An Arcane Inheritance by Kamilah Cole - 29

Ellory awoke to voices.

It was early, too early, for Stasie to have guests in their dorm room. Ellory’s satin bonnet had shifted in the night, freeing her curls to the air, and her oversize Batman T-shirt had shifted with it, revealing her shoulder and collarbone. The blankets were tangled around her bare legs, and her boy shorts were riding up her butt. It was in this state that she contemplated finally killing her roommate. She would end up in jail, but it might be worth it. Every time she thought Stasie had reached the apex of how annoying she could be, she invented a new level.

Grunting, Ellory opened her eyes, only to find that one of the voices belonged to Hudson Graves.

Hudson stood in front of the closed door, his hands in his pockets as he eyed the dormitory like it might give him a contagious disease. There were bags beneath his eyes and a frown on his mouth, but he was here, he was here , and Ellory sprang into a sitting position at the sight of him.

Then she remembered that she wasn’t wearing a bra and crossed her arms over her chest.

“What are you doing here?” It came out more waspish than she had intended, but her state of undress made her hyperaware of herself. And him. And him seeing her breasts like this for the first time, sagging drowsily toward her stomach. “You haven’t been answering my calls.”

“I’ve been asking myself what I’m doing here for five minutes now,” said Hudson, wrinkling his nose. “I don’t remember these dorms being so small…”

“I wanted a single,” Stasie said, sitting cross-legged on her bed. She was fully dressed, her tablet in her lap. “But my parents didn’t want me to be antisocial.”

Ellory frowned at her tone until she realized what was bothering her: Stasie sounded nice . Flirtatious, even. She watched her roommate watch Hudson through her light-brown lashes, and Ellory’s frown deepened. That explained why Stasie had let him inside the dorm while Ellory had been sleeping, yes, but it made Ellory even angrier about the violation. Stasie was wearing full makeup, her hair in perfect waves that cascaded toward her shoulders. Ellory looked like a troll doll, her nipples poking at her shirt in the cold room. Knowing Stasie, she’d done this on purpose.

Ellory wiped at the corner of her mouth, relieved to find she hadn’t drooled. Small miracles.

“Can you wait in the hallway while I get dressed?” she asked, pulling her blanket up to her chin. Hudson stopped scanning the room and scanned her instead, as if realizing for the first time that she wasn’t ready for the day. His lips parted like he wanted to say something, but he just nodded sharply. Ellory didn’t relax until there was a closed door between the two of them. She glared at Stasie. “New rule: no boys over while I’m asleep.”

Stasie discarded her tablet and stared at Ellory with more interest than she’d ever had before. “How do you know Hudson Graves? He asked for you specifically. I thought you were dating Liam Blackwood.” She paused. “Speaking of, how did you manage that ? I cannot believe you have more of a dating life than I do when all you do is study and pass out.”

Ellory ignored her to throw on her laundry-day bra and whatever shirt-and-jeans combination that wasn’t visibly stained. When she opened the door, Hudson was leaning against the wall opposite the dorm, looking, if possible, more exhausted than he had inside. She so rarely saw him appear anything less than perfect, but he’d left a trail of cracks in the facade for her to find: His coat was improperly buttoned, his curls drooped from beneath his beanie, and his skin had the kind of pallor one usually associated with a fever. The urge to put him to bed was so strong that she closed the door tightly behind her before she could act on it.

“Let’s walk and talk,” she said. “You look like you need coffee.”

Hudson followed her without argument, stifling a yawn. “I saw your messages and came right over. I went home like we talked about, but then there was a family emergency.”

“Was the emergency that you lost your phone?”

“No,” he admitted. “But I forgot to check it with everything going on.”

“What was it, then?”

“My brother. He showed up at the house.”

Ellory discarded her first three questions and settled on her fourth: “Is that why he was calling you?”

