An Arcane Inheritance by Kamilah Cole - 31

Classes restarted, indifferent to the depressive spiral Ellory had fallen into. The New Year was meant for resolutions and manifestations, but she had spent it in bed, the blankets wrapped around her as tightly as a burrito, watching the ball drop without emotion. Several times, Aunt Carol tried to lure her out of her room, but Ellory left only to shower or use the bathroom. If Carol hadn’t brought her meals to her, she might not have eaten.

Her first semester at Warren University felt like a test she’d failed, and she had dreaded returning to campus only to stumble over another forgotten memory or unsolved mystery. She had broken the heart of a man who liked her too much, her heart bore cracks from a man who liked her too little, and she was no closer to figuring out who was trying to kill her. Every aspect of her life was overwhelming, and there was no reprieve in sight.

Her coursework remained as difficult as ever, which at least gave her something else to do with her brain besides focus on everything she’d done wrong. Hudson brought her new books on the occult to flip through and didn’t ask questions when she was quick to leave. Sometimes, she thought his eyes lingered on her, but most of the time, it seemed like wishful thinking.

She read the books on the floor of Tai’s dorm, mainly because Tai kept doing wellness checks to their room that were starting to annoy Stasie. Take-out containers surrounded them. Tai was shoveling chicken and broccoli into her mouth while studying a textbook with oily fingers, the kind of carelessness she could get away with since she didn’t need to resell them for money at the end of the year. Ellory, who had already finished her chicken wings and french fries, handled Hudson’s books more delicately, until she found something of interest.

“It says that Warren University is supposedly built over the lodges of the Old Masters,” she said, finger tracing the paragraph as she read. “‘The founders of the school bought acreage large enough for the Old Masters to meet in secret, and from those grounds rose a school more legendary than any aspiring secret society.’ That’s got to be about the School for the Unseen Arts.”

“Or it’s nonsense,” Tai said without looking up.

“If their lodges used to be here, maybe they’ve left something behind that I can dig up.” Ellory wrote it in her notebook anyway, even as she acknowledged that Tai was right. As with most of the things she’d learned in her research, this amounted to nothing but more questions. “It’s at least nice to read a book that acknowledges that they existed.”

Tai made a dubious sound, but Ellory ignored her. Since that night at Powers That Bean, Tai had reported a distinct lack of magical occurrences in her life, and she seemed much happier for it. She wanted normalcy, and who was Ellory to take that from her? Her best friend was still willing to let Ellory bounce ideas off her and ramble on about the occult. If that was all she could get, she would take it.

“Why did they need more than one lodge?” Tai asked, collecting the empty containers to dispose of in the hallway’s trash chute. “How many Old Masters were there?”

“If I had to guess, I’d say they had at least three.” She could almost see them, log cabins of the kind Abraham Lincoln had lived in, each one labeled with wooden signs that bore painted images of birds: a crow, a hummingbird, an owl. “But as Hudson so thoughtfully pointed out, all I have are guesses.”

Ellory set that book to the side and moved on to the next: Haunted Hallowed Halls: A Collection of Campus Ghost Stories . She settled into the first chapter, while Tai left to take out the trash, and then read the next and then the next. By the time she looked up again, Tai was lying on her bed, on the phone with her sister. Ellory’s lower back ached, her elbows numb from propping up her head for what felt like hours.

Tai paused long enough to say, “Nerd. I’ve never seen someone read themself into a coma like that before. Kehinde says hi, by the way.”

Ellory stretched. Her bladder was spitting threats of a UTI in her future. “Tell her I said hi back.”

She returned from the bathroom to find that Tai had taken her phone hostage.

“Nope,” she said when Ellory made a swipe for it, using the two inches she had in height to her advantage. “We’re going out for dinner. You’ve either been sulking or studying, and it’s too much now. Go put on something that isn’t sweatpants.”

Ellory looked down at her loose gray pants and semisheer top. If not for work and class, she likely wouldn’t have gone outside, and her favorite part of every day was shedding her middling attempts at fashion for something she could lie around the dorm in. Tai, Cody, and Hudson made up most of her contact with the outside world; even her class engagement had dropped in favor of robotically taking notes while her mind was a thousand miles away.

This investigation hadn’t just consumed her life; it had consumed her. And she’d let it, because it was easier than fixing all the things she had broken.

Tai was right. Ellory knew it. And yet… “Can we have a raincheck on—”

“ No .” Tai nudged her toward the door with a hip and an expression that promised trouble if Ellory tried to argue with her again. “If you’re not back in ten minutes, I’m going to kick down your door.”

***

If Hudson was bothered by Ellory summoning him to her side after classes without warning, he didn’t show it. Snow dusted the ground, so light that it had already melted in high-traffic areas, and flakes hung on the shoulders of his peacoat as he approached.

His hair, newly dyed, had a fresh golden tint to the silver, but it wasn’t enough to stop him from looking a bit like Jack Frost, personifying the season in the form of a mischievous sprite. His high cheekbones and broad nose, his thick eyebrows and smirking mouth, all of it contrasted with his tartan scarf and mahogany leather gloves to make him look like a fey professor—too otherworldly for this campus and yet an inextricable part of it. When he stopped in front of her, the sunniest thing about this cold gray day, her heart skipped a beat.

