She appears on a scaffold below me and looks up. Her eyes go round when she sees where I am, and I realize how dangerous this is, but I don’t care. “I found something.”
Professor White comes up to see for herself, and I point out the sigil. She’s forced to stand on the railing to get a better look, too, holding on to the balustrade like it’s a lifeline. Her knees shake, but she only needs to glance at what I’ve found.
“Oh my,” she says, stumbling back to the safety of the scaffolding. She isn’t surprised by what I found. Her face shows only resignation, a sigh in her shoulders. “This whole time I thought my team was misreading the symbols.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a symbol of undoing. A sign of Beelzebub, the prince of demons.”
Professor White holds out a hand and helps me back onto the scaffolding. She looks at me with an expression that appears, dare I say, impressed. “Atticus, relegating you to administrative duties is clearly a waste of your talents. I’m putting you on the team. Apparently, we need your help.”
“Help?” I ask. “Really?”
“Yes, it looks like someone is sabotaging the project.”
6
Dorian
The day lingered and the last calls of the last birds sounded, in a flushed sky, from the old trees.
—Henry James,The Turn of the Screw
“Adelina! Adelina! Please!”The ghostly voice rings in my thoughts. I’m still haunted by what I saw when I touched Hecate’s wand. It’s been days, and it persists, far longer than any vision I’ve had before. It’s leached into me like a red wine stain, and I can’t scrub it from my mind.The body…symbols in blood…red candles…I blink the vision away. But just like the setting sun, I know the vision isn’t gone. The memories will return like the dawn, whether I want them to or not.
“Just relax, Dorian,” I say to myself. “It’s a memory. It can’t hurt you.” I force myself to believe that as I open the door to the coffee shop. Briefly, I want to share what I saw with Atticus and Raven, but the memory is still too raw, too violent to discuss, so I push it from my mind. I don’t want to think about it. I just want a moment’s peace.
The Acroteria is a dusty but cozy building nestled into a corner of the old campus, and it already feels like home. It’s easy to forget the rest of the world when you walk through these doors. It is a winding, labyrinthian shop, known for almost every inch of the place being covered in books. They are piled so high they formwalls. The whole place is organized chaos. There are hallways that lead nowhere and paths that wander like the alleys in a maze.
Atticus and Raven have already claimed our table. We’ve been using the same one all week. They’ve burrowed in, marked their territory, acting like they belong here. We’re in the cafe area, in a section right in front of the showstopping arch made of books that leads into the bookstore proper. Atticus spots me from his seat next to the window and waves me over.
When Raven glances my way, a soft smile curves her lips, like the sun coming out after the rain. My breath hitches. Today, she’s wearing a diamond-patterned sweater vest over a collared shirt, looking just like one of the students. As I sit down across from her, she slides a ceramic mug toward me.
“Well, well, well,” says Atticus with a grin. A half-eaten cinnamon roll warms the plate in front of him. “If it isn’t Indiana Jones himself.”
I know he’s teasing and give him a withering look. “You flatter me, Finch.”
But in truth, I’m pleased. Atticus is just like his namesake: fair, brave, and just. My best man, my best friend.
“Hey,” Raven says with a smile, and my skin tingles. “How was the museum? You look like you’ve had a long day.”
“I’m fine,” I say. I tug my gloves higher up my wrist. “Old Bones is the shit, actually. They had me cataloging their inventory today.”
“You mean you touch the old bones?” Atticus asks, a wicked grin on his face.
“Yeah,” I say. “Tons of skulls.”
Atticus makes ayeughsound. “Gross.”
I shrug as if it doesn’t bother me.
Raven nudges her hand toward mine but stops short of touching me. “Would you like another pair of gloves to celebrate your success?”
“I’m good,” I say. It takes effort, what with my heart feeling like it’s lodged in my throat. I’ll probably keep these gloves until they rot off. These gloves changed everything. The moment Raven gave them to me—hiding them behind her back and asking me to guess what they were, and no, I couldn’t use Atticus to cheat—was the moment I fell in love with her. But I’ve never told her. That was my sixteenth birthday. Two years ago. That might not be a long time, but carrying such a secret weighs on a person. “These gloves are the only thing keeping me sane these days.”
I notice Atticus is staring at me, and I rake the foam from my upper lip with my bottom teeth. Atticus’s gaze flicks to my mouth momentarily before his eyes go back up to mine. They’re brown and bright like sunlight.
“Atticus and I were just talking about work before you came,” Raven says, filling me in. “I have so much to do, it’s crazy. But I missed you guys.”
