CHAPTER TEN

INTROSPECTION

( — contemplation of your own thoughts and desires and conduct. )

— ♡ —

          "ISLA, WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN?" Rhiannon asks, once Isla steps through the door of their dorm room on Saturday morning, after having disappeared from the campus the previous afternoon. Students have been advised to avoid going out after the sun sets after what happened to Taylor, but it's not like a big number of them actually obeys.

          Isla truly doesn't give a damn about those rules, waltzing in and out whenever she pleases, but she usually lets people know where she's going just in case something bad happens and she needs help (though she never admits the last part, always wanting to prove to everyone she can protect herself just fine on her own).

          Last night wasn't one of those times.

          She was calmly sitting in the room, surrounded by her textbooks, notebooks and prized TI-Nspire calculator (which Rhiannon suspects Isla loves more than she loves her, but it's quite understandable), and then, all of a sudden, sprung up from her bed as if the mattress had burned her, dark eyes wide open and hair falling from its usual bun.

          She left without a word, bolting out of the room before Rhiannon had a chance to ask her what was going on, and even turned off her phone, leaving the rest of them deprived of a good night of sleep as they tryed to figure out anything about her whereabouts. Rhiannon almost convinced Jude and Matteo to join her on a search party, but, just when she was about to win the argument, they were ordered to return to their rooms because it simply isn't safe out there anymore.

          Apparently, Isla is above the safety rules just because she's the chancellor's daughter, which clearly isn't fair for anyone else, but Rhiannon thinks she understands. Technically, no one or anything is forcing them to stay in their rooms, locking them in their dorms, but it's something they should do.

          Anyway.

          Rhiannon didn't bat an eye throughout the entire night, sitting on her bed by herself as she stared at the door, wishing for it to swing open at any moment as Isla made her way back inside, but that never happened. She could simply have returned to Jude and Matteo's room, as they'd provide her with some distraction, but, with security guards roaming the hallways, she'd, most certainly, get in trouble with them again.

          The pile of coursework sitting on her desk simply wasn't attractive enough to make her want to do anything else. She kept trying to contact Isla, only to be greeted by her Voicemail as it asked her to leave a message if it was urgent, but she didn't feel like yelling at her best friend through an electronic device. Hell, she rarely ever raises her voice, being nothing more than a scared little mouse.

          Rhiannon fell asleep at some point, curled into a ball under her bed sheets, as her eyelids weighed too much and her muscles were stiffer than usual, anchoring her down to the mattress. When the sun rose behind the clouds and the fog, several hours later, she jumped awake, panting, as Isla stormed inside the room . . . wearing a sweatshirt she hadn't taken with her when she left the previous night.

          It shouldn't be a warning sign, as she could have simply kept it inside her car for emergencies and frosty nights, but it was simply too big for her (she even had to roll up the sleeves so they'd leave her hands uncovered) and she was wearing her red cape the last time Rhiannon saw her.

          "So?" Rhiannon insists, hands set on her hips. "Aren't you going to explain what happened and where you went last night? We were worried sick—"

          "At Rowan's," she nonchalantly replies. "There are some really . . . bad things happening in this town and it's his job to write about them. I want to figure out what's going on."

          "By going out in the middle of the night weeks after Taylor went missing? You don't know what happened to her, Isla; hell, for all we know, she might have been killed! Do you want to . . . do you want the same thing to happen to you?"

          "Rhea, honestly"—Isla pinches her nose bridge, falling to her bed—"can we, like, not do this right now? Nothing happened to me, alright? Besides, Taylor went missing after leaving the library, which is a place I refuse to step inside, unlike you and Jude. If anything, you and everyone who spends their time in that forsaken place are the ones who should be worried, not me; besides, I carry a can of pepper spray with me wherever I go, remember? And I didn't do anything wrong. I'm just helping my father's ghostwriter get paid."

          Rhiannon huffs, running her fingers through her hair to try to make it look slightly more presentable. "And what's that supposed to mean? Are we supposed to stop hanging out in the library?"

