The Hunter's Curse (Monster Hunter Academy Book 2) Page 11

  I started moving again. It wasn’t fair of me to conflate the two ideas, this possibility or strangeness of not pushing for more information from my mom about her family, coupled with not fully understanding where all my scars had originated. Not even that, not fully thinking about the ones that remained on my body or how odd their existence was when most of them had faded.

  Grim had pointed out the ones on my shoulder right off the first night I’d met the guys, and obviously, Tyler had seen them. I had to assume Zach and Liam had glimpsed them as well. They simply were a little politer about it. But why couldn’t I remember what had caused those scars? What had I buried so deep that I couldn’t dredge it up again, even when the evidence of something happening was clearly written upon my skin?

  And why hadn’t I ever asked about my mom’s family?

  I’d started walking more quickly, and within a few minutes, I saw my apartment building up ahead. I slowed my step as I approached, however, as I recognized my landlord on the front stoop. A sudden panic grabbed me. What was Mr. Bellows doing here? Had I missed a rent payment? Surely not. It’d only been a few weeks since the last time I’d paid, and I’d deliberately paid a couple of months in advance in case I ever got forgetful…or hurt.

  At that moment, my landlord turned and looked at me. He smiled widely, lifting his hand in greeting. A surge of relief washed through me, though I didn’t know why. I hadn’t done anything wrong. I moved toward him, glancing around to make sure that nothing else was following me or watching from the shadows. The habit was so ingrained in me that I wondered if I would ever shake it. Clearly, not today.

  “Nina,” Mr. Bellows said. “I happened to be in the neighborhood and wanted to check on you. Everything okay with the unit?”

  There was enough loud cheeriness to his voice that I went on my guard. “The apartment is great,” I said brightly. “If you’ve been up, you may have noticed that I have a couple of extra locks installed, but that’s more to do with where I came from, not here. I hope you don’t mind. I can get you the keys if you do, of course.”

  “Oh no, no, no problem at all,” he said. “At the end of your lease, whenever that might be, I’ll ask for your keys or get the locks rekeyed myself. But I never have a problem with a tenant wanting to be safe.” He looked at me more carefully. “You do feel safe, right? Nobody’s been bothering you?”

  “Not at all,” I said blithely. I racked my brain to remember how I’d left the apartment. It had been spotless a few days ago, but had something happened to it? I really should have come back sooner to check on it again. “Is there a problem? Someone say anything?”

  “Not at all, I was just talking with one of your neighbors, Mrs. Pendleton, downstairs. She’s a bit of a homebody and she mentioned she hadn’t seen you around in a few days. She was a little worried.”

  I lifted my brows. Mrs. Pendleton? I honestly had begun to wonder if the apartment building was empty besides me, as there’d been absolutely no activity when I’d been coming and going. To be fair, with my random hours at the academy and searching for my Mom, it probably shouldn’t have surprised me that I had neighbors I’d never seen.

  I plastered a relieved smile on my face. “Oh, how nice of her,” I said. “I honestly haven’t met her, but if I see her, I’ll wave. I guess if you rent to a lot of students, she’s probably used to them coming and going all the time.”

  “You’re not wrong.” Mr. Bellows chuckled. “I’ve had great success renting to students in this area. It sort of attracts the good ones, you know? The ones who are serious about school, I mean. Learning is so important.”

  Learning was important, but it seemed a strange thing for a landlord to say. I’d found Mr. Bellows through the most basic of online searches for apartments, but this was the most we’d ever talked after he’d confirmed I had plenty of money to pay the rent and didn’t appear to be a serial killer. Now, though, as I was starting to feel truly nervous, he smiled and gave me a little wave, trotting down the steps past me.

  “Well, I’m glad you’re good. I hope you enjoy your stay in Boston, how ever long it is, and who knows? Maybe you’ll stay here forever.” His smile was wide and gracious, but I couldn’t help the tremor of dismay that passed through me.

