An Arcane Inheritance by Kamilah Cole - 4

“I’d like to go back now,” Ellory said, her arms folded. “This is a waste of a dress, and you damn well knew what you were doing.”

She couldn’t believe that she’d worn her most club outfit—a long-sleeved metallic-black minidress with sheer mesh between the bust and the skirt, and a pair of black heels she could kill a man with—only for Tai to drive her off campus to a house that belonged to none other than Hudson Graves. Ellory hadn’t known that Hudson was somewhere inside by looking at it, of course. Her obsession—and in the dark of the car with only the stars to witness, she could admit it was a bit of an obsession—didn’t extend that far. Tai had instead shut off the engine and admitted this little proviso in quick, jumbled words, and Ellory was having none of it.

On top of all that, she was clearly overdressed. The house was a flat-topped two-story redbrick building with five white columns that held up a gray box gable roof over the porch. People spilled out onto that porch and the dying lawn beyond, chatting over the pounding of music with a lot of bass. Everyone was carrying soda bottles that clearly did not contain soda, or narrow-necked flasks in crumpled paper bags, and they were dressed like extras on a teen drama, all flannel shirts and crewnecks, ripped jeans and ankle boots.

“Let’s go inside,” said Tai, affecting a pout. “Just for like five minutes.”

“You promised you’d take me home if I wasn’t having fun.”

“We’re in the car .”

“And I’m not having fun!”

Tai’s pout grew even more exaggerated. “It’s a big house, Lor. You probably won’t even see him.”

“Oh, I will,” Ellory said darkly. “I’m unlucky like that.”

Sometimes Ellory imagined herself and Hudson as magnets with opposing ends, but the universe seemed to think them more like nuclear fusion, binding together with explosive results. The house could be two stories or ten, the yard could be ten acres or twenty, and she and Hudson Graves would find each other. The only real question was when.

“At least give me your flannel,” she finally relented, after five long minutes of Tai sulking in the driver’s seat without turning on the car. “I can still make this work.”

It was oversize and plaid, the deep red of Baldwin apples. Ellory slipped it over her shoulders and tied it in a knot beneath her breasts, making her look less like she was standing in line at a nightclub and more like an actual person. Her heels and cat’s-eye makeup, she could do nothing about, but she finally got out of the car.

Music drowned out the New England night, so loud that Ellory was shocked the neighbors hadn’t complained. A light wind stirred her halo of curls, but it was a warm breeze like the dying breath of summer. Yellow-green bushes clustered in front of the building, some tall enough to partially cover the ground-floor windows. Between their stems, she could see crowds gyrating in flickering neon color.

In the corners of the house, shadows bubbled like fresh tar. Ellory blinked once, twice, three times, but she could still see that teeming darkness spilling across the lawn, flooding every inch that wasn’t illuminated by porch lights. It oozed closer and closer to where she was standing, indifferent to her racing heart. She was outside a house party, but it was like she was in a painting and someone was taking varnish to the colorful details, leaving her alone in the void. The music had been replaced by the buzzing of a thousand bees, and she couldn’t see anything but the wicked dark and the crouching building that now seemed farther away.

Hands grabbed her shoulders. A scream tore from her throat.

“Whoa, whoa,” said Tai, raising those same hands in surrender. “I didn’t mean to scare you. You zoned out on me for a second there.”

When Ellory looked back, the shadows were harmless and still. The only sound she could hear was the pulsing music.

It had all been in her head.

It had all been in her head.

Breathing hard, she dragged her gaze back to her confused friend. “Sorry, I thought I saw—sorry.”

“Sounds like somebody needs a drink.”

Tai linked their arms and dragged her through the front door. The walls were baby blue. The spacious floor was gray wood. That was all the detail Ellory managed to gather around all the people . Either the students of Warren were starved for entertainment, or Hudson Graves really knew how to throw a party, because there was hardly any room to navigate the living area. People were tucked into corners, talking, laughing, or making out. Others were swaying to the music, half of them too drunk to remain on beat. A group cheered one another on as they took turns chugging cups of who knew what. Someone was fast asleep on the long side of an L-shaped couch. On the other side, someone else—a friend?—texted, pausing only to glare at anyone who came too close.

Ellory’s first and last college party had been during orientation week, in one of the residence halls with a dining hall on the first floor, and it had involved mild property damage and a warning from the resident manager. By comparison, this was wildly boring. Too loud to think, too crowded to stand out, too tame to worry.

She loved it. In this chaos, she could breathe again.

Tai took her to the kitchen, where they found two unopened Coronas in a cooler on the kitchen island. The fridge was stainless steel, sitting alongside white cupboards and black marble-top counters. Half-full bowls of colorful snacks were everywhere: tortilla chips and spinach dip, pretzels and dried fruit, popcorn and carrot sticks. Tai rooted through the cupboards until she found a clipped bag of barbecue potato chips. “What?” she asked in the wake of Ellory’s judgmental stare. “I don’t know where all these grubby hands have been, and that dip already looks funky.”

Ellory grabbed a fistful of chips. The spinach did look funky.

