An Arcane Inheritance by Kamilah Cole - 11

Saturday was a rare warm day, one where the sun chased away the glacial autumn wind. Ellory had a jacket folded into her backpack, but she wore nothing heavier than an oversize hoodie and a pair of turquoise leggings. Sleep had eluded her since they’d made their plans. Every night, she lay in bed for hours while the compendium of horrors she’d witnessed played out in startling detail behind her eyelids. Every day, she moved through classes and shifts like a wraith, jumping at shadows and waiting for her reality to tilt once more. Now that she was finally on her way to get some answers, or so she hoped, she was glad for the unseasonable heat to give her something else to think about.

A tray with two coffees from Powers That Bean rocked in Ellory’s lap as the Uber carried her through Hudson Graves’s neighborhood, which looked like an entirely different place in the light of day. The streets weren’t clogged with parked cars, and the air wasn’t thick with loud music. Without the marks of a college party in progress, it was a normal suburb with clipped lawns and reddening trees. Two children played catch on a sun-gilded sidewalk. A woman pushed a lawn mower through her overgrown grass. A stray cat weaved between the empty garbage bins in someone’s driveway.

She felt like she was in a sinister suburban drama. She half expected to see a single drop of blood slowly drip-drip-drip down a pristine window.

Hudson’s precious ’71 Barracuda was parked as close to the house as it could get without entering the living room, a literal orange traffic cone behind the bumper to warn people away from approaching it. The lawn was more yellow than green now, and the bushes that huddled beneath the front windows were more branch than leaf. But the porch had been newly cleaned, each beam of wood shining in the morning light. To the left of the stairs rested a lopsided jack-o’-lantern with a cell phone wedged inside.

The door swung open after a single knock. Hudson yawned out a greeting, more dressed down than she’d ever seen him: loose white T-shirt, black sweatpants, and white socks with yellow ducks on them.

Ellory grinned. “Is that for me?”

“Is that for me?” Hudson replied, eyeing the coffee tray with longing. His roots were growing out, night black tipped with sun gold. “Boone broke the fucking espresso machine.”

“There’s a phone in your pumpkin.”

Hudson yawned again. “That’s Liam’s problem. Come in.”

She handed him the coffee, and he stepped out of her way. In front of the silver L-shaped couch rested a black walnut coffee table that hadn’t been there during the party. Books were stacked in a neat pile on top of it. A sage-green rug—also new—was beneath it, lending the room a calming sort of elegance. From the kitchen, she could hear the tinny sound of R & B playing through laptop speakers. Hudson padded in that direction, and Ellory slipped off her shoes and laid them neatly in the shoe rack before following him.

His laptop was on the kitchen island, open and surrounded by papers. She’d expected more books, yet there was nothing here but an empty plate smeared with the remnants of maple syrup and a black pen that dangled over the edge of the sink.

Hudson settled onto a barstool and drained half his coffee. His eyes opened a little wider. “A cinnamon roast? How’d you know?”

Ellory opened her mouth to answer and then closed it. Because she realized, right then, that she had no way of knowing he preferred a cinnamon roast. Hudson Graves had never been in the Powers That Bean, at least never while Ellory had been on shift, but she had ordered it for him without even thinking about it. It hadn’t seemed strange until now.

hudson will hɘlp

She cleared her throat. “You’re welcome.”

Hudson watched her for a moment over the rim of his cup and then took another sip. “There are eggs on the stove if you haven’t had breakfast yet. Bread’s on top of the fridge, apricot jam inside. I trust you can find the toaster by yourself.”

Once Ellory had fixed herself a plate of scrambled eggs, toast, and jam, she settled on a barstool beside Hudson. His screen saver was the word of the day: MAGNILOQUENT. He pulled the laptop closer to himself and scrolled through news sites while she ate. There were no windows in the kitchen, but petal-shaped glass pendant lights hung over the island, casting a golden glow over the countertop. It was almost noon, yet the house was as sleepy as the man beside her, soft and open in a way it hadn’t been at the party.

The music played on. The aroma of coffee filled her nose. It was peaceful.

“I looked up the symbol in your note,” Hudson said, after he’d washed up and refused to let her help dry. “The backward e has a lot of meanings, but the most relevant one is its status as an existential quantifier. In mathematical logic, that symbol essentially means, ‘There is at least one,’ or ‘There exists.’ And that’s—”

“The Warren University motto,” Ellory finished for him. “But why would I tattoo that on my neck?”

