Eve of Eternal Night Read online

  Am I?

  “No.”

  “Then I think you just removed your own roadblock. Would you now like to tell me why you’re really here?”

  I mirrored his expression, staring back at him with the same intensity.

  “I saw something. Last night, after a party. I called the cops, but there was nothing on the news about it today, no rumors spreading across campus. I finally went to the place where I saw it, but there’s no evidence that it even took place.”

  “Maybe you should start by telling me what it is you saw.”

  “You mean what I think I saw.”

  “No, I mean what you saw. If your mind is so convinced it occurred, then I’m willing to believe it did, if you are.”

  Freddie was earning points by the second. I took a deep breath and resituated myself in the chair, folding my leg underneath me to sit up a bit taller.

  “A murder. I think I saw a murder.”

  He stilled for a moment.

  “Where were you?”

  “Greek Row. There was some stupid party there, and I went because sometimes I go just to keep up appearances.”

  “But you didn’t actually want to go?”

  “No. I hate those parties.”

  “So what happened there?”

  “What happened there isn’t super relevant, but I nearly got laid out by the backup quarterback—that story ties back to me being in shit with the dean, by the way—and some random guy knocked him out and saved the day. He tried to get me to stay and have a beer with him, but I bolted.”

  “Why didn’t you want to stay? Did he do something?”

  Freddie sat forward a bit in his chair when he asked that question.

  “No, he was fine. Actually, he was funny and kind of sweet, but I don’t trust guys like that. It always seems to blow up in my face.”

  “I’m going to set that conversation aside for now, but we will be addressing your trust issues eventually.” Of course. “So you left the party and went where?”

  “I walked home. But along the way, between a couple of buildings, I saw these five guys. They were standing around a body.”

  “Are you sure it was a body?”

  “It was a bloody lump of flesh, so yeah, I’m pretty sure it was a body.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “What do you think I did? I bolted for my place and didn’t look back. I called the cops, but they either didn’t go or somehow didn’t find anything when they did, which is why I’m starting to wonder if I saw what I thought I saw.”

  He sat there quietly assessing what I’d just told him, probably wondering how he was going to delicately break it to me that I was losing it. His silence made me twitchy. I felt like I was going to jump out of my skin. Finally I cracked, jumping up out of the chair and grabbing my bag.

  “Forget I said anything,” I snapped as I rushed toward the door.

  His hand gently grabbed my elbow and pulled me to a halt. It startled me at first, since every therapist I’d ever worked with had made little to no physical contact with me beyond a handshake. When I looked up at his face, I didn’t see the schooled, neutral expression I expected. Instead, I saw pain and regret and something else I didn’t understand in his eyes.

  “Please don’t mistake my hesitation for something it wasn’t. I wanted to choose my words carefully so that you wouldn’t feel like I was manipulating or placating you like others clearly have in the past. I can see that you have a whole history of baggage, and I hope to one day learn about it, Eve. But I have no intention of making you feel like there is something wrong with you. That’s the last thing I want.”

  I tried to muster up a harsh reply, but I couldn’t. I was too lost in the thought that maybe, just maybe, Freddie—Gunnar Fredrickson—actually gave a shit about me. That maybe he wanted to help me.

  “What if there is something wrong with me?” I said softly, unable to meet his gaze.

  “Then we’ll fix it.”

  I tried to quell the hope rising within me, my long history of being disappointed and let down by those around me too ingrained to ignore. But there was something about the look in his eyes and the set of his brow that told me not to abandon the possibility that what had been broken could be fixed. Whatever it was about Gunnar, it made me want to believe him.

  Trust him, even.

  “I really do need to go,” I said, my voice much kinder than it had been. “I’ll be late for class.”

  “We can pick up where we left off on Monday, if possible,” he said, releasing my arm. I nodded in response. “I’ll have the receptionist call you to schedule.”

  I didn’t dare thank him, afraid my tight throat would betray my emotions, so I just walked away, not bothering to look back. I already knew he was watching me. I’d have done the same if I were him.

  By the time I broke through the double doors into the damp outside air, my mind felt clearer, as if just telling someone about what I’d seen last night had purged the fear and confusion I felt about it. A sense of relief washed over me as I walked through the common, pulling my jacket collar tighter around me.

  I really did believe that Gunnar would help me.

  Maybe my advisor wasn’t a complete dick for sending me to him.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I stopped to get a coffee on my way to class. Though I wasn’t super hung over, I didn’t feel amazing, either. My head hurt, and there was an ache in my chest, undoubtedly from stress. Caffeine was needed—in large quantities.

  I stopped by the coffee cart and purchased a cup before making my way back out to the common. It was sparsely populated due to the impending rain, but just like earlier that morning, I could hear an eerie tune ringing out through the space, the lone violin still going strong.

  I looked down at my watch and sighed. I was already twenty minutes late for organic chemistry. Since there was no easy way to sneak in unnoticed, I wondered if I should bother going at all. Then the violin hit a high note that demanded my attention, and I started walking toward the source as if my feet had made my mind up for me.

