She practically saw the understanding pass between them.
And the name was on her lips before it was even all the way through.
“Jyoti. You were Jyoti, and I was your friend Lili. And Frank—”
“He was my guy. He wasWill. And we spent all our time in the secret house, the summerhouse under the stairs. The north wing stairs, the invisible door, oh my god. Is that why I kept thinking there was a door there when I couldn’t see one? Is that how I knew how the dining hall worked, how I knew that it wasreliefthat sparked me?” Anaya met her eyes, dazed. “We were all friends.”
“We were.”
“Then you both disappeared, and I don’t know what happened after that. I don’t know what happened. I think I left the school; I think I was frightened—I don’t know,” she said, looking from Bram to her and back, as if they had the answers. But of course, that part was beyond them.I was dead and he was asleep, most likely sure he was a danger to you, too, Mina thought, even as Anaya had more to ask. “Did someone call me back as well? It can’t have been Will—he’s such a dope. I adore him, but he’s a dope. Oh, Will, were you okay being a dope somewhere, on your own?”
It didn’t surprise Mina to hear the break in Anaya’s voice then.
Or to see her suddenly sit down, hard, on the edge of the bed. Face in her hands, body trembling minutely. It made her go to her friend before she’d even thought about it, a gentle touch on her shoulder. And words spilled out, before she could stop them. “You are the friend my heart has been crying out for all my life. The one I knew was there but didn’t know how to find. Bram, I knew how to get to him, but you... oh god, Anaya, I’m so sorry; I’m sorry I’ve dragged you into all of this. I didn’t know what I was doing,” she said, words descending into a babble and then finally a break in her own voice.
It made Bram step forward.
Just like he would have done in the past, when his friends were troubled.Once we hugged each other, in the garden of the summerhouse under the stairs. We formed a circle, an unbreakable circle, full of comfort for all our hurt, she thought, and just as she did, Anaya turned and threw her arms around her. She spoke into her hair, voice thick with tears.
“Friend, what are you sorry for? You brought me back from being probably murdered by Professor Hargreaves. And now I get toavenge my own most likely terrible death. And Frank’s most likely terrible death. Oh my god,do you think I brought back Frank? Do you think I brought back my big daft Will?”
She pulled away then, searched Mina’s face.
She didn’t have to, though, now. The answer was clear.
“I think we might have all brought back each other. For love. And for this. To finish what we started. To make things fair,” Mina said, and that energy boiled. It bloomed. It became a bracelet of memories and understanding between them, bright as a new star in the Calabaraian sky.
“I think I’ve changed my mind about going to that office,” Anaya said.
And this time, Bram did not protest.
She could tell he was still nervous about the plan. But it felt as if he was a little less so, knowing that Anaya and Frank were watching Hargreaves’s sleeping quarters, while they tackled the office. Or not Anaya and Frank, exactly. Jyoti and Will. Jyoti, who loved to dye her hair pink with magic, and made huge pots of keema for them to all eat in the breaks between terms, and had a bicycle that flew because she loved the movieE.T. Will, with his dimples and his obsession with televisions and his tendency to blurt out the strangest things.
“I think someone dropped me down a well,” he said, as they stood between the staff quarters and the offices. And then Anaya dragged him away, half giggling over the absurdity, half thrown by the existential horror of remembering your own death. Just as they all were. Or at least all but Bram.
He was just unsettled that they were all so fragile, and might leave him again at any moment. She gathered magic and pushedit into uncovering whether Hargreaves’s door had any kinds of alarms or protections on it, and came up with nothing. Yet he still made her check and check again. And after she had, and she had sprung the lock, he didn’t want her to go in. He put a hand out to stop her. Tried to maneuver her behind himself.
“Please, Lil,” he said. “At least let me protect you a little.”
It was his expression that convinced her, however.
She could see how tense and haunted it was, even in the near darkness of three in the morning, in the east wing office hallway. His eyes seemed enormous, liquid. That soft mouth was now a tense line again. And when he heard a sound from somewhere down the hall—just wood settling, nothing more—he seemed to choke while trying to breathe. One hand went out to her, to shield her.
She had to let him go first.
But she kept hold of him. She prepared herself to yank him back or maybe even throw him through a portal, if she could make it in time.Draw a circle; that will be fastest, she told herself.Or make a glass wall again, of the sort that stops things getting to him.
And it helped.
But she still held her breath as they stepped inside. Her heart still hammered so hard she could see her own skin jumping, when she caught a glimpse underneath the V of the shirt of his she had on. She was sweating, trembling. She jerked at the first shadow she saw and almost flung a fireball.
Only to find a completely empty room.
Quite literally—Hargreaves apparently had almost no furniture. Just a punishing-looking chair, and a tiny table, and a stunted little shelf with nothing on it. “No books,” she whisperedto him and was heartened to see him look just as mystified and disgusted by this as her.I now have a partner in crime for all my weird concerns, she thought.
Then squeezed his hand tightly.
And he squeezed back.
