An Arcane Inheritance by Kamilah Cole - 1

The political science major at Warren University was a prestigious murder weapon.

Ellory Morgan had been staring in rising dismay at the dense pages of her con. law textbook for over two hours, and in that time, her mind, her soul, and her confidence had expired. In theory, these constitutional principles were her keys to unlocking a successful future. In practice, Ellory thought bludgeoning herself with the book would help her absorb roughly the same amount of information. It might even be less painful.

It was only three weeks into the first semester of her first year, and already stress flavored the stagnant air inside Graves Library. At every table, at least one student was about to break down, was in the process of breaking down, or had just come back from a breakdown in the bathroom, crimson-eyed and waxen-cheeked. Books were stacked like barriers to give people the illusion of privacy, but it was silent except for the turning of pages and the tip-tap of autumn rain against the windows. Ellory could hear someone weeping, but that could have been the Graves Ghost. According to the orientation walking tour, he’d also died studying.

The Graves, as the library was more often called, had been named for its donors and design. The Gardiners, a Connecticut old-money founding family, had married into the Graves line, whose members all came from Virginian post–Civil War new money, and they’d celebrated their union by gifting the library to Warren—because that was what people with fuck-you money did with it. Modeled after the Catacombs of Paris, the Graves consisted of an ornate one-story entrance, languishing beneath the sun like a king in repose, and eight more underground floors of book stacks and study rooms, tables with the world’s most uncomfortable chairs, and vaulted stone ceilings with a round skylight that flickered every time someone walked across the levels above.

During her first week on campus, Ellory had gone to the basement and looked through the skylight, curious if she would be able to see all the way up to the painted ceiling that watched over the entrance. But it was too disconcerting. Even with the air conditioner at full blast, the permeating late-August heat made her feel as if she had been buried alive. The longer she stared through that quivering skylight, the more a scream built in her throat, one she knew without knowing would only echo around the stone walls of the ossuary-like basement, never bleeding through to anyone who could help her. Goose bumps had pebbled her arms until she’d made it back to the elevator.

Now, as a general rule, she never went lower than the second floor of the Graves. The memory made her tremble so violently that she almost dislodged her backpack from its precarious perch at the edge of the table. Papers spilled across the surface in swatches of cloud white, charcoal gray, and sandstone beige. Her eyes hooked on one in particular, thicker than the rest, emblazoned in black, green, and gold.

Ellory made sure no one was paying attention to her and slipped the flyer into her textbook. It was a flyer she should never have taken, let alone carried around every day since, its edges so frayed from her frequent handling that it could be mistaken for scrap paper, but still she traced the fading letters like they spelled something holy. NEW YEAR, NEW REPORTERS: JOIN THE WARREN COMMUNIQUÉ, read the colorful advertisement—colorful and pointless , because she had no time for extracurriculars. Not when she had started so strong only to start slipping in her classes, even though her scholarship depended on her excelling every second of every day.

And yet the Warren Communiqué was the most well-respected student newspaper in the country, rivaled only by the Yale Daily News . She imagined seeing her byline below the emerald-and-onyx logo. An above-the-fold, front-page feature story with a glossy photograph that would earn them a Pulitzer. Maybe one day her very own beat or column, with readers who picked up the Communiqué to read her words…

Ellory crushed the seed of that dream before it could sprout into fresh disappointment. She had no time for writing, for hobbies, for clubs. Not if she wanted to pass this semester. She wedged the flyer back into her bag, shoved the bag closer to the center of the table, and yanked her textbook into her field of view. Constitutional law. She could do this. She could do this.

Laughter cracked the brittle quiet. Ellory glanced through the fingers she had buried in her curls, locating the place where people were actually having fun. Haloed by the fluorescent bulbs of the chandeliers and the natural skylight, the table was near the center of the room and bursting with students. Freshmen, she guessed from the fact that none of them looked dead inside. Some had taken chairs from another table and jammed them into every available space at the communal one, and they were unpacking their backpacks in a flurry of joyful energy.

She tilted her head to observe them better. Newly graduated from high school, probably. Many of them seemed to know one another in a way that ran deeper than orientation desperation.

