Chapter 5 Roses
Lila didn’t sleep the rest of the night.
By morning, the light outside her window looked wrong, it looked sharp, and too pale.
She stared at the rose petal still resting on her desk. The color had darkened overnight, curling at the edges like a burned leaf.
Her phone buzzed. A message from Asher. “Coffee?”
She typed back before thinking. “Please.”
They met at the café across from the library. Students moved around, laughing, ordering frappes, discussing philosophy essays like life-and-death matters. The normalcy made Lila’s skin itch.
Asher waved her over, flashing his easy grin. “You look like hell.”
“Thanks,” she muttered, sliding into the seat opposite him.
He handed her a steaming cup. “Double shot. You’re welcome.”
She stared at the coffee for a long moment, then blurted, “Someone was in my room last night.”
That wiped the grin from his face. “What?”
“I woke up and my camera was on. Recording me. And” she hesitated, glancing around at nearby tables, lowering her voice. “I got a photo of myself sleeping. Sent from an unknown number.”
Asher frowned, leaning forward. “Okay, that’s not funny.”
“I’m not joking.”
He studied her face, the dark circles beneath her eyes, the way she gripped her cup so tightly her knuckles went white. “Could it be a glitch? Maybe your camera has some motion sensor thing”
“Asher, there was a shadow on the video.”
“Maybe someone broke in,” he said quietly. “You should tell security.”
“And say what? ‘Hi, I think a ghost or stalker took my picture last night’? They’ll laugh me out of the office.”
He sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “Okay. So what’s your theory?”
Lila hesitated, then whispered, “Serena. She’s trying to tell me something.”
Asher blinked. “Your sister?”
“I dreamed about her. She said” her voice faltered, “he sent her roses.
Asher’s eyes softened with pity. “Lila”
“I’m serious.”
“I know,” he said gently, “but dreams don’t mean”
A loud murmur spread across the café, cutting him off. People’s phones began lighting up. Lila’s did too.
CAMPUS ALERT: Body Found Near Art Building. Investigation is Ongoing. Avoid the Area.
Lila’s stomach dropped. “Oh my God.”
Asher looked up, eyes wide. “The art building? That’s”
“Photography wing,” she finished for him.
They ran out of the café together.
By the time they reached the cordoned area, students had gathered in clusters, whispering. Police tape stretched between two trees, fluttering in the wind. Officers stood near the entrance of the art building, faces grim.
Lila caught fragments of conversation.
“ She was found early this morning.”
“Her hands were cold, and stiff already.”
“She held a rose in her hand.”
She pushed closer until Asher grabbed her wrist. “Lila, stop. Don’t.”
But she saw everything.
Through the open door, she caught a glimpse of a young lady, lying near the stairwell. She was pale and motionless. Hair spilling around her head like fire.
Red hair.
In her hand, she held a single rose.
Lila’s breath left her body. “No.”
“Come on,” Asher said quietly, pulling her back.
“Who was she?” someone asked nearby.
A student answered in a shaky voice. “Clara Reed. She was in my photography class.”
Clara. Lila knew her, she's the girl who’d helped her find the darkroom on her first day.
Her knees nearly buckled.
Asher steered her away from the crowd. “Hey. Look at me. Don’t pass out here.”
“She dyed her hair red last semester from what she told me,” Lila whispered. “She joked about it. She said it’d make her look like Serena.”
Asher didn’t know what to say. He just stood there, jaw tight, eyes darting around the courtyard like he expected the killer to still be standing there, watching them.
The memorial was held that evening in the small chapel on campus. The air was thick with candle smoke and murmured prayers. Lila sat in the back row, staring at the framed photo of Clara surrounded by roses. Red, of course.
She barely heard the chaplain’s words. Her gaze drifted across the crowd until it landed on Professor Beckett.
He sat stiffly near the front, face unreadable, hands clasped tight. When people spoke to him, he nodded once, curtly, then looked away.
Lila’s pulse quickened.
Beckett had taught Clara too.
When the ceremony ended, Beckett rose quickly, muttering something to another professor before slipping out a side door.
Asher leaned close and whispered, “He looks guilty of something.”
Lila’s eyes didn’t leave Beckett’s retreating figure. “Maybe he is.”
Outside, night had fallen. The air smelled of rain and wax and something faintly sweet roses again.
Lila lingered near the chapel doors while Asher went to grab their coats. Her mind replayed the dream, the shadow, the photograph, the rose.
She tilted her head back, exhaling shakily. The chapel ceiling was high, white-painted beams and vents running across it.
Then something fluttered near the vent above her.
A small sound, thup.
Something soft hit the ground beside her foot.
She looked down.
A rose. It was fresh and brightly red.
It lay perfectly centered beside her shoe, a drop of water or something darker sliding down one petal.
Her throat tightened. She whispered, “No, no, not again” and bent to pick it up, but stopped halfway.
From the vent above, another petal drifted down slowly, and gracefully landed on her shoulder.
Lila stepped back, heart hammering.
“Asher?” she called, voice shaking.
He wasn’t back yet.
Another petal fell. Then another.
She stared upward. Inside the vent, something moved a faint shift in the shadows.
Click.
A flash burst from inside the vent quickly and blinding.
She stumbled backward, nearly tripping over the pew step.
When she blinked the light from her eyes, the vent was still again.
And the rose on the floor is gone.
Only the damp mark where it had landed remained.
Asher returned with their coats, but before Lila could speak, her phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out.
A new message from the same unknown number.
“Did you like the memorial?”
With an attached image of Lila standing alone beneath the vent head tilted up, petals falling around her.
