1
The political science major at Warren University was a prestigious murder weapon.
Ellory Morgan had been staring in rising dismay at the dense pages of her con. law textbook for over two hours, and in that time, her mind, her soul, and her confidence had expired. In theory, these constitutional principles were her keys to unlocking a successful future. In practice, Ellory thought bludgeoning herself with the book would help her absorb roughly the same amount of information. It might even be less painful.
It was only three weeks into the first semester of her first year, and already stress flavored the stagnant air inside Graves Library. At every table, at least one student was about to break down, was in the process of breaking down, or had just come back from a breakdown in the bathroom, crimson-eyed and waxen-cheeked. Books were stacked like barriers to give people the illusion of privacy, but it was silent except for the turning of pages and thetip-tapof autumn rain against the windows. Ellory could hear someone weeping, but that could have been the Graves Ghost. According to the orientation walking tour, he’dalsodied studying.
The Graves, as the library was more often called, had been named for its donors and design. The Gardiners, a Connecticut old-money founding family, had married into the Graves line, whose members all came from Virginian post–Civil War new money, and they’d celebrated their union by gifting the library to Warren—because that was what people with fuck-you money did with it. Modeled after the Catacombs of Paris, the Graves consisted of an ornate one-story entrance, languishing beneath the sun like a king in repose, and eight more underground floors of book stacks and study rooms, tables with the world’s most uncomfortable chairs, and vaulted stone ceilings with a round skylight that flickered every time someone walked across the levels above.
During her first week on campus, Ellory had gone to the basement and looked through the skylight, curious if she would be able to see all the way up to the painted ceiling that watched over the entrance. But it was too disconcerting. Even with the air conditioner at full blast, the permeating late-August heat made her feel as if she had been buried alive. The longer she stared through that quivering skylight, the more a scream built in her throat, one she knew without knowing would only echo around the stone walls of the ossuary-like basement, never bleeding through to anyone who could help her. Goose bumps had pebbled her arms until she’d made it back to the elevator.
Now, as a general rule, she never went lower than the second floor of the Graves. The memory made her tremble so violently that she almost dislodged her backpack from its precarious perch at the edge of the table. Papers spilled across the surface in swatches of cloud white, charcoal gray, and sandstone beige. Her eyes hooked on one in particular, thicker than the rest, emblazoned in black, green, and gold.
Ellory made sure no one was paying attention to her and slipped the flyer into her textbook. It was a flyer she should never have taken, let alone carried around every day since, its edges so frayed from her frequent handling that it could be mistaken for scrap paper, but still she traced the fading letters like they spelled something holy. NEW YEAR, NEW REPORTERS: JOIN THE WARREN COMMUNIQUÉ, read the colorful advertisement—colorful andpointless, because she had no time for extracurriculars. Not when she had started so strong only to start slipping in her classes, even though her scholarship depended on her excelling every second of every day.
And yet theWarren Communiquéwas the most well-respected student newspaper in the country, rivaled only by theYale Daily News. She imagined seeing her byline below the emerald-and-onyx logo. An above-the-fold, front-page feature story with a glossy photograph that would earn them a Pulitzer. Maybe one day her very own beat or column, with readers who picked up theCommuniquéto readherwords…
Ellory crushed the seed of that dream before it could sprout into fresh disappointment. She had no time for writing, for hobbies, for clubs. Not if she wanted to pass this semester. She wedged the flyer back into her bag, shoved the bag closer to the center of the table, and yanked her textbook into her field of view. Constitutional law. She could do this. She coulddothis.
Laughter cracked the brittle quiet. Ellory glanced through the fingers she had buried in her curls, locating the place where people were actually having fun. Haloed by the fluorescent bulbs of the chandeliers and the natural skylight, the table was near the center of the room and bursting with students. Freshmen, she guessed from the fact that none of them looked dead inside. Some had taken chairsfrom another table and jammed them into every available space at the communal one, and they were unpacking their backpacks in a flurry of joyful energy.
She tilted her head to observe them better. Newly graduated from high school, probably. Many of them seemed to know one another in a way that ran deeper than orientation desperation.
Though she was also a freshman, at twenty-one, Ellory felt distant from recent high school graduates. To go to college, one had to have go-to-college money, and go-to-college money meant disposable income in the hundred thousands. Each of her university acceptances had come with a scholarship rejection. Predatory loans and strangely specific grants did not pan out. Odd jobs and freelance work paid pennies compared to the zeros at the end of each semester’s tuition.
In the end, Ellory was forced to defer admission. Before Warren, before the Godwin Scholarship, she had resigned herself to taking classes online one at a time as she earned enough money to register for them.
