Page 42 of Hellhound AU

“It takes a lot to be hellbound, as it should. It’s an eternal sentence. Humans have free will, and there is almost always the chance for redemption. Not everyone takes it, but enough do and have over time that we cannot judge people prematurely.”

“I guess that makes sense.” Milo shrugged. “I guess that’s also sort of good news for us.”

“How so?” I asked.

“Because whoever took Betsy wasn’t truly evil, so that’s something.”

I nodded, and I decided not to add that she might not have been taken from this room. We really didn’t know if the personwas truly evil or not; we only knew that no one truly evil had been in her bedroom.

“Time to check the computer,” Milo declared, and he sat down at the desk and opened it up.

We got the password on the third try—Betsy’s mother had given Beatrice some good suggestions for what Betsy would use. Milo combed through the files while I looked through her notebooks and textbooks. She took meticulous notes with the tiniest handwriting I’d ever seen. It almost looked like a computer had written her notes. There was a sketch pad that was full of drawings and ideas for what looked like carvings and jewelry. She was a talented artist, and I enjoyed looking at her work.

Milo hummed.

“Did you find something?” I asked.

“Maybe? Her files are all clean, and her email used the same password as the computer—someone needs to talk to this girl about cyber security. There’s nothing much in her inbox or outbox, but her trash has some messages that could be vaguely threatening.”

I put down Betsy’s sketchbook and put my hands on Milo’s shoulder, reading the email he had open over his shoulder. It talked about how beautiful Betsy’s most recent sketch was, and it talked about going out together.

“I’m not sure how that’s threatening,” I stated. It seemed like an email one friend would send another.

Milo closed out of it and opened the trash bin. There were at least ten messages from the same email address, but that still didn’t mean it wasn’t a friend.

“She’s trashed all these messages, and she hasn’t once replied to any of them. Not only that, but this isn’t a university email account. It’s just some random account that literally anyonecould open up. And if she never replied to a single email, then continuously referencing them going out would be threatening.”

I hummed in agreement. “Also, perhaps the references to her work were threatening.”

Milo turned and looked at me, confusion on his face.

“Someone being able to reference all her work in such detail must mean that they were watching her. It was someone close by, at the very least.”

“I hadn’t thought of that, but you’re right. Unfortunately,” Milo continued, “that doesn’t give us much to work with. She seemed to have a stalker, but there’s no way to trace this email, there’s no defining elements to give us clues, and the authorities wouldn’t take any of this as threatening since it isn’t obvious.”

“What now?” I asked. “Investigating crimes isn’t really my forte. Usually I’m given the information and I go in and clean things up.”

“Now we go talk to people,” Milo said. “And we can start with the RA for the dorm.”

The RA was a pink-haired woman who was short but clearly in charge. Luckily, she believed that we were investigators hired by Betsy’s mom. We didn’t even need to show her ID, but I guess we knew enough about Betsy and her mom that we were believable.

“The last time I saw Betsy? Hmmm… maybe two days ago? Not today and not yesterday, anyway,” she told us.

“She went to class yesterday morning,” Milo told her.

The RA, Jodi, scoffed. “Maybe. A lot of professors don’t really take attendance and just mark everyone present as a default. Or they take attendance in their books, and it reflects on their grade. Few professors actually use the college’s attendance system. The college saying she attended class doesn’t really mean she did. They only get involved if a student shows up as missing a lot of classes a lot of times. They try to step in and help if that type of situation evolves.”

“Was anyone bothering her?” I ask.

“Betsy? She was a sweet kid. She didn’t complain about anything, and she had a good group of friends she hung out with. If she had any issues, she didn’t tell me.”

“Do you know the name of her friends?” Milo asked.

“Oh, yeah, I can tell you those.” She left her door open and went into her room, grabbing a pad and pencil. She wrote down some information and tore off the sheet of paper. Before she handed it to us, she stopped, asking, “Is she okay? You guys don’t think, like, something happened to her, do you?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer, but Milo took over. “Don’t worry. If Betsy is in trouble, we’ll fix it. It’s what we do.”

With that, Milo grabbed the paper, and we said our goodbyes to Jodi.