“Excuse me!” she calls. “This area is off-limits!”
I recognize him. It’s Aspen, Raven’s, uh…friend, from the archive. He doesn’t look startled to be shouted at, though. Instead, he glares in our direction, a complete change from his Labrador appearance when I met him at the party. His aura is a hazy yellow—curious, intrigued. Is he looking for something?
After a moment, Aspen skulks off. What was he doing here?
“St. Ad’s boys…” Professor White grumbles. “Always lingering where they don’t belong.”
I recall Professor White had warned me about St. Adolphus Hall when we first met. I wonder if it’s for a good reason. I don’t have the guts to ask her about it, though. She’s lost in thought.
Her gaze drifts toward the rear of the building, where a fallen wall forms a kind of ramp leading down into the ruins. She contemplates it, wondering if it’s stable. From my point of view, youwould have to be insane to climb down it. Nothing about any part of the rubble looks truly trustworthy. No wonder Stone wants to demolish it.
“There’s no other way to access it, a way around?” I ask, thinking about the network of tunnels under our feet.
“There might be,” Professor White says. “If someone could just get down there and save all those books…” She shakes her head. “Otherwise, everything in it will be lost.”
She circles the site, falling silent as she goes. I try to sense her thoughts and get only her frustration. I suppose that’s to be expected. This is her life’s work crumbling beneath our feet.
I touch her thoughts again, and her despair washes over me, like fresh paint on a wall, obscuring my own psyche. I sense regret, layered within something below I cannot grasp. I drift, plunging farther into her mind, and I have to force myself to pull back, counting to regain control of my own head.Zero, one, one, two, three, five, eight…
I take a deep breath as Professor White’s energy fades from my grasp.
“Atticus, someone should save those books,” she says intently.
Then I realize. It’s me. She’s asking me to save them.
Underneath the rubble is a chamber full of old and powerful books of magic…and Professor White has given me tacit permission to take them. The chambers below Arches are exactly what the Oneiric Society has been looking for.
21
Raven
Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!
—Emily Brontë,Wuthering Heights
It’s midnight, andthe darkness feels oppressive. Even with Dorian and Atticus at my side, it’s like the night itself is conscious of our movement, observing as we cross the diamond quad and slip beneath the police tape, moving from shadow to shadow, as we keep our steps light and our breaths quiet. The watchful eye of Sibylline glows bright in the Rosette’s window, lighting our path.
When Atticus told us what we were doing, I couldn’t contain my glee. Books are my specialty, and he promised a whole room full of them. Of course, that room is buried beneath the fallen tower. Sweat blooms on my palms as we stumble upon the outermost ruins of the crumbled tower. Seeing it up close now, even in the dark, I’m reminded of how majestic it once was and how untouchable it had seemed when it still stood. Now it’s practically a tombstone, a crumbling memorial rising out of the broken ground.
I’m about to ask how much farther when Atticus brings us to a half-collapsed wall surrounded by police tape.
“In here,” he whispers.
All I see is wreckage. “In where?” I ask.
Atticus slips around the brick wall, sliding into a gap hardlybig enough for him to squeeze through sideways. I hesitate. Tight spaces and I don’t get along, and I’m not sure I want to do this anymore.
“Is this the only way?” I ask, but he’s already nodding.
There is no other way.
The thought of going into a narrow tunnel without a map or a known way out strikes me as unnecessarily dangerous, and my breath catches in my throat. I picture myself climbing through tunnels with millions of tons of rocks over my head, and I can’t breathe.
Dorian pauses in the slender gap between the walls. “Are you okay?” he asks. “You don’t have to come with us. I know you’re claustrophobic.”
“You’re not leaving me behind again,” I tell him sharply.
“Course not,” he says. He’s dressed all in black, so his fair face and golden hair float in a sea of darkness, comforting me. “Come on.” His words are quiet as the night, his smile warm. He holds out his gloved palm and I take it. It helps ground me.
