Chapter 2: Two Days Missing

Delaney

My head was going to fucking explode.

That was my first coherent thought when I opened my eyes. My second was that someone had stuffed an entire bag of cotton balls into my mouth while I slept.

I groaned and rolled onto my side, and the room tilted beneath me like a plate being carried by a clumsy waiter.

Oh, God. Never again.

I was never drinking again. Not vodka. Not tequila. Not whatever questionable liquid Trevor had been pouring into those stupid red cups. I was officially retiring from alcohol at the ripe old age of nineteen.

My stomach rolled. I squeezed my eyes shut.

"Please don't throw up," I whispered.

After several minutes of bargaining with whatever higher power might be listening, the nausea settled enough for me to sit up.

Sunlight leaked through the blinds in thin gold stripes. My dorm room was quiet. Sloane's bed was empty, her expensive white comforter smoothed flat beneath roughly twelve decorative pillows.

I would never understand the obsession with decorative pillows. They were pillows. They were supposed to be slept on, not displayed like priceless artifacts.

I rubbed my face, and something scratched against my cheek.

I looked down.

What the fuck?

My shirt was torn. Not slightly ripped at the collar or split along a seam. Torn. The fabric hung off one shoulder, with long, ragged slashes stretching across my chest and stomach. My jeans weren't much better. There were holes at both knees, dirt smeared along my thighs, and what looked suspiciously like dried mud near my hip.

One sneaker was missing.

I stared at myself. "What the hell did I do?"

I remembered the party. Sort of. Loud music. Too many people. Trevor handing me another drink. Someone laughing when I nearly fell off a kitchen stool.

Then walking. I remembered walking. The sidewalk had been moving, and I'd talked to a streetlight. Or maybe that had been a dream.

Something cold settled in my stomach.

Trees. I remembered trees. And something watching me from between them.

My heart gave an ugly thump. There had been a dog. No. Not a dog. A wolf. A huge black wolf with red eyes. I could almost picture its face, the teeth, the growl, the slow way it had moved toward me. I remembered running, and then a sudden, horrible pain.

My hand flew to my shoulder.

Nothing.

I pulled the ruined collar aside and twisted toward the little mirror hanging on my closet door. There wasn't a scratch on me. No bite marks. No blood. Not even a bruise.

I sat there for a moment, confused. Then I laughed, a little too high. "Okay. Apparently I hallucinate wolves when I'm drunk. Good to know."

That was concerning. Really concerning. But surely there would be evidence if I'd actually been attacked by an enormous animal, and since I was sitting in my dorm room instead of a hospital bed, I decided to believe my brain had invented the whole thing.

I needed water. Possibly an exorcism. Definitely coffee.

I fished my phone out from where it had wedged between the mattress and the wall. The screen lit up.

1% battery remaining.

"Seriously?"

I swiped the warning away, and then I saw the date.

I froze.

Monday, September 21.

I blinked. No. That couldn't be right. The party had been Friday night. I'd left sometime after one in the morning, which meant it should be Saturday. Sunday, if I'd slept the whole day away. But Monday?

10:42 AM.

My stomach dropped through the floor.

"WHAT THE FUCK?"

I scrambled out of bed so fast that my bare foot landed on the missing sneaker, which had apparently been hiding under the blanket the entire time. I stumbled into my desk, and a stack of textbooks hit the floor with a crash.

"Shit! Shit! Shit!"

Monday. It was fucking Monday. I had somehow lost two entire days.

I checked my messages. Seventeen notifications. Three missed calls. Four emails from the university. And approximately a million messages in the class group chat. My phone died before I could open a single one, and the screen went black like a door slamming in my face.

"You absolute piece of shit."

Wonderful. Fantastic. Perfect. I had no idea where I'd been for two days, my clothes looked like I'd crawled through a wood chipper, and my phone had picked this moment to give up on life.

The digital clock on my desk read 10:44.

My psychology lecture started at eleven. Across campus.

"Oh, fuck me!"

I threw myself toward the bathroom. The shower ran freezing because I didn't have time to wait for it to warm up, and I stood there gasping while I scrubbed dirt from my skin and washed my hair twice. I tried to remember anything useful from the weekend.

Nothing. Well, not nothing. Fragments. Cold pavement. The smell of wet leaves. Red eyes. Pain.

I shivered. It had felt so real.

I turned the water hotter, trying to chase off the prickling sensation crawling over my skin. Maybe someone had slipped something into my drink. The thought made my stomach twist. I'd heard enough horror stories about college parties to know it wasn't impossible.

But who would have brought me home? And why couldn't I remember any of it?

