Page 66 of Mayhem

I checked mine. Echo had not called or messaged once, which made me check the screen again instead of relaxing.

I had left her alone for less than three hours with coursework, food, and an explicit instruction to leave Nichlas alone. The absence of messages meant she had either listened to me for the first time since arriving at Aldrich or had done something she knew better than to document.

Malakai glanced at the screen when I checked it again. “She hasn’t called?”

“No.”

Ronan looked up from his phone. “That’s concerning.”

I shoved mine back into my pocket and stared out the window for the rest of the drive. The elevator opened onto the lounge twenty minutes later and the smell of copper hit me first.

Blood had a way of changing a room before you saw where it came from, metallic and warm beneath the cleaner scent somebody had apparently made a halfhearted attempt to use. I stepped out ahead of Ronan and stopped hard enough that Malakai nearly ran into my back.

Nichlas was tied to one of my dining chairs. For several seconds, my brain refused to make the pieces fit because the man in front of me looked considerably worse than the Nichlas I had left on campus that afternoon. His shirt had been cut open in several places and was soaked dark across the chest and one thigh.

Blood had dried beneath his nose and down his neck, with newer streaks running from somewhere near his hairline. His hands were bound behind the chair, and what I could see of his fingers was swollen and wet with blood around the nails. One eye had nearly closed beneath the bruising.

Echo sat on the edge of the table several feet away with a towel in one hand and blood smeared across the front of her shirt.

She looked at us as though we were early.

“Dinner good?”

Nobody answered her. Nichlas made a sound that barely qualified as one and tried to lift his head and Malakai moved first.

He crossed the room, crouched in front of Nichlas, and put two fingers against his neck while Ronan came around the other side of the chair. The shift in Ronan was immediate. Whatever he had been thinking about Desmond or Westbridge disappeared while he assessed the blood on the floor and the condition of Nichlas’s hands.

“How long has he been like this?” Malakai asked.

Echo glanced toward the clock. “Define this.”

I closed my eyes for one second. When I opened them, Ronan was already cutting the restraints around Nichlas’s wrists. “He needs a doctor.”

“He’s alive,” Echo said.

“For the moment.” Ronan eased one of Nichlas’s arms forward and swore under his breath when he saw the hand properly. “What the fuck did you do to his fingers?”

Echo wiped the blade in her hand with the towel and set it carefully on the table. “Several things.”

Malakai looked over his shoulder at me. Nichlas still had to survive whatever end Echo eventually intended for him, and leaving him here while I argued with her was not going to improve the odds.

“Take him,” I said. “Use ours. No campus records.”

Ronan and Malakai got Nichlas upright between them. His knees barely held, forcing Malakai to take most of his weight while Ronan grabbed the coat lying near the chair and wrapped it around what remained of his shirt. Nichlas turned his head toward me once, expression dazed enough that I could not tell whether he expected me to save him or simply wanted confirmation that I had seen what she did.

Then the elevator doors closed behind the three of them. I waited until they were gone before looking at Echo who was still sitting on my table.

Blood had dried in a thin line along one side of her jaw, and there was enough beneath her fingernails that I did not want to know which part of Nichlas it had come from. Behind her, my floor looked like somebody had tried to clean a murder scene before remembering the victim was still breathing.

I loosened my tie and walked farther into the room. “Start talking.”

Echo glanced at the elevator doors before looking back at me. “He contacted me. He wanted to talk, so I told him where I was and that you were all at dinner. He came up here willingly, we talked for a while, then he decided he was done talking and tried to leave.”

I looked at the blood smeared several feet away from the chair and then at the reddish streak across the elevator door. “And somewhere between him trying to leave and us coming home, you decided the appropriate response was to turn my lounge into a fucking interrogation room. I told you before I left not to touch him, Echo.”

“You told me not to go after him. I didn’t.” She hopped down from the table and tossed the ruined towel into the pile she had started near the sink. “He came to me because apparently spending every day wondering when I’m going to kill him has finally fucked with his head enough that he wanted to explain himself.”

“That distinction is not going to save this conversation.” I loosened my tie the rest of the way and pulled it free, too tired to keep feeling the knot against my throat. “You knew exactly what I meant when I told you to leave him alone.”