“They needed someone who knew objects, Cella. They needed us. Dr. R said herself Ellendale and Amy disagree for sport, that the council couldn’t work together for three seconds.”
“Neither can we! She’s probably going to die, you know, because we couldn’t figure it out! And that’s on us.”
He kicked the ground with his shoe. “Forget about it! Fuck, Cella, now I know how goddamn painful it is for you to even be in the same city as me. I’m sorry, okay? Is that what you want to hear?”
“So that was it, then. You needed Magic so badly that you couldn’t stand to let me live my life in peace. What the fuck do you even need Magic for? You wrangle horses!”
He held my gaze, then looked away. “Forget about it.”
“Oh no, you don’t walk away from me, Max Middlemore!” I grabbed a rock and chucked it hard as I could at his back. It glanced uselessly off his belt; I fumed. “And after you embarrassed the hell out of me with Basile. I’m getting information from him! You need to stay out of it.”
“Are you, Cel? Because it sure as hell looks to me that he’s getting information from you.”
I was so frustrated I wanted to scream. “What do you care about what I do or who I talk to?”
He threw his hands up. “Because it feels like I’m losing you all over again!”
Both of us stood there staring at each other, breathing hard. A blisteringly hot breeze swept through the grounds, lifting the branches of a creosote bush.
“Look,” he said, “I’m not going to pretend it’s somehow the chivalrous thing to do to let you go and leave forever. I know you said you never wanted to see me again, but what about what I want?”
I cackled, aware of how maniacal it sounded, but past the point of caring. People were gathered to stare at us now. “When do we ever not consider what you want? We broke up because you couldn’t ignore whatyouwanted.”
He looked at me and shook his head, once, firmly. “That’s not fair, and you know it. We were not together when Luce and I … Look, I know I’ve hurt you. But I’m going to fight for it. I just got you back, Cel. And I see you pulled into this shit again, somebody talks a big game and entices you with their theories and all these exciting ideas, and you jump in because that’s who you are, and I love that about you, but damn, I hate when you leave me behind. You’re getting sucked in again, just like with Jamie and the others. And maybe I’m not as smart as Basile or any of those guys, but I know what it looks like when you’re pulling away.” He shook his head. “You’re just running, Cel. It’s what you’ve been doing for years. And I’m not going to let you do it anymore. It was time for you to come home, to come back to your life and your career and your Magic. You know it, too.”
Then he turned and left me there, staring after him, the sound of boots crunching against glass still ringing in my ears.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
We didn’t make up after the fight. The next day, Max shuffled into the library looking like he’d seen better days, dark bags under his eyes, face drained of much of its color. “Hey,” he said, tossing his hat down on the table.
“Hey,” I said.
And that was that. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to breach the topic of our fight. Okay, maybe it was a little bit of that, but I was also still mad, and I’m sure he was too. That didn’t change the fact that we still had a job to do. We wanted to save Dani, and we owed it to her to not let our near constant state of unrest get in the way of it.
So, for now, it was easier to just try and work around our own issues.
I nibbled a blueberry muffin and scrolled through the news headlines, trying to wake up. Wildfires on the West Coast,* the rise and fall of Hollywood’s hottest celebs, and blah blah blah. But it was a header off the sideboard that caught my attention.
HOWDIDDEANMORRENBECOMEAMERICA’SBIGGESTTIKTOKSTAR?
A little younger than me, Dean Morren had become popular for his video-game content. He’d gotten into a bit of a firestorm last May over a challenge that landed a kid in the hospital. Along with the story was a photo of him. My eyes traveled to the tattoo on his wrist, and I nearly dropped my phone.
It was a tattoo of the same ten-dot triangle, the same symbol I’d seen in Dani’s notebooks, though not inside a circle this time. The triangle stood on its own, a version of the symbol I’d seen over the dormitories across campus.
I looked over at Max, opening my mouth, then closing it. He sighed. “Better tell me whatever it is before you pee your pants.”
“Look at this!” I blurted, thrusting the phone under his nose. “Dean Morren, he’s a TikTokker.” I pointed to the tattoo on his wrist. “It’s the same symbol that I saw in the frat house!”
Max frowned and looked down. “We can’t talk to them again.”
My face fell. “Look, I know everything yesterday was—a lot,” I stumbled.
“That’s not it.” He dug a card out of his pocket and tossed it on the table.
I turned it over in my hands. “LP Lewis Associates, Attorney at Law. So, he really got a lawyer?”
“It’s why Basile”—he spat out the name like a bug—“and I were talking yesterday. A girl said she saw Grant lurking outside House Torlaine the night before the murder. I went to go ask him about it, but the brothers wouldn’t let me in the house. Threw me this fucking card.”