“No, he was calling me because he wanted money. It’s unusual for him to go back to Darien. It was…” Several seconds passed in silence before Hudson settled on something: “Exhausting. My parents hadn’t seen him in long enough that all three of them had forgotten how much they hate one another, and I had to mediate at least six disagreements.”

Ellory saved the rest of her questions for when she’d gotten some coffee in him. When they reached Powers That Bean, Wynne, who often worked the morning shifts because most of her classes were in the afternoon, gestured for Ellory to get behind the counter and make her own. The morning rush had resulted in a line that wrapped around the room, and it was either that, or they would be waiting at least an hour for their drinks.

She and Hudson ended up on one of the benches that ornamented the campus, this one overlooking the quad. Hudson had already downed half his roast by the time they found the bench; the other half followed as soon as he sat down. Ellory, drinking her coffee at a more measured pace, tried to rein in her concern and failed.

“Did you not get any sleep?” she asked.

Hudson tossed his empty cup into a nearby garbage bin. “I told you I came as soon as I got your messages. That was about two hours ago.” His dark eyes were now alert enough for her to read the apology in them. “Did you still get to go to the salon? Was it horrific?”

“Worse than that,” Ellory groaned. “Those people—”

“I know .”

The entire story of their time apart spilled out of her, starting with the salon and ending with her conversation with Boone. Hudson didn’t question her offer from Colt or her anger at Boone for the lies he’d told them both. He just listened until she ran out of words and had to replenish her energy by finishing her coffee. Her attempt to throw it into the trash can missed by at least two feet.

“This whole time…” Hudson said, when she returned from picking it up and placing it in herself. “Part of me didn’t truly believe Boone could be an Old Master until now. Especially not after I discovered my magic. I thought anything strange that happened around our house was me, not.…”

He sounded as baffled and betrayed as Ellory had been. Still, her mind couldn’t settle. “You really had no idea? How is that even possible? He said you’re as close as brothers.”

“Boone’s always been a facetious person. He’s sarcastic even when he’s telling the truth. If I hadn’t witnessed everything we’ve seen this school year with my own eyes, I probably wouldn’t have believed him even if he’d done magic right in front of me. And he hasn’t .” Hudson wasn’t looking at her, but there was a tick in his bearded jaw. “Everyone is so concerned with protecting me when all I want is the goddamn truth.”

“Yeah,” Ellory murmured. “I know how that feels. I just have no idea what to believe anymore.”

“Believe me . We agreed to be on the same side from now on, didn’t we?”

Ellory’s cheeks warmed as she remembered that night on the balcony, his hand in hers and her mind on the ways their bodies could move together. He was right, though. He had been nothing but open with her since, he had driven through the night to get back to her side, and she was letting her anger at Boone and fear of Colt poison their budding partnership.

Along the quad, students rushed to get out of the cold, carrying books or bearing heavy backpacks. Someone sped by on a skateboard, wearing a massive pair of headphones. Hudson watched them with the thousand-yard stare of a man fighting a war on too many fronts. Ellory decided then and there not to add another battle.

She placed a hand on his arm, a touch light enough to be brushed away. Hudson released a shaky breath. “Anyway…everything I learned at home lines up with what Boone told you. Another former dean—Dean Godwin—took a major interest in all manner of magic, which he eventually distilled into three kinds: evocation, incantation, and divination—summoning, spellcasting, and scrying. Each with their own alchemical symbol, a kind of code for like-minded people to translate. But Boone was also right that magic is dangerous. That’s why my parents didn’t want me to remember that I could do it. It’s been twisted into this dark version of itself somehow.”

“Maybe that’s why the School for the Unseen Arts closed so quickly. Maybe they couldn’t figure out how to do magic without some sort of sacrifice.” Ellory thought of the soccer ball she had stopped, of the dead patch of grass she’d left behind and the memory she had surrendered in order to fix it. She thought of how magic had drained her of more than she could even remember, how power—real or imagined—always had a cost. “Do you think the Lost Eight and Malcolm Mayhew have something to do with all that? He had that crow tattoo, so maybe he was studying magic.”

