By the time it became semibearable, the students surrounded her in a half circle of reluctant concern. Two of them hung back, radiating an air ofdon’t make this my problem, but the remainingthree were in the middle of offering to walk her to the health center.
“No, no,” said Ellory, proud of her voice for sounding normal when she felt anything but. “I’m fine. Dizzy for a second.”
“See?” said one of the men in the back. “We’re going to be late if we don’t hurry up.”
“It’s a movie, Brayden,” said the woman in the center, rolling her eyes. “We can start it from the beginning.” She toyed with her phone, searching Ellory’s face. “Are you sure you’re okay? I don’t want to hear later that you collapsed after I left.”
“I won’t collapse. Promise.”
Brayden made an impatient sound. His companion hissed at him to shut up. It took Ellory five more minutes of calm assurances and stifled flinches to get the group to move on, and by then the pain had lessened even further to an ache that she could live with. Once she could no longer see the students, she pulled out her phone, already knowing what she was going to see in the blurry, badly centered photographs.
Rem?mber.
Her tattoo was back.
***
“You’re terrible at this,” said Hudson, his voice flatter than the Great Plains.
Once again, Ellory had been hoping to find him working late in Graves Library. Instead, she’d searched every floor but the basement and turned up nothing but a handful of study groups and one student in a suit taking a video call in a private room. She lingered outside the building now, her phone pressed to her ear, herfree hand tracing her still-sore tattoo. Magic had brought it forth, which made it likely that her magic—hermagic!—was the thing Ellory was trying not to forget. That only opened more questions, but it was a strong enough theory for her to reach out to Hudson before her closing shift at Powers That Bean.
And he was, as always, unimpressed.
“I thought I’d be happy when you got your phone back. Now I’m wondering why I called,” she muttered. “I did magic, Graves.Realmagic!”
“Or you gave yourself brain damage.”
Ellory rolled her eyes. “I’m perfectly healthy. I can’t imagine how disappointed you must be.”
Hudson sighed as thoughshewere being tiresome. It was amazing, how belligerent people could twist any situation to blame their own bad attitude on those who had to deal with it. “I’m happy to be your partner in this supernatural investigation, but I can’t be the only one of us who cares whether you live or die. What good are answers to a corpse?”
The darkened path before her faded into the background as her mind stretched miles away to imagine Hudson Graves as he probably was: Dressed cozily. Sprawled out on his bed. Brow so furrowed that its grooves were considering buying permanent real estate on his forehead. Book open in front of him as he took a study break to answer her call. She could see it perfectly, as if she’d witnessed him like that a thousand times before, and the sudden shiver of familiarity made her tattoo throb anew.
“I didn’t actually think it would work,” she said, rubbing at it again. “Now I don’t really know what to do with myself.”
“What do youwantto do?”
Ellory considered and discarded several answers to that question.She wanted justice for Malcolm Mayhew, whose name history had already forgotten. She wanted to know what she’d lost, what had compelled her to tattoo herself in a fruitless attempt to remember. She wanted to use magic for some sort of good, even if she had no idea where to start.
“I want to show you,” she decided. “I have work soon, but maybe tomorrow?”
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea.” She heard the rustle of papers, the light notes of some R & B song in the background. “I’ve devoted more than enough of my time to this endeavor lately. God forbid my grades begin to slip.”
Ellory blinked. “Youaskedto do this with me.”
“And now I’m asking that you leave me out of this. You’re more than capable of handling things, especially considering how much you love to run off on your own.”
Her mouth worked, but no words sprung forth. The night’s darkness stalked close as she thought of that man who had led her to safety with his arm around her shoulders, his body shielding her from a labyrinthine forest. The man who had softly promised to learn all he could about the Old Masters, all because they might have threatened her. The man who had listened to her accuse his childhood friend of subterfuge and come up with a plan for her to further investigate.
Realization sliced through her like a hot knife through butter. “You’re afraid.”
Hudson fell silent. Red-orange circles illuminated the night. A trio of students hovered near the side of the Graves, passing lit cigarettes back and forth despite the crisp air. Others traveled in packs around the quad, the occasional burst of laughter crackling through the air. Behind her, the library was still, but she could feelthe miasma of stress that seemed to permeate the building. Every sweating student was a sacrifice to its academic altar.
“I suppose questioning everything is a good trait in a lawyer,” Hudson finally said, and he sounded almost bored. “What conspiracy have you centered me in now?”
Ellory put some distance between herself and the Graves, narrowing her focus to the man whose family had paid for it. “You found something in your research that scared you, didn’t you? That’s why you want to distance yourself.”
“Wanting to focus on school while attending a school is a symptom of terror? Fascinating.”
