An Arcane Inheritance by Kamilah Cole - 33

Ellory had read the Warren Communiqué at least three times by now and was already on her fourth by the time the bus dropped her off at Riverside Campus. She had turned in her article on Warren’s famous families weeks ago, and she’d done a round of edits with Boone that had been so brutal she had been sure he’d found out that she was still working with Hudson and this was his revenge. Now here it was, on the fifth page of the Communiqué , below the fold, but bearing her byline: THE TANGLED ROOTS OF WARREN’S FAMILY TREE by Ellory Morgan.

Her first byline since high school, in one of the most famous student periodicals in the country. If she hadn’t been in public, Ellory might have cried.

Disappointment tugged at her that she couldn’t share this accomplishment with Aunt Carol, but she pushed it away. Tai and Cody had been so thrilled for her that they’d insisted on celebratory dessert after she got back from, as Cody put it, Sherlocking around campus, looking for ghosts , and that would just have to be enough. She didn’t want anything or anyone to steal the smile on her face today. Which was also why she hadn’t called Hudson to tag along. They hadn’t spoken since she’d bandaged his wound, and she intended to keep it that way for as long as possible.

He lived inside her head in a way she didn’t live inside his. He’d made that clear more than once. Space would be good for them both.

The morning was cold and misty. Fog rose off the Connecticut River and hung around Riverside Campus. Trees appeared every few feet, hidden in the haze, and dewdrops painted every flower and grass stem. Ellory’s hair went from frizzy to disastrous after only a few minutes, making her wish she’d brought a hat. The first time she’d been to Riverside Campus, it had been raining and she had been disoriented. At sunrise, even the mist was painted a dusty pink, and the tree-lined path that twisted farther into the woods and the pond beyond looked like the Yellow Brick Road. Danger waited around every bend, but now she knew how to recognize it. To fight back. To survive.

Ellory was certainly hoping to find magic again, but if it found her first, she was ready.

She walked until she reached the clearing. The surface of the pond was still, grass growing as close to the bank as it could get before mud took over. Bur reeds and flowering rushes decorated the edges with pops of color: pinks and oranges, yellows and greens. After their successful—if terrifying—divination session, this was as good a place as any to summon Letitia Rose.

Like the rest of the Lost Eight, Letitia had left few facts about her life. She’d been a scholarship student. She went by the nickname Tabby . She’d come from a large family. That was all Ellory had learned, aside from the tiny black-and-white class photo she had found in an old paper, where Letitia’s dark brown face had been wedged between two beaming white classmates, her smile more measured.

Almost like she knew what was going to happen to her and couldn’t pretend to care about anything else.

Ellory used the printed photo as the center of her circle, adding a series of things she had guessed that a woman in the 1960s might enjoy: a lava lamp, a pair of bell-bottoms, a copy of The Sound of Music . A flutter drew her attention to the path, where a charm of hummingbirds had gathered to flit from drooping flower to drooping flower. She couldn’t remember if they had been there before, but it was reassuring to see them now. It meant the souls of the dead were already listening.

She stood back from her circle, making sure it was closed and identical to the one she’d made in the library. Her phone had no service, but she had told Tai where she was going. If anything went wrong, someone would find her before the day was through. Despite not returning her feelings, Hudson had cut himself to pieces to help her, while she’d shied away from casting even the smallest of magic. It was her turn to sacrifice. It was her time to end this.

Ellory glanced at the hummingbirds one last time. Then she closed her eyes and let the darkness take her.

It was surprisingly easy to put herself in Tabby’s shoes in the hopes of connecting with her from across the veil. Her story felt familiar: a Black woman vaulted into an elite space and left to fend for herself among predators who didn’t care whether she lived or died. If she thrived, she would be a credit to her race. If she failed, she shouldn’t have been brought in to begin with. She wondered if Tabby had been born in America or if she had immigrated here, if the Civil Rights Movement had been something she longed to be an active participant in or if she just wanted to exist in peace, if her family ever pressured her to get the right kind of job and make the right kind of friends no matter her personal desires.

Ellory sank deeper and deeper into the darkness, opening herself to whatever might reach back. The stink of rot made her open her eyes.

Fish cluttered the muddy bank. A bluegill, a largemouth bass, a fathead minnow, and several more floated to the top of the pond, wafting toward her like shuffling zombies. They smelled rancid, like they’d not only died but had been dead for years. Their swollen eyes seemed to accuse her. Their scaled bodies had putrefied, leaving wet holes in their skin through which their narrow bones were visible. Their open mouths leaked pond water and pus onto the ground.

Ellory covered her nose, fighting the urge to gag as more and more of them washed ashore. She loved seafood, but she wasn’t sure she could ever again eat a fish without thinking of a smell so rancid that it burned the back of her throat. The fish kept coming, more of them than the pond could possibly have held, until a frog dropped atop the small pyramid. Its pale mouth fell open, and a ball of light floated into the air between them with a small cascade of brown-blue water.

The ghost light hovered there for a moment before plunging into the mist.