  “Maybe,” I said cheerfully and waved as well, waiting until he turned away before I headed up the stairs. It took everything I had not to glance back as I keyed open the front door and stepped inside. Had he turned to watch me? Was I under some kind of surveillance? Who was this Mrs. Pendleton? That sounded like an old name, a name vaguely familiar…maybe someone Tyler knew, a high-society connection?

  Even as I entertained that thought, I chased it away. Pendleton wasn’t exactly an unusual name, especially in the Northeast. And she was an old lady living in an apartment in Back Bay, Boston, not in some gracious old mansion. I was imagining things that weren’t there.

  I climbed the stairs to my apartment, hastily going through the ritual of the keys until all the locks were disengaged and I could step inside. I paced all through the bright open space, my gaze darting everywhere, but I could tell at a glance that nothing had been disturbed.

  My chaise sat in the center of the main room, tidy and tweedy and bearing just enough rust-colored threads that any errant bloodstains were easily hidden after a particularly bad monster attack. There was nothing else in that room but my cheap electric clock and a couple of extra pillows. My bedroom looked even tidier, since I’d rolled up both the plastic tarp and the sleeping bag and pillow and tucked them against the wall.

  My iron box in the armoire was still locked and the clothes arranged perfectly around it, wrapped and rewrapped to my specifications—no one had touched it. The bathroom was pristine, and the kitchen as well, down to the slightly chipped and now no-longer-complete dish collection, a victim of Tyler’s first visit to my apartment. When he and I kissed, the world literally shook. When Zach and I kissed…

  “Don’t think about Zach,” I ordered myself. Especially don’t think about kissing Zach. And even more especially, don’t think about kissing Zach and ending up on desolate open plains or an enormous bed of red satin, his body stretching over mine, poised and ready to—

  Stop thinking about that, I insisted, more firmly this time. But I knew it was a losing battle. And why was I fighting this so hard? I didn’t have to jump Zach in some back alley like some crazed nymphomaniac, but what would it hurt to understand him a little bit more? In fact, I probably should understand him better. He was my teammate. We would be fighting together, presumably. Heck, we’d already fought together. Knowing him better would help me be a better teammate, was all.

  Yeah, right.

  I peered around the space, suddenly feeling out of sorts. Almost like I didn’t belong here, which made no sense. This was my furniture, my supplies. All I really owned in the world. Even the few mementos I’d kept from back in Asheville, which hadn’t been much, now that I thought about it.

  Why had I kept so little?

  I frowned and stepped back into the bedroom, moving over to the armoire. I carefully unwrapped the folded clothes to reveal the chest, a two-foot-by-one-foot iron case with an iron clasp. With monsters literally coming out of the closet to say hello at all hours, I hadn’t wanted to take anything for granted.

  Now I popped open the lock, which didn’t require a key but a code. It opened easily, and I stared down at the few things I’d kept from my childhood home, which I’d shared with my sweet, careful mother for twenty-four years…right up until she’d died far, far too young.

  There was depressingly little. Mom had only had one piece of jewelry that she’d worn every day, and that was a necklace with a teardrop stone surrounded by diamonds. Citrine, she had told me once, and the diamonds looked real enough to me, though of course I hadn’t ever had it appraised. That piece lay in its velvet bag, along with one of her handmade pairs of earrings, shards of sea glass that she’d twined thin metal strips around. Otherwise, there were financial records, ins
urance documents, and maybe a dozen photographs of her. She hadn’t been much for digital photos, but these had been with her letter to her family…though not in the same envelope.

  I sighed now as I settled on my heels, setting the carefully unsealed letter to the side, then paging through the photos. My mother looked nothing like me, or at least not enough, I’d always thought, with her bouncy brown hair and sparkling blue eyes, her wide smile and happy countenance. Getting to my feet, I carried the earliest-looking snapshot to one of the few pieces that had come with the place, a heavy, stand-alone wrought iron mirror positioned between the bedroom’s two windows. I held the picture up next to my face. If I squinted hard, there was some resemblance, I thought. Maybe.

