Chapter 96: The Trap Closes

POV: Georgia

I start asking questions like I already know the answers, just to see who flinches.

Something shifts in me after Darcy’s slip. I stop circling carefully. I stop pretending I’m only half curious, only mildly suspicious, a girl asking idle questions to pass the time. I start dropping details on purpose, sharp and specific, and I watch what happens to people’s faces when they land.

The notebook helps. I’ve started keeping it in my jacket pocket instead of my bag, close enough that I can pull it out the second I’m alone, the second whatever I just witnessed is still fresh enough to write down accurately. Names. Reactions. The exact words I used to provoke them. It’s starting to look less like a diary and more like a case file, and some nights that thought keeps me awake longer than it should.

I catch Bella in the hallway outside her dorm on Monday morning, her hair still damp, a textbook clutched to her chest like a shield. "Weird thing," I say, breezy, like I’m just making conversation while we happen to be walking the same direction. "I heard the equipment review flagged the mounting screws specifically. Not the blade edge. Screws."

She goes white before I even finish the sentence. Her eyes flick toward the window, quick and involuntary, like she’s checking for something outside, someone outside, before she catches herself. The textbook slips an inch in her grip before she catches it too. "I’m late," she mumbles, voice cracking on the second word, and disappears around the corner so fast her bag nearly slips off her shoulder.

I stand there a second longer than I need to, watching the space where she’d been, and the window she’d glanced at, glass reflecting nothing but empty lawn.

At lunch, I ask a boy from the hockey team, someone I’ve barely spoken to all semester, whether injuries here heal faster than at other schools. He laughs, too loud for the question, too fast to be anything but nerves dressed up as amusement, then gathers his tray and finds somewhere else to be. Two minutes later his seat sits empty, and I’m left staring at the dent his elbows left in the tablecloth.

I try it with a teacher next, a comment about strange howling near the dorms, dropped while she erases the whiteboard after class. She doesn’t turn around right away. When she does, her expression has smoothed into something practiced. "Probably wildlife," she says, breezy, dismissive, the words coming out rehearsed. "We do border a lot of forest." Then she’s asking about my essay draft, and the subject has changed so smoothly it’s almost impressive, like watching a magician palm a card.

Not everyone flinches the same way. But the pattern is there, filling the section of my notebook I’ve started keeping separate from the rest, the pages already crowding faster than I expected.

Since Monday, I haven’t seen the twins in the dining hall once. Their usual table by the window sits empty, or occupied by strangers who don’t belong there. Our paths used to cross in the hallway between classes, where Bianca used to bump my shoulder on purpose just to make me laugh. This week, they don’t. Bella, who used to glance at me with something like guilt whenever we passed, now seems to vanish before I’ve even registered she was there, like she’s timing her exits around my schedule. I hear, secondhand, from a girl in my chemistry class, that Bianca requested a schedule change for one of our shared classes. I don’t know if that’s true. I believe it anyway.

Darcy is the opposite. Darcy gets closer.

He starts showing up more, not less, appearing at the edges of my day with a frequency that stops feeling like coincidence almost immediately. He’s outside my dorm in the morning, leaning against the brick with his hands in his pockets, offering to walk with me even though I never asked. He texts more than he used to, small check-ins that used to read as sweet and now read as tracking. *Where are you? What are you up to? Who are you with?* He asks about my afternoons like he’s building a schedule of them.

"You’ve been busy," he says one day, catching me on the path outside the science building, his tone deceptively casual. "I feel like I never see you anymore."

"I’ve had a lot going on," I say, keeping my eyes forward, my pace steady.

"Like what?" His eyes stay steady on my face, searching, patient in a way that feels less like patience and more like waiting. "You can tell me. That’s what I’m here for."

I give him nothing. I’ve gotten good at giving him nothing, small talk wrapped around empty spaces where information used to be. But he doesn’t stop asking. If anything, he asks more, wants more, needs to be told where I am and who I’m with and what I’m thinking about, in a way that used to feel like closeness and now feels like a hand slowly tightening around my wrist.

By Thursday, I’ve stopped answering half his texts. I tell myself I’m just busy, that my phone died, that I forgot it in my room. I know that isn’t why. I know exactly why, and the knowing sits in my chest like a stone I can’t put down.

Friday afternoon, I’m walking out of my last class, cane tapping against the tile in the rhythm I’ve had memorized since freshman year, my bag heavy on my shoulder, and Darcy is waiting for me in the hallway.

He’s leaning against the wall by the door, arms crossed, in the exact spot he’d have to know I would pass through. His smile is in place when I see him, easy, familiar, the one I used to find so comforting, the one that used to make my stomach do something warm and stupid. But something about the way he’s standing, too still, too deliberate, tells me this isn’t a casual run-in.

"Hey," he says, voice pitched warm.

"Hey," I answer, careful, testing the air between us. I try to keep walking past him, toward the stairs, but he falls into step beside me, close, closer than he usually stands, his shoulder nearly brushing mine.

"You’ve been distant," he says, tone gentle, almost wounded.

"I’ve had a lot on my plate."

"Right." He says it lightly, but there’s an edge underneath it now, a tightness I haven’t heard from him before, not even the night his mask cracked over the twins. "You know, I’ve noticed you asking people some pretty specific questions lately. Screws instead of blades. Healing rates. Howling near the dorms."

My stomach drops. I don’t answer. My grip tightens on the handle of my cane, knuckles going pale.

"People talk, Georgia." He says my name slower than usual, drawing it out, savoring it in a way that makes my skin crawl. "It’s a small campus."

We reach the stairwell, and he steps in front of me, blocking the top step, close enough that I have to stop walking or run straight into him. His arm braces against the railing, not touching me, but I can’t get past without pushing him. Behind him, the hallway has emptied out, everyone else already gone to wherever they’re going, the silence pressing in from both directions.

"You should really stop digging into things that don’t concern you," he says, voice still soft, almost affectionate, which makes it worse.

His voice is still light. His smile hasn’t moved at all. But his eyes have gone hard, flat and cold in a way I’ve only seen once before, across a dining hall table with his fork frozen halfway to his mouth. There’s no charm behind them now. There’s nothing soft in his face at all.

It’s the first time since I met him that he’s stopped pretending to be safe.