“And, what, he became a sacrifice?”

“Maybe. Or maybe he knew too much. Maybe they all knew too much…” The back of her neck began to ache again. Ellory rubbed it, refusing to let the pain derail her. “Boone said the Old Masters are a secret society—and we know they tried to warn me from getting too close to their secrets. What if those who don’t get in are dealt with, and those who do get in are sacrificed?”

“That’s a terrible way to run an organization.”

“I have a theory, but I need to do more research into the Lost Eight. I need more than their names at least. I can probably do that at the Communiqué .” More of Boone’s words rang in her ears, clawing at the back of her mind. The Old Masters are a bunch of stuffy old white fucks too stuck in their ways. Meanwhile, she and Boone, Tai and Cody, and Malcolm Mayhew and the Lost Eight—they were all people of color. There was a pattern to follow, a deadly past that threatened her anarchic present. “But if we’re right…”

“Morgan, all we have right now are a lot of maybes with little evidence. Are you all right?” Hudson turned to her, his eyes narrowing on her hand. “What’s wrong with your neck?”

“I think my tattoo is coming back. Like it came back when I did magic for the first time.”

Ellory’s hand covered the space she knew the message would be, scrawled in her handwriting with that backward E . He reached for her, pausing inches away until she nodded, and then pulled her hand away from her neck. His fingers brushed her skin, leaving goose bumps in their wake as they lifted her curls. He leaned closer, and Ellory could feel his sharp intake of breath.

“You told me about this,” he said, “but even still I didn’t…”

“It comes and goes,” she whispered, remaining motionless. She was afraid to breathe, in case that would jolt him into movement. His fingers were tracing the letters in a soothing stroke, and his soft exhales were warm on her exposed skin. He smelled like coffee and, beneath that, his usual woodsy citrus. She wanted to inhale him. “Every time I learn something, I feel this pain or this dread… It feels like a curse. It feels like someone cursed me.”

Just like her parents had feared. Maybe the obeah magic had never cured her at all.

Ellory lifted her head. They were so close that she could count every line in the bags under his eyes. She could see the hazy edges of his irises, like he had been drawn by someone with shaking hands. She could see the bumps across his otherwise-smooth skin. She collected reasons to break his gaze, but in the end, none of them mattered. He was looking at her, and she was looking at him, and his hand was on her neck, and her hand was on his arm, and that was what mattered. She had hated him and trusted him, competed against him and reached for him, and he was here. That mattered.

“We’ll figure this out,” he said, so soft, so tender. “You and I. Together.”

“Thank you.”

She licked her suddenly dry lips. His pupils expanded. Once again, the air between them caught fire. Her breathing thinned. His cut out entirely.

Hudson dropped her hand as if he’d been burned. He cleared his throat and stood. “Thank you for the coffee. Sorry again for being MIA.”

Ellory felt like she’d run a marathon only to find no one waiting at the end. Embarrassment crashed through her. She got to her feet, unable to look at him. “It’s fine. I just hope you’re all right. If you need to talk—”

“I know where to find you now,” he said. “I’ll text you later?”

“Sure, of course.”

“Okay.”

“Great.”

Awkwardness pressed down on them like a weight. Ellory wanted to run. She wanted to scream. She wanted to rewind to the moment she’d felt closer to him than ever before and stay there. She wanted not to want that.

And then warmth enveloped her. No, not warmth, but Hudson, pulling her against him in an unexpected hug. Her cheek touched the fabric of his coat. His chin pressed against her forehead, scratchy from his beard and yet somehow perfect. She closed her eyes, her arms looping cautiously around his waist, expecting him to shove her away at any moment. Instead, he pulled her closer, and it broke something inside her. Tears gathered at the corners of her eyes, and she had no idea why.

She hugged him tighter.

“Together,” he said again, a solemn promise that she had no choice but to believe. “We’ll figure this out.”