Despite the dedicated efforts of those who posted graphic videos to social media of the police’s extrajudicial killings, the endless public shootings, the ever-worsening genocides, and the tragic natural disasters, Ellory had never seen someone die before. Her last two trips to Jamaica had been for funerals, but those ceremonies were for the desolate aftermath of death, when tears in stone churches were dried with evening parties outdoors to celebrate the life that had been lived. She had never walked this closely with death, locked in the same room as someone taking their last breaths. It was unsettling in a way she couldn’t describe. Her fingers twitched at her sides, aching to intervene. Aching from the knowledge that it was useless to try.
The shelf tipped, books tumbling like raindrops from the top row. Malcolm turned in time to let out a cry drowned out by the falling tomes. For an instant, their eyes locked, and Ellory’s heart dropped to her ankles. Of course he could see her now, in this pause between living and not living. She forced an apologetic smile. Malcolm’s eyes were wide as plates, sclera ghost white around his dark brown irises.
Before he’d taken even two steps to safety, the other shelf collapsed atop him.
Ellory felt cold for an entirely different reason. Wood creaked and cracked, forming a jagged grave that buried the now-silent Malcolm Mayhew. Books continued to strike the ground, sounding like a boxer hitting a punching bag. One fell open before her, its pages shuffled by the breeze of the fallen shelves.
Then she realized the wind wasn’t coming from the fallen shelves. It raked across her shadow skin, and her shadow body prickled with unease as the mist cleared enough for her to seeanother figure beyond the wreckage. She couldn’t make out the details of their face and clothes, but their hands were tucked into their pockets, and she could tell, somehow, that they were staring at where Malcolm had once stood.
“Sorry, man,” the figure said, lifting one hand from their pocket. Their fist clenched, and the wind stopped as abruptly as it had started. When they turned into the mist, she caught a flash of a crow tattoo almost identical to the one on Malcolm’s skin—except the bird’s eyes glowed an eerie silver. “You’re more use to us dead than alive.”
Ellory’s heart raced. The cold was still there, but fear had crept back in, squeezing like a vise until she couldn’t breathe. Because even now, she wasn’t alone.
Another figure made of shadows and stardust stood beside her, and she knew without seeing that it was Malcolm Mayhew. She looked at him—at the lack of him—and she could feel his eyes boring into her, as if to say,Do you see? Do you understand?
But she didn’t understand. Not at all.
Because it seemed almost like that person had used magic.Realmagic.
Because, if so, then Malcolm Mayhew’s death had been a murder.
And if he’d been murdered, then why? And by whom?
Malcolm gripped her shoulder as tightly as an eagle would a mouse. He had no fingers, yet she felt them digging into her until her bone threatened to snap. His touch was so icy that itburned, but she refused to scream. She refused. His jaw, or the shadows where his jaw would be, elongated until his head looked like a gaping hole, and from that hole exploded a dozen birds, a hundred birds, a thousand birds, all of them shrieking until there was no room for the sound of her own thoughts—
And she lurched up in bed with a scream.
“JESUS CHRIST, ELLORY,” Stasie screamed back from her bed. Her Bambi-brown hair was a mass of silk scrunchies tied together with a bathrobe’s belt. She had cream smeared on her face and murder in her eyes. “SHUT THEFUCKUP AND GO TO SLEEP.”
Ellory struggled out of bed, ignoring the muttered curses of her roommate. In the time it took her to find a pair of shoes, Stasie had buried her head beneath her pillow with her back to Ellory. A muffled “Where are yougoing? It’s four a.m.—” followed her out the door, but Ellory didn’t stop until she was down the hallway.
Before she could bang on Tai’s door, her voice filtered through it.
“—a stupid dream.”
“One we both had?” Cody shot back from within, their voice faint, as if they were on the other side of the room. “What in the hell?”
“We just came back from a séance. Of course we’d dream about ghosts. That doesn’tmeananything.”
Ellory stepped forward until her ear was pressed against the wood. Was it possible that Cody and Tai had seen the same things she had? Even the fact that they were awake right now was promising. She didn’t have to hold the claustrophobic burden of this memory—thisvision?—by herself.
“Look, I know it’s been a strange year for us,” said Tai. Her voice was farther away now, perhaps as she joined Cody on the bed. Ellory could almost picture them there: tangled brown limbs and fond dark eyes; Cody’s fingers buried in Tai’s hair; Tai’s arms locked around their waist; two hearts beating in concert. “Butlifeis weird. That doesn’t make it magic.”
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
“Quote Shakespeare to me again,” Tai purred.
Cody made a sound halfway between a laugh and a moan, and Ellory jolted back from the door with burning cheeks and a complicated emotion swirling in her chest. It wasn’t the sharp edge of jealousy that briefly knifed through her when she witnessed her friends’ harmonious relationship, but a feeling darker and more cutting. The conversation had told her nothing, and her suspicions were already running away from her. Because it almost sounded like not only had the three of them had the same dream but the three of them had also been experiencing strange phenomena since the school year had begun.
And Cody and Tai were hiding that from Ellory.
She was assuming things. She had to be. The séance had her seeing conspiracies where there were none. Tai—her best friend, her first college friend—wouldn’t let her drown in her flights of fancy alone without telling her she’d seen the same things. And even if Tai would, Cody had been willing to hear Ellory out, to believe her. They would have said something. They would have confided in her, with or without Tai.
Besides, there were many things that could be described as strange and magical.
Ellory repeated that to herself as she shuffled back up the hallway, but she felt suddenly, utterly alone.
15