Now she was here, but it was awkward to be so much older than most people in her core classes. Awkward to field questions about why it hadtaken so longfor her to get into a school. Awkward to explain that somewhere between the lower-income population and the upper-income elite were people like Ellory, lost in the shrinking abyss of middle income, where living paycheck to paycheck didn’t make her needy enough for a single needs-based grant.
Watching these freshmen now, so wealthy and carefree and full of potential, made her feel like a crone. It had taken her three years to get where they’d never once doubted they’d be. For them, college had been a guarantee. For her, it had been a gift—one that could betaken back at any moment.
“This is a library,” said a voice colder than the air conditioner the school had yet to shut off, “not a comedy club.”
Hudson Graves loomed over the freshmen like an angry god, swathed in a midnight peacoat and gripping a thick leather-bound book. His ombré fade had been freshly touched up since the weekend, his curls dyed white gold and cresting over his forehead like whitecaps frothing against a stormy sea. His full mouth was twisted into a frown, his body language haughty and unfriendly. Ellory bit the inside of her cheek to keep from scowling, especially when a swift hush fell over the once-bright table. One sheepish student murmured an apology, as though Hudson Graves were a librarian whose word alone would get them thrown out.
Since Hudson was the scion of the family that had purchased the building, that wasn’t anunreasonablefear, but his ego was large enough without such unwarranted deference. He was no librarian, and he was no god. He was a bigger pain in her ass than con. law could ever be.
Hell, he was part of the reason con. law was such a pain in her ass. It was one of the few classes she shared with seniors like him.
During the first full day of classes, Ellory had made the mistake of sitting down next to Hudson Graves. She hadn’t even been looking at him; she’d seen an empty seat and captured it before the embarrassment of trying to find a friendly face had time to kick in. The worst part was that it had been a good day up until then. The sky was an effervescent periwinkle, the sun sparkled from behind a wreath of cotton clouds, and the weather was a perfect marriage of summer and autumn that required nothing but a light jacket. She’d practiced walking the path to her classes so many times that she had arrived in Rousseau Hall with fifteen minutes to spare, ahalf-finished iced vanilla latte dangling from her fingers. Her work-study program had placed her at an on-campus café literally called Powers That Bean, and she’d scoped it out ahead of her shift mainly for the discount drinks.
And then Hudson Graves said, “Did you ask if you could sit there?”
“What?” she’d responded, more confused than offended. “I didn’t realize I needed to ask permission to sit in an empty chair.”
These days, it burned to remember that her first thought when Hudson Graves had fully turned to face her was an inane one:What pretty eyelashes. They were lush dark smudges curving upward from tan skin so golden, it took her a moment to realize he was Black. His Afro-textured hair had been dyed a light blond that was nearly silver, and his jaw was outlined with overnight stubble that this class had taken priority over shaving away. She thought him handsome, but in a boyish kind of way. Thick-browed and big-nosed and round-cheeked, he looked like he was still growing into his features and the final product would be breathtaking. His downturned eyes were the deep brown of an avocado seed, reminding her of something her aunt had once said:
The color brown has been associated with so many things that people would never call beautiful: Dirt. Mud. Shit. But we’re copper and amber, tiger’s-eye and smoky quartz. We’re tawny and sepia, umber and russet. We’re forest wood and fresh soil, warm coffee and sweet gingerbread, a spill of ink, a starless sky, a damn good glass of brandy. A person who sees that sees you.
Ellory opened her mouth to defuse the situation with a compliment, fascinated by the way the overhead lights brought new shades of brown to the fore of his intense gaze, but he spoke over her.
“The seat’s not empty,” he sneered, “and you’ll have a toughtime in this class if all you do is make assumptions.”
His expression was the only reasonable argument against climate change, so cold that it could single-handedly refreeze all the polar ice caps. Then Hudson glanced over her head, and a manicured hand landed on her desk. Seconds later, a hostile feminine voice said, “There’s assigned seating. This one’s mine.”
Ellory scurried away so quickly that she probably left a trail of smoke, her cheeks burning. It all felt so juvenile, sohigh school, that she knew she should let it go. It was one man on a campus of people, and one class—she hoped—that she had to share with him. The mature thing would have been to ignore him… But his sheer fuckingdismissiveness. The way he’d underestimated her. How he’d assumed that she could afford to struggle in this class or any other. It rankled more than his rudeness.
And so, when the professor strolled in five minutes late, Ellory’s hand rocketed into the air at the first opportunity to answer a question from the reading she had done in full over the summer. Beneath the lazy inspection by her half asleep classmates—and one set of burning brown eyes—she analyzed the broad gray areas still inherent in the application and interpretation of constitutional law.
