“Not that long, then,” said Boone, “if I’ve never come up before now.”
“Like the rest of the world, I don’t think of you when you’re not actively annoying me.”
Boone blew Hudson a kiss that served only to make Hudson even more murderous. Ellory had to bite her lip to keep from smiling. Usually, when Hudson was spewing poison at someone other than her, it was cold and short and made her uncomfortable to even be in the room. But he and Boone acted like belligerent siblings, bickering without blades. There was something endearing about seeing him like this, dressed down and unguarded, fond and fighting a smile. He was so different here, in the heart of his home—or perhaps he was different in public, surrounded by strangers and sycophants.
Liam grabbed Boone by the back of his shirt and yanked him off the barstool. Ellory half expected Boone to fight, but it seemed this was more normalcy. He let Liam manhandle him out of theroom and toward the stairs, laughing all the while at a joke only he seemed to get.
The kitchen was too quiet with them gone. Hudson’s softness had left with them. When she looked at him now, the wall he erected between himself and other people was firmly back in place, with her on the outside. His expression was as distant as the Talcott Mountain peaks, his eyes as hard as winter soil. It was again like looking at a different person, but in a worse way. Hudson’s previous openness no longer felt like a sign that he was capable of being tender. Instead, it was further proof that he would never be that waywith her. That he chose not to be that way with her.
“I should probably leave, too,” Ellory said into the silence. “I don’t think we’re going to get anything else done with everyone here.”
“We need an action plan,” Hudson pointed out. “Unless you’re hoping that you stumble upon more books.”
“You have my number.” Ellory hopped down from the barstool and grabbed her bag. “Learn how to use it.”
She made it out of the kitchen before being stopped, this time by crashing nose first into a firm chest and a sea of aquamarine. Liam Blackwood blinked down at her. “Leaving so soon? I was hoping we could hang out a little.”
“I’m going to the bus stop,” Ellory said, sidestepping him. Her shoes were still arranged neatly on the shoe rack, but they’d been half buried in other shoes: combat boots and white sneakers. “It was nice to see you again.”
“Do you want a ride back to campus?”
“You have a car?”
“Of course I have a car.” Liam laughed. “How else would I get to class?”
Ellory decided to let that one go and put on her shoes instead. She’d been spending too much money on travel lately anyway. “If you’re not busy, I’d love a ride.”
Liam’s smile was warm and cozy, like a campfire on a crisp autumn night. “I’m never too busy for you, Ellory. I’ll meet you outside.”
12
During the next week, Ellory and Liam started texting from sunrise to sunset. True to Hudson’s word, the phone in the jack-o’-lantern had indeed belonged to Liam (Boone, he’d explained with a roll of his eyes, wiping pulp off his screen.It’s a long story.), and his initial message had escalated into never-ending conversation. Divorced from the blinding force of his generic handsomeness, Liam was still every bit as charming, funny, and interesting. He sent her songs and memes, jokes and photos of restaurants he wanted to try. In turn, she mostly sent him reminders to study, because her flirting skills had always been poor. Somehow, he seemed to find that endearing, and their banter rolled onward.
If Hudson Graves knew she’d been communicating with his roommate, it didn’t show as he leaned against the wall, waiting for her. His gaze was on his phone, ignoring the eyes that roved over him as people passed. None of the students approached, however. Ellory and Hudson were, after all, meeting at the campus founders’ museum, a location Ellory hadn’t even known existed beforeHudson had texted her and would never have gone to otherwise. She could barely believe they’d squandered a building on a museum devoted to long-dead white men, but if there was one thing rich people knew how to do, it was waste money.
“Hey, Morgan,” Hudson said, pocketing his phone. “Ready to go digging?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” she confirmed. “Do you actually think we’ll find anything in here?”
“Oh, absolutely not. But I’m bored and we’re both free, so why not?”
Ellory snickered, following him inside. A weary student was behind a desk in the small lobby, playing a handheld game. He didn’t even look up as Ellory and Hudson passed, and she got the feeling that they could have walked back out with half the museum’s items in their arms and he wouldn’t have blinked. The museum itself was smaller than Ellory had expected from the size of the building; it was one long hallway, with portraits, plaques, and the occasional preserved item against the back wall. There was another door—a fire exit that led outside—but no obvious way of getting to the rest of the floor.
“Hardly encouraging,” Hudson observed.
“Suck it up, Encyclopedia Brown. You did say there would be digging involved, so dig.” Ellory reached out to clap him on the arm, then thought better of it. “You take left, I’ll take right, and we’ll meet in the middle.”
His eyes burned into her back as she walked away, but she ignored it. Just like she was ignoring the fact that she had no idea how to interact with him in this provisional space between what they’d been before and what they were now. Were they partners? Colleagues? Enemy soldiers in a temporary ceasefire? She’d seenparts of him that she couldn’t forget, yet she didn’t know him any better than she had in August. Not really. They weren’tfriendsby any definition of the word, but it was still Hudson here with her instead of Tai or Cody. It was Hudson who had been the first to take her seriously. It was Hudson who had offered to help her—no dismissal, no psychoanalysis, minimal snark.
Once, she had been able to rely only on his contempt. Now his faith in her was the one thing keeping her sane as she faced the possibility that ghosts were real, she could see them, and they might be a sign ofmagicleaking into the natural world.
It was uncanny, and not because of the spirits. Her world had tilted so quickly that she was dizzy with it. At least she had a mission to focus on, something easier to investigate than the mystery of Hudson Graves.
Information was as bare as the hallway walls. The founders of the school—Howard McElking, J. Brett Troy, and Richard Lester Odell—had three large gold-framed portraits with the existential quantifier between them. Their interest in the occult and former membership in the New England Society for Psychic Research wasn’t mentioned, not even in a single line. They were noted to be an architect, a philanthropist, and a mathematician respectively—which at least confirmed Hudson’s interpretation of the symbol—but that was all.
The most peculiar thing about them were the birds; each man gazed severely from the oil painting that captured their pale cheeks and silver sideburns, each with a bird perched on the shoulder of their suits. McElking had a crow, its black talons piercing the fabric of his brown jacket. Troy had a doctor bird—or hummingbird, as she remembered Americans called them—a tiny thing with ruby neck feathers and a straw-like beak. Odell had anowl with black button eyes gazing from a snow-white face and brown body.
They also sat by arched windows displaying different time periods. McElking and his crow sat during a bright, sunny day. Troy and his hummingbird frowned from beside a clear night, the clipped-nail curve of the moon lining the windowsill in silver. Odell and his owl were seated at night as well, but there was no moon visible; instead, their sky was a gorgeous patchwork of off-white stars.