  On the far side of the knoll, leaning against a massive oak tree, stood the musician whose melodies had called to me. I found a bench a small distance away and sat down to drink my coffee and enjoy the music. I hoped I wasn’t overly conspicuous, not wanting to look like a total creeper, but the moment the man behind the music looked over at me and smiled, I knew I’d been busted. Why it bothered me as much as it did, I had no idea.

  I held his steel grey gaze for as long as I could before I took out my phone and mindlessly flipped through my emails, hoping to make myself look disinterested. After a couple of minutes, I hazarded a glance up toward him. It was met with an amused grin. He pushed his tall, athletic frame off the tree and started toward me, still playing as he did. Uninvited, he sat down next to me on the bench and continued to play until the song was finished.

  Then he just stared.

  “Isn’t the moisture bad for your instrument?” I asked before taking a sip of coffee. It was so hot that it burned the roof of my mouth, and I winced in pain.

  “Careful,” he said, still smiling. “Caffeine can be dangerous.”

  “Clearly.”

  “And yes, the damp is bad for my violin, but I don’t care. Why play something beautiful if you have to stay indoors to do it? Where’s the inspiration in that?”

  I shrugged, not really knowing what to say. “Well, thanks for the song,” I said, getting up. “But I’m late for class.”

  “Or are you right on time?” he asked, leaning forward a touch so his dark blond hair hung in his eyes.

  “Philosophy major, I take it?”

  He splayed his arms wide as if to say ‘in the flesh’. “I’m a student of life.”

  “Well, I’m a student of chemistry, and sitting around out here doesn’t really help me learn that, so…”

  “I feel like there’s a line in there somewhere—something about the chemistry between us—but that would be t
oo easy, wouldn’t it? Too childish?”

  “It definitely would,” I said, collecting my bag from the bench. “You get points for not saying it.”

  “Would I get points for buying you breakfast to go along with that coffee? Somewhere that doesn’t involve a cafeteria or ladies in hairnets?”

  I stared at him, doing nothing to hide my dubious expression. He stood there, violin in hand, and waited for my decision. No pressure. No agenda.

  “Do you know who I am?” I asked.

  “Does anyone really know who anyone else is?” he replied with a grin. When I didn’t laugh, he attempted to make himself look serious and tried again. “No. I don’t know who you are.” Silence. “Do you know who I am?”

  “You’re the weirdo playing violin by himself in the middle of campus.”

  “You say ‘weirdo’, I say ‘eccentric man of mystery’.”

  “If you prefer that...”

  He took a step back from me, his grin returning. “I can see that you’re not quite ready to let go of your demanding schedule, latte girl, so I will leave you to join the rat race alone.” He turned to walk back to his tree and the violin case lying next to it. “Perhaps another time. When you’re ready to throw caution to the wind and really live.”

  He didn’t look back at me, having politely dared me to go out with him. The open-ended invite was so bizarre that it almost made me want to take him up on it, if for no other reason than to let him know that he didn’t have the upper hand in this scenario. But I didn’t, of course. I wasn’t ready to be that kind of headline.

  “Hey weirdo!” I called after him. He stopped but didn’t turn around. “You got a name, or should I just refer to you as ‘eccentric man of mystery’?”

  I saw his shoulders shake with laughter. “I like that, but I prefer Stian. It suits me better.”

  “Maybe I’ll see you around, Stian.”

  “I’m sure you will, latte girl.”

  I didn’t bother to tell him my name. I liked the idea of him not knowing it. I relished the anonymity.

  With coffee in hand, I made my way to class, sneaking in the side entrance when the professor had his back to the class. While he droned on about something that would normally have been of interest to me, my mind wandered over the events of the past twelve hours, trying to sift through all that had occurred.

  Then my mind landed on the body in Greek Row and it froze. As if zooming in on the memory like a picture on my phone, it tried to dissect the image, looking for anything to help discern what had really happened last night. Maybe it hadn’t really been a murder at all. Maybe it had just been a bunch of guys standing around their buddy who’d hurt himself—possibly knocked himself unconscious somehow. The more I thought about it, the more plausible it seemed. Except for the blood i was sure i'd seen. The blood altogether missing from the scene.

  I shook my head, chiding myself under my breath.

  I needed to stop watching the news. Immediately. The sensationalized ‘journalism’ was creating a sense of paranoia in me that I didn’t need help with.

  As soon as class ended, I spotted Charlie collecting her stuff from the front table. I threw my backpack over my shoulder and made my way over. Charlie was about the only person on campus I considered a friend, but the jury was still out on whether or not she felt the same. She was a bona fide genius. The kind that lacked the social skills to function in the real world. She was going to be a brilliant chemist—probably the one to finally cure cancer or come up with some other award-winning discovery—but she needed to be tucked away in a lab for her own good. People-ing was never going to be her thing.

  “Charlie!” I called to her. She turned around and gave an awkward wave.

  “You came in late today,” she said by way of greeting.

  I laughed and shook my head. “Guilty as charged.”

  She frowned, her full lips pulling down at the corners. “That’s not a chargeable offense, Eve.”

  “And thank God for that!”

