“Hush,” she told him as she lifted her finger into the air to signal that he should be quiet. “I wasn’t even talking to you.”

Then, her attention turned back to me. “Honestly Lisette, your mother would be so disappointed. Oh, and a cottage in Asheville? What is our family turning into now? You’re just lucky that I came when I did.”

“When exactly did you come?” Adam asked her.

Naomi rolled her eyes at him. “See?” she said as she waved a disregarding hand in the air toward him. “This is why we can’t have nice things.”

Oh my god. I knew instantly what was happening now.

“Aunt Naomi,” I said. “Where did you say you had gone to all those years?”

“Away.”

Yep, that’s what I thought.

“We need to leave,” I said to Michael, who was now standing right by my side.

He took my hand to walk away and the other two men were close behind us.

“You know dear,” my Aunt Naomi called from the hallway. “In order to do great things, you need to make some sacrifices. Being Headmistress is a great responsibility; it will get you much further in life than all these other distractions. Sometimes you have to give a little to get a little in this life—SORRY.”

My feet suddenly started to jump into a run.

“What the hell is going on?” Rob asked as the guys ran alongside me.

“We need to get back inside the apartment right now!” I shouted.

The four of us ran all the way off Goldshire’s campus, across the Lineage campus, and up into the apartment. Michael deadbolted the doors and pushed a cabinet in front of the door while Adam pulled all the blinds and curtains tightly closed over the windows.

Rob went to the liquor cabinet and drank a shot right from the bottle.

“Okay, what the hell?” he asked.

I motioned to Adam to please help me unzip my dress and as soon as it was loosened, I let it drop onto the floor and kicked my shoes off, not even caring that the sight of me half-naked had cause Rob to take another hearty swig from the bottle.

Michael came out of the bedroom and tossed me a T-shirt and my joggers to put on, while he and Adam both took off their jackets and loosened more buttons on their shirts. Michael rolled up his shirt cuffs and got glasses down before yanking the bourbon bottle out of Rob’s hands.

I couldn’t sit down on the couch, I had to pace back and forth across the floor because my nerves were on fire. Adam watched me until he got dizzy from all the back and forth and then walked over to hand me a drink to help me calm down.

“Take a breath, Lisette. Tell us what’s going on,” Michael said.

I knew he already had a pretty good idea, but there was definitely some explanation necessary.

“Naomi is my mom’s sister,” I said as I spoke with fervor. “She was around a lot when I was very small, and I remember that I used to like to play with her. She was always super good at playing make-believe and she would get really into playtime. But then, when I was like five or six, she just disappeared. That’s why I had trouble remembering her. I literally don’t have a single memory of her since before my early childhood years.”

“Didn’t your mom explain to you where she went?” Adam asked.

I shook my head and wrung my hands together. “No, it was kind of like a taboo topic and then eventually I just forgot about Aunt Naomi all together. Don’t you see? When she said she went away, she means she was locked up and I’m betting that was in a mental institution. She’s batshit crazy.”

“And dangerous,” Michael added.

“Why do you say that?” Rob asked.

“Didn’t you hear her?” Michael asked as he took a swallow of his drink. “She knew everything that had happened. She knew about David, and the cottage in Asheville, she knew about Lisette’s projects on campus that were destroyed. And that part she said about Adam—this is why you can’t have nice things.”

“Holy shit,” Adam said. “Did she put all those cuts on me?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I think she did. Did you hear what she said when we left?”

Michael nodded and looked at me. “Sorry.”

“So, your super-crazy and estranged aunt is the one behind all the notes, and the batshit that’s happened on campus, and even David’s death?” Rob asked. “I mean I believe it, but man that’s a lot to take in.”

“It sounds like she thinks she’s helping you,” Michael said. “Like she thinks you should be Headmistress and have some power for yourself and not be distracted by anything or anyone else.”

“Yeah,” I nodded as I finally wore myself out from pacing and sat down on the couch next to Adam. “That’s exactly what it sounds like.”

“The question is what do we do about it?” Rob said.

“Stay away from her,” Adam answered. “Get through the rest of this year here, stick tight, and then get out of here.”

“I don’t think that’s going to be enough to work,” Michael said. “I mean, we’re talking about a woman that killed a man and carved the same word into Adam’s body like a hundred times.”

Adam scoffed. “Good point, that was super messed-up.”

“I can start an investigation; see if there’s anything that we can get her booked for,” Rob said.

Michael came over to sit on the other side of me on the couch.

“Just try to relax,” he said. “At least now we know who’s behind all of this. Now we can be smart about it and hopefully stop her from doing anything else.”

“I hope so,” I said. “I don’t like what she said though. It sounded an awful lot like she wasn’t going to stop until I had nothing left to focus on but myself.”

“What was with all the notes though?” Adam asked. “Is she apologizing for the things she’s done? That’s a whole lot of apologies.”

“Maybe she’s apologizing for the things she’s planning to do,” Michael said.

I scoffed. “Well now that’s even more screwed-up.”

That night when I fell asleep, I dreamt that I saw my aunt’s face in every crowd, in every window, and in every mirror and reflection that I looked into. She looked back at me in the shadows and in the shapes of the clouds in the sky. I tried to wish my mother’s face into the dreams instead, trying to replace Naomi with her. But, their faces were so eerily similar that my brain kept flipping back. Surely it wouldn’t be that hard to flip my dreamscape, or at least I figured. But instead it just kept on being Aunt Naomi’s face no matter how hard I tried to see my mother instead.

And I fucking hated it.

“I don’t know if this is a good idea,” I said the next morning as we all stood in the garden together.

The guys were already starting to clean up all the trashed plants and smooth the ground back out. Michael had ordered an entire new pallet of plants to be delivered within the hour.