Page 30

Two Weeks Before Christmas

Professor Edwin Chadwick had loved two things all his life: books and the sound of young minds catching fire.

He should have retired years ago. His colleagues had begged him to. His lungs, brittle from decades of pipe smoke and the damp chill of the northern air, often seized in his chest when he tried to climb the stairs. But there was something about the classroom—the murmur of students opening notebooks, the smell of chalk, the ritual of it all—that made him feel useful. Alive.

He’d told the Headmaster once that he wanted to die with a book in his hand. The Headmaster had laughed, thinking it a metaphor.

Edwin revelled in the sight of his students struggling with a concept, only to have the cogs turn rapidly by the end of one of his lessons, their brows once pinched in frustration soon replaced with a bright light that shone in their eyes.

He believed that everyone held good within them. That no matter who you were, you could be taught if you just had the will to do so. Regardless of what information you started with or which opportunities you were granted, everyone had the capacity to learn and excel. It was for this reason that his students adored him, and faculty alike.

Edwin had sauntered up to his bed, setting a mug of tea at his bedside and shimmied his tuckus, excitement thrumming through him at the thought of climbing under the covers and returning to his latest read. It was one that most certainly would not make it onto his syllabus.

It wasn’t that he thought the material unworthy of being taught, but rather that the content was riddled with the nastiest, most depraved smut he had ever read—and that was to say, he had read a lot.

The professor sat on the edge of his bed, kicking off his slippers, and slid beneath the dark green covers in his silken pajama pants and matching top. He sighed, taking hold of his tea and swigging a long sip that warmed his chest. He began to read, bushy gray brows climbing his forehead when he’d reach the particularly risque parts. He would smack a hand on the mattress beside him, murmuring or even shouting his enthusiastic agreement when the men would whimper or the female character would allow her men to take all of her holes at once, sometimes going for a two-in-one special.

“Good God! Lucky girl, indeed,” he had said with a chuckle, his lids growing heavy. He fought through the exhaustion, never one to allow his age to dictate his life. Who was to tell him that an eighty-six-year-old should be fatigued all the time? Certainly no one worthy of his consideration.

He began coughing as he slumped further into his pillows, the angle exacerbating his chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The cough worsened, and though he continued reading, his comprehension slowed as he stopped every few sentences to hack into a handkerchief, the coughing fits causing the muscles in his chest to ache.

It was well into the night before he finished the book, shutting it closed and setting it on his bedside table. He turned off his lamp and hunkered down beneath the covers, pulling his silk eye mask over his face and falling to sleep with a small smile curving his lips.

The coughing persisted. The little gasps of oxygen he managed were tainted by an unlikely villain, stealing his soul from his body before his time, accelerated by the very air he breathed.

And so, that night, he read until the end, the book’s final line marking the quiet close of his own.

Chapter 18

Three Weeks Before Christmas

Hook Hand Henry

Ihuff out an exasperated breath as I make my way through the boiler room, coughing on dust, stopping only to kick a dead rat out of my way. “Blasted rodents,” I mutter, shutting the furnace off and staggering up the stairs as I prepare to tell the real rat that if he wants shit to get fixed, he needs to pay for the parts to do it.

I allow the door to slam shut behind me, turning on my good leg, and hobble down the dimly-lit corridor. As students pass me, clutching their bags, eyes widening in horror as if I could reach out with my hook, snag them like a fish, and bite their heads off at any second. I shake my head. Distasteful little twats.

If I were a better man, I’d ignore them. But I’ve got to get my kicks where I can.

When that Delacort kid turns the corner, shouldering past me as if I’m no better than the gum on the bottom of his shoe, I jut my hook toward his face, raising a brow, and bare my teeth at him.

His eyes grow wide, all the breath leaving his lungs and the stench of piss permeates the air. I glance down at the crotch of his pants at the same time he does and take note of the growing wet spot on his navy trousers.

“Disgusting,” I grunt, gritting my teeth as I find my way to that slimy bastard’s office.

I don’t bother knocking, pushing inside as I try to remind myself why I need this job and coming up lacking.

“Henry!” Whitmore all but shouts, eyes growing wide as he jolts upright from his chair, chest heaving as if I’ve scared the shit out of him, and I hope I have. “What can I do for you, dear friend?”

My brow lifts as I take in his disheveled attire and the unruly state of his desk, riddled with bills that I’m sure remain unpaid.

“I need you to order two parts for the furnace before we can turn it back on. It’s a hazard, there’s a car⁠—”

“Now, Henry. Why don’t you take a seat?” he asks in that weasley tone of his I’ve always abhorred. His gaze drops to the table, eyes roaming too quickly over the papers in front of him to be from anything but nerves.

“I don’t need to take a seat. I just need two parts. That’s it,” I grunt out, having no desire to extend my time in his presence.

He sucks in a deep breath through his nose, his shoulders rising and falling as he clenches his eyes shut, pressing the pads of his thumb and fingers against his closed lids like he’s in pain. “I hate to do this, Henry. But I think we all recognize it’s about time,” he says, rounding the edge of his desk and leaning against the lip of it, eating up the distance between us. He brings his hands together in front of his bulbous belly, pressing his fingertips together.