  She stared at me blankly, most likely trying to sort out how God—if there was one because there was no scientific proof to support religion—had anything to do with it. Her deep brown eyes were pensive, and her brow furrowed as she concocted a response. Her wild black curls were clipped back in an unintendedly asymmetrical way, as though she’d just thrown it in to keep her hair out of her way. All function, no fashion. It was sad, really, because Charlie, under all her nerdy glory, was quite stunning. Her warm brown skin was flawless, and her features were large and well balanced. But nobody ever noticed her beauty. Her general awkwardness and disinterest made it hard.

  “So anyway… can I borrow your notes from today and give them back to you later?”

  She fished them out of her bag and handed them over.

  “I’ll be in the lab all afternoon. You can bring them there.”

  “Perfect. Thanks, Charlie.”

  “Don’t lose them. And don’t write on them. And don’t give them to anyone else.”

  “Got it! I won’t.”

  She stared at me for a moment, weighing whether or not she was sold on my reply.

  “Why were you late today?”

  I let out a sigh. “That’s an incredibly loaded question, Charlie. Let’s just say my morning started off in the dean’s office and went downhill from there.”

  “Are you on probation or something?”

  “Or something. Let’s just leave it at that.”

  “Eve… you’ll lose your TA position,” she warned, as though I needed the reminder.

  “I know. It’s all straightened out. No worries.”

  She stood there silent for a moment before replying. “If you need me to help you, let me know.”

  I smiled at her. “Thanks. I will.” I held up her notes before putting them safely in my bag. “I’ll have these back to you in no time. Promise.”

  “Okay.”

  With that, she walked out the front exit and disappeared down the hall.

  Though she hadn’t come right out and said it, she was right; I did need to get my shit together, and thinking about murders that didn’t really happen was quite the opposite. I spent the next two hours in the student union, handwriting her notes out to help me learn the material, then studied everything that had been covered so far that semester. After lunch, I studied some more, foregoing my other classes to get caught up. I had been slacking, my apathy for school growing by the day. I couldn’t explain why I’d stopped caring. My interest had just seemed to wane slowly as my attention had focused on the growing unease I felt at the shift in the world around me. It made me wonder what the point of it all was if I would just end up shot on my way to class or run over while crossing the street. The more my mind drifted down that path, the emptier I felt. And as the emptiness grew, the more apathetic I became. And so on, and so forth.

  I really needed to break the cycle.

  It was dark by the time I put my books away, well past dinnertime. I thought about heading home to eat, but instead, I stopped by the lab to give Charlie her notes, then grabbed something from the cafeteria and ate it as I walked home to get my car. It was eight o’clock, which was a perfectly fine hour to go for a drink to celebrate my recommitment to my studies. Nothing says ‘getting your shit together’ like going for a drink alone, right? Regardless, Friday night cocktails at the Sketchy Fox was a ritual that I intended to keep.

  So I got in my car and headed there.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Friday night at the Sketchy Fox was usually pretty crowded, but that particular evening, it was packed. I’d barely managed to snag a seat at the bar before the mob stormed in. When I asked Cheryl, the over-the-hill bartender who never skimped on a pour, what was going on, she said they had some new band playing. Apparently said band had one hell of a following. It was downright claustrophobic in there.

  I sipped my tequila, leaning my elbow on the bar so I could face the tiny stage at the far end of the place. I loved listening to live music ther
e. Loved blending in with the seedier element that frequented it. Nobody there ever knew who I was, or gave a fuck if they did. It was far from the college scene, which I found refreshing. It was my happy place, where I retreated to when life got a bit too real.

  “You need another one, honey?” Cheryl asked, eyeing the guy who had sat down next to me.

  “Yeah. That’d be great.”

  She disappeared behind the bar to retrieve my bottle, then popped back up to set it down in front of me. She didn’t ask me for money—she always let me run a tab because she knew I was good for it. Cheryl was about the only person in there that I knew was aware of my identity—or my father’s, at least—but she kept that tidbit to herself.

  Cheryl was good people.

  With a fresh tequila in hand, I turned around in my seat to assess whomever Cheryl had been giving side-eye. I needed to see if moving was in my best interest. But before I could get a good look, someone else bumped into me from behind, knocking me forward into my drink. I managed to catch it before it spilled everywhere, but it took some effort. The guy beside me clearly noticed and had a good chuckle at my expense.

  When I tried to wheel around on the asshole that had caused the near miss, I found it difficult to move. His body was too close for me to easily maneuver in my chair, and his hand was planted on the bar, caging me in a bit. Though every alarm in my girl-brain was going off, I looked up to see Cheryl coming over, smiling at the douchebag. And Cheryl never smiled.

  “What can I get you, G?” she asked, her tone like honey instead of its normal rasp.

  “You know what I like, Cheryl.” I could practically hear the wink in his voice as he spoke those words.

  She gave a quick reply. I thought I heard her say his name, but I couldn’t be sure. Gerrick? Godric? I just couldn’t tell; I was too surprised by Cheryl’s behavior to pay attention. Knowing she was smitten with him was somewhat comforting, but I was still unnerved by the fact that the old girl had actually flirted with him. He was either an angel among men or one shady sexpot. It was a toss-up really, knowing Cheryl.