For now.
Then the rest of Hudson’s words sank in. “Wait. You’re not going home for fall break?”
“I don’t usually go home for fall break,” said Hudson as the waitress returned with their food. A bacon cheeseburger for Hudson, with a mountain of golden fries, and Southern-style shrimp and grits for Ellory, with a side of honeyed corn bread that smelled fresh from the oven. Ellory was momentarily distracted by her first taste of the creamy, perfectly flavored grits coating soft pink shrimp, but she still managed to make an inquisitive sound. “I like the quiet,” Hudson continued. “Or as quiet as it gets with Boone underfoot.”
“Did you two always live close to each other or something?” she asked, thinking again of their easy camaraderie.
“Boone? I met him in freshman year. Liam’s the one I grew up with. We’re both from Darien.”
Ellory blinked. “You…don’t seem particularly close.”
“Yes, well,” Hudson said, contemplating his burger, “that’s why you shouldn’t date someone you live with.” He took a large bite, chewed aggressively, and swallowed. “And no, I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I wasn’t going to ask,” Ellory said, stifling her curiosity about what Hudson thought of Liam flirting with her every time they saw each other. “Where’s Darien? I’ve never been.”
Hudson launched into a story about his childhood in the coastal Connecticut town, the large houses and the endless blue of Long Island Sound. Ellory was again struck by how normal it felt to be sitting here with him, eating some of the best food she’d ever tasted while watching Hudson Graves smile,reallysmile, a smile that made his cheeks dimple and his eyes crinkle. Beneath the table, their feet touched, his Doc Martens lightly pressed against her years-old Nikes, and the booth felt like a hug. Intimate. Safe.
It was peculiar. It was familiar.
It was…lovely.
She told him about her aunt and growing up in Astoria, the place to which she would return for fall break to remember the world that existed outside the concentrated glitz and sinister glamour of the Ivy League: their rented apartment, their stacks of bills, her multiple jobs, her nosy neighbors. Instead of feeling self-conscious or judged, she blossomed under Hudson’s clear interest in her small, silly stories. By the time the waitress brought the check, it was dark outside, and Ellory had several texts from Tai asking where she was and if she and Graves had gone on a date. The idea of such a thing didn’t rankle as much as it should have, and it was that more than anything else that finally made discomfort twist in Ellory’s gut.
“All right, so fall break,” she said as Hudson swirled a signature onto the receipt. “You’ll talk to the logic professor about the symbols. I recognize one of them, but I don’t remember from where, so maybe that will spark something. Meanwhile, I’ll gather what we need to safely summon the Graves Ghost. Anything else?”
“Just don’t be surprised if nothing comes of all this, Morgan,” he replied, tucking his credit card back into his wallet and his wallet back into the inner pocket of his jacket. His jaw worked like he was choosing his words carefully. “Unsolved disappearances are one thing. The supernatural is quite another. These are the kinds of questions that end only in disappointment or danger.”
“If that day at Bancroft turns out to be a folie à deux, I promise to let youI told you some right to my death.”
Hudson’s eyes were shadowed with a dark intensity that gave her pause. “Well. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”
Interlude
Dean Edwin Thomas Godwin had been among the first to suggest the idea of different classes of magic. Though he never claimed a source for this flash of brilliance, it was rumored he had been inspired by Scholomance, the legendary underground school for black magic in Romania, and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the Freemason-founded secret society for occult study and practice in Great Britain.
Magic, he wrote, was at the heart of too many disparate cultures to be nonexistent. And there were too many forms—or classes—to presume that one was superior to another. For those who believed, there was simply ability: what kinds one could and could not do.
Enter the Godwin Scholars.
They tried alchemy and scrying. They learned tarot cards and astrology. They created charms and studied ley lines. Mediumship and mysticism, rune casting and wonder-working. Even Santeria and Kabbalah, Shinto and Maya, vodou and obeah—religious traditions from around the world that they considered far beneath themwere appropriated for their occult properties and discarded for their refusal to give up their cultural secrets.
Therewasmagic a breath away, an undeniable element of the world like death and taxes. The scholars knew it, but they could not unlock it.
In a world of appearances and deceptions, desperation lifts a mirror and forces people to face who they are when no one’s watching. For most, this answer is shameful. And for those who have never before known what it is to want, this answer is downright chilling.
Maybe if the Godwin Scholars had chosen failure, there would be no story to uncover.
Instead, their access to magic became an arcane inheritance of lives taken and bodies buried.
13
“I hate exams,” Tai complained. “I just want to be hot and rich.”
“You’re already hot and rich,” said Ellory, typing a nonsense conclusion into her international-politics essay. Exam season swung like the Sword of Damocles above them, and fall break was, apparently, no excuse to miss a due date. She had two papers to write and a test to study for; since returning to campus, she had spent so much time in the Graves that she’d started to dream about it. She couldn’t be sure she wasn’t dreaming now, in fact, except her stress felt very real. “It won’t help you pass.”
On the other side of the table, Cody snorted. “Don’t tell her that. You’ll upend her entire worldview.”
There was a book open in front of Cody, but they were on their phone, playing Candy Crush. Tai leaned against their shoulder, her eyes glued miserably to her own textbook. Even without counting fall break, it had been a while since Ellory had spent time with her friends. When she’d suggested this study date, Tai had pointedly asked,You won’t be busy with Graves?This mystery glued Ellory and Hudson together, but she hadn’t realized how isolated she’dbeen until that snide wake-up call.
