A Magic Most Foul
They beat us to surrender weak with fright,
And tugging and tearing without let or pause,
They flap their hideous wings in grim delight,
And stuff our gory hearts into their maws.
“Birds of Prey,” Claude McKay
Interlude
A detective is a seeker of justice. A journalist is a seeker of truth. After three students vanished, journalists swarmed the campus of Warren University to do what the detectives could not. Willem Pendel was one such journalist, a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter whose investigative pieces had appeared in theNew York Times, theNew Republic, and theNew Yorker. He had noticed a pattern of unexplained disappearances, and it was his intention to write a nonfiction book about whatever he found out.
According to Pendel, the administration was remarkably helpful. He was allowed to examine dormitories and classrooms. He was allowed to research in libraries and retrace steps across the quad. He was allowed to study student records and interview living family members. It was the evidence that gave him trouble. It was nonexistent, as if Letitia Rose, Manuel Sharp, and Angel Mclaughlin had never walked these unhallowed halls. Pendel had written takedowns of well-protected government figures that had left more of a paper trail than three students from two different decades.
Instead, he wrote about the peculiarities of Warren. The rooksand hummingbirds and owls that gathered on campus in eerie packs, living peacefully together while watching the students with eyes that held an almost-human wisdom. Their unorthodox start and the rumors of paranormal activity that they had never quite shaken. The Old Masters, a secret society that no one could truly prove existed, and the Godwin Scholars, a not-so-secret society that contributed reams of esoteric research to the world.
That book would never reach publication. Willem Pendel was found dead of a heart attack in his office at the age of thirty-three, face down on his own notes. His final page of writings included sketches of birds, each one more detailed than the last, staring up at the ceiling with a peculiar sort of malice that gave his widow chills.
30
Winter break turned the campus into a ghost town—and Ellory loved it. Her shifts at Powers That Bean were quiet, her customers largely international students who didn’t have the money or the desire to hop on an expensive flight home for the holidays.
Snow had yet to fall, but the weather was preparing for it: every day was subzero, and the grass crunched beneath her boots when she crossed the frozen quad. Decorations appeared in the fir trees and building windows, cutouts of Santa and Stars of David, snowflakes and dreidels. A lake in town had frozen over, and she occasionally saw students heading toward the bus station with ice skates hanging by their laces off their arms.
The holiday season, for Ellory, was a gift and a nightmare. Retail shifts were hellish, packed with the kind of customers who made her wish it were legal to hunt other humans for sport. When she’d worked at Midtown Comics, she had been yelled at more times than she cared to remember for not having the exact issue of the exact comic series someone wanted at seven o’clock at night on Christmas Eve. But there was also a hopefulness in the air that wasunmatched by the rest of the seasons, a sense of camaraderie and togetherness that she had always loved. It was like the world forgot to be cruel, because the sight of snow and the ringing of sleigh bells forced a collective calm.
Ellory would have felt calmer if Aunt Carol hadn’t taken her decision to spend an extra week at school so hard. “Don’t tell me that you’re starting to like it up there,” Carol had huffed over the phone. “This is your home.I’myour home.”
“And you always will be,” Ellory assured her. “But Liam invited me to his family’s Christmas party, and it would just be easier to get there from here. I’ll be back in Astoria right after.”
“Liam,” Carol repeated. “I thought you broke up with him.”
“I did.” Ellory winced at the reminder of letting that slip. “But we’re friends. We’re fine.”
It was Ellory who wasn’t fine. She had been able to think of little else but Hudson Graves and the way his breath had caught as he stared at her mouth on a cold bench just off the side of the quad. She had moved on so quickly that it was as if she had never liked Liam at all, and still he’d broken the stalemate between them with this invitation. He was a far kinder man than she had ever deserved, and her heart did not care at all.
“I guess I’ll see you after your fancy party, then,” Aunt Carol said, somehow making it sound like Ellory was getting kidnapped rather than choosing to spend extra time at school. “Don’t get arrested.”
Ellory had rolled her eyes and said her goodbyes.
The day of the Christmas party dawned without fanfare. Ellory took her time in the shower, getting dressed, and packing, luxuriating in having the room to herself. She took the bus to the Metro North, even knowing that Hudson probably would have driven herif she’d asked. It was over an hour from Hartford to Darien, so, of course, she hadn’t asked.
Where Hartford was bisected by a river but otherwise landlocked and forested, Darien was a small coastal town that looked like it belonged on a postcard. The Long Island Sound was a gorgeous ribbon of blue, lined with gray beaches, piers with white boats, and pink and brown boulders. She passed redbrick buildings, a school that looked more like a barn, and several long driveways leading to houses that were probably too expensive for her to look at.
The Blackwood house was one such manor. Her taxi carried her to a colonial-style stone-and-shingle home located on two wide acres of land at the end of a private lane that stretched for what felt like a mile. It was two stories tall, with three arched roofs and a chimney. Stone steps led up to a front door wedged between two beige columns. To the right was a wrought iron fence that led around to the back of the property, and after that was what looked like an attached garage.
Ellory already felt underdressed.
Liam opened the front door before she’d even ascended the stairs, beaming down at her. Christmas music poured into the yard, a Bing Crosby classic with muffled words. A smile tugged at Ellory’s lips at the sight of this bright and beautiful man, so unabashed in his enthusiasm for life. What was wrong with her that she couldn’t have mustered up equal affection for him? What was wrong with her that he hadn’t been everything she could ever want?
He hugged her so tightly that he lifted her off her feet, and Ellory felt nothing, absolutely nothing, except the faint desire for someone else to be holding her instead. She swallowed down a wave of shame. “Hey, Liam.”
“All good, Ellory? Come meet everyone,” Liam said as he set herdown. “I can put your bags and coat in my room for safekeeping, buddy.”
He was trying. Ellory owed it to him to try, too.
