unease running through her. She circled her shoulders, stretched her arms behind her back.
Maybe Samantha just forgot and had her phone turned off. Maybe she overslept. Samantha was a hunter; she wasn’t in danger from whoever—or whatever—was stalking the campus.
Sighing, Meredith gave up on her workout routine. She wasn’t going to be able to focus until she checked on Samantha, even though the other girl was probably fine.
Undoubtedly fine. Scooping up her backpack, she headed for the door. She could get in a run on the way over.
The sun was shining, the air was crisp, and Meredith’s feet pounded the paths in a regular rhythm as she wove between people wandering around campus. By the time she reached Samantha’s dorm, she was thinking that maybe Sam would want to go for a nice long run with her instead of sparring today.
She tapped on Samantha’s door, cal ing, “Rise and shine, sleepyhead!” The door, not latched, drifted open a little.
“Samantha?” Meredith said, pushing it open farther.
The smel hit her first. Like rust and salt, with an underlying odor of decay, it was so strong Meredith staggered backward, clapping a hand over her nose and mouth.
Despite the smel , Meredith couldn’t at first understand what was al over the wal s. Paint? she wondered, her brain feeling sluggish and slow. Why would Samantha be painting? It was so red. She walked through the door slowly, although something in her was starting to scream.
No, no, get away.
Blood. Bloodbloodbloodblood. Meredith wasn’t feeling slow and sluggish anymore: her heart was pounding, her head was spinning, her breath was coming hard and fast.
There was death in this room.
She had to see. She had to see Samantha. Despite every nerve in her body urging her to run, to fight, Meredith kept moving forward.
Samantha lay on her back, the bed beneath her soaked red with blood. She looked like she had been ripped apart.
Her open eyes stared blankly at the ceiling, unblinking.
She was dead.
26
“Are you sure you don’t want us to cal your parents, miss?” The campus security officer’s voice was gruff but kind, and his eyes were worried.
For a second, Meredith let herself picture having the kind of parents he must be imagining: ones who would swoop in to rescue their daughter, wrap her up and take her home until the horrible images of her friend’s death faded.
Her parents would just tel her to get on with the job. Tel her that any other reaction was a failure. If she let herself be weak, more people would die.
More so because Samantha had been a hunter, from a family of hunters, like Meredith. Meredith knew exactly what her father would have said if she had cal ed him. “Let this be a lesson to you. You are never safe.”
“I’l be okay,” she told the security guard. “My roommates are upstairs.”
He let her go, watching her climb the stairs with a distressed expression. “Don’t worry, miss,” he cal ed. “The police wil get this guy.”
Meredith bit back her first reply, which was that he seemed to be putting a lot of faith in a police force that had yet to find any clues as to the whereabouts of the missing people or to solve Christopher’s murder. He was only trying to comfort her. She nodded to him and gave a little wave.
She hadn’t been any more successful than the police, not even with Samantha’s help. She hadn’t been trying hard enough, had been too distracted by the new place, the new people.
Why now? Meredith wondered suddenly. It hadn’t occurred to her before, but this was the first death, attack, or disappearance that took place in a dorm room instead of out on the quad or paths of the campus. Whatever this was, it came after Samantha specifical y.
Meredith remembered the dark figure she chased away after it attacked a girl, a girl who said she didn’t remember anything. Meredith recal ed the flash of pale hair as the figure turned away. Did Samantha die because they got too close to the kil er?
Her parents were right. No one was ever safe. She needed to work harder, needed to get on with the job and fol ow up on every lead.
Upstairs, Bonnie’s bed was empty. Elena looked up from where she was lying, curled up on her bed. Part of Meredith noted that Elena’s face was wet with tears and knew that usual y she would have dropped everything to comfort her friend, but now she had to focus on finding Samantha’s kil er.
Meredith crossed to her own closet, opened it, and pul ed out a heavy black satchel and the case for her hunter’s stave.
“Where’s Bonnie?” she asked, tossing the satchel onto her bed and unbuckling it.
“She left before I got up,” Elena answered, her voice shaky. “I think she had a study group this morning.
Meredith, what’s going on?”
Meredith flipped the satchel open and began to pul out her knives and throwing stars.
“What’s going on?” Elena asked again, more insistently, her eyes wide.