They ended up in the backyard, a wide expanse of flattened grass protected from the other buildings and houses by trees on three corners and a listless chain-link fence on the fourth. The party had spilled out here, too, but it felt more intentional. Fairy lights were threaded through the tree branches. Someone was fiddling with a keg. Folding tables were set up, and flip cup and beer pong were in full swing. A Bluetooth speaker duct-taped to the side of the house made sure the music was still an invisible guest.

Tai was immediately sucked into a game of flip cup; Ellory wouldn’t cross her mind again until she’d made everyone else at the table cry. Ellory wandered over to a small circle of people playing hacky sack and watched them kick the glow-in-the-dark footbag back and forth. It looked like a confused meteor, an ever-moving orb of phosphorescent light in the dimness of the yard.

One of the players caught sight of her and, after knocking the footbag across the circle, broke rank to come over. She had never seen him before, but he was catalog-model handsome, the kind of white man who looked like he answered to the name Tripp or Digby . His carefully coiffed chestnut hair swooped back from his broad forehead just so , his clean-shaven square jaw gave him an approachably masculine appearance, and his thick biceps screamed crew team or tennis club or both. He was over six feet tall, wearing a black-and-white-striped polo, loose blue jeans, and black plimsolls—a type of shoe Ellory had had no reason to know the name of before she’d come to Warren. Now she didn’t dare confuse them with loafers or oxfords.

“Hey,” said Possibly Tripp, pushing a hand through his hair. His smile was relaxed, open, and practiced. Not toothy or overstretched, but a tool that only enhanced his natural good looks. “I don’t think I’ve seen you at one of these before.”

“I’ve never been to one of these before,” Ellory confirmed. “My friend brought me.”

She pointed over at Tai, then saw the light of recognition in his chocolate-brown eyes. Which was no surprise. Tai definitely knew the Tripps and Digbys of the world—or at least all the ones in New England. “Well, if you came with Tai, then you must be good people! Can I get you anything to drink?”

“I’m still working on this.”

“The Corona? It’s empty.”

“Because I’m working on it.” His pencil-thin eyebrows knitted together. Ellory decided to have mercy on him. “I could maybe use some more chips.”

The smile returned, this one like the spill of morning sunshine through a window. He left Ellory standing there blinking, wondering what exactly she’d done to earn a smile like that. Shame flared within her at how quickly she’d judged him, cutting him down to stereotypes that justified her sarcasm. That feeling only increased when he returned less than five minutes later with a plate of individual snack packs of several different kinds.

“I didn’t know what you like,” he explained, “so I got the basics.”

The basics turned out to be potato chips, cheese puffs, pretzels, onion rings, cheesy tortilla chips, and graham crackers. Guilt softened her tone. “Thanks. This is great. I’m Ellory, by the way. Ellory Morgan.”

“Liam Blackwood,” he said, plucking the graham crackers from the plate with a wink. “Delivery fee.” The wink must have been practiced, too. It turned him from handsome to devastating. There was no way he didn’t know it. “So, Ellory Morgan, what’s your story? I would remember if I’d seen you around campus before now.”

“I’m a freshman,” she began. Then, at the flash of alarm on his face, she quickly added, “I’m twenty-one. I started late.”

“Ah. Godwin Scholarship?”

“The school has other scholarships,” Ellory said, her grip tightening on the plate. “But yeah.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean it…however you’re taking it. I know plenty of Godwin Scholars. Come here a sec.”

Liam’s large hand pressed against her shoulder blades and steered her back into the house. Tai was still at the flip-cup table, knocking back a plastic cup of beer and then positioning it at the edge of the table. She flicked the base, which sent it tumbling through the air before it landed upside down in the center of the table. Cheers erupted from her team. Her opponents looked pained but not yet defeated. Ellory felt sorry for them already. Tai’s scorched-earth, kiss-the-ring, bend-the-knee approach to every drinking game would crush their spirits one way or another.

To the left of the living room was a staircase with white balustrades. An actual velvet rope was attached to one, barring the way upstairs in a way that made the second story of the house seem like some exclusive nightclub and thus would stop absolutely no one. Liam led her to a group of four loitering in front of the stairs, most of them people of color, most of them women. A pale redhead with glittering pastel-pink lip gloss. A russet-skinned woman in a sour-apple-green hair wrap. A spiky-haired man with golden skin, wearing a Manchester United T-shirt. A freckled woman with her hair drawn up into a frizzy bun and a black cherry White Claw in her hand.

They all stared at her, making Ellory feel like a kindergartener on the first day of school. All she needed was a Bluey lunch box to clutch to her chest or maybe a box of Crayola crayons—the good shit, the sixty-four pack with the built-in sharpener—to trade in exchange for friendship.

Liam’s hand slithered to her shoulder. “I found another one. This is Ellory. She’s new.”

“Hey,” the man said first. “I’m David Chang Vargas.” His smile, when he turned it on Liam, stopped shy of friendly. “Blackwood’s been collecting as many of us as he can find tonight. Have you checked off your bingo card yet?”

Liam laughed obliviously. “Not yet, but I’ll keep you posted.”

