Page 12 of Demonic Delights

“Thank you ever so much. Did you need anything?” I wrench the drawer open and pull out a new shirt in its crisp, plastic packaging.

“Stuart Woodrow called from the sports centre. You were supposed to join him for a game of squash ten minutes ago. Apparently, he tried to reach you on your mobile phone but never got through.”

“Oh bollocks,” I swear, and Stubbs scowls at me. “It’s Friday, isn’t it?”

“Correct.”

“Just lovely.” Leaving the new shirt half-unbuttoned, I take two strides towards the freestanding wardrobe on the opposite side of the office and grab my gym bag from it without looking inside. “Beatrice, please be a dear and clean this up, will you?”

I’m out of the door before she can protest.

The sports centre is only about a quarter of a mile away, at the opposite side of the campus from where the staff houses—including mine and Roxana’s—are.

The weather hasn’t changed at all over the past four days; it is still foggy and miserable, the combination of chill and high humidity fusing into the kind of cold that gets into the marrow of your bones. It is to escape the elements, rather than out of any regard for Stuart, that I try to make haste.

If only gynaecologist Stuart Woodrow—my head of faculty’s husband—weren’t the only other decent squash player on the campus. Not that he has noticed, but I can hardly stand the tosser after all the trouble he unwittingly caused for me last year with Mia Campbell. Mia was a third-year student who took my Post-War Britain module. Bright and bubbly, she frequently made use of my office hours and always interwove coursework conversations with pleasantries. She looked strikingly similar to a young Roxana, especially her dark hair and trim, petite figure. But whereas Roxana’s skin is tanned, owing to her Romanian heritage, Mia’s was fair, like porcelain. A true Snow White, especially with those pouty lips of hers, always painted red.

I liked Mia. I’d be the first to admit that. I liked Mia a lot. But much as I wanted to, I never touched her. Too sensitive. Too unpredictable. Too dangerous. Still, we were seen talking frequently, spending more time together than usual for a professor and a student. I enjoyed her enthusiasm and her eager mind, even if I couldn’t let myself enjoy her beautiful body. But then a rumour started circulating about Mia having an affair with an older man. Thornedale is a small, isolated community. Gossip spreads fast, and it spreads everywhere, excluding only the people it’s about. It is no surprise it reached Roxana’s ears long before it did mine. And since I know Roxana as well as I do, it’s no surprise to me that she went off the rails completely in a way that was very much her own: methodical, thorough, merciless. Silently unhinged and completely lethal.

She watched us from afar; she watched us take walks and chat after lectures, and on a few occasions, she watched Mia walk into my office and not walk out for more than an hour. Being who she is, of course, she never mentioned any of this to me, never gave me a chance to explain.

Instead, menacing messages written in deep red—eerily like blood— started appearing wherever Mia went, but only in places that had no cameras. Threatening letters began arriving at Mia’s mailbox. Then, black boxes tied with red ribbons, containing roadkill, rotten and torn to shreds, with tyre marks in the blood-soaked fur. I thought nothing of it.

Next, Mia’s email and social media messages exploded. And finally, her password to a digital online storage got hacked, and her very private, intimate photos were not only leaked but also sent directly to a great number of professors and students. All of whose email addresses I had saved on my computer at home. And still I failed to connect the dots.

Mia had nightmares, developed crippling anxiety, and finally had a complete mental breakdown, threatening to kill herself. She dropped out of Thornedale, and I never saw her again. Roxana did, though, about six months later and only two weeks prior to November 30.

She drove to Keswick to get her nails done and spotted Mia from her car, walking briskly towards one of the lesser-known hotels at the edge of the town. Parking her car around the corner, she followed her inconspicuously. And she watched her throw her arms around the middle-aged man waiting for her, kissing him with fervour.

Roxana would show me the photos she took of them later that day, after an extraordinarily delicious dinner of lamb chops that she had made for me after months of spaghetti and beans on toast.

“Stuart Woodrow,” she said, leaning close with the mobile in her hands, adorned by her new, scary-looking nails. “Who would’ve thought that he was her older lover?”

She raised her slanted eyes to look at me pointedly from underneath her eyebrows like raven wings.

“Yes.” I cleared my throat. “Real shame what happened to her. She was such a bright student.”

Roxana nodded slightly, clearing her throat too, but with a guttural, predatory sound. Completely remorseless.

“Perhaps,” she said, getting up from her chair with her sight still fixed on me. “Still, how bright can someone be who’d only protect photos like that with nothing but a ‘password123’?”

My chest constricted with horror back then, and I struggled to breathe. But not as much as I’m struggling now, every muscle in my body aching with each step. My pace is sluggish despite my efforts to the contrary.

What point even is there to play squash when I’m in such a state?

Just as I’m deciding whether it wouldn’t be for the best to cancel on Stuart altogether, a small hand squeezes my tender upper arm, and I wince.

“Well, hello there, Professor Moore.”

“Poppy. Hello.”

My eyes land on her smile, her big blue eyes boring into my own. Her hair is a little damp, and so a shade darker than her usual beach blonde.

“Where are you headed?” she asks, toying with the cross pendant on the delicate chain around her equally delicate neck, exposed despite the harsh weather.

A potent burst of annoyance flashes through me.

“Ermh ... I ...” I glance around, making sure we’re not being observed.