I ran, someone else would be victim to Professor Morgan, and that was blood I felt on my hands, tacky and warm.
So I turned the cold handle and pushed into the heart of my nightmares.
The office was completely unchanged.
The palatial wood desk was littered in papers and books, a steaming mug of that jasmine tea perched precariously on an uneven stack of texts about Homer. The same velvet chair, decompressed by many bottoms sitting in its center, and the same carpet where my mug had fallen to the floor. The acrid taste of that spiked tea bloomed on the back of my tongue and I almost gagged again.
