“Not optional,” Meeker fired back.
“Everything is optional.” The text was from Hayes. Colton slid his phone back into the pocket of his gym shorts. “As it turns out, I don’t feel like doing the Apostle’s busy work today.”
“No one asked about yourfeelings, Price.” Meeker’s smile was as twitchy as the rest of him. “You’ll do what’s expected of you.”
Colton leaned against the counter and took a sip of his shake. He hadn’t left the blender on long enough, and the consistency was too thick. “I’m not an errand boy.”
“No,” Meeker agreed. “You’re not a boy at all, you little shit. Take the day. Look everything over. See if you can’t piece together why these idiots kept turning up dead. The Apostle expects a call from you tonight.”
When he was gone, Colton finished his shake. He went upstairs to take his shower. Paganini’s 24 Caprices blared over the speakers, violin solo shivering through the soles of his feet. He didn’t let himself think about the folder. He thought, instead, of the sounds the shadows made, far outside his capacity to hear them.
When he was done, he toweled himself dry and clicked on the news. A grim-faced reporter stood center-frame, discussing the latest in a string of tourist deaths out in Illinois. The newest victim was a student named Julian Guzman. All-American swimmer. Honors student. Beloved by friends and family. He’d been found on the side of the Chicago Skyway, his body crumpled up like roadkill.
Colton didn’t know how the news made him feel. Empty? Annoyed? Afraid? A rising Godbole senior, Julian Guzman had possessed the uncanny ability tosniffout doors between worlds. One whiff, and he picked up on any nearby rips in the ether like a bloodhound. Once, in their sophomore year, Colton had asked Guzman what a thinning sky smelled like.
“Sulfur,” Guzman replied. “Brimstone. It’s not roses, man. This shit reeks.”
On the television, a grim-faced woman with too many teeth looked directly into the camera and explained how Guzman bled to death on the pavement where he’d been discovered.
Colton wondered if bleeding out was slow.
Drowning took time.
He remembered the feel of slipping beneath the ice, cold ripping at his skin. The anesthetized dread of waking up several days too late, beneath a morning gone several degrees too warm. The commanding aura of a little girl all in rainbows.
His parents scarcely looked at him once he’d been medically cleared to come home. He knew they blamed him. Little Colton Price, always late. Always getting into scrapes. And Liam, the dutiful older brother, always there to pull him out.
He hadn’t managed to pull Colton out of the pond.
Sulfur and brimstone. Shadows and ice. Drowning boys and a pound of flesh. One grisly accident after another. Godbole’s legacy was being built on bones.
Colton clicked off the television. It was 7:30.
He checked his phone, opening the text from Hayes. The message was brief:Did you see the news this morning?
Yeah,he texted back,just saw.
The incoming reply beeped instantly:Looks like Guzman struck out. Which of us is on deck?
It was meant as a joke, but it left him cold.
Kostopoulos, he replied.
Setting aside his phone, he dressed in the clothes he’d ironed and laid out for himself the night before. He sat on the edge of his bed and pulled on his socks. He tried not to think about death. The silence of his room was all-encompassing. The quiet of the house threatened to swallow him whole.
***
Midway through the morning, he arrived at Whitehall’s freshman seminar to find Lane already there. Another change. Another hiccup in his routine. He drew up short in the open door, caught off guard by her presence. She was dressed all in black, her hair a waterfall of color, and for several seconds he wasn’t entirely sure which instructions he was meant to follow. He was expected to be in class fifteen minutes before students arrived. He was expected to stay away from Lane. He couldn’t obey one directive without forgoing the other.
It was the coffee that convinced him. A latte sat on the edge of the desk, steam still rising from its white paper cup. He recognized the drink for what it was: a peace offering. He wouldn’t accept it. Hecouldn’taccept it. But turning tail and hiding somewhere else until class began felt too much like cowardice. It was, he surmised, in both of their best interests for him to have no reaction at all.
The moment he stepped over the threshold, he felt it—a pervasive ache that stitched beneath his ribs. A physical reminder. A Pavlovian response. He hadn’t expected direct defiance to feel so palpable. Biting down a groan, he made his way toward the desk.
Pen between her teeth, Lane didn’t glance up from her planner. She looked fully engrossed in her reading, and he wasn’t sure if she hadn’t heard him come in or if it was a part of her grand plan to pretend like he didn’t exist.
He got his answer the moment he took his seat.
“I’m on time today.” Her delivery came out too quiet for the theater’s carpeted sprawl. Like she wasn’t sure how powerfully she needed to project in order to be heard. Like she was worried about her voice taking up too much space. She sat with her legs crossed, one black boot swinging through the air like a pendulum.