  I’d never thought Mom had adopted me, but now a strange kind of disquiet snaked through my stomach, curdling in my belly.

  Pinching the photo between my lips, I turned to the side, and lifted my shirt. The ugly ragged scar was still there, puckering my skin. It was the largest of my mystery scars. I ran my fingers along it, surprised at the chill that slipped down my spine. As with all the scars that had refused to heal, I had no recollection of this particular monster fight, but it had happened a long time ago, I knew. I’d carried that scar with me for most of my life.

  The phone buzzed in my pocket, so loud I yelped in surprise and jumped back, spitting out the picture. I bent down to pick the photo up off the floor before even swiping for the phone—I had my priorities straight—but it had slipped behind the mirror’s base, of course. I had to angle myself awkwardly to reach it, my gaze instinctively scanning up the wall to fix on a point just beneath the window sill.

  Which was how I discovered the camera in my bedroom.

  16

  The phone blared again, and I jerked up, banging my head on the mirror. “Ow!” I yanked the phone out of my pocket, then fell back on my ass and scooted away from the camera.

  The photo. I lurched forward again, pulling up the photo before retreating entirely out of the bedroom and sinking down against the wall of the corridor. Who would have put a camera there? Given its position—low under the window, facing the door—the only thing you could see with any amount of certainty would be someone crossing in front of the bedroom door to head to the bathroom.

  Depending on whether or not it was a wide angle, you couldn’t even get a decent view of anyone above the knee. So what was someone trying to see? And where was the feed going? My apartment backed up to another apartment, I was sure, but I had never heard anyone there in the few weeks I’d been here. Was this some sort of Peeping Tom situation? Was it Bellows’s camera?

  Dimly, I realized the phone had stopped ringing. I looked down at the screen and scowled. Though I’d managed to swipe the device on, I’d missed the actual call, which maybe was just as well. I sat with my back against the hallway wall, my lungs heaving. I should just contact Mr. Bellows, I thought. Or simply cover the damn lens. If Mr. Bellows didn’t know about it, then he could continue not knowing about it until I moved out. I didn’t really feel like having anyone else in my space right now.

  My phone rang again, the same number. This time I picked up.

  “Hello?” I asked sharply.

  “Nina, where are you? What’s going on?”

  I blinked at the worry in Commander Frost’s voice, then modulated my own. “I’m at my apartment.”

  “You’re on campus?”

  I shook my head, though of course he couldn’t see me. “No, the one I have off Newbury. I’m on a short-term lease.”

  “You know you can stay in Fowler Hall. It’d be better to have you on campus.”

  I grimaced and leaned against the wall. Now was as good a time as any to wade into this mess, and it would distract me from the flat lens I couldn’t stop seeing in my mind’s eye, even if I’d scooted out of view of it.

  “Yeah? You really think me moving in is a great idea given everything that’s going on with the guys now that I’ve joined the collective?” My blunt honesty came out almost harshly, and Frost breathed out a long, careful sigh. He knew what I meant.

  “Yes…I do,” he said heavily. “The collective was created to ensure the absolute power of any hunters willing to dedicate themselves to each other as a team unit with an unbreakable bond. It was designed to protect the individuals, not put them at risk, and I believed—wanted to believe—still believe—that you were safer as part of the collective, or I would never have allowed the five of you to complete the process. Tyler leveled up after you and he, err…”

  “Had sex,” I helped him out as he hesitated, and I could practically feel Frost wince over the line.

  “Yes. But you should have leveled up after that as well. It’s only when you didn’t that I realized I didn’t have all the information, and what’s worse—I still don’t have all the information. There seems to be a legitimate value to you, ah…” Frost broke off again, but I was all in at this point.

  “Hooking up with all four guys,” I stated flatly. “Yeah. I read through the Apocrypha.”