“School spirit, clearly.”

Ellory glared at him.

“Rah-rah,” Hudson snarked, adding a little fist pump.

Ellory ignored that to dig through her bag until she found her notebook. By now, it was half-full with data and decorated with small multicolored page flags and neon Post-it notes scribbled with her handwriting. She’d returned to Cover Story several times as every detail she recorded only created more mysteries. Psychology had been swiftly abandoned for the esoteric, especially as she’d pried deeper into the history of the school.

Hudson closed his laptop and pushed it to the corner of the kitchen island, making room for her to set the notebook between them. Then he pulled his chair closer, close enough that she could feel the warmth of his body. Even though they weren’t touching, Ellory knew how easily they could, and it brought her thoughts to a screeching halt. His scent enveloped her, citrus and earth and man , and was she really so starved for sex that her body was having a chemical reaction to a guy with the temperament of an open sore?

She stared at the countertop. “I’ve been doing research, and I found out something interesting. Did you know Warren University has a supernatural history?”

Hudson snorted.

“Apparently, the founders of the school were former members of the New England Society for Psychic Research, and their initial goal was to open an academy to educate people about the arcane. Warren was originally registered as the School for the Unseen Arts for about a month before the change. Even now, several books claim that occultism and witchcraft is still baked into the stones of this place—especially since it was given Ivy status the same year it was founded. Prior to Warren, the most recently founded college was Princeton in 1865.”

“Weren’t all the Ivies officially given Ivy status that year?” Hudson pointed to one of her page flags. “This says the Ivy Group Agreement happened at an athletic conference in 1954.”

“And you don’t find that strange? That Warren started as a laughingstock and became an Ivy within months ?”

Hudson frowned. “I guess that is a little strange.”

“There used to be rumors about demonic bargains and dark magic, especially when students began disappearing. Letitia Rose in the 1960s, Manuel Sharp and Angel Mclaughlin in the 1970s, Olivia Holloway, Tasha Butler, and Eugene Kang in the 1980s, and Kristopher Douglas and Joel Carroll in the 1990s.” Ellory turned to another page, where she had summarized a paragraph from a book that referred to the disappearing students as the Lost Eight . “They were never found, and to this day, no one knows what happened to them. There isn’t a lot of information on it that I could find. But maybe that’s why all this is happening to me again. Maybe I’m haunted because the school is haunted.”

“Your theory is that you’re experiencing strange phenomena because the dead founders kidnapped eight people and, what, fed them to a demon for power?”

Ellory slammed the Moleskine shut. “Listen, if you’re not going to take this seriously—”

“I’m not seeing what any of this has to do with what’s happening now . Even if the founders did make some sort of infernal pact to join the Ivy League, who cares? It seems like they got what they wanted in 1954.”

“You’re relating this back to political systems for your thesis, right? Well, when have people in power ever stopped when they’ve gotten what they wanted? If you knew magic existed—if you could manipulate it to change the world—would you stop? Would you ever stop?”

Hudson was now frowning at her . They were so close that she could see the line of stubble he’d missed during his morning shave. His leg brushed hers when he turned to face her, their knees grazing. Without the music in the background, Ellory became overly aware of their breathing synching up.

“You think magic exists?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” She was trapped in the melted chocolate of his eyes. His attention was a heady thing. When he wasn’t making her angry, the intensity with which he studied her bolstered her confidence that she knew what she was talking about. “I think it depends on your definition of magic. We don’t even know everything there is to know about the ocean. How can we claim to know everything there is to know about the world?”

“But… magic .”

“I don’t know if it’s magic! Let’s stick with the word haunting . That’s how the New England Society for Psychic Research got started. It was established by Ed and Lorraine Warren, a demonologist and a trance medium who traveled the country investigating supposedly haunted sites. There are loads of movies about their cases.” Ellory managed to free herself from Hudson’s gaze and pulled her notebook protectively against her chest. “Maybe the things I keep seeing are…a death echo from the Lost Eight. Because I’m—I don’t know—spiritually sensitive. Or maybe I’ve seen one too many movies. But the one thing we know for sure is that no one knows what happened when those students went missing. And they deserve justice, don’t they?”