Though she was also a freshman, at twenty-one, Ellory felt distant from recent high school graduates. To go to college, one had to have go-to-college money, and go-to-college money meant disposable income in the hundred thousands. Each of her university acceptances had come with a scholarship rejection. Predatory loans and strangely specific grants did not pan out. Odd jobs and freelance work paid pennies compared to the zeros at the end of each semester’s tuition.

In the end, Ellory was forced to defer admission. Before Warren, before the Godwin Scholarship, she had resigned herself to taking classes online one at a time as she earned enough money to register for them.

Now she was here, but it was awkward to be so much older than most people in her core classes. Awkward to field questions about why it had taken so long for her to get into a school. Awkward to explain that somewhere between the lower-income population and the upper-income elite were people like Ellory, lost in the shrinking abyss of middle income, where living paycheck to paycheck didn’t make her needy enough for a single needs-based grant.

Watching these freshmen now, so wealthy and carefree and full of potential, made her feel like a crone. It had taken her three years to get where they’d never once doubted they’d be. For them, college had been a guarantee. For her, it had been a gift—one that could be taken back at any moment.

“This is a library,” said a voice colder than the air conditioner the school had yet to shut off, “not a comedy club.”

Hudson Graves loomed over the freshmen like an angry god, swathed in a midnight peacoat and gripping a thick leather-bound book. His ombré fade had been freshly touched up since the weekend, his curls dyed white gold and cresting over his forehead like whitecaps frothing against a stormy sea. His full mouth was twisted into a frown, his body language haughty and unfriendly. Ellory bit the inside of her cheek to keep from scowling, especially when a swift hush fell over the once-bright table. One sheepish student murmured an apology, as though Hudson Graves were a librarian whose word alone would get them thrown out.

Since Hudson was the scion of the family that had purchased the building, that wasn’t an unreasonable fear, but his ego was large enough without such unwarranted deference. He was no librarian, and he was no god. He was a bigger pain in her ass than con. law could ever be.

Hell, he was part of the reason con. law was such a pain in her ass. It was one of the few classes she shared with seniors like him.

During the first full day of classes, Ellory had made the mistake of sitting down next to Hudson Graves. She hadn’t even been looking at him; she’d seen an empty seat and captured it before the embarrassment of trying to find a friendly face had time to kick in. The worst part was that it had been a good day up until then. The sky was an effervescent periwinkle, the sun sparkled from behind a wreath of cotton clouds, and the weather was a perfect marriage of summer and autumn that required nothing but a light jacket. She’d practiced walking the path to her classes so many times that she had arrived in Rousseau Hall with fifteen minutes to spare, a half-finished iced vanilla latte dangling from her fingers. Her work-study program had placed her at an on-campus café literally called Powers That Bean, and she’d scoped it out ahead of her shift mainly for the discount drinks.

And then Hudson Graves said, “Did you ask if you could sit there?”

“What?” she’d responded, more confused than offended. “I didn’t realize I needed to ask permission to sit in an empty chair.”

These days, it burned to remember that her first thought when Hudson Graves had fully turned to face her was an inane one: What pretty eyelashes . They were lush dark smudges curving upward from tan skin so golden, it took her a moment to realize he was Black. His Afro-textured hair had been dyed a light blond that was nearly silver, and his jaw was outlined with overnight stubble that this class had taken priority over shaving away. She thought him handsome, but in a boyish kind of way. Thick-browed and big-nosed and round-cheeked, he looked like he was still growing into his features and the final product would be breathtaking. His downturned eyes were the deep brown of an avocado seed, reminding her of something her aunt had once said:

The color brown has been associated with so many things that people would never call beautiful: Dirt. Mud. Shit. But we’re copper and amber, tiger’s-eye and smoky quartz. We’re tawny and sepia, umber and russet. We’re forest wood and fresh soil, warm coffee and sweet gingerbread, a spill of ink, a starless sky, a damn good glass of brandy. A person who sees that sees you.

Ellory opened her mouth to defuse the situation with a compliment, fascinated by the way the overhead lights brought new shades of brown to the fore of his intense gaze, but he spoke over her.

“The seat’s not empty,” he sneered, “and you’ll have a tough time in this class if all you do is make assumptions.”

His expression was the only reasonable argument against climate change, so cold that it could single-handedly refreeze all the polar ice caps. Then Hudson glanced over her head, and a manicured hand landed on her desk. Seconds later, a hostile feminine voice said, “There’s assigned seating. This one’s mine.”