  “You…” Frost broke off, clearly trying to process that piece of information. Meanwhile, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but the butterflies taking up residence in my stomach had woken up during this conversation, and appeared to be fully on board with the idea of me getting cozy with Zach, at a bare minimum. They were practically playing Twister in a hurricane by the time Frost continued.

  “Well, yes. From what still remains in the Apocrypha, if you choose to connect with the other team members, it will help them. Help you too, though that part isn’t quite clear.”

  “Yeah, about that. I read the section where I’m supposed to destroy…something. Then it was cut off. Please tell me you know something more about that little piece of crazy.”

  “Unfortunately, I don’t,” Frost said. “Furthermore, I’m not sure that actual physical connection is required in every instance. It’s possible that an emotional connection is enough. It would need to be a profound emotional connection, but…”

  I sat up sharply, my butterflies leaping up with me, their spinning making me dizzy. There had been something about an emotional link. How had the book put it? “Yeah? You think so?”

  “I do. That said, we know precious little about any of this, and every new revelation leads to two or three more questions. This magic is very old, and the older the magic, the more the people who were wielding it tended to keep things simple and, frankly, primal. Which means…”

  I grimaced, not needing him to complete the sentence. It meant the writers had sex in mind, full stop. It also meant that not only would I need to act on my irrational and irresponsible attraction to Zach…but to Liam as well. And Grim.

  All the butterflies fainted.

  Frost again hammered home the data point of past collectives imploding, and his theories about how we might avoid that slice of joy, but I couldn’t quite hear him anymore. Instead, I saw my mother’s face, white with fear, her orders regarding four men in a collective harsh and overloud in the small room. If you ever see them—you run. Promise me!”

  “…and that takes us back to where we started from. Which is knowing too damned little to do any good,” Frost finally muttered, and fell silent. I wanted to give the man a break, but I didn’t know how. We had to figure this out.

  “Okay, well, let’s look at whatever comps we have,” I offered. “Liam said this kind of, um, relationship is normal at your sister school or whatever, Twyst Academy? How do they handle it?”

  “Twyst is an entirely different scenario,” Frost grumped. “Except for those Trials teams who actually win—which is precious few—the teams are temporary constructs and their participants are not required to physically bond in order to win. It helps, without question. But it’s not required. With Wellington collectives, it’s not only not required, it appears to be the most dangerous course you can take, regardless of the upsides.”

  I winced. “And you haven’t figured out any workaround yet.”

&nbs
p; “I haven’t. Every trail leads to the same response. You engage in some sort of intimate interaction with another member of the collective, they level up. You should have as well, but since you didn’t, I suspect you will only level up to a significant degree after you engage with all of them. And what that transformation will look like is unknown.”

  “Right.” I sighed. “This is some seriously twisted magic you guys have going on here, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

  “On that point, we agree,” Frost said. “Which gives us something else to consider. This is an old book, and old books are given to absolutes, and they are often written by, frankly, socially inept old men. So perhaps I am mistaken in what’s truly required. With everything going on, I haven’t had time to research it more thoroughly. I should put Liam on the job.”

  I grimaced. “That’s okay. I don’t know that I necessarily want Liam thinking too much about…all this.”

  Frost snorted. “Good luck with that. I have a feeling he’s already undertaken plenty of research on his own.”

  Heat flashed through me, equal parts dismay and…okay, pretty much only dismay. I didn’t even know what to do with that information, so I pushed on. “Why did you call, anyway?”

  Once again, Frost hesitated. “I was concerned about you. Dean Robbins stopped by the library to discuss your conversation with him. He wasn’t sure you were as appreciative as you could have been regarding your recent change of circumstances. He also pressed me for more information about your mother.”

  I sat up straighter. “What did you tell him?”

  “Exactly what I know for certain, which is very little. Janet Cross disclosed to you that she taught in the Back Bay area of Boston, but we’ve found no record of that. If she did teach here, which seems likely given her mentions of the area to you, she may have changed her name upon relocating to Asheville. Or she could have been making up that history to lead you down a false path.”