I pushed the questions aside. I couldn't deal with them right now. I had class, and if I missed another lecture, Professor Whitmore was going to skin me alive.

Figuratively. Hopefully.

I jumped out of the shower, wrapped myself in a towel, and tore through my closet. Jeans. Sweatshirt. Socks. Two matching shoes. Good enough. My hair was still dripping when I shoved my laptop into my backpack. I plugged my phone into my portable charger and nearly cried when the little charging symbol appeared.

"Thank you, sweet baby Jesus."

I wasn't particularly religious, but desperate times called for desperate measures. I grabbed my student ID, my keys, and my notebook.

Then I ran.

Greyhaven University had never looked so fucking big.

Seriously. Whoever designed this place needed to be arrested. There were too many buildings, too many sidewalks, and apparently every single student on campus had decided to walk directly in front of me.

"Excuse me!" I dodged around a cluster of girls. "Sorry!" I nearly collided with a guy carrying three coffees. "Coming through!"

A cyclist swore at me. I swore back.

By the time I reached the psychology building, my lungs were on fire, but I barely noticed. I checked my phone.

10:59 AM. 5% charged.

Holy shit. I might actually make it.

I hurried down the hallway and slipped through the lecture hall doors just as Professor Whitmore began to speak. Every seat near the back was taken, of course. The universe had clearly decided I hadn't suffered enough. I made for an empty chair near the middle of the room, and my backpack snagged on someone's desk. Their water bottle tipped. I caught it an inch before it hit the floor.

"Sorry," I whispered.

The guy blinked at me. I set the bottle upright and practically fell into my seat.

Professor Whitmore paused, and his eyes found me.

"Nice of you to join us, Miss Mercer."

Twenty heads turned. I wanted the floor to open up and swallow me whole.

"Sorry, Professor."

He glanced at the clock. "Cutting it rather close."

"Yes, sir."

"I trust you've had time to review the assigned reading."

My stomach sank. Assigned reading? There had been assigned reading?

"Of course," I lied.

He studied me a second longer, then turned toward the projector. I let out a breath I'd been holding since the doorway.

Thank fuck.

I opened my laptop and pulled up the course website, and I nearly stopped breathing. Two missed discussion posts. An online quiz. A reading response. And an assignment worth fifteen percent of my grade.

Fifteen. Fucking. Percent.

No, no, no. This couldn't be happening. I'd worked too hard to get here. Too many late nights studying. Too many scholarship applications. Too many shifts at the grocery store while I was still trying to finish high school. My scholarships depended on my grades, and I couldn't afford to screw this up.

I opened a blank document, then another tab, then the assignment instructions. Professor Whitmore was explaining something about behavioral conditioning, but his voice reached me as if from underwater. My heart hammered against my ribs.

What was I supposed to tell him? Sorry, Professor. I accidentally vanished for two days after getting absolutely wasted at a freshman party.

Yeah. That would go over wonderfully.

I swallowed hard. One thing at a time. That was how I'd survived living with my parents. When everything went wrong, I focused on the next thing I could control. Not the yelling. Not the insults. Not the inevitable consequences. Just the next task.

I could fix my grades. I could apologize to my professors. I could catch up. And then, when I had time, I could figure out what the hell had happened to me.

My phone buzzed against my thigh.

I glanced down. It had charged enough to wake up finally, and a notification glowed on the screen.

Unknown Number: You shouldn't have walked home alone.

I stopped typing. My fingers went cold. For a moment, all I could hear was the faint hum of the projector.

Then another message appeared.

You're lucky someone found you.

I stared at the screen, and my mouth went dry. Someone found me? Who?

My thumbs shook as I typed back. Who is this?

The message showed as delivered. I waited. Nothing. Then the typing indicator appeared, three little dots, and vanished. Appeared again. Finally a reply came through.

Be more careful next time, Delaney.

Something unpleasant tightened in my chest. Whoever this was knew my name. They knew I'd walked home alone. And apparently they knew something about the two days I couldn't remember.

What happened to me?

This time, there was no answer.

I stared at the conversation until the screen dimmed. Then I looked up at the tall windows along the side of the lecture hall. Students hurried along the sidewalks outside. A few sat beneath the trees, laughing and drinking coffee. Everything looked perfectly normal.

For some reason, that made the fear worse.

I lowered my eyes to my phone again, and that was when I noticed something I'd missed. These weren't the first messages this number had sent. At the very top of the thread, above everything else, was an earlier notification.

Sent Saturday morning. 2:13 AM.

It held only four words.

She's back in bed.

And beneath it, a reply from a different number I didn't recognize.

Then keep watching her.