Ellory scurried away so quickly that she probably left a trail of smoke, her cheeks burning. It all felt so juvenile, so high school , that she knew she should let it go. It was one man on a campus of people, and one class—she hoped—that she had to share with him. The mature thing would have been to ignore him… But his sheer fucking dismissiveness . The way he’d underestimated her. How he’d assumed that she could afford to struggle in this class or any other. It rankled more than his rudeness.

And so, when the professor strolled in five minutes late, Ellory’s hand rocketed into the air at the first opportunity to answer a question from the reading she had done in full over the summer. Beneath the lazy inspection by her half asleep classmates—and one set of burning brown eyes—she analyzed the broad gray areas still inherent in the application and interpretation of constitutional law.

Shortly afterward, Hudson Graves answered a different question, expounding on his theories regarding why the American constitution was one of the hardest to update in the world.

She brought up six Supreme Court cases that had changed the interpretation of the same line in the constitution. He countered with the fact that the SCOTUS’s power of judicial review was created through Marbury v. Madison , not the constitution, so wasn’t it unconstitutional that the court had changed the interpretation at all?

The class fell away. The students disappeared. The professor might as well have never shown up. There was only her and Hudson Graves and an hour-and-fifteen-minute-long chess match that never reached a checkmate.

Ellory left that class without a backward glance, her blood pumping and her enmity secured. And twice a week, for an hour and fifteen minutes, Hudson Graves had found new ways to rub it in her face that she was falling further and further behind.

Now he was harassing freshmen in the very library where she was studying. Though she was glad the dumpster fire that he called a personality was willing to burn people other than her, she didn’t want to be in the blast radius. As the simpering students drew him into quiet conversation, Ellory packed up her things and found her umbrella.

The elevator spat her out into the street-level atrium, with its white stone floor, painted dome, and circular skylight. Rose-tipped clouds spanned the vibrant celestial mural that decorated the ceiling. Rain clattered against the glass, the real clouds a hazy purple gray that threatened lightning. Though it was early afternoon, the only light came from the lanterns in the wall sconces, electric in power but ancient in appearance. In her experience, most universities loved three things: money, tradition, and aesthetics.

“Morgan.”

Ellory’s shoulders tensed. She fiddled with her umbrella, desperate to get it open even though she was still several yards from the front doors.

“I know you hear me.”

“Isn’t it a little hubristic of you to study in the library named after you?” she muttered.

Hudson Graves caught up with her easily. He was only four inches taller than her, but those inches were mostly in leg, and his waterproof Timberlands gave him an added boost. Ellory didn’t embarrass herself by trying to run, but her fingers dug into the folds of her umbrella.

“Isn’t it a little masochistic of you,” he drawled, “to study in the library named after me?”

His peacoat was open, flapping around his body like the wings of a bird in flight. Beneath, he wore a beige cable-knit sweater over a powder-blue button-down fastened all the way up his neck. The leather-bound book was gone, replaced by a smaller volume that he carried at his side, tucked against his black jeans.

This one he held out to her with an infuriating smirk. “However, I imagine you’ll find it difficult to study at all without this.”

It was her constitutional law textbook. Ellory’s face flamed. She snatched it back, half expecting him to turn this into an adolescent game of keep-away to drag out her humiliation. His fingers brushed the inside of her wrist during the handoff, but he didn’t call attention to it, and neither did she. Her skin tingling, she eased the book into her satchel, a thrifted steel-gray messenger bag covered in pins and patches that looked so silly next to his Montblanc sling. One pin read, MAYBE TOMORROW, SATAN. Hudson quirked an eyebrow at the sight of it.

“Well,” she said before he could comment. “I’d love to stay and chat, but I’d rather sit on a cactus than look at you, so—bye.”

The rain came down in sheets, wind tearing at the trees that lined the cobblestone square around the library. A sudden gust tried to suck her umbrella inside out, but she pushed her head closer to the nylon fabric and pressed on. Water welled from between the stones, turning the square into a muddy creek, levels perilously rising. Footsteps splashed behind her. Ellory swore under her breath, unsurprised to see Hudson Graves haunting her trail. His umbrella was black, and the white glow of his phone screen washed out his face until it looked like a skull, all sharp, gaunt angles and deep, dark eye sockets.