          Isla quirks an eyebrow. "And am I supposed to simply stop going out because Taylor's gone? We don't even know what happened to her; maybe she pulled a Brooklyn and decided to run away, or something, and I heard the police tell Papa they didn't find any signs of struggle around here. Wherever she went missing, it wasn't here."

          If there's even such a thing as a basically pointless decision, that is to try to argue with Isla when she has already made up her mind about something. Though she certainly has a point, as they shouldn't stop living their lives over some urban legend that has caused a Crowcrest student to vanish into thin air, much like that ship in the port, Rhiannon can't help but grow warier of her surroundings.

          Being constantly on her toes, concerned about what might jump out of the shadows, is no way to live, but, with Connor spending plenty of time at the campus as he waits for the list of participants to be released, she likes to think it's a relatively rational decision. She knows she's running the risk of sounding horribly paranoid whenever she voices her concerns, especially because Connor definitely shouldn't be trusted with something as important as that experiment, but opening her mouth would only worsen it all.

          "I'm sorry for not telling you where I was going," Isla eventually says. "You have a point. Sort of. But I'm obviously not going to stop living my life just because of the stupid lore and, hey; maybe Rowan can figure this out with that book of his." She sighs softly. "He let me borrow the sweatshirt. I'm pretty darn aware of how intimate this might seem," she dryly adds, when Rhiannon's lips stretch into a smug grin, "but I don't care. It's not like that."

          Rhiannon surrenders, raising her hands next to her head. "Whatever you say."

          "I'm serious!" Isla's voice goes up a whole octave. "He's only here to write that book and get paid, while I'm here to get my degree, land my master's degree and be smarter than everyone else in this place. Not to mention the guy is absolutely obnoxious most of the time." She exhales, blowing back some rebel strands of her hair. "I don't have time for petty drama."

— ♡ —

          ISLA'S IMPATIENCE KEEPS GROWING THROUGHOUT THE FOLLOWING WEEK. It begins when she's woken up by a phone-call at three in the morning, muttering every possible curse word she can remember under her breath, and Rhiannon barely lifts her head from her pillow to follow the source of light coming from the opposite side of the bedroom.

          Luckily, it's now officially Saturday, as it has been for the past three hours and fifteen minutes—according to the time plastered on Rhiannon's own phone—and no one has to get up early in the morning (except for Isla, who simply loves to study in the morning, as everything is a lot quieter than it is as the hours pass). Next to her, Jude mumbles something unintelligible, tightening the hold around her waist and she falls back to the mattress with a soft thud.

          The gentle pressure of his lips against the bare skin of her neck is more than enough to spread noradrenaline through her bloodstream and quicken her heart rate.

          "Rowan?" Isla mumbles, voice so slurred her words are barely comprehensible, while Rhiannon wishes the guy had the decency to call at more godly times during the day. "It's . . . three in the morning. What is it?" Isla only waits around ten seconds before kicking off the covers, grabbing her robe and exiting the room, being considerate enough to talk outside. "Slow down."

          She stays outside for long enough to let Rhiannon and Jude almost drift back to sleep, with Rhiannon rolling to the side to turn into the big spoon, holding him with both an arm and a leg. Unfortunately, they never go any further, as Isla accidentally slams the door on her way back inside and Jude jumps on the bed, like an alert cat, startling Rhiannon in the process as well.

          Jude asks her to tell her boyfriend to learn how to be a decent person, Isla retorts said guy is definitely, definitely not her boyfriend, as she has plenty of better things to focus on and they're technically only business partners. Besides, he's also worried someone is playing some sort of macabre game with him, trying to make him lose his mind, and Taylor having gone missing is only making it worse.

          Rhiannon says nothing, scooting closer to Jude, and presses a quick kiss to one of his vertebrae, the one right on the base of his neck, feeling him shiver. At the end of the day, she, Rowan and Isla are following the same goal, even though Isla is the one using a more direct approach by taking matters into her own hands.

