No lights on the road and a cold wind started blowing. Sam checked his pockets to find a dead lighter and three nickels. His sneakers had worn heels and strayed more towards brown than their original white. Each step brought a squelch as an earlier rainstorm caught him uncovered. Three miles to go, he told himself.

Escaping from the dorms proved the easy part. Arthur, the house prefect, had more interest in opening bras than checking on the wards after ten pm, not that Sam could blame him if he had the same tailored looks and air of confidence. Sam had shimmied down a rusted drainpipe alongside the third story corridor that led between the rooms and the bathroom. The timing had to be perfect, in between the would be delinquents also absconding for the night and the night owls whose bladders finally forced them from their nocturnal studies.

In another life, Sam might have joined either camps, but he didn’t have time to waste drinking swill or reading ancient tomes in hope of discovering a tract through the arcane. He had something better— he had a secret.

Sam pulled the sealed vellum note out of his pocket for the hundredth time.

Meet us in the lower tower past Wralheim falls in the Drywjallen forest. Half an hour before the zenith of the moon. Come alone. -V

He’d found it lying under his pillow earlier in the week. His door still locked and items untouched. It wasn’t until he’d gotten into bed that he heard the rustle of the note against his sheets. Sam couldn’t recall anyone with a V name in his grade. Nor at the school itself, but that wasn’t a surprise. He hadn’t covered himself in social accolades trying to learn many names after he transferred. Better to keep to himself with all the cliques, he thought.