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Silence hangs between us for a second before I suck a breath. “I’m sorry, I just—” Lyle just stares at me, letting me stew in my discomfort. “Fuck, I—” I like to think of myself as pretty cognizant of my privilege, but I have my own blinders to contend with, don’t I? I can’t imagine what it must be like for Therese. “Okay. Yes, you’re right. We all deserve to know what the hell is happening here, and I should be the one to take the risk.”
“She was our friend, too,” Therese replies, a hard line digging between her brows. “And if you don’t do it, we will.”
“No,” Marcella says, definite. “Absolutely not. Lacie was Laurel’s closest friend, and she deserves to uncover the truth.”
And she’s right. For so many reasons, I have to do this. Lyle and Therese have no clue what we saw, and they aren’t in folklore. They might write off important pieces of evidence Marcella and I wouldn’t miss.
My heart batters my ribs. “But what about Arjun? Evan? I mean, what if—”
“We’ll be quick,” Marcella says, stepping even closer to me. From here, I can smell the peppery spice of her perfume, the subtle aloe of her shampoo. My god, why is she so persuasive?
“You’ll be in and out,” Lyle confirms, holding up his phone. His face has softened a little, which is more than I deserve. “And if we see anything weird, we’ll text you and you can get out of there.”
“Classics is like a tomb,” I snap. “What if I don’t have service?”
“You should. Trust me.” Therese studies me. “I’ve had enough meetings with Shea to tell you I always get my emails up there.”
“I can’t believe I’m doing this.”
“If you want justice,” Marcella says, her voice a snap of tension as though I’m a disobedient child rioting over a cup that’s the wrong color, “then you have to actually do something about it.”
I stare at her, then Lyle and Therese. Catching my lower lip between my teeth, I nod. For Laurel.
Classics is devoid of students after 5 PM; that’s simply how it works. And between the Christmas break coming up and the time of day, it’s an easy dash up the back steps to Dean Shea’s office.
Hard to imagine only a few days ago, I watched Marcella perch on the edge of his desk and flutter her newly minted tenure-track position at me like a threat. And she’s still a threat, I remind myself as I take my key card out of my pocket and tap it to the responder.
The door unlocks with a two-toned beep.
“I’ll take the desk,” I say, slipping into the twilit room. My phone’s out of my bag and I flick on the flashlight; I don’t dare turn on the overheads, not while I’m sneaking around.
Marcella nods, her pupils blown wide as she smiles at me. “I’ll check the bookshelves.”
We get to work, my hands slick with sweat and shaking as I leaf through piles of papers placed hither and thither, slapdash organization that Dean Shea’s secretary no doubt tried to wrangle once upon a time but never managed to convince him of. Madame Kehane, a distinguished professor in her own right, is an imposing French-Canadian woman, and she only deigns to speak with assistant professors when it directly behooves her to do so. She makes me think of the nuns we used to have in Catholic school, and I secretly think she only took the position of dean’s secretary so she could get closer to the epicenter of decision-making. So far, it’s panned out for her.
My fingers brush a photograph printout. Odd. My heart skips a beat when I realize it’s Marcella.
Easy on the eyes, I read, and stifle a gasp. It’s her—what is this, an application? No, this isn’t an application, this is a direct recommendation from Dean Hansen at University of Seattle—a man who was found dead not even a week ago. Panic lodges hard in my throat as I look up at Marcella, who’s busily flicking through books.
She must feel my gaze, because she meets my eyes with a languid, predatory smile. How do I know she’s not behind all this? What if she killed for the position she has now? My thoughts snarl like the cat’s cradle in Marcella’s pocket, and I have to force my breath.
“Find anything, Lacie?” she whispers, her voice a knife in the too-still room.
“I—” I swallow and reshuffle the papers on Dean Shea’s desk. “Not yet,” I say, knees weakening. Looking down quickly, I pull open the filing cabinets beneath the desk. Yes, I need to lose myself in the mindless work, the rote repetition of file open, flick through, file closed. What do I expect to find? Damning information about—what, supernatural creatures, wights—in this place? Please.
I feel like a stupid little schoolgirl. Like childhood me, the one saving worms in the hard, dried yard so they wouldn’t writhe and desiccate. I’m back to being the girl rapped behind the knees with a ruler by a nun, placed in a coat closet when I couldn’t sit still, when my imagination was an unruly distraction. And Marcella is baiting me into it.
Maybe she’s trying to get me caught. Fired.
And then what? Would I go back to living in my parents’ basement in Tennessee, crushed up next to the weeping statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe and Knights of Columbus memorabilia?
I can’t. But if Marcella killed Dean Hansen to get to Preston, I’m in danger.
“What the fuck are we doing?” I snap, the nerves squirming in my stomach causing my voice to shake. “Are you trying to get me put on probation or something?”
Marcella laughs, a soft, slow threat. “Silly girl. Of course not.”
“Did you kill Laurel?” But something in my gut knows: of course not. Marcella, so cool and calm, would never. Not like that. She’s a honed blade. What happened to Laurel was like a flurry of badly aimed hammer strikes.