          Rowan reads and writes about mythology while his feelings of paranoia grow. Rhiannon tries to come up with an excuse to check the footage from the surveillance cameras, even though the police said there were no signs of struggle and they must have already had the same idea.

          "Also," Isla whispers, with a slight note of irritation twisting her voice, "care to tell me what the hell you're doing in this room? This is a sacred place!"

          "'Teo snores," Jude grumbles, voice muffled thanks to his pillow. "Rhea doesn't."

          "Rhea's also dating you. I have no idea if Matteo wants to tap that."

          "Yeah." Jude yawns. "There's that, too. Guess which of them I'd rather tap."

          Rhiannon playfully sinks her teeth into his shoulder, over his thermal sweater. "You're terrible."

          Things quickly go from bad to worse in a span of merely a few hours. Though Rhiannon wakes up feeling relatively well-rested, choosing to ignore all the work she still hasn't done, including an assignment due on Tuesday (which is something she knows she can perfectly wing), her gut tells her those feelings of bliss won't last throughout the rest of the day.

          For starters, rumor has it Beatrice and Frances are revealing the list of participants later today, sending the entire student body into panic mode. Personally, Rhiannon thinks there really shouldn't be a reason for so many people to be feeling this way, with the symptoms of mass hysteria easily spreading around the campus like they did on that episode of House MD, but she's not one to talk; she, too, has freaked out over seemingly minimal things and maybe some people actually give a damn about the experiment.

          She's not one of them. When you live in a world that revolves around money instead of the sun, those things are easily shoved to the back of your brain and turn into the least of your concerns. Easy as pie.

          Second of all, Isla returns around lunch time, stomping her feet as she barges into the cafeteria, dropping her backpack over the table and startling poor Gabriella. Apparently, she had scheduled lunch with Rowan, just to see if the guy could finally calm down and think things through, as they all doubt someone is really trying to mess with his head, but then his ex-girlfriend decided to show up. He was the one who called her last night, after Isla hung up the phone, but couldn't even remember having done it.

          "It's Jasper St. Claire," Isla complains. "He dated Jasper St. Claire for six years. Hell, even I wish I had dated Jasper St. Claire."

          "So?" Jude asks. "What's the drama?"

          "I mean"—Isla wrinkles her nose—"I don't want to get involved in their drama because that was a really messy break-up, let me tell you, and the dude is absolutely wrecked, but you should have seen the way he was looking at her."

          "I bet it's the same way Laura looks at Frances," Sutton jokes, and Laura elbows her, while everyone else chuckles. "It's the whole 'why does it feel so good but hurt so bad' business all over again. People tend to want what they can't have, unless they suddenly turn into annoyingly sappy creatures like certain people." She discreetly points to Jude and Rhiannon with her head, but the smile on her lips is genuine as she does it.

          "Are you okay, though?" Rhiannon quietly asks Isla, as she sits down next to her.

          "Yep," Isla replies, in a breath. "Why wouldn't I be? It's not like we owe anything to each other."

          "Still." Jude's knuckles gently graze against Rhiannon's shoulder blades. "I don't want you to get hurt."

          Lastly, Matteo decides to take Jude's place as the bearer of bad news (though the role of prophet belongs to him and the Universe will never stop reminding everyone of it, especially through Murphy's Law) by bursting inside the cafeteria, panting as he stops by their table, with a hand pressed against his side.

          "The list is out," he chokes out, and everyone falls silent. "We're all in it. Yes, you too," he tells Rhiannon, when her eyes widen. "Call me paranoid all you want, but I don't think this is a mere coincidence."

— ♡ —

THE TIMELINES HAVE FINALLY CAUGHT UP AND I AM DONE WITH NANO

so, uh, ben barnes liked my tweet. again. it was the third time. my heart doesn't know how to handle this BUT I AM STILL ECSTATIC I LOVE HIM SO MUCH ps watch marvel's the punisher on netflix