31
Classes restarted, indifferent to the depressive spiral Ellory had fallen into. The New Year was meant for resolutions and manifestations, but she had spent it in bed, the blankets wrapped around her as tightly as a burrito, watching the ball drop without emotion. Several times, Aunt Carol tried to lure her out of her room, but Ellory left only to shower or use the bathroom. If Carol hadn’t brought her meals to her, she might not have eaten.
Her first semester at Warren University felt like a test she’d failed, and she had dreaded returning to campus only to stumble over another forgotten memory or unsolved mystery. She had broken the heart of a man who liked her too much, her heart bore cracks from a man who liked her too little, and she was no closer to figuring out who was trying to kill her. Every aspect of her life was overwhelming, and there was no reprieve in sight.
Her coursework remained as difficult as ever, which at least gave her something else to do with her brain besides focus on everything she’d done wrong. Hudson brought her new books on the occult to flip through and didn’t ask questions when she was quick to leave.Sometimes, she thought his eyes lingered on her, but most of the time, it seemed like wishful thinking.
She read the books on the floor of Tai’s dorm, mainly because Tai kept doing wellness checks to their room that were starting to annoy Stasie. Take-out containers surrounded them. Tai was shoveling chicken and broccoli into her mouth while studying a textbook with oily fingers, the kind of carelessness she could get away with since she didn’t need to resell them for money at the end of the year. Ellory, who had already finished her chicken wings and french fries, handled Hudson’s books more delicately, until she found something of interest.
“It says that Warren University is supposedly built over the lodges of the Old Masters,” she said, finger tracing the paragraph as she read. “‘The founders of the school bought acreage large enough for the Old Masters to meet in secret, and from those grounds rose a school more legendary than any aspiring secret society.’ That’s got to be about the School for the Unseen Arts.”
“Or it’s nonsense,” Tai said without looking up.
“If their lodges used to be here, maybe they’ve left something behind that I can dig up.” Ellory wrote it in her notebook anyway, even as she acknowledged that Tai was right. As with most of the things she’d learned in her research, this amounted to nothing but more questions. “It’s at least nice to read a book that acknowledges that they existed.”
Tai made a dubious sound, but Ellory ignored her. Since that night at Powers That Bean, Tai had reported a distinct lack of magical occurrences in her life, and she seemed much happier for it. She wanted normalcy, and who was Ellory to take that from her? Her best friend was still willing to let Ellory bounce ideas off her and ramble on about the occult. If that was all she could get, shewould take it.
“Why did they need more than one lodge?” Tai asked, collecting the empty containers to dispose of in the hallway’s trash chute. “How many Old Masters were there?”
“If I had to guess, I’d say they had at least three.” She could almost see them, log cabins of the kind Abraham Lincoln had lived in, each one labeled with wooden signs that bore painted images of birds: a crow, a hummingbird, an owl. “But as Hudson so thoughtfully pointed out, all I have are guesses.”
Ellory set that book to the side and moved on to the next:Haunted Hallowed Halls: A Collection of Campus Ghost Stories. She settled into the first chapter, while Tai left to take out the trash, and then read the next and then the next. By the time she looked up again, Tai was lying on her bed, on the phone with her sister. Ellory’s lower back ached, her elbows numb from propping up her head for what felt like hours.
Tai paused long enough to say, “Nerd. I’ve never seen someone read themself into a coma like that before. Kehinde says hi, by the way.”
Ellory stretched. Her bladder was spitting threats of a UTI in her future. “Tell her I said hi back.”
She returned from the bathroom to find that Tai had taken her phone hostage.
“Nope,” she said when Ellory made a swipe for it, using the two inches she had in height to her advantage. “We’re going out for dinner. You’ve either been sulking or studying, and it’s too much now. Go put on something that isn’t sweatpants.”
Ellory looked down at her loose gray pants and semisheer top. If not for work and class, she likely wouldn’t have gone outside, and her favorite part of every day was shedding her middlingattempts at fashion for something she could lie around the dorm in. Tai, Cody, and Hudson made up most of her contact with the outside world; even her class engagement had dropped in favor of robotically taking notes while her mind was a thousand miles away.
This investigation hadn’t just consumed her life; it had consumed her. And she’d let it, because it was easier than fixing all the things she had broken.
Tai was right. Ellory knew it. And yet… “Can we have a raincheck on—”
“No.” Tai nudged her toward the door with a hip and an expression that promised trouble if Ellory tried to argue with her again. “If you’re not back in ten minutes, I’m going to kick down your door.”
***
If Hudson was bothered by Ellory summoning him to her side after classes without warning, he didn’t show it. Snow dusted the ground, so light that it had already melted in high-traffic areas, and flakes hung on the shoulders of his peacoat as he approached.
His hair, newly dyed, had a fresh golden tint to the silver, but it wasn’t enough to stop him from looking a bit like Jack Frost, personifying the season in the form of a mischievous sprite. His high cheekbones and broad nose, his thick eyebrows and smirking mouth, all of it contrasted with his tartan scarf and mahogany leather gloves to make him look like a fey professor—too otherworldly for this campus and yet an inextricable part of it. When he stopped in front of her, the sunniest thing about this cold gray day, her heart skipped a beat.
She avoided his eyes. “Thanks for coming. I didn’t want to dothis alone.”
“Thanks for calling,” he replied. “Walking into danger without anyone to watch your back seems to be a habit of yours.”
“And yet I’m alive and unharmed, so, if anything, you’re extraneous.”
“Or you’re particularly lucky. Luck runs out.”
“Does your arrogance ever run out? I’ve been wondering that since I met you.”
From her periphery, she saw his mouth tick up into a smile too quick for him to stifle. Ellory hid a smile of her own, comforted by old patterns. The changing landscape between them had not taken this away, at least, and it was easier to communicate in swapped witticisms than to wade into anything deeper.
Bailey Library loomed over them, its attached clock tower chiming three bells. As the oldest library on campus, it looked more like a basilica, built in a Romanesque style with sloping roofs and narrow windows. The interior was cathedral, lit by the sun streaming through the clerestory windows, with vaulted ceilings and gorgeous frescos of scenes from classic storybooks. Alice chasing a white rabbit toward Wonderland. Odysseus tying himself to the mast with wax in his ears to avoid the sirens’ song. Gatsby staring across the bay toward the green light that represented his yearning for Daisy.
