But he was looking at me with a scrutinizing gaze.
“What?”
“You weren’t holding an object.”
“Oh.” I dug it out of my pocket. “Here.”
Sweat shined across his forehead. He frowned, nodding before wiping the sweat off his face with his shirt. He wearily leaned forward, and his hands shook. “I guess I’m just not used to it. It’s a lot of power; we really need to practice with it more regularly.”
“Yeah.”
He got up to get a drink of water, and I closed my eyes, willing away the cold, dark feeling I’d been left in when he’d gone. I felt it when he walked away. Just like I’d felt it every day when he was gone. Alone, in the dark. And I didn’t want to be alone. Not anymore.
I realized out here under the dry, unrelenting New Mexico sun, I felt the first clarity I had in months. I knew what Vern would say, that it was because I was here with Max. Connected to my dimidium.
Maybe he was right, and maybe he wasn’t. All I knew was that, for once, things weren’t so overwhelming. For once, things felt like they were going to be alright.
Field Journal of Luce Montgomery
My hands are shaking so badly I can hardly hold the pen, but I’ve got to get this down.
I found something.
Something terrible. Something—I have to tell someone.
I was looking for animal trails using the map from the mycologists’ network. There were signs of a small predator in the area, scatterings of tiny bones belonging to a bird and grass tamped down by scampering bodies. As I followed the trail farther, I noticed bits of fur and blood scraped across the grass. It wasn’t as far from the school as I thought I would need to go. The rocks were loose, so I had to watch my footing, but I continued down to the bottom of the canyon.
It was there I found mushrooms.
It wasn’t the right conditions for fruiting bodies, but food was food, and whatever nutrients this fungi fed on were sure to spark the interest ofAgaricus cataphractusas well. I used the small hand trowel I’d brought with me and got on my hands and knees. I’d found plenty of decomposing animal bodies, dead birds, cats, coyotes in my line of work. I wasn’t squeamish. But when my shovel hit bone and I caught a glimpse of long hair that didn’t belong to any animal, my scream sent the birds scattering across the sky.
I dropped the trowel right where I stood.
My only question is what now? Where do I go? Who can I go to with this? And why do the voices chanting on the breeze sound like they’re getting closer?
I’ll make for the closest building to me, the Phi Kat house. I can see it now in the distance. In the upstairs window, a light is on.
FROM THE JOURNAL OF DANICA STEWART
APRIL 1ST[THE DAY OF THE MURDER]
Danica DANICA DANICAAA DANICA Danica Dani Dani
Deni Deneni Deani Deai Dead Dead DEAD DEADDEAD
DAEAD DEADDEADDEAD
we’re all a little bit monster nowadays, aren’t we?*
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Iran into Basile the next morning in the Business building. I made to walk right past him, pretend I didn’t see him, but the building was old, and the floorboards beneath the ratty gray carpet needed to be replaced. I took one squeaky step, and he turned. “Cella?”
Something was different, and we both knew it. I’d deleted my phone’s history, stopped watching his videos, stopped looking at his posts. The part of me that whispered warnings in the back of my mind was on red alert. I didn’t know how to reconcile the two versions of him in my head. Basile Samir, the brilliant theorist, with this idea that could change the world … and Basile Samir, head of a creepy frat, who may have drugged me and who could very well be involved in Dani’s death.
“I can’t help but feel awful about how things went down the other night. Truly, I—you’re really not going to look at me?”
I pulled my lip between my teeth and chewed, making a decision. “Don’t worry about it,” I said, and his eyes widened in surprise.
