The Midnight House First Chapter

CHAPTER ONE

Vivienne

It’s not that I wish my ex were dead so much as I wish that he’d never been born in the first place.

I know I shouldn’t let him occupy so much mental real estate, but truly, he’s the fucking impeached mayor of my brain.

Especially right now.

My heels, demure, mindful– click across the tile floor of my old department. Chin held high, I try to ignore the gasps and whispers of faculty when I walk by.

People I used to consider friends. Colleagues, at least.

I swallow hard, like if I can just keep all liquid out of my mouth maybe I won’t cry.

At the very least, I won’t let them see me cry. This time.

I take a deep breath as I reach the end of the hall, the main office of the History Department here at my university.

The university I always wanted to go to, with gorgeous story-book architecture and moody trees dropping perfectly umber leaves in the fall. With the best research program for historiographers, like me.

I grit my teeth and knock twice on the door.

A little too hard, seeing as how it opens right away.

“Miss Estrella,” Henry Hobson, my old grad advisor, beams at me from behind his spectacles as he ushers me in. “I wasn’t expecting you today, but come right in.”

“Dr. Hobson, it’s so great to see you,” I tell him, and mean it. He’s never been anything but kind to me. Even if his assistant was supposed to tell him I was coming. “I was hoping to discuss scheduling a new dissertation defense board, but ah,” I pause, choosing my words delicately. “You know it will be slightly different than what I’d originally planned.”

“Of course, here, why don’t you come sit down and join us? We were just getting started—”

I blanche, and anything else Dr. Hobson is saying goes right in one ear and out the other.

He’s here.

Cole Gibson, the piece of shit that ruined my life, my ex-boyfriend, my ex-research partner, or so I thought, and current inhabitor of all my most vile fantasies, is sitting in one of the two chairs in front of Dr. Hobson’s desk.

“Well, Vivi, you look beautiful today,” Cole says.

He has such a punchable face.

“Thank you.” My voice is clipped.

“Of course, we were just discussing Mr. Gibson’s ground-breaking research into—”

“Oh, you don’t want to bore Vivi with the details of that, Henry.” Even Cole’s laugh is pompous, and he raises one eyebrow, as if daring me to challenge him. “She’d always get so bored when I’d go over the details of the old secret societies here, wouldn’t you? You know she prefers things like… literary analysis to historical documents.”

It would be so easy to take my heel off and shove it through his eye socket.

My smile twitches.

“In fact, that’s why I’m here, Vivi, darling.”

Red. I’m seeing red.

“That’s right,” Dr. Hobson says, his tone sad. “He came with all the evidence of his notes preceding yours. You know I think you’re a good student, Miss Estrella, but academic dishonesty is truly… reprehensible.”

I open my mouth, staring between them.

All the speeches and evidence I’d prepared to get myself back into good standing fly out of my head.

As if Cole stealing my research wasn’t enough, publishing my work before I realized he’d even been dipping into my notes…

Now he’s trying to get me kicked out of my PhD program?

“Sir, I never would do that,” I say, and am sickened by the stammer I hear in my own voice. “In fact I had new research I wanted to show you—”

“That won’t be necessary, Vivi,” Cole interrupts. “But if you want someone to verify your sources for you, make sure you’ve translated things correctly—”

I am going to black out from rage.

“Miss Estrella, why don’t you set up an appointment with my assistant for another date? You don’t look well.” Dr. Hobson seems genuinely concerned.

“Yes, Carmilla is excellent at remembering little things like that. You know, she loves that Italian restaurant I used to take you to in the city.”

“Thank you for your time, Dr. Hobson,” I hear myself say. It’s like I’m watching myself in slow motion. The door closes behind me somehow.

My heels clack in the empty hallway.

I nod, my mouth in a rictus grin, at one of my former research buddies. “Sophia,” I say blandly. My voice still sounds far away.

Tunnel vision. That’s what this is called.

I keep walking. Ignoring the people who have been talking behind my back, lapping up everything Cole’s lied about. Believing him.

He took everything from me.

Everything.

But I’ll get the last word, because I know I’m right.

I know the research I have in my bag, at my side, in my laptop, nestled next to the bear spray I carry on me at all times, is the real deal.

So I just don’t go through the fucking school’s grant program to find the artifact mentioned in that dusty old text I painstakingly translated from cyphered Latin for the last six weeks.

I’ll do it myself.

I’m back on the main streets of the city before I know it, the sky green-grey, sure signs it’s going to storm soon. A neon sign catches my eye, and I’m walking through the front door of the corner store, and before my brain’s caught up to my hands, I’ve paid for a cheap bottle of wine with a rooster on the label, a pack of cheap lighters, a roll of duct tape, the biggest flashlight they have, a tiny flashlight and a baseball cap that’s way overpriced, thanks to the fact it’s advertising the Eagles on it.

Sad, considering I’ll be defacing it in short order.

If I were smart, I’d go back home and change clothes, get drunk, and cry. Come up with a new plan.

But I’m too fucking mad to be smart.

My skin practically crackles with rage. I swear, if I looked at my arms right now, all the hairs there would be standing up on their own.

I plop down on the nearest bench, peeling my heels off and throwing on the comfortable sneakers I always keep in my backpack. Sure, I’ll be going into the tunnels in a stupid pair of slacks and a button down, but fuck it. I’m going.

I screw the lid off the wine and take a long drink, cringing slightly at the acidic flavor.

“Carmilla would hate you,” I tell the wine, and set it next to me, feeling slightly fortified.

No less impulsive, though.