Behind him, Graves Library lurked, its limestone facade bathed in the golden light of the windows. Built in the style of the Barrière d’Enfer—the neoclassical tollhouses that marked the entrance to the Catacombs of Paris—the stone arch of the building entrance seemed, for a moment, like the gaping maw of some primordial creature sucking all the air out of the courtyard.

Then she blinked, and the library was just a library, the man just a man.

And she was tired of both of them.

Though her residence hall was to the left, Ellory cut a right on Powell Street. Moneta Hall also happened to be near the student parking lot, and she would much rather take the long way around than risk Hudson bumping into her with more unsolicited advice and unwanted commentary.

Without the trees to act as cover, the wind howled like a dying animal. Her heart kept time with the rain: pitter-pat , pitter-pat , pitter-pat . People clustered beneath the overhang next to the bus stop. Ellory thought she recognized one woman from her criminology class, but to take a hand off her umbrella even long enough to wave would be to lose it to the elements.

Everything looked different in the gray. As she walked the Loop, which was what students called the half-moon stretch of Archive Lane that cut around the back of Graves Square, the landmarks were slick and shadowed, her view hindered by the incessant rain. She should have waited in the lobby, Hudson or no Hudson. He had to walk no farther than the student parking lot down the street, where he’d take his fancy car to his fancy off-campus housing, while Ellory was stuck hoofing it through torrential rains to get back to the freshman dorms, where her eighteen-year-old roommate was probably streaming some incomprehensible reality show and wrinkling her nose at the amount of mixed-berry yogurt Ellory had managed to pack into the minifridge.

Stop letting him get to you when he’s not even here.

Rain splattered the side of Ellory’s face and dripped from the tight coils of her hair. She swore again, adjusting her umbrella to protect her twist out, and walked even faster. But instead of Ellory arriving at Moneta Hall in ten minutes, fifteen elapsed without any sign of the dorm. By the twenty-minute mark, she’d passed empty quads broken up by the occasional copse of trees, but she saw no road markers or statues, no other students or parked cars, no Warren buses or security booths. The storm had, if possible, gotten worse. Her phone said 5:00 p.m., but the sky said midnight. The clouds were so thick that she couldn’t see the outline of the sun. Lightning cracked without thunder, the only illumination on a path whose streetlights had yet to turn on.

She stopped at an intersection. Was she even still on campus?

A passing car barely avoided splashing her with the grime of a puddle beyond the sidewalk. She jumped anyway, losing her grip on her umbrella. Water soaked into her hair, into her forest-green hoodie, into her newly polished thrifted high-tops. Her slate-gray messenger bag turned a deep charcoal. A single raindrop trailed down the face of her MAYBE TOMORROW, SATAN pin. Poetic fucking cinema.

Ellory fished her umbrella out of the sewer water and blinked the rain out of her eyes. But even after she dragged her damp sleeve over her damp face, clearing her vision enough to bring the world back into focus, she recognized nothing about this area. She had walked this campus from end to end that summer, refusing to broadcast her freshman status by lumbering around with a map in hand, and before this moment, she would have claimed there was no part of Warren she couldn’t navigate. Twenty minutes was not enough to leave school grounds. Twenty minutes was not enough to lose landmarks. Twenty minutes was not enough to make her so disoriented that her surroundings ebbed and flowed as if she were caught in a riptide.

She wiped her eyes again, as if that would somehow cause her to wake up at Moneta Hall. Instead, thunder clapped above her and shadows reigned around her and brackish water rose below her—tiny natural disasters that shot her anxiety to new heights.

This wasn’t possible. This wasn’t possible .

Ellory’s breath rattled out of her lungs in hitching pants. Through the hammering rain, she thought she heard a giggle, but when she whirled around, there was no one there. The path she had walked to get here had grown darker, unfamiliar, like an elongated black tongue. Trees twisted in the gale, branches splayed like the limbs of a broken puppet. Lightning snapped across a sky the dark purple of a fresh bruise.

Perhaps the laughter was only in her mind, her subconscious processing what she was so slow to accept.

Impossible or not, she was lost.

The storm had somehow swallowed her whole.