He laughed again, husky and a little… desperate, somehow. ‘You’re the one who should be happy about that.’
‘You’ve certainly got a knack for piquing my curiosity with all those creepy lines,’ I said, wondering what was wrong with me. It didn’t repel me–in fact, I felt more words rising unbidden to the tip of my tongue. Words that sounded less provocative and more halting than I wanted them to. ‘So…would you mind if we saw each other again soon?’
Abruptly the smile on his mouth faded. Slowly he opened his hand and let the scarlet shreds of leaf drop.Blood rain, Ithought, shuddering. ‘Would it stop you if I said yes?’
The trace of a pang burned in my chest at his words. And I despised myself for it. Like I said: I didn’t care what other people thought, as long as I didn’t care about them. So obviously it didn’t matter to me if this dipshit didn’t want me around.Hedidn’t matter to me–but the pain in my chest told me something I didn’t want to acknowledge: I did care. It was ridiculous. I didn’t even know him, and I wasn’t going to let myself get all upset just because he didn’t like me. I certainly couldn’t let it stop me from doing what needed to be done.
‘Nope. And now I’ve got to go.’ I skipped over a puddle next to us to get past him. Part of me wanted to take the long way round, avoid Blake’s friends, but I steeled myself.No cowering, no hiding–not from anybody.
I’d taken barely two steps when Blake’s voice held me back. ‘That guy from the supervision. What’s his name?’
Confused, I turned to face him. His hand was clenched into a fist. The one he’d used to crush the leaf. The one he’d used to touch me. It was so stupid: a trivial, two-second memory and my heart was pounding so hard I couldn’t think straight. ‘Matthew Bassett. Why?’
Blake merely shrugged before he turned and walked away without another word. A dark fleck on the autumn-vivid courtyard, slowly receding. Away from his friends. Away from me.
Chapter9
Mabel
The wind whipped against the draughty windows.
Tugging the neck of my woolly jumper up over my chin, I looked outside. The college grounds were dark and serene beyond the glass, as if the image were cast in lead. The last drops of ebbing rain beaded the vaulting windows, and a current of November air swept unchecked through the corridors–one of the reasons why this library was usually half empty, and why I loved it so much.
It was past eight o’clock in the evening, and apart from a few weary faces occasionally scurrying by in search of a book, most students had already gone home. I didn’t know how long I’d been sitting there, but my stomach felt hollow and there was a sharp, stabbing pain between the vertebrae in my neck. I dug two fingers into the place where it hurt and circled my shoulders before returning to the open book.
I’d come to the library straight after the last seminar to work on an essay. My laptop had gone to sleep ages ago, but every now and then the ancient fan would spring to life, as if trying to tell me with an exasperated groan where my priorities should lie. Unfortunately, my brain refused to agree. Whenever I tried to concentrate on work, my mind began to wander. The deeper I burrowed into Davie’s research, the more I understood why he was so nervous.
There were plenty of clues pointing to the existence of the League of Starlings, but no proof. Rumours of parties in lecture halls and on faculty roofs, of statues looted from college grounds, professors’ offices ransacked and porters rescued from storage rooms the morning after, stripped of their uniforms and their memory. Tales passed along the grapevine, stories that under normal circumstances I’d have dismissed as legend for lack of hard evidence. But then again: there was the symbol. Photos of the bird scrawled on the doors of student flats and faculties, on toilet walls and monuments to great philosophers. Moreover, the League of Starlings was mentioned in several university newspapers in the same breath as other societies and clubs, although never in detail.
The universities where rumours of the name cropped up were scattered across England: Oxford, Kent, London and Cambridge. Over and over, Cambridge. The closer I got to the present day, the more sporadic the references became. Almost as if the club–if it had ever existed–had dissolved. Or… as if its members had grown more cautious over time.
I was leafing pensively through the University of Cambridge yearbook from 1982 when my phone lit up. Davie.
Davie
Hungry? I have half a tray of chips left over from dinner, and I could throw in a slice of apple pie to make the schlep across town worth your while.
I smiled as I cast my eye over the message. Mostly he only sent me texts like that towards the end of the month, when he knew my funds were running low.
Mabel
Tempting, but I’ve still got stuff to do here.
Davie
I don’t think you’re understanding me. They’re curly fries.
I bit my bottom lip to keep from laughing, which I knew would irritate the student at the other end of the table.
Mabel
Seriously I can’t. I’ve got to finish this essay.
I felt a stab of conscience as I flipped my phone screen-down and hunched over the book. Partly because my laptop had just started humming again and partly because I was deliberately lying to Davie.
He knew I wanted to help him with his research, but I’d downplayed the extent to which this research had mushroomed over the last few days. Either I was trying to find out more about the people in Ashton’s circle whose names I’d learnt, or I was digging into the sinister society, hoping that the two strands would eventually intertwine.
So far, there was no sign of that happening, except for Davie’s experience outside a pub. We’d gone back a couple of days ago, but the bricks had long since been scrubbed of graffiti. It could all be a coincidence. Ashton could have seen the bird symbol somewhere, like we had, and sprayed it on the wall just on a whim. He and his friends might be a common-or-garden bunch of spoilt, new-money brats who simply happened to use the name of a species of bird as a password to get into their parties. We might be wrong. And yet: we didn’t think so.