She avoided his eyes. “Thanks for coming. I didn’t want to do this alone.”

“Thanks for calling,” he replied. “Walking into danger without anyone to watch your back seems to be a habit of yours.”

“And yet I’m alive and unharmed, so, if anything, you’re extraneous.”

“Or you’re particularly lucky. Luck runs out.”

“Does your arrogance ever run out? I’ve been wondering that since I met you.”

From her periphery, she saw his mouth tick up into a smile too quick for him to stifle. Ellory hid a smile of her own, comforted by old patterns. The changing landscape between them had not taken this away, at least, and it was easier to communicate in swapped witticisms than to wade into anything deeper.

Bailey Library loomed over them, its attached clock tower chiming three bells. As the oldest library on campus, it looked more like a basilica, built in a Romanesque style with sloping roofs and narrow windows. The interior was cathedral, lit by the sun streaming through the clerestory windows, with vaulted ceilings and gorgeous frescos of scenes from classic storybooks. Alice chasing a white rabbit toward Wonderland. Odysseus tying himself to the mast with wax in his ears to avoid the sirens’ song. Gatsby staring across the bay toward the green light that represented his yearning for Daisy.

Ellory often thought Bailey was too suffocating to study in; it was more of an altar to the literary gods, and she wasn’t pious enough to ignore that none of the frescos featured scenes from books by Black authors. Walking past dozens of white characters, suspended in their famous tales, only reinforced her fear that she didn’t belong at the university. At least in Graves, she could pretend that she did.

Hudson paused by the elevator that would take them up to the reading room. “Maybe we should try the rare-books room first? That’s in the basement.”

Ellory’s chest felt tight. “Why?”

“If I had something to hide, I would keep it in a place with few visitors.”

The strangled sensation only worsened. He pressed the DOWN button, and she had to clench her fists at her sides to keep from slapping his hand away. She didn’t want to go down there, and she had no idea why she didn’t want to go down there, except it reminded her of her first week on campus and her exploration of the Graves, that feeling of being buried underground. Trapped.

There were stairs, she told herself. If anything happened, she had an escape route. She had Hudson.

But the anxiety persisted until every breath became a struggle.

The elevator descended into the bowels of the library.

Once the doors opened, Ellory trailed after Hudson, concentrating on placing one foot in front of the other. The rare-books room was at the end of a long, dimly lit hallway, interspersed with flickering lights. There was a humidifier to keep the books at the optimal temperature, but even the sound of it running wasn’t enough to hide the skittering of vermin in the corners. Their footsteps were loud on the stone floor, warning anyone present that they were getting closer. Not that there was anyone down here.

She hoped there was no one down here.

“What should we be looking for, exactly?” Ellory whispered as the light bulb flashed another warning. “I don’t think any ghosts are going to jump out and introduce themselves.”

“Hidden passages. Discarded journals.” Hudson unlocked the heavy doors, his expression cast in shadow as the light flickered off again. “Ghosts are appreciated, but not required.”

Ellory had never been inside the rare-books room of any library. Shelves wrapped around all four walls, making space only for the door that had let them inside. A glass cage took up half the room, filled with even more books, whose yellowed pages looked like a single touch would dissolve them. There were desks with books stacked on top of them and podiums with books open on them. Dark lamps hung over them as the humidifier droned on.

She rubbed the goose bumps that had risen on her arms, unsure if they were being caused by the temperature or from the nerves that churned in her gut. But the sooner they found something, the sooner they could leave.

Haunted Hallowed Halls featured an entire chapter on Graves Library, but there wasn’t anything about Bailey. Ellory had suggested meeting at the bigger library instead, but Hudson had made the sound point that anything buried on campus was likely to be in the oldest buildings rather than the newest. While he tugged at the spines of the books on the shelves, probably hoping for some cartoonish wall panel to slide open, Ellory wandered over to the nearest desk. Every book had an embossed title, and every spine was unbroken. She would have thought they were brand-new if not for how faded the text was. A small brush was abandoned by the side of one stack, the dust of newly cleaned tomes clinging to the bristles.

The hairs on the back of Ellory’s neck stood up.

She peered over her shoulder, but nothing was there. Hudson moved silently around the room, and the humidifier roared its presence, but neither explained the way her instincts had shot to life, every nerve ending crying, Danger, danger, danger…

She turned her attention to the drawers. In the first one, she found more brushes and a larger feather duster. There was a notebook with numbers scratched on every page, and a key card that looked at least a decade old. The next drawer revealed pens, an empty planner, and an opened pack of batteries.

Her skin prickled with the feeling of being watched. She stopped with her hand on the handle of the third and final drawer, straining to listen. Beyond the humidifier, beyond Hudson’s fruitless search, she could have sworn she heard a whisper.

Danger, danger, danger…

Ellory opened the drawer with shaking hands. It was empty.

Her heart was racing. She rubbed her chest as she knocked the drawer closed with her hip. “Hey, maybe we should—”

That was as far as she got before all hell broke loose.