Ellory hurried after it.

She kept her phone in her hand, hoping to get a signal, but it remained dead as she followed the light through the woods. The farther she went, the less confident she became that she could find her way back to the university buildings. Every tree looked the same, and the mist was even thicker here, hiding the path she had taken.

Conjured lights had led her to safety when she’d gotten lost in the orchard, but that didn’t mean each one was trying to help her. She imagined wandering around the woods until it got dark, her legs aching and her body shivering, as the ghost light made sure she didn’t stumble over anyone who could take her to safety. She imagined sitting down against a tree’s rough bark and falling asleep, only to freeze to death there as the morning mist turned to evening snow. She imagined Tai finding her like that and having to tell Aunt Carol that Ellory had killed herself trying to save herself, and people like her, from the machinations of the Old Masters—a mystery no one had asked her to solve, a theory no one had asked her to validate.

She tugged her coat more tightly around herself and promised she would try to find her way back after five more minutes.

Seconds later, the endless treescape ended in a large clearing. A dilapidated building, all wooden beams and a shingled roof, perched like a pigeon on a phone line. It looked like a one-room schoolhouse from colonial times, but the bell tower was taller than any she’d seen in pictures before, so tall she was reminded of the story of Rapunzel. The door was both caved in and boarded up, decorated by a dusty keyhole arch. A sign had swung down from over the door, one corner pressed into the stone steps that led up to the entrance. Most of the text was missing, but Ellory could make out a single letter:

Ǝ.

She had never heard anyone mention a building like this on Riverside Campus. It hadn’t been on her map either. Ellory was sure this clearing hadn’t existed before she’d drawn her summoning circle, and the fact that the light continued to hover at her shoulder lent credence to the theory. Tabby’s spirit may not have shown up, but perhaps she had sent the ghost light to show Ellory the truth.

Overgrown grass tangled around her boots as she fought her way toward the building. Arched windows with dirty, broken glass hung on either side of the door. A thick spider had made an elegant web in one of the remaining sections, and its legs twitched at Ellory’s approach. She gave it a wide berth as she circled the schoolhouse, looking for a way in. At the back, she found a door with a hummingbird knocker that had rusted with time. It creaked open easily, sending a cloud of dust into the air.

Ellory coughed into the bend of her elbow. “Hello? Is anyone here?”

The first floor was one long room. She saw misshapen rows of desks with attached chairs, each one of them broken; a domed ceiling, and a ladder that led to an overhang; an abandoned blackboard, cracked into three pieces; and several filthy textbooks with holes in the equally filthy pages.

Rectangular objects leaned against the walls, covered by tarps. Ellory tugged one free to reveal a portrait, newer than anything in the room. It was painted in the same style as the ones of the Warren founders in the museum, but this one was labeled DEAN ARTHUR O’CONNOR I. Stasie’s grandfather frowned at Ellory from the center of the oil painting. A crow was perched on the windowsill behind him, which, like the painting of Howard McElking, had sunlight streaming through the glass.

Ellory freed another portrait. This one read DEAN PRESTON COLT and featured a younger version of the professor she’d come to know so well, a snow owl cupped between his hands. He was in front of a stained glass window that she recognized from the Warren Communiqué office, and, like in Richard Lester Odell’s portrait, a moonless starry sky in different shades was on the other side of the glass.

The third and final portrait was of Dean Nathaniel Graves, a stern-looking white man with curly black hair and narrow black eyes. A hummingbird hovered by his shoulder, and he gazed out a window into a midnight sky empty except for a crescent moon.

My father is a cruel man , Hudson had said. Ellory was looking at a painting of Hudson’s father, a man deeply entrenched in magic, who had, nonetheless, gaslighted his own son into believing it didn’t exist.

Disgust made her hands shake. She wanted to carve his portrait up, but she took pictures of all of them instead. Arthur O’Connor was the only one of the three who had ever been dean of Warren University as well, and there was no reason for these portraits to be commissioned, let alone here, if Colt and Graves had been deans at other schools. They had run one of the three magical disciplines of the School for the Unseen Arts: evocation, incantation, and divination.

Colt was part of this, just like her vision had warned. And he was, at least, close enough to answer her questions—whether he wanted to or not. If she could figure out how to tie this back to the paper, to weaponize the silence between his answers, she might get him to reveal more than he’d intended. It had worked for interviews with tight-lipped sources during high school. The trick was never revealing how much you already knew.

A scream cracked the silence of the schoolhouse.

Ellory jumped, whirling around, but she could see no one in the dim room. The scream ricocheted off the walls, building upon itself, until it sounded like a chorus of panic. She turned and turned, but no matter where she looked, there was nothing. Just that endless clamor, a ghostly wail of ancient pain.

Clapping her hands over her ears, she stumbled toward the door. A rectangle of light beckoned her to freedom until a shadow filled the space. Ellory skidded to a halt, her ears still covered, squinting at the figure limned by the sun. She could feel eyes on her, but the person was silent, and if they heard the screaming, they were unaffected. She got the sudden urge to put some distance between her and this stranger, and she gave in with three large steps back. The figure didn’t move.

