An Arcane Inheritance by Kamilah Cole - 26

Ellory had expected Hudson’s liquid courage to cause morning regrets, but she woke up to a text from him complaining about the brightness of the sun and warning her to take ibuprofen before attempting to do a single thing.

graves: that voice telling you to get out of bed without it is the devil talking

Unlike some people, she texted back, I have an early shift today so I didn’t get drunk.

Her reciprocation forged a tentative new connection between them, in which it became common for her phone to flash with his name. Not as often as Liam’s golden texts had come, but often enough that Ellory began to look forward to them. There was a freedom to Hudson over text that was absent when she saw him in person. He was a fountain of darkly funny one-liners that made Ellory giggle in between the helpful links and random questions he sent over the course of the next week.

It made her feelings both harder and easier to ignore.

“I go on runs here,” Hudson said dubiously when he met her on Riverside Campus. Since she had no way of knowing what would happen, she’d told him to dress in his favorite clothes, clothes he considered so innate to his personal style that they were practically a part of him. He had translated that to mean the same peacoat, that obnoxious yellow sweater, and a pair of frayed jeans she’d never seen before. Somehow, he looked incredible. “The paths are straightforward. How did you possibly get lost?”

“Magic,” Ellory deadpanned. “Which is why we’re here.”

The orchard was too far. The Graves was too haunted. And the quad—Ellory had altered her path to her classes to avoid that stretch of grass for weeks. Riverside Campus, prismatic and desolate in the November cold, was perfect for her third attempt to cast magic intentionally. The trees, those that still had leaves to brag about, had gone scarlet and butterscotch, lime and amber. Sunlight rippled through the canopy, painting the foliage with buttery light. The babble of the Connecticut River was as peaceful as a lullaby. After a stormy few days, this clear morning was rife with magical potential.

It had been only natural to demand Hudson work with her. If she was bargaining parts of herself for power, she wanted someone who would criticize what she’d given away. Someone who would remember what she’d lost and perhaps complain until she found a way to regain it.

hudson will hɘlp

Her note to herself had been right, that day. Instinctively, she was drawn to him instead of Tai and Cody, and that had to mean something. There was a difference between a crush—the butterflies and obsession, the confirmation bias of every interaction—and her thorny feelings for Hudson. The high highs and low lows could not explain how badly she wanted to know and be known by him, to be liked, to be wanted . This craving was like no crush she had ever felt.

Hudson made a face at the mud lingering from the rain. “Your logic is sound, but your taste continues to be questionable, Morgan. I know a better place than this.”

Baffled by her own taste, Ellory rolled her eyes. “I hope it’s a better place to hide a body, because I plan to leave yours there.”

“It’s always nice to have goals,” Hudson said archly. “Follow me.”

He led her down a quiet running trail, occasionally peppered by a dog walker or a sweatband-wearing athlete, and through a thicket of trees reduced to nothing but knotted branches. He moved with the confidence of someone who had been to this area many times before, the same confidence that had flooded her that rainy night she’d been lost in these woods. She stifled a ridiculous urge to ask him if they’d come here together before. Hiking with her once nemesis wasn’t something she’d just forget.

“Here we are,” Hudson said. “Better, right?”

They were in a clearing, the yellow grass feathered with multicolored leaves. The Connecticut River was louder here, like they were near a small waterfall, and there was a pond near the right side that had a single duck cutting across its rippling surface. Its black wings were tucked tight to its brown body, its green-and-black head turned away. The sky was framed by golden-red trees, thin clouds ambling across a cerulean blanket.

Ellory didn’t realize how much stress she’d been carrying until her shoulders dipped, free from the weight of it all. “All right. I’ll let you have this one.”

She spread the blanket she had brought a few feet from the lake, then sat cross-legged atop it. As good as the sun felt on her skin, it wasn’t enough to settle her stomach or her mind. Hudson gingerly sat down next to her, gaze expectant, and trying to seem competent was taking more energy out of Ellory than any spell had.

“I want to try divination,” she said, tugging her almost-full notebook out of her bag. After twice leaving her phone behind, she had made it her new go-to for portable notes. “After the party, I realized I’ve done two of the three. I can restore Bancroft Field, and I can summon the Graves Ghost, but I haven’t tried reading the future or anything.”

“Divination isn’t just about the future. You tried to summon the Graves Ghost, but instead you divined what really happened the night he died.” Hudson took her notebook, flipping through the pages until he found her badly drawn replica of the summoning circle and her hastily scrawled description of all that had happened afterward. “He didn’t appear to you until he was already dead…again. So I’m not sure that counts as evocation.”

Ellory frowned at her own notes, feeling like she was missing something. Malcolm Mayhew wasn’t the first ghost to appear to her without answering her questions. Death had followed her all her life—from Miss Claudette to the Lost Eight—and she felt, instinctively, that she had a unique talent for drawing the deceased to her. If there were only three forms of magic, then what she had done and seen defied categorization. Her frown deepened. Even in this, she didn’t belong.

“Let’s try it anyway,” she decided, retrieving the book and spreading it out in front of her. “I’m not changing my plans based on your guesses.”

