An Arcane Inheritance by Kamilah Cole - 15

Hudson Graves glowered at her with the fires of Phlegethon in his dark brown eyes. Ellory would have considered being afraid if she hadn’t, quite literally, just seen a ghost. Instead of her usual iced coffee, she clutched a large honey-lavender tea with both hands, steam drifting upward in stringy clouds—not unlike the mist from last night. She had waited until the sun had tanned the horizon into a burnt-orange line before texting Hudson to meet her in the same study room as last time. Though she’d expected him to ignore her or to make her wait, he had showed up shortly after Ellory, drowsily clutching his cinnamon roast.

At the time, she’d thought he looked soft, his damp flaxen curls finger combed and his combo of a blackberry knit sweater and blue jeans basic enough to forget he came from money. Then she’d told him what she’d gotten up to last night, and now he looked like what he’d always been: a well-dressed piece of shit.

“Your recklessness in pursuit of this so-called mystery is going to get you killed before you get the answers you’re searching for,” he said peevishly. “I thought we were in this together.”

“I couldn’t reach you,” Ellory lied over the rim of her to-go cup. “And I didn’t get murdered, but Malcolm Mayhew did.”

“What you did was incredibly dangerous, Morgan,” Hudson continued, starting to pace. “You could’ve spent too long outside your body and gotten trapped in that void. You could’ve been hurt by the Graves Ghost. You could’ve—”

“ But I didn’t. So can we please move on?”

Hudson stopped on the other side of the room with his eyes narrowed. Ellory felt like an old scarf, all frayed ends and loose threads. Every time she blinked, she saw Malcolm’s distended jaw, the silver-eyed crow tattoo, the choking mist. Her head was empty except for the sound of his final cry, playing on a loop like the ringing of tinnitus. Hudson could yell at her all he wanted, but she had barely slept in almost two days, and she’d wasted all her energy on sharing her findings.

Magic was real, and it was dangerous. Magic was real, and it had been used to kill at least one person on this campus. Magic was real, and someone was using it to drive her mad.

By comparison, Hudson Graves was nothing.

He seemed to realize that, because he deflated with a sigh and hoisted himself up on the table beside her. A long drink of his coffee followed. Ellory watched his throat bob before turning her blank gaze on the glass doors. This early, anyone who had to go to the Graves usually stopped on the upper floors, as close to the surface and the sunshine as possible. Aside from them, the only other person on the floor was a woman at a desk near the elevator, and she’d fallen asleep on a leather-bound copy of The Vicomte de Bragelonne .

“Are you all right?” Hudson asked, setting his coffee cup between them. He smelled like bergamot and shea butter, sharp citrus and smoky earth, like the cinnamon of his drink and the dew of the early morning. “Your hands are shaking.”

Ellory observed this fact with such detachment that it was almost like it was happening to someone else. She placed her tea between them, too, and slid her hands beneath her thighs, where they couldn’t betray her fear. Today, she had opted to wear black overalls over a pink-and-white-striped crop top; one strap was unbuckled, swinging across her back with every movement like the pendulum of a grandfather clock. Her curls were tugged into a pineapple puff, decorated by a pink floral scarf. It was the kind of outfit she would wear around Astoria, bounding down the stairs of her apartment building to go to the deli, where she could buy Carol aspirin, ginger ale, and a scratch ticket while trying to lure Baker, the cat, out from the shelves.

At Warren, there was an unspoken uniform of neutral colors, collared shirts and blazers, slacks and cardigans. But, right now, Ellory did not want to assimilate. She needed this comforting slice of home in this Stygian place marked by death.

“It was a lot. This entire year has been a lot, but this…” She thought of Tai and Cody again, and her throat closed up. “And you’d rather yell at me than listen to me.”

“I can listen to you and not want you to fall apart on me at the same time. What if you cry? What am I supposed to do if you cry?” Hudson made a face. “I left the house so quickly, I forgot to grab my handkerchief.”

Ellory rolled her eyes. “You do not have a handkerchief.”

“I do not. And if I did, I wouldn’t waste it on other people’s tears.”

“Luckily for you, I’d rather eat a live roach than cry in front of you.”

“ Thank you ,” said Hudson, so effusively that Ellory had to laugh. It was more air than sound, a little amused and a lot exasperated, but it loosened something in her chest that made it easier to breathe. From the corner of her eye, she thought Hudson looked almost proud of himself, but when she turned to face him, the expression was gone, replaced by his usual boredom. “On my end, the conversation with the logic professor went nowhere. She identified the hidden symbols as alchemical in nature, but, to be honest, I think I actually know less than I did before I called on her.”

