He pulls his bundle of pages closer to his chest with an uneasy smile. “I don’t know, I feel like this is my responsibility, and my flight doesn’t even leave for another—”
Carter reaches out and plucks the flyers from Aadesh’s hands.
“Done,” I say brightly.
After we talk Aadesh into actually leaving—with a littlepushfrom Devon in the end—and explain to Carter what to look for, Carter, Devon, and I set out to try to find the boundaries of the phenomenon.
It takes a little over an hour and a half to walk the area surrounding the cemetery, expanding outward in a block-by-block spiral. And when the three of us meet up again in front of the Theta Iota house, we’ve got a rough estimate of twelve to fifteen people possibly missing, based on the notes. We’ve found elevenhusks between the three of us. Devon pulls his sketchpad from his back pocket and marks them on the campus drawing, which he’s going to have to expand.
The farthest one out is two blocks to the east. But it may have blown there. Maybe. And of course we can’t go behind the barricade, so we’re missing that block.
So the numbers are probably, most definitely, higher than even our best estimate.
“I’m about to find a shovel and start digging up graves,” I say flatly, staring at the cemetery across the street.
But the cemetery takes up an entire block, side to side and front to back. Short of a backhoe or a lot of luck, it would take weeks. Weeks we don’t have because I’m pretty sure this, whatever it is, is getting stronger.
This does make me reconsider Devon’s suggestion that the magic might be connected to Beecher itself, rather than a spawn that’s (still, unbelievably) hiding. But I don’t understand how I could have lived here this long without noticing it before.
Unless… it’s because somethingelsehas changed. Not me, not Beecher, but some other, unknown factor that I’m not aware of.
All I can say for sure is that I never felt magic on campus, not even a hint of it, until yesterday morning, when I found Lennie’s body.
“I doubt they would look favorably on that,” Carter says in response to my shovel idea, nodding at the two police officers who were left to guard the barricade after everyone else departed. They look bored and cold. Probably not a good combination.
I’m tempted to shout at both of them, “Wake up, don’t you see you’re in danger? Everyone’s in danger!”
But it would do no good. They wouldn’t believe me. I’mlucky—uncharacteristically so—that Carter is here and not looking at me like I’m one White Claw short of a six-pack.
Humans are attached to their myths and stories—most of the time, they prefer them. And they get really angry and scared when something comes along that doesn’t fit within the standard narrative.
And the existence of magic—magic that’s killing people—definitely qualifies.
Just a little pull from both of them, and they wouldn’t notice a damn thing. They’d wake up a year or two closer to death, but…
No.I shake my head.No!
Exhausted, I scrub my freezing hands over my face and stomp my feet to get the blood circulating into my toes. My nose is so cold I can’t even tell if it’s running anymore. It’s a stupid thing to worry about, but I would rather not walk around with streams of snot pouring over my upper lip in plain view of my former hookup.
Bigger fish, Jo.
Yeah, but at the moment, my brain is spinning its wheels, a truck with bald tires sucked into the mud, unable to free itself. I just keep retreading the same thoughts, trying to find some new angle or possible action.
Probably better off taking a break. Get warm, try again.
But an iron band of stubbornness inside me refuses to consider the idea of leaving until we havesomething. Plus I’m not even sure where we would go. Aadesh locked up the Oats house when he left. Even the union won’t be open forever if the university ends up going remote for classes…
An idea flashes through my mind, so quick that I miss it. I pause, replaying my thoughts until my mental wheels catch on that bit of traction.
The union. The display.Electricity zips through my veins when the pieces connect. “Okay, if we assume that the cemetery is the source, what if we dig another way?” I huff hot air onto my tingling fingers.
“What do you mean?” Devon asks.
“The union has a huge display on the campus’s development. Historical and proposed. I had to help pull historical donor and alumni information for my job in alumni relations.” I try to shrug, but I’m too cold. It comes off more like a full-body twitch instead. “The committee requested all kinds of random historical documents from the university archives. Maybe we can find something on Old Campus or the cemetery.” Honestly, I’m out of better ideas.
“When did you last eat?” Carter takes my hands in his, warming them.
“I’m fine.” I pull away gently, fighting my own desire to maintain contact. I can’t forget that he sought me out because he needed to talk. I doubt that conversation is going away.