I pull the cap out of the plastic bag next, then take my time duct taping the tiny flashlight to the bill of it, then pop it on my head and tug my long black hair through the back of it. A lighter goes in my pocket, the rest in my backpack, and I shove the wine in a side pocket and the huge flashlight in the other water bottle pocket.

I don’t need to consult my notes on my laptop.

I know exactly where I’m going, because I didn’t steal anyone’s research.

I did this the hard way, and if I have to excavate an old tunnel myself to get the evidence, then that’s what I’ll fucking do.

Right now, damn it.

***

A few hours later, half the wine bottle’s gone, I’m filthy, and the tunnels under the city are proving more treacherous than I thought.

Especially in slacks.

They’re ruined, for the record.

The old library entrance was easy enough to find, and even though it was hard to not scream in excitement when twisting the statue in their “thinking” garden caused an old man hole to slide open and revealing stairs themselves, that was… well, that was the only thing that’s been easy.

The tunnels are waterlogged, there are rats, lots of rats, so many spiders that I’m concerned I may actually develop arachnophobia at any moment, and the only thing that’s gone right?

My little baseball cap headlamp kicks ass.

I keep going left.

The cipher I have memorized spoke about sinister directions, and in Rome, sinister was left, for a lot of cool historical reasons that don’t really matter right now.

So going left the only thing that makes sense down here, and I know if I want to head back up, all I have to do is make a whole bunch of right turns until I find the stairs from the hidden entrance.

“I have enough proof for a grant now, anyway,” I mutter.

Somewhere in the dark, a rat squeaks, and a splash sounds.

I slap at my neck, because I’m pretty sure there are spider babies making a daycare in my bra and climbing out.

I keep my cellphone out, recording the signage on the walls. There’s not a lot, but it’s definitely hard evidence that someone used to use these tunnels.

And that the someones who used these tunnels also used the same Latin based cipher that got me down here.

I am sore, hot, wet, covered in baby bugs, and I stink.

But I was right.

“Vindicated,” I scream sing.

A few rats squeak in response, and I bow in their general direction.

“I’m going to fucking find the artifact that passage talked about, and then I’m going to shove it straight up Cole’s pimpled ass–“

I pause, narrowing my eyes at a glint over head.

More Latin. Of course. Secret societies and their Latin.

How predictable.

Which is great for me, really.

“Quem tenet Aurora mendax cognomine litus,” I read the first line out loud. Not well, but well enough.

I repeat it under my breath, thinking fast.

A land which the coast of the dawn, a lie of a name… roughly something like that. I purse my lips. Could be something about a falsehood?

Coast of the dawn. That was definitely part of this particular society’s schtick, from what I’ve found so far.

I peer up, my flashlight shining eerily on the second line of text.

“Et media nox tus domus sinistra freti.” My mouth twists to the side.

I don’t think I said that right.

Something about a midnight sea? Sinister again, which is both left and evil, because the Romans had real strange thoughts about left and right.

I shouldn’t have had the cock wine. Whatever.

“Try again, genius,” I tell myself. “We’re not letting that fucker Cole win.”

I widen my stance, staring up at the bob of my little baseball cap flashlight, trying to ignore the nastiness all around me.

This is important. I can feel it in my bones.

Or maybe I just really need to pee.

I clear my throat and try my best impression of my first Latin teacher, in high school. She would have done this like a Shakespearean actor on stage.

“Quem tenet Aurora mendax cognomine litus, / et media noctus domus, sinistra freti,” I boom out.

Then screech, because ahead of me, something begins to grate, stone on stone.

The water ripples around my ankles, the entire tunnel shaking. A brick overhead dislodges, and I screech as it plunks into the receding water next to me.

“Holy shit,” I say on an exhale, almost sobbing with excitement. “I fucking found it.”

Cautiously, even though I want to run, I slowly make my way under the Latin sign, filming the murals that illuminate scenes of war, gorgeous paintings of weddings and funerals and murders, an entire history in chipping paint.

I have goosebumps everywhere.

I can’t believe I found it.

And somehow, I knew I would.

 I keep walking, stunned into reverent silence by the ancient art telling me all about this secret society, enough art that this, by itself, would be an entire dissertation.

And I’m recording it all.

And I’m the first person to see this is centuries.

A hot tear rolls down my cheek, and I’m so busy making sure I’m getting the murals beside me that I nearly trip over the track in the tunnel.

“There you are,” I say. I feel sick with glee, awed, and completely overwhelmed.

A quick check of the wall where the mural ends shows me that I was right, there was a door here, and somehow, me reciting the Latin triggered it.

Or a pressure plate?

I don’t know. I’ve never read about an acoustic trigger in architecture. That’s a whole new line of research.

This place is a goldmine.

Relief.

That’s the feeling I have.

And when I finally shine my headlamp on the column in the middle of the room, a fluted stone podium, I know I’m going to be okay.

An astrolabe, covered in dust and cobwebs, sits alone on the podium, a lone sliver of light shining directly on it from a small grate overhead.

I must be somewhere under the city now, though I can’t hear cars or people or any of the normal city noises.

I found the damn artifact, the one this secret society I’ve researched for years, trying to prove was real, prized above all else.

I reach out, swiping the dust away as I hold my phone up, recording everything, but the minute my hand touches it, everything shifts.

The room goes sideways, pain jolting up my arm.

I can’t breathe.

Something’s not right.

Was it booby trapped?

Woozy, I try to take a step forward, try to grab the dusty astrolabe. They’ll have to pry it out of my cold, dead hands.

My last thought, as I start to fall forward, is that at least when they find my body, they’ll know I didn’t steal anyone’s research.

When I black out, there’s a smile on my face.

It’s not a very nice one.

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