His tone was different. She was used to his arrogance, his peevishness, his introspection. This was a clipped discomfort, like he was hesitating over every word while trying to seem like he wasn’t. The acetaminophen had eased her physical pain, but mentally she still felt out of sync with the hazy world. Except him, her enigmatic sometimes ally.
“I can’t trust you if you don’t trust me,” Ellory said, closing her eyes. She was exhausted all the way down to her bones, but she doubted she would sleep tonight. At least not until she had a theory about why that enforcer had chosen her room to wait in, and if they’d actually gotten inside, and what they had touched or taken if they had. “You encouraged me to believe in my magic. You gave me a way to investigate Boone. You’ve been there for me twice in the wake of these attacks. But you hid your magic from me. You didn’t notice that you live with someone who has the ideograms of the Old Masterswritten on his skin. And I feel more unsafe right now, in this car, than I did bleeding in that stairwell.” Her eyes opened, meeting his gaze through the windowpane. “Out there, I know who the enemy is. In here, I don’t even knowyou.”
“Morgan—”
The car came to a stop in front of Moneta. Ellory unbuckled her seat belt, eager to put some distance between them. With or without a concussion, she couldn’t think in Hudson’s presence. Every time she tried to hold on to her anger at him, he inevitably wore her down. But her anger was a gift and a shield. It had protected her from the person in the mask, and it would protect her from a man who knew only how to lie.
He caught her hand before she could get out of the car.
Ellory stopped, but she told herself it was because the rain had gotten heavier and she didn’t have an umbrella. With the door open, the evening wind bit through the car, making her shiver. She reluctantly turned to face him head-on, meeting eyes the dark brown of Southern sweet tea. His thumb touched her pulse point, and an infuriating warmth suffused her body at the way he was always so gentle with her.
“Should I walk you up?” he asked. “In case that—person is still hanging around?”
“You didn’t kill them?”
“What?No. Do I look like I kill people?”
Ellory stared at him. Hudson scoffed.
“I’m pretty sure I kind of…banished them. If I’dkilledthem, there would have been a burnt body. And no matter what you think, I’ve never killed anyone before. I wouldn’t beokayafterward.”
Ellory’s foot was getting wet where it rested on the pavement. She settled back into her seat, but she didn’t close the door. Hudson deserved for his precious car’s precious internal detailing to get water damage. He deserved worse than that, but she was too tired for punitive justice. All the while, he didn’t let go of her hand, and she didn’t make him. It was the only thing keeping her steady.
“Whatever you think of me right now, I’m on your side, Morgan. Iwantyou to remember what you’ve lost. I want the Old Masters to be stopped. I want…”
I want you. And I’m tired of pretending I don’t.
Yeah? Then do something about it.
Ellory gasped back to the present. She yanked herself from Hudson’s grip and escaped into the rain.
“I need to think,” she said, slamming the door. On his expression,open in a way it hadn’t been before, eyes tinged with an inexplicable grief. On the words she’d heard as clear as day, their voices having a conversation they’d never had. On this emotionally draining day, which was tearing her soul to pieces faster than any magic.
His lips silently formed her name. Ellory turned and fled into Moneta Hall without looking back.
***
That night, Ellory crashed into a slumber so deep that Rip Van Winkle would have been jealous. She’d told Stasie that someone had attempted to break into their dorm, and she’d listened to her roommate tear security a new one before ordering a camera for the door. She’d told Tai about her trip to the health center, and Tai and Cody had spent the rest of the night checking on Ellory’s head, leaving notes with time stamps so she would know they’d come to visit. When she woke up to an empty room the next day, her headache and nausea had ceased, and she felt less wrung out. Her stress hadn’t fully faded, but she was learning to live on high alert.
By late afternoon, she judged herself healed enough to read, devouring the occult books she’d gotten from Hudson. The tote bag was waiting outside her door, off to the left so no one would trip over it. She’d found it on her way back from the bathroom, and her stomach had flipped at this small consideration. Research was easier than thinking abouthimand all the tangled emotions his lies had embedded in her.
Two of the books were useless—if fascinating—histories of haunted artifacts and men made myth. Nicolas Flamel and Ostanes. The Bronze Lady and the screaming skull. They were great for contextualizing how the natural became the supernatural, even justin tall tales told by the superstitious, but there was nothing specific to her situation.
The third book covered secret societies, and it was halfway through that one that Ellory finally found something worth adding to her notes.
The Old Masters have maintained their anonymity to such an extent that it is impossible to confirm their existence. Though largely based on hearsay, their clandestine activities are said to have roots in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Or, perhaps, their ongoing activities were simply legitimized by the CIA.
Hudson had been right. This section was a mere page and a half compared to other chapters, so it wasn’t exactly enough to qualify as a break in the case. But something about it filled her with a heavy sense of significance, and she lingered over each word.
From the beginning, they have walked hand in hand with the occult. Starting with the New England Society of Psychic Research and then peppering the declassified Stargate Project with their members, the Old Masters are rumored to have wanted power unlimited to the natural world. In writings alleged to have been rescued from the burnt journals of rumored member Arthur O’Connor I, there are notes on occult magic and psychic phenomena from around the world, including alchemy, Maya, ESP, and more. But when questioned, O’Connor, a formerdean of Warren University, claimed ignorance of any such journals or organization.
Buzzwords leaped out at her as she read the paragraph again.New England Society of Psychic Research—the same group the founders of Warren University had allegedly belonged to.Arthur O’Connor—the same surname as her surly roommate. If he was a former dean, then she might be able to find a book in the founders’ museum gift shop, or at least there might be a mention of him on one of the displays.
The section concluded with the acknowledgment that the Old Masters were not as legendary as Skull and Bones nor as powerful as the Illuminati, but rumors of their recherché activities had never entirely faded. Ellory read the page three more times to make sure she wasn’t missing anything and then rubbed at the back of her neck. Goose bumps made her skin feel rough, and she knew that sickening dread would soon follow.
She took a shaky breath and refused to give in. She’d found a new lead, and she had the resources to investigate, people who would help, even if they didn’t know everything they were helping with. And yet her heart continued to pound like she was about to be attacked again. She massaged the space between her breasts, begging her body to calm down.
Stasie came clattering through the door a half hour later, her arms laden with shopping bags. She dropped them on her bed and wiggled her knit cap off her penny-brown hair, which had recently been cut into a short wavy bob. Christmas was only a couple of months away, but Ellory doubted a single one of those purchases was for anyone other than Stasie herself.