“H-hello?” she said, her voice swallowed by the screams that still deafened her. “Who are you?”

The shadow charged toward her. This time, Ellory was the one to scream.

She threw herself to the side, narrowly avoiding being tackled by a person she still couldn’t see. She could no longer blame the sun for casting them in shadow. Their form was nondescript, as if her eyes hadn’t adjusted to the darkness. Their face was blank, not in expression but in features: They had no nose, no eyes, no mouth, just sunken crevices where those things would be. Their skin was corpse gray, and as she watched, their muscles swelled and their legs elongated until they were six feet, seven feet, eight feet tall. Their nails were needle sharp as they reached for her.

But this was not the person who had attacked her on the quad or at Moneta.

This was no masked enforcer. This twisted creature was an assassin.

Ellory rolled back onto her feet and ran.

The floor shook as the monster chased her down. The scream that had weakened her abruptly cut out, leaving Ellory with nothing but her quick breaths and desperate steps to keep her company. Her pursuer was as silent as a cemetery: no breathing, no growling, no threats. Her heart leaped to her throat as every rumbling step brought it closer and closer and closer…

The door had never been so far away.

Talons pierced the back of her jacket, scratched her spine.

Ellory threw herself into the sunlight, her face wet with tears. A clawed hand stretched out, only to dissolve upon contact with the outside air. One minute, the monster was stretching the foundations of the door, desperate to drag her back into its lair, and the next minute, it was gone in a flutter of black spots that clouded her vision. Still, she kept running, cutting through the tall grass and past the tree line. Then and only then did she slow enough to glance back again.

The monster was gone, but so was the clearing, the building. In their place was a thicket, and the winding path that led deeper into campus. Her heaving breaths combined with the sound of rushing water, a sign that she was close to the riverbank.

If not for the sting of the scratches and the chill wind that had already found the hole in her only winter coat, Ellory might have thought she had imagined it all.

She fell into the grass beside the path, pressing her hands against her closed eyes. “Holy shit.”

“Are you okay?!”

Her blurred vision resolved itself into an upside-down Hudson Graves. There were twigs and dirt in her hair, and she was pretty sure she was bleeding, but this was just as unbelievable as the danger she had escaped. Ellory was so confused that she allowed him to pull her to her feet. He dusted off her sleeves and then reached for her hair before seeming to realize what he was doing. He cleared his throat, stuffed his hands in his pockets.

“I followed you,” he said gruffly. “I saw you heading into the woods alone , and I thought maybe—you might need—I don’t know.”

Ellory noticed, belatedly, that he was dressed in the kind of clothes people typically went running in: stretch leggings and comfortable sneakers, a long-sleeved breathable shirt and headphones wrapped around his neck. Sweat beaded at his temples, and his coat was nowhere to be seen.

“I don’t need you,” she heard herself say. “But I’m glad you’re here.”

Slowly, invitingly, she tipped her head forward. Hudson studied her for a moment and then stepped closer to pick the debris out of her hair. Ellory wanted to fold herself against him, to close her eyes and know that she was safe, but she held herself still before she embarrassed herself again. His touch was gentle and focused. She let that soothe her frazzled nerves instead.

“What happened?” he murmured.

“I think I found one of the buildings for the School for the Unseen Arts,” Ellory said. “I did a summoning spell, and it led me to a clearing with a schoolhouse in it. I think it might have been the oldest one, going back to Letitia Rose’s time.” She told him everything she had found inside but excluded the portrait of his father. She would tell him, eventually, but not now, not like this. She thought of how small he’d sounded on the balcony, recounting how many lies his family had told him, and she didn’t want to cut him with another one when he was already so worried. “I think something terrible happened there. That scream…it was like the death echo of Malcolm Mayhew’s murder. It was awful . If this is where Tabby died, then she was in incredible pain the whole time.”

Hudson cupped her cheeks, his thumbs caressing her damp face. Her breath caught. She hadn’t realized that she was still crying, and now she was paralyzed by the look in his eyes, the protectiveness of his touch, the safety she’d found in his company.

“I’m so glad you’re okay,” he whispered. “So, so glad.”

“I’m getting mixed signals here,” she whispered back.

Hudson laughed, more breath than sound, more relieved than amused. “I care about you, Morgan. Isn’t that obvious by now?”

Ellory was frustrated with him, and perhaps she always would be, but she couldn’t deny he was right. It was obvious. He had worried about her, and he was here. Every time she called him, he was there. Even when she didn’t call him, he was there. She had spent her entire life living for other people, embodying her parents’ hopes, keeping track of her aunt’s medicines, making her own meals even when she worked late. She didn’t need Hudson Graves, or anyone else, to take care of her.

But damn did it feel good that someone wanted to.

“We need to talk to Colt,” she said, shuddering at everything she had just seen. “Maybe he’s the key to tying all this together. And, even if he isn’t, I want to know whatever he knows.”