“I’ll go first. I want—can I go first?”

Even before he glanced hesitantly her way, his tone made her answer easy: “Of course.”

Hudson closed his eyes and took a breath. “Who’s hunting Morgan? Tell us where to look, where to start.”

Ellory was glad he couldn’t see her so she could manage her surprise that this was the first of his questions. She would have thought he would want confirmation that Boone was innocent of what they suspected or more information about what else his family was hiding from him. Hudson using his magic to protect her—again—made her stomach flutter.

Wind whistled through the clearing, lifting her braids off her shoulders. The clouds moved no quicker, but leaves shot across the ground in swirls of color. A frog leaped into the water, its protruding eyes the only visible sign that it was there. Ellory could no longer see the duck at all, even though she didn’t think she’d seen it fly off.

Hudson’s lids flickered like he was having a bad dream. His lips parted, but no sound came out. His hands had curled where they rested on the blanket, his fingers like claws against some imaginary attacker.

“Hey,” said Ellory, “are you all right?”

She touched his shoulder and gasped.

Night fell. Lightning flashed across the violet sky, surrounded by spidery branches torn free of leaves. The woods were pitch-black in between lightning strikes, and there—in the flare of illumination—figures stood as still as the trees around them. Everywhere Ellory looked were unfamiliar faces, their eyes gleaming in the unnatural light. Every time she caught one, their heads decayed like corpses. Skin bloated and then sagged. Nostrils leaked purge fluid that, even from here, smelled like death. Maggots crawled from blackening eye sockets. She could barely pick out any defining features before they were gone.

The few remaining faces were ones she didn’t recognize.

Except one.

Except Preston Colt.

The professor stood between two trees that leaned against each other like lovers, his hands in the pockets of his tweed suit. She recognized his salt-and-pepper beard, his jaunty pocket square, but she didn’t recognize the expression on his face. With every flash of lightning, his skin turned translucent, revealing a hollow-eyed skull with bared teeth on the left side of his face. His right side remained opaque, wearing a half smile that felt drawn with cruelty.

Ellory eased onto her knees. “Professor?”

Someone screamed so loudly, her word was drowned out. More people had appeared in the clearing, these ones visible even without the glow of the lightning. Four men and four women—none older than their midtwenties, all of them noticeably people of color—circled a blanket, holding hands.

Eight strangers.

Eight young adults.

The Lost Eight.

The sound had come from one of the men, perhaps Manuel Sharp, whose throat widened in a river of red that soaked into his denim jacket and gray turtleneck. To his right, a woman who might have been Olivia Holloway screamed as her skin burned, from brown to pink to white to black and flaking. Then the next person and the next person and the next person, dying in some horrific way before her, shrieking at the top of their lungs as they did, until all she could hear, all she could see, were these people who could have been her classmates suffering in ways she could never have imagined.

A single phrase cut through the cacophony, like a lightning strike of its own: “Wake up. Wake up! WAKE UP!”

“Stop it,” Ellory whispered. Then, louder, clapping her hands over her ears: “STOP IT!”

The vision faded with a final echoing scream. Sunlight momentarily blinded her, and the rush of the Connecticut River returned in place of the lightning. Ellory rubbed her eyes, damp with tears, but, when she could see again, Riverside Campus had returned to normal. Even the frog and duck were back, casually moving around each other in the pond.

Her breath tore from her chest, and her head throbbed, and she knew what was about to happen if she wasn’t quick enough.

“Did you see—”

Ellory ignored Hudson to dive for the notebook, scratching a quick summary of everything as gaps began to appear in her memory. Hudson realized what she was doing and freed a pen from his bag, taking the next page, writing down what he had seen. Between the two of them, they painted a complete picture of a nighttime meeting, of decaying corpses, of unknown figures who couldn’t—shouldn’t—have been there.

She stopped writing only when her headache eased, dropping her pencil from shaking fingers. She’d expected for the entire vision to be gone, but she could still remember what she had written. The decaying corpses and the screaming victims. Professor Colt and a salon of minorities dying before him. Her stomach twisted with revulsion and fear. If that memory hadn’t been taken, which one had ?

Hudson stared blankly at his own handwriting. “I don’t remember any of this.”

“Don’t worry,” Ellory said, swallowing the urge to vomit into the grass. “I have it. I just don’t know what I don’t have.” It was unsettling, but she didn’t want to linger on it. Not now. Not when she’d done magic, intentionally, for the third time . She couldn’t miss what she didn’t remember, but she could move forward. She had to move forward, before that vision drove her mad. “I saw Professor Colt. If those were the Old Masters, then—”

“Fuck.” Hudson pressed the meat of his palms against his eyelids. “Is anyone we know not suspicious as hell?”

“He was at the orchard. How well do you know him?”

“As well as any student. My parents would probably know more.” He dropped his hands, squinting down at the notebook again. “This really happened? I don’t remember—”

“Welcome to my life since August,” said Ellory, climbing to her feet. Her legs nearly collapsed beneath her but, thankfully, decided to hold her weight at the last minute. “You talk to your family. I’m going to do more research into the Lost Eight. I think they have something to tell me.”