Hudson’s hand dropped to the bed. He was pulling away fromher again, and she didn’t know how to stop it. “I…I should go to the health center. Not that I don’t trust your work, but…just in case.”
“Hudson—”
“Morgan,” he said, standing. “I can’t, okay? Whatever it is you want from me, I can’t give it to you. Not—I can’t.”
Ellory deflated. If this was a preview of what it would be like to tell him how she felt, then she would die with her crush unspoken. She enjoyed their push and pull, but not when it came to her emotions. She was too old for games and for men who still played them. If he wanted to be partners in this investigation and nothing more, then that was what he would get from her.
“I guess I’ll see you later, then,” she said, her voice hoarfrost cold.
Hudson mumbled something that might have been a goodbye or might have been an apology. Either way, Ellory ignored it.
33
Ellory had read theWarren Communiquéat least three times by now and was already on her fourth by the time the bus dropped her off at Riverside Campus. She had turned in her article on Warren’s famous families weeks ago, and she’d done a round of edits with Boone that had been so brutal she had been sure he’d found out that she was still working with Hudson and this was his revenge. Now here it was, on the fifth page of theCommuniqué, below the fold, but bearing her byline: THE TANGLED ROOTS OF WARREN’S FAMILY TREE by Ellory Morgan.
Her first byline since high school, in one of the most famous student periodicals in the country. If she hadn’t been in public, Ellory might have cried.
Disappointment tugged at her that she couldn’t share this accomplishment with Aunt Carol, but she pushed it away. Tai and Cody had been so thrilled for her that they’d insisted on celebratory dessert after she got back from, as Cody put it,Sherlocking around campus, looking for ghosts, and that would just have to be enough. She didn’t want anything or anyone to steal the smile on her facetoday. Which was also why she hadn’t called Hudson to tag along. They hadn’t spoken since she’d bandaged his wound, and she intended to keep it that way for as long as possible.
He lived inside her head in a way she didn’t live inside his. He’d made that clear more than once. Space would be good for them both.
The morning was cold and misty. Fog rose off the Connecticut River and hung around Riverside Campus. Trees appeared every few feet, hidden in the haze, and dewdrops painted every flower and grass stem. Ellory’s hair went from frizzy to disastrous after only a few minutes, making her wish she’d brought a hat. The first time she’d been to Riverside Campus, it had been raining and she had been disoriented. At sunrise, even the mist was painted a dusty pink, and the tree-lined path that twisted farther into the woods and the pond beyond looked like the Yellow Brick Road. Danger waited around every bend, but now she knew how to recognize it. To fight back. To survive.
Ellory was certainly hoping to find magic again, but if it found her first, she was ready.
She walked until she reached the clearing. The surface of the pond was still, grass growing as close to the bank as it could get before mud took over. Bur reeds and flowering rushes decorated the edges with pops of color: pinks and oranges, yellows and greens. After their successful—if terrifying—divination session, this was as good a place as any to summon Letitia Rose.
Like the rest of the Lost Eight, Letitia had left few facts about her life. She’d been a scholarship student. She went by the nicknameTabby. She’d come from a large family. That was all Ellory had learned, aside from the tiny black-and-white class photo she had found in an old paper, where Letitia’s dark brown face had beenwedged between two beaming white classmates, her smile more measured.
Almost like she knew what was going to happen to her and couldn’t pretend to care about anything else.
Ellory used the printed photo as the center of her circle, adding a series of things she had guessed that a woman in the 1960s might enjoy: a lava lamp, a pair of bell-bottoms, a copy ofThe Sound of Music. A flutter drew her attention to the path, where a charm of hummingbirds had gathered to flit from drooping flower to drooping flower. She couldn’t remember if they had been there before, but it was reassuring to see them now. It meant the souls of the dead were already listening.
She stood back from her circle, making sure it was closed and identical to the one she’d made in the library. Her phone had no service, but she had told Tai where she was going. If anything went wrong,someonewould find her before the day was through. Despite not returning her feelings, Hudson had cut himself to pieces to help her, while she’d shied away from casting even the smallest of magic. It was her turn to sacrifice. It was her time to end this.
Ellory glanced at the hummingbirds one last time. Then she closed her eyes and let the darkness take her.
It was surprisingly easy to put herself in Tabby’s shoes in the hopes of connecting with her from across the veil. Her story felt familiar: a Black woman vaulted into an elite space and left to fend for herself among predators who didn’t care whether she lived or died. If she thrived, she would be a credit to her race. If she failed, she shouldn’t have been brought in to begin with. She wondered if Tabby had been born in America or if she had immigrated here, if the Civil Rights Movement had been something she longed to be an active participant in or if she just wanted to exist in peace, if herfamily ever pressured her to get the right kind of job and make the right kind of friends no matter her personal desires.
Ellory sank deeper and deeper into the darkness, opening herself to whatever might reach back. The stink of rot made her open her eyes.
Fish cluttered the muddy bank. A bluegill, a largemouth bass, a fathead minnow, and several more floated to the top of the pond, wafting toward her like shuffling zombies. They smelled rancid, like they’d not only died but had been dead for years. Their swollen eyes seemed to accuse her. Their scaled bodies had putrefied, leaving wet holes in their skin through which their narrow bones were visible. Their open mouths leaked pond water and pus onto the ground.
Ellory covered her nose, fighting the urge to gag as more and more of them washed ashore. She loved seafood, but she wasn’t sure she could ever again eat a fish without thinking of a smell so rancid that it burned the back of her throat. The fish kept coming, more of them than the pond could possibly have held, until a frog dropped atop the small pyramid. Its pale mouth fell open, and a ball of light floated into the air between them with a small cascade of brown-blue water.
The ghost light hovered there for a moment before plunging into the mist.
Ellory hurried after it.
She kept her phone in her hand, hoping to get a signal, but it remained dead as she followed the light through the woods. The farther she went, the less confident she became that she could find her way back to the university buildings. Every tree looked the same, and the mist was even thicker here, hiding the path she had taken.
Conjured lights had led her to safety when she’d gotten lost in the orchard, but that didn’t mean each one was trying to help her. She imagined wandering around the woods until it got dark, her legs aching and her body shivering, as the ghost light made sure she didn’t stumble over anyone who could take her to safety. She imagined sitting down against a tree’s rough bark and falling asleep, only to freeze to death there as the morning mist turned to evening snow. She imagined Tai finding her like that and having to tell Aunt Carol that Ellory had killed herself trying to save herself, and people like her, from the machinations of the Old Masters—a mystery no one had asked her to solve, a theory no one had asked her to validate.
She tugged her coat more tightly around herself and promised she would try to find her way back after five more minutes.
Seconds later, the endless treescape ended in a large clearing. A dilapidated building, all wooden beams and a shingled roof, perched like a pigeon on a phone line. It looked like a one-room schoolhouse from colonial times, but the bell tower was taller than any she’d seen in pictures before, so tall she was reminded of the story of Rapunzel. The door was both caved in and boarded up, decorated by a dusty keyhole arch. A sign had swung down from over the door, one corner pressed into the stone steps that led up to the entrance. Most of the text was missing, but Ellory could make out a single letter:
?.