Before Hudson could respond, the front door opened. Ellory shoved the Moleskine into her bag and zipped it shut while Hudson scooted his barstool away from her and opened his laptop. Her cheeks were burning, though they had been doing nothing more illicit than talking about ghosts. She chalked it up to the hot kitchen.

Ellory heard the duo before they actually appeared in the doorway. The first to enter was Liam Blackwood, today wearing an aquamarine polo and black jeans. Though he wore long sleeves, Ellory could see that his ringed hands were also tattooed and that more ink inched under the fabric. Bird wings, she thought from a quick glance. Behind him was another man, with almond skin, thick black hair, and tattoos on his neck that disappeared beneath his black shirt.

The man dressed in black was the first to react to the scene. “I fucking told you he wanted us out of the house for a reason.”

“Don’t be rude,” said Liam, beaming. “This is Ellory Morgan. She was at our last party. Ellory, this is my other roommate, Boone Priestley.”

“What’re you two up to?” asked Boone, whose onyx eyes had not shifted from the scene in front of him. “Study date?”

“It’s not a date, but yes,” said Hudson. “I thought you were going to see a movie.”

“It sucked ass. We left early.” Boone seemed to sense that Hudson didn’t want them here and found this amusing. He grabbed one of the other two barstools, dragged it around to their side of the kitchen island, and perched beside Ellory with his head propped up on his arm. His sleeve slunk down enough for her to see that another one of his tattoos was a sun with a random line through the center. “What’d you say your name was? Emory?”

“Ellory.”

“Hud’s never brought a woman home before. How long have you two been together?”

“ Never? ” Ellory asked with feigned shock. Hudson looked like he would have tried to strangle them both if there weren’t a witness in the room, and that made Ellory add an exaggerated gasp. “What a nerd.”

“Don’t encourage him, Morgan,” Hudson grumbled. “You’ll regret it.”

“Not that long, then,” said Boone, “if I’ve never come up before now.”

“Like the rest of the world, I don’t think of you when you’re not actively annoying me.”

Boone blew Hudson a kiss that served only to make Hudson even more murderous. Ellory had to bite her lip to keep from smiling. Usually, when Hudson was spewing poison at someone other than her, it was cold and short and made her uncomfortable to even be in the room. But he and Boone acted like belligerent siblings, bickering without blades. There was something endearing about seeing him like this, dressed down and unguarded, fond and fighting a smile. He was so different here, in the heart of his home—or perhaps he was different in public, surrounded by strangers and sycophants.

Liam grabbed Boone by the back of his shirt and yanked him off the barstool. Ellory half expected Boone to fight, but it seemed this was more normalcy. He let Liam manhandle him out of the room and toward the stairs, laughing all the while at a joke only he seemed to get.

The kitchen was too quiet with them gone. Hudson’s softness had left with them. When she looked at him now, the wall he erected between himself and other people was firmly back in place, with her on the outside. His expression was as distant as the Talcott Mountain peaks, his eyes as hard as winter soil. It was again like looking at a different person, but in a worse way. Hudson’s previous openness no longer felt like a sign that he was capable of being tender. Instead, it was further proof that he would never be that way with her . That he chose not to be that way with her.

“I should probably leave, too,” Ellory said into the silence. “I don’t think we’re going to get anything else done with everyone here.”

“We need an action plan,” Hudson pointed out. “Unless you’re hoping that you stumble upon more books.”

“You have my number.” Ellory hopped down from the barstool and grabbed her bag. “Learn how to use it.”

She made it out of the kitchen before being stopped, this time by crashing nose first into a firm chest and a sea of aquamarine. Liam Blackwood blinked down at her. “Leaving so soon? I was hoping we could hang out a little.”

“I’m going to the bus stop,” Ellory said, sidestepping him. Her shoes were still arranged neatly on the shoe rack, but they’d been half buried in other shoes: combat boots and white sneakers. “It was nice to see you again.”

“Do you want a ride back to campus?”

“You have a car?”

“Of course I have a car.” Liam laughed. “How else would I get to class?”

Ellory decided to let that one go and put on her shoes instead. She’d been spending too much money on travel lately anyway. “If you’re not busy, I’d love a ride.”

Liam’s smile was warm and cozy, like a campfire on a crisp autumn night. “I’m never too busy for you, Ellory. I’ll meet you outside.”