Outside of Ilex Hall, it was clear that the situation inside had deteriorated. The lights inside the entire building were blinking, casting eerie shadows on the lawn, and wispy wraiths were skating around the edges of the light. A few bricks had come dislodged from Ilex Hall’s facade and scattered on the lawn where they’d fallen. On the third floor, clouds of lavender pall pressed up against the windows so hard, Arthur was afraid they might shatter, taking out the runes he’d carefully redrawn with Maggie after graduation. If this monstrous pall got out…he didn’t want to think about what would happen.
When Maggie looked up from the paint and noticed him coming toward them, all he could see was her relief. Her shoulders sagged, and her hand came up to her chest. Her eyes were red and puffy, like she’d been crying, and all he wanted to do was go to her and stand next to her, to envelop her in an embrace that would reassure her. Instead, he stayed on the other side of the picnic table even though it killed him.
“I brought Rory to help out,” he said, as if that weren’t obvious. Rory was already next to Dahlia, holding empty paint pens while Dahlia filled them carefully.
Maggie nodded absentmindedly. “Jim is here, too. He’s getting more supplies and then he’s going to stand at the south stair with Dr. Chen as backup. Dahlia was going to stand at the north stair door after we go in. Can Rory stay with her?”
“Of course,” Rory said.
There was so much Arthur wanted to say. He needed to know if she was okay, if she had eaten, if she had slept. “I’m sorry,” he said, like it was meant for the entire group of people gathered there, but he didn’t go on until Maggie looked at him. “I’m sorry I didn’t answer my phone right away.” It wasn’t the real thing he wanted to apologize for, but it was an apology she needed to hear all the same.
She just nodded, going back to the clipboard in front of her. When they finished filling the pens a moment later, there was nothing left to wait for. “I’ll stay out here,” Dr. Silva said. “Wardsmiths are on their way, and if we need additional backup, I’ll call for it.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Arthur and Maggie stood on the third-floor landing of the southern stairwell of Ilex Hall. If you once had asked them, they would have said this was where their story began, but now they both knew the truth. It had started much earlier.
Even now, Arthur barely thought about what they were preparing to do. Instead, he remembered that frantic afternoon when Maggie had emerged from the fog of his panic, and he’d nearly toppled her down the stairs. Maggie, who had evacuated all of his students one by one, who’d tried to run into danger without a thought for herself until he’d pulled her back. Maggie, who would never be his again. This may not be where their story began, but, he supposed, this was where it was going to end.
After today, their bargain would be done. There was nothing left to research. He would move out of her office for good. And, he supposed, they would go back to barely saying a word to each other during faculty meetings. That thought broke his heart all over again, and he hoped Maggie couldn’t see it on his face.
Gods below, he needed to focus. It didn’t matter what was going on between him and Maggie when they were in the pall. If he couldn’t keep it together, he wouldn’t be able to protect her, and wasn’t that why he’d agreed to this arrangement to begin with?
“Ready?” shouted Dahlia from down below. The tinny voice of Jim coming from her phone responded, “Affirmative!” like he was playing pretend with walkie-talkies. Each of them was prepared to cast spells to contain the pall if Maggie and Arthur failed at their task. Dahlia had already drawn runes in her careful marks, each one in the light-purple chalk paint infused with the gloaming creeper decoction, just waiting for their Diadhan incantation.
On their landing, Maggie stood before the door. Her hands trembled, and she bit her lip. Arthur had been where she was before. When he’d returned to the pall after his memories tangled with the boy’s, standing here had brought them all back to the fore. It had been confusing, frightening. It had filled him with an unpleasant longing for what lay beyond the fissure.
“How are you holding up?” he asked gently. Was that a question he could ask, now that he had been relegated to colleague? He didn’t care. Not right now.
“I just want to get this over with,” she muttered.
Arthur stepped closer, just barely, but it was enough for Maggie to eye the space between them. He wanted to think she was daring him to close it, to come stand next to her, but he didn’t make the move. Instead, he said quietly, “I can go in alone.”
She rolled her eyes and huffed. “As if I’d let you get all the glory. Are you kidding?” Arthur felt relieved. He knew this Maggie. “If you think the paper we write about this is going to be authored by ‘Taliesin et al.,’ you really don’t know me.” With a new determination in her movement, she reached up to wipe away the rune.
“Wait,” Arthur said, and then the words tumbled out of himbefore she could tell him to stop, before the pall pressed on the door and overtook them altogether. “Before we go in there, I have something I need to say. I should have said it earlier, but…gods below, Maggie, I was just so broken by the end of that conversation.” She started to interrupt him, but he kept going. “I’m sorry. I should have listened to what you needed.”
“Why are you telling me this now?”
“Because tomorrow, when I’m just your colleague, I’m going to be professional. I’m going to do exactly what you asked. But I don’t know what’s going to happen when we erase that rune, and I couldn’t risk you not knowing.” She watched him carefully as he added, “You don’t need to say anything. I’m not asking you to forgive me or absolve me. I know what I did. I just wanted you to know.”
She was quiet for a moment and then said, “Thank you.”
If there was anything else she wanted to say to him, she didn’t say it now. Maybe there was nothing left to say at all. After one last lingering look between them, they pulled up their masks. He nodded toward the rune, and she wiped it away.
Every time Arthur entered the pall, there were small, subtle shifts. It had always felt like a living, breathing thing that grew and changed, but that was nothing compared to what the pall had become since they were there last.
The air had grown thicker with otherworldly dust and sludge. It took effort to walk through the pall, like moving through something viscous and slimy. It felt wrong, and Arthur’s stomach turned with every step forward. Objects that before had been careening through the air were now stuck, like fruit in gelatin. Wraiths, no longer content to swarm on the lawnbelow, had made their way to the third floor with their long, dark shadows looming in corners. This close to the fissure, they suddenly had firmer edges, and Arthur shivered as one took on a vaguely human shape with a wide, clownish grin. The grimace in the scrunch of Maggie’s eyes mirrored exactly how he felt.
“I know they’re mostly harmless, but do they have to be so terrifying about it?” he said awkwardly, trying to defuse the tension that had spun between them after their conversation. She rewarded him with a smile that he couldn’t see, but her mask bobbed. Across the hall, the wraith slinked along the wall, and he wasn’t sure if he was imagining it, but its grin seemed to grow.
They had both decided that the dissipation spell needed to be done in his lab, near the fissure, so there was no reason to dawdle in the other rooms. They walked as quickly as the soupy atmosphere would let them. The smell of sulfur and ash in the air was overwhelming, even through the mask he wore over his mouth and nose. His hangover certainly didn’t help.
When they reached the door to his lab, Arthur didn’t think before grabbing Maggie’s elbow. She flinched, and he pulled his hand away. Arthur tried to keep the heartbreak out of his expression, but he knew he failed. Fortunately, Maggie wasn’t looking at him; she was staring at the place where he’d held her.
“We’ve already done the hard part,” he finally said. His voice hitched, and she looked back up at him. “All we need to do now is draw the rune, say the incantation, and this is done. And stay away from the unsettled dead.” Maggie’s eyebrows furrowed together, and he knew what she was thinking. He’d thought it himself, but it was impossible. “You won’t find her again. But she knows—she knows what you’re trying to do.”
“Do you really believe that?”
