“Believeme. We agreed to be on the same side from now on, didn’t we?”
Ellory’s cheeks warmed as she remembered that night on the balcony, his hand in hers and her mind on the ways their bodies could move together. He was right, though. He had been nothing but open with her since, he had driven through the night to get back to her side, and she was letting her anger at Boone and fear of Colt poison their budding partnership.
Along the quad, students rushed to get out of the cold, carrying books or bearing heavy backpacks. Someone sped by on a skateboard, wearing a massive pair of headphones. Hudson watched them with the thousand-yard stare of a man fighting a war on too many fronts. Ellory decided then and there not to add another battle.
She placed a hand on his arm, a touch light enough to be brushed away. Hudson released a shaky breath. “Anyway…everything Ilearned at home lines up with what Boone told you. Another former dean—Dean Godwin—took a major interest in all manner of magic, which he eventually distilled into three kinds: evocation, incantation, and divination—summoning, spellcasting, and scrying. Each with their own alchemical symbol, a kind of code for like-minded people to translate. But Boone was also right that magic is dangerous. That’s why my parents didn’t want me to remember that I could do it. It’s been twisted into this dark version of itself somehow.”
“Maybe that’s why the School for the Unseen Arts closed so quickly. Maybe they couldn’t figure out how to do magic without some sort of sacrifice.” Ellory thought of the soccer ball she had stopped, of the dead patch of grass she’d left behind and the memory she had surrendered in order to fix it. She thought of how magic had drained her of more than she could even remember, how power—real or imagined—always had a cost. “Do you think the Lost Eight and Malcolm Mayhew have something to do with all that? He had that crow tattoo, so maybe he was studying magic.”
“And, what, he became a sacrifice?”
“Maybe. Or maybe he knew too much. Maybe they all knew too much…” The back of her neck began to ache again. Ellory rubbed it, refusing to let the pain derail her. “Boone said the Old Masters are a secret society—and we know they tried to warn me from getting too close to their secrets. What if those who don’t get in are dealt with, and those who do get in are sacrificed?”
“That’s a terrible way to run an organization.”
“I have a theory, but I need to do more research into the Lost Eight. I need more than their names at least. I can probably do that at theCommuniqué.” More of Boone’s words rang in her ears, clawing at the back of her mind.The Old Masters are a bunch of stuffy old white fucks too stuck in their ways.Meanwhile, she andBoone, Tai and Cody, and Malcolm Mayhew and the Lost Eight—they were all people of color. There was a pattern to follow, a deadly past that threatened her anarchic present. “But if we’re right…”
“Morgan, all we have right now are a lot of maybes with little evidence. Are you all right?” Hudson turned to her, his eyes narrowing on her hand. “What’s wrong with your neck?”
“I think my tattoo is coming back. Like it came back when I did magic for the first time.”
Ellory’s hand covered the space she knew the message would be, scrawled in her handwriting with that backwardE. He reached for her, pausing inches away until she nodded, and then pulled her hand away from her neck. His fingers brushed her skin, leaving goose bumps in their wake as they lifted her curls. He leaned closer, and Ellory could feel his sharp intake of breath.
“You told me about this,” he said, “but even still I didn’t…”
“It comes and goes,” she whispered, remaining motionless. She was afraid to breathe, in case that would jolt him into movement. His fingers were tracing the letters in a soothing stroke, and his soft exhales were warm on her exposed skin. He smelled like coffee and, beneath that, his usual woodsy citrus. She wanted to inhale him. “Every time I learn something, I feel this pain or this dread… It feels like a curse. It feels like someone cursed me.”
Just like her parents had feared. Maybe the obeah magic had never cured her at all.
Ellory lifted her head. They were so close that she could count every line in the bags under his eyes. She could see the hazy edges of his irises, like he had been drawn by someone with shaking hands. She could see the bumps across his otherwise-smooth skin. She collected reasons to break his gaze, but in the end, none of them mattered. He was looking at her, and she was looking at him, andhis hand was on her neck, and her hand was on his arm, and that was what mattered. She had hated him and trusted him, competed against him and reached for him, and he was here. That mattered.
“We’ll figure this out,” he said, so soft, so tender. “You and I. Together.”
“Thank you.”
She licked her suddenly dry lips. His pupils expanded. Once again, the air between them caught fire. Her breathing thinned. His cut out entirely.
Hudson dropped her hand as if he’d been burned. He cleared his throat and stood. “Thank you for the coffee. Sorry again for being MIA.”
Ellory felt like she’d run a marathon only to find no one waiting at the end. Embarrassment crashed through her. She got to her feet, unable to look at him. “It’s fine. I just hope you’re all right. If you need to talk—”
“I know where to find you now,” he said. “I’ll text you later?”
“Sure, of course.”
“Okay.”
“Great.”
Awkwardness pressed down on them like a weight. Ellory wanted to run. She wanted to scream. She wanted to rewind to the moment she’d felt closer to him than ever before and stay there. She wanted not to want that.
And then warmth enveloped her. No, not warmth, but Hudson, pulling her against him in an unexpected hug. Her cheek touched the fabric of his coat. His chin pressed against her forehead, scratchy from his beard and yet somehow perfect. She closed her eyes, her arms looping cautiously around his waist, expecting him to shove her away at any moment. Instead, he pulled her closer, andit broke something inside her. Tears gathered at the corners of her eyes, and she had no idea why.
She hugged him tighter.
“Together,” he said again, a solemn promise that she had no choice but to believe. “We’ll figure this out.”
Part III