“Are you sure you didn’t get stupider without me here to keep you on your toes?”

“A light breeze could knock you over right now, Morgan. You’re hardly in a state to be the whetstone to my mind’s keen knife.”

“Calling your mind a keen knife is vastly overstating its capabilities, but all right.”

“I recorded our conversation,” Hudson said in a clipped tone, pulling his phone from his pocket. His thumbs flew across the screen, every tap as sharp as his voice. “I’ll send it to you, and you can hear for yourself that it wasn’t worth the trip.”

Ellory stifled a yawn, though she had every intention of listening to the recording later. If Hudson Graves were as smart as he thought he was, he’d have graduated early. Hell, if he were as smart as he thought he was, he wouldn’t have believed her in the first place.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked. “It can’t be for your thesis. You don’t even like me. Unless I’m the subject of your thesis, I don’t see how—wait, I’m not the subject of your thesis, am I?”

Hudson’s eyebrow arched. “I would need your written consent for that, I think.”

“You’re rich. You don’t really need anything but less money.”

Hudson’s other eyebrow joined the first. “You’re not the subject of my thesis, Morgan.”

“Then why…?”

His eyebrows lowered, his gaze clouding over in thought. A single bead of water slid from his drying hair down the back of his neck, staining his sweater a deeper purple. His white-blond curls shrank close to his skull, as fluffy as a sea of dandelions. As his jaw worked like he was practicing and discarding several answers to her questions, Ellory found herself desperately interested in what he had to say. Neither of them had any reason to be here, to be together, and yet here they were all the same.

And she had room in her life for only one mystery right now.

“If you must know, I’ve always wanted to be a part of something extraordinary,” he murmured without looking at her. “I’ve always wanted to discover worlds within wardrobes and magic behind mirrors. I know it’s childish and impractical and silly , but part of me never stopped believing in the impossible. And everything we’ve researched…it’s impossible.” He smoothed down the invisible wrinkles across the front of his sweater, then adjusted his collar. Anything, she realized, to distract from his childhood dream laid bare. “Thesis or not, I want to see this through, Morgan. With you.”

“That,” she managed, “is a lot of faith to put in someone you don’t even like.”

“I beg you to see a therapist about this obsession you have with how I feel about you.”

Ellory’s mouth dropped open and then snapped shut without a word. Damn him, he was right. There was no reason for her to want him to like her, no reason for her to constantly toss his inexplicable hatred for her toward him like a bomb, hoping he would finally defuse it. Ellory had always craved validation—she was, after all, a former honors student—but only from authority figures and crushes: Teachers. Parents. Liam. The hot Korean woman in her Spanish class with the lesbian flag pinned to her messenger bag.

Hudson Graves didn’t fall into either category, so why did she keep doing this to herself?

She straightened her shoulders and reached for her to-go cup. “I just think it’s weird to declare your undying loyalty to someone whose arguments you once called neonatal in complexity .”

“First of all, you had called me human coccydynia not even thirty seconds prior to that. Second of all, I’m committed to the cause, not to you.”

Ellory coughed as lukewarm coffee hit her tongue instead of the lavender tea she’d been expecting. Hudson Graves didn’t believe in sugar, and the bitter aftertaste of his roast coated her tongue like oil. He gingerly took his cup from her, making a face that said, I will be throwing this in the trash at my earliest convenience . His sneer struck her with the realization that her lips had been where his lips had been. Now they both tasted of cinnamon.

That felt unbearably intimate for this not-quite-cordial interaction.

“In any event,” Hudson said, still looking put out about his coffee, “Liam used to date a Mayhew. Sophomore year, I think. I don’t remember her name.”

“Shocking.”

He ignored her. “I doubt their bedside conversations dove into exploring the branches of her family tree, but he might know more about the Mayhews in general. If there’s one thing rich families know better than anything else, it’s keeping up appearances. Malcolm Mayhew’s murderer could have had the money and the resources to ensure his death was reported an accident.”

“Oh, great. I’ve always wanted to disappear.”

The words turned to ash in her mouth, sending a shudder down her spine. There it was again, that déjà vu, as if they’d had this exact conversation before. As if she’d said these exact words, and it had been more dire than simply tempting fate. Her breathing rattled like a stone in a tin can. The white walls turned black, then white, then black again—or was it her eyes playing tricks on her? Even if sirens weren’t blaring from every nerve ending, her body was exhausted. Too exhausted for this level of stress.

“Let me know what you find out,” said Hudson, jumping down from the table. “And try not to do any more séances without me, Morgan. If you keep playing with fire, sooner or later you’re going to get burned.”

The glass door slid shut with the finality of a prison cell.