E L L E

 

I don’t pull away from the locker.

The pull just loosens, little by little, until my fingers stop reaching and my knees remember how to lock.

Luke doesn’t give me time to think about it. He catches my suitcase in one hand, my elbow in the other, and steers me down the corridor before I can look back.

“Food first,” he says, low and steady. “Then sleep. You’ll feel less like you’ve seen a ghost.”

I try to laugh, but my throat is too tight. The skin of my hand still tingles where the cold almost touched me. The hum under my ribs hasn’t gone. Walking away from the east wing feels wrong, like I’ve left something unfinished behind me.

Or something behind me hasn’t finished with me.

By the time Luke pushes open the heavy oak doors to the dining hall, my pulse is still running too fast.

The room is huge. Vaulted ceiling. Iron chandeliers dripping candlelight. Long black tables crowded with students and trays and lifted voices. It should feel warm after the corridor.

It doesn’t.

It feels alive.

And it feels like it notices me the second I step inside.

Conversation dips in uneven waves. Forks pause halfway to mouths. Heads turn one after another until the whole hall seems to tilt in my direction.

“There she is.”

“Wrenwood.”

“That’s the girl from the locker.”

The wool of my scarf suddenly scratches against my throat like static. I tighten my grip on it and keep walking, but the whispers spread faster now, sharper, fed by something fresh.

“I heard it slammed by itself.”

“No one even touched it.”

“My roommate said the whole row shook.”

Luke guides me toward the far end of one table, shoulders squared like he can block all of it by standing a little closer. I sit with my back too straight and my hands clenched in my lap. He drops onto the bench beside me, close enough that our sleeves brush.

That only makes people stare harder.

Maribel Crane leans forward from three seats away, blonde hair glossy in the candlelight, smile thin as a blade.

“Careful,” she says sweetly, loud enough for half the hall to hear. “She might hex your cocoa if you look at her wrong.”

A few people laugh.

Then more join in, because that is how these things work. One cruel voice gives the room permission, and suddenly everyone wants to be part of it.

“She hexed the locker shut.”

“Maybe that’s why they let her in. Entertainment.”

“Heard frost formed on the handle.”

“Don’t sit too close unless you want to lose a finger.”

The room doesn’t erupt. It tightens. The mockery rolls outward in one ugly wave, each line meaner because of the one before it. Not random now. Not old gossip dragged out for sport.

This is about today. About me. About whatever happened back there.

My scarf itches worse. Heat climbs my neck, but under it, cold slips lower, threading through my chest. The same hum from the corridor. The same sick little pull.

Luke glances at me once, takes in too much with that one look, then leans closer.

“She’s just jealous,” he murmurs, like he’s letting me in on a secret, “because her hair doesn’t have as much personality as yours.”

The laugh escapes me before I can stop it. Small. Stupid. Real.

My hand flies to my mouth, horrified, but Luke grins like he’s been aiming for exactly that.

“There you are,” he says softly.

Warmth flickers through me. Brief, fragile, but enough to let me breathe.

A server passes. Luke grabs two bowls of soup and slides one in front of me.

“Eat.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“That wasn’t a suggestion.”

I look down at the soup anyway, steam curling against my face. Around us, the noise starts to shift away from me, not because they’ve lost interest, but because gossip burns fast. It finds a spark, flares bright, then waits for the next thing to feed on.

I pick up my spoon. My fingers are unsteady enough to make it tap porcelain. Luke pretends not to notice.

For a few seconds, I focus on little things. The smell of bread. Candle wax. The scrape of benches on stone. The weight of my scarf around my shoulders.

Normal things.

Luke bumps his shoulder lightly against mine. “Remember when you fell asleep on your math book and woke up with numbers stamped into your cheek?”

I glance at him.

He smiles into his soup. “You walked around half the day looking like algebra had claimed you.”

A small smile pulls at my mouth before I can stop it.

“You promised never to tell anyone that.”

“I promised no such thing.”

“You’re awful.”

“And yet,” he says, lifting a brow, “still your favorite.”

The knot in my chest loosens just enough to hurt. Luke has always done this. Found the crack in the panic and pried it open until air could get in. Back home. At Nan’s kitchen table. Outside graveyards. In every moment when I’ve looked too close to falling apart.

I hold onto that memory for one breath. One last warm, stupid, normal thing.

Then the heavy oak doors at the far end of the hall creak open.

The sound should disappear under hundreds of voices.

It doesn’t.

It cuts through the room cleanly. The chatter stumbles. Forks pause again. Even the candle flames seem to still before they flicker.

A shiver walks down my spine.

The hum under my skin stirs at once.

Someone enters.

At first, all I catch is height and dark fabric and the strange way the air seems to pull back from him. Then he steps fully into the light.

He looks about my age. Maybe nineteen. Dark hair falling in loose waves over his forehead. Storm-gray eyes. No smile. No uncertainty. He moves like he already knows this place and hates it.

Or owns it.

“Who is that?” someone whispers.

“New student?”

“He doesn’t look familiar.”

No one answers.

He doesn’t head for the food. Doesn’t hesitate in the doorway like every first-day student does. He walks forward with a controlled grace that is almost too precise, too quiet. When he passes the nearest table, conversation lowers around him instead of rising. Even Maribel goes silent.

I should look away.

I don’t.

My eyes catch on him as if something inside me has hooked and gone tight. He keeps walking, through candlelight and shadow, past rows of curious faces and half-lifted cups. He chooses the darkest corner of the room like it belongs to him and sits.

Only then does he lift his head.

And look straight at me.

The breath leaves my body all at once.

My spoon slips from my fingers and clatters against the bowl. Too loud. Sharp enough to turn heads. I barely hear it over the rush in my ears.

His stare doesn’t waver.

It pins me where I sit, cold and exact. Not casual curiosity. Not the same hungry interest as everyone else in the room. This feels worse. Quieter. Like recognition.

The scarf at my throat prickles hard enough to sting. Cold slides over my skin in a thin, creeping line. I stare back because I can’t seem to do anything else.

Luke shifts beside me. “Elle?”

I hear the tension in his voice, but it sounds far away.

The boy still doesn’t look at anyone else.

Not Luke. Not Maribel. Not the students openly whispering about him now.

Just me.

I drag my eyes down to the soup, forcing air into my lungs. Steam curls up, fogging my vision for a second. My pulse pounds too hard, too uneven.

Get a grip.

He’s a boy. A student. A stranger in a school full of strangers.

But the lie falls apart the second it forms.

Nothing about him feels ordinary.

Luke’s hand brushes my sleeve, warm and familiar. “Elle.”

“I’m fine,” I whisper.

The words don’t sound real. Luke goes still beside me. I know that stillness. He’s looking at the boy now. Measuring. Already deciding he doesn’t trust him.

Neither do I.

But trust has nothing to do with the way my body reacts.

The hum in my chest deepens.

A cold ache slips down my arms.

Curiosity wins before common sense can stop it.

I look up again.

He hasn’t moved.

Not an inch.

Storm-gray eyes locked on mine, patient and unblinking, like he knew I would look back. Like he’s been waiting for it.

The air above my soup chills.

A thin bloom of fog spreads over the surface.

And I forget how to breathe.