“But what did she say? How do I get it out?”
You don’t, skittered the voice.We cannot be rent apart until I am good and ready to go.
Next to her, Mackenzie spoke over the voice, unaware. “She said you should talk to Whitehall before you resort to any do-it-yourself–style exorcisms. Her words, not mine. Speaking of, are you going to Whitehall’s Thanksgiving soiree on Sunday?”
“I don’t know.” She brushed crumbs off the thin pinstripe of her skirt. “I hadn’t really thought about it.”
“Come with us,” Adya said, still eyeing Delaney with a skeptical, sideways stare. “You can pick his brain at the party. Plus, I want to keep an eye on you.”
***
Delaney had been to Professor Whitehall’s house before.
She stood on the gray-pavered walk, her grandmother’s pelmeni cooling in her hands, and stared in rising horror at the whitewashed brick, the burlap-dotted garden. Her stomach was in upheaval. Her feet were leaden.
“Come on, ladies,” Mackenzie called, already halfway up the walk. Next to her, Haley looked startlingly normal in heeled boots and a red velvet dress, no animal onesie in sight. Mackenzie slid a hand in hers and called back, “We’re not just fashionably late. We’re late-late,Adya.”
“I’m not sorry,” Adya fired back, still retrieving her tray from the back of Haley’s ancient purple Outback. “A mousse cake takes time to make. Is haslayers. You can’t just slap it in the oven and call it done.”
“This is brownie slander,” Mackenzie said, “and I won’t stand for it.”
The conversation faded into the trill between Delaney’s ears. Her heart thudded into the wall of her chest. In the pocket of her pinafore, the bone shard sat tucked in a little velvet drawstring bag. It felt impossibly heavy. Weighted, like it knew it was back. Like it didn’t want to be here.
“Lane?” Adya drew up next to her, tray in hand, cake dazzled in an assortment of bold-red berries. “Are you okay?”
“I don’t think I can go in there,” she whispered.
“Is it the crowds you’re worried about? Because we can stick together. I’ll cue you in if you look lost.”
“That’s not it.” Her stomach swam. “It’s just that this is where I took it from.”
Adya frowned and peered up at the house. “No way. You mean—”
“The shard,” Delaney finished for her. “Whitehall had it all along.”
***
The door was open, and they let themselves in, toeing out of their shoes in the carpeted mudroom, with its glittering glass menagerie. The living room and kitchen were flooded already with students. They flocked around old and heavy furniture, the cushions well-loved, pillows mismatched and sagging.
“What are you going to do,” Adya asked, sliding her cake tin onto a table of assorted desserts.
“I haven’t decided yet.”
“Will you call Colton?”
“I don’t know.” At the bottom of the stairs hung the painting of nyads, emerald loch glittering beneath a pastel sky. She guided Adya toward the bottom step, out of the current of incoming students. “Adya,” she said in a whisper, low and urgent. “I brought it back.”
Adya’s face morphed into disgust. “You—what? You mean, you just have it in your pocket? Like a little rabbit’s foot?”
“What was I supposed to do? He asked me to keep it safe.”
“I don’t think he meant carry it with you everywhere you go.”
“Well, he definitely didn’t mean bring it back here.” She swallowed, her nerves coiling tight, and drew away from a rush of passing upperclassmen. “There’s something else.”
“What else?”
“There was someone upstairs, last time I came here. I think—I think they were locked in one of the rooms.”