Everyone else made their introductions. The Black woman was Imani Khalif. The redhead was Addison Sullivan, “but you can call me Red .” The final woman was Ximena Moreno, an introduction she followed up by offering Ellory a White Claw from her oversize purse. Imani and David were nineteen-year-old poli-sci majors, while twenty-one-year-old Ximena was suffering through biochem, and Red, twenty, was here for electrical engineering. All of them apologized when Ellory said she was majoring in poli-sci, too.

“We’re still mostly doing core classes,” said David, assuming, like everyone did, that Ellory was a senior. “But even those are soul crushing. Something about the atmosphere here is so…”

“ Serious ,” Red finished, “in a super-pretentious way. Like, we get it, you’re a future hedge fund manager with an inheritance you can’t wait to snort your way through. There’s no need to wear a fucking suit to the student center.”

“That was one time ,” Liam said. “And I had a networking event.”

“It was twice,” said Imani. “And you wore different suits each time.”

“I had multiple networking events!”

His hand was still on Ellory’s shoulder. She reached up to pat it. She didn’t know how to explain to him that the problem was probably that he owned a full suit in the first place, let alone more than one. If he wasn’t aware that they were expensive, that most people rented them for prom or thrifted them for interviews, then there was nothing she could do to save him from the undercurrent of resentment this group was sending his way.

He didn’t seem to notice it, at least. She wondered what that was like. Did elevator music play in his head when someone didn’t like him, drowning out the barbs and the side-eyes? Or did he notice the barbs and take the high road, the road that money allowed him the luxury of taking?

The conversation turned to coursework, professors who made them want to give their best and professors who made them want to drop out, and the general lack of time for anything resembling a life thanks to the demands of the Godwin Scholarship. Ellory ate her pretzels and let the words wash over her, trying to stay engaged. But the more they spoke, the more she thought about her constitutional law textbook and the quiz she’d come to the party to escape. So far, she hadn’t seen Hudson Graves anywhere. Maybe he hadn’t deigned to attend his own house party. Maybe that was why he’d scored higher than her.

The pretzels tasted like lead. She handed her plate and empty Corona bottle to Liam. “Is there a bathroom?”

“There’s…” Liam pointed to a door a few feet to their left that had a couple enthusiastically making out against it. One groped for the doorknob behind them, and they tumbled inside, only two hands visible. “Well, there’s another one upstairs, to the right. Oi!”

Ellory left him to deal with that. Upstairs was quieter, cleaner, emptier. The walls were painted a peaceful blue, and the bathroom was white brick and tile with a sunset-orange shower curtain hiding the tub from view. Ellory peed and examined herself in the mirror over the sink as she washed her hands. Her mascara was still impeccable, her dark lipstick only slightly smudged from the beer. She touched it up and then took several deep breaths, shoving con. law to the back of her brain where it belonged. She was at a party. She was having fun. She could talk about schoolwork and make new friends without having a breakdown. It wasn’t even obvious that she’d been crying earlier this very night.

Back in the hallway, she paused. The stairs were ahead to the left, but there was another door between them and the bathroom that she’d ignored in her haste to empty her bladder. It was half-open, and she could see bookshelves. Did these people actually have a home library?

No, it was a bedroom, albeit one that seemed stuck in the transitional stage between that and a library. There was a queen-size bed wedged in the corner. There was a desk underneath a window with short cherry-red curtains. There was another door opposite the bed that she assumed led to a closet. Almost every other inch of space was full of bookshelves or books that couldn’t fit on the bookshelves and had instead been stacked unsteadily over the black carpet. There were books on top of the shelves, books in front of the shelves, books on the desk, and books under the desk. There were books on the bed, fanned out across the pillow as if they’d fallen asleep.

It was a literary wonderland.

Ellory forgot about the party, instead losing herself in the cracked and well-loved spines. These books weren’t for decoration. They had all been read, some of them many times. Nonfiction biographies and memoirs. Crime novels and fantasy epics. Essay collections and leather-bound classics. Romance novels piled next to a single self-help book. She gasped and reached for one of the tomes on the desk, a copy of Reel to Real by bell hooks that had been read so many times that the cover had been taped back on. It was her favorite of the author’s works, a series of essays on the influential nature of films—whether they meant to teach a certain lesson or not.

During those first few years after she’d moved to America, television had been Ellory’s gateway to culture. She couldn’t speak like her classmates, and she didn’t grow up with the same references, but she kept a list of the things she overhead so she could diligently catch up. Then Aunt Carol bought her a copy of Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the Movies from the bargain bin at the Strand, and Ellory devoured the analysis, pored over the highlighted stereotypes, and took a more critical eye to all the media she consumed from then on.

It was as if she’d been asleep, and bell hooks had been her gentle awakening to a world that said so much more than she had been picking up.

She traced the cover with loving fingers, a small smile on her face. The pages were dog-eared and annotated with thoughtful comments and questions that made it clear the owner had really engaged with the text. She flipped to the chapter on Crooklyn , her favorite of the essays, almost eager to get their thoughts.

“Of course,” said a bored voice behind her. “With an entire floor of food and festivities, why wouldn’t you instead break into my bedroom?”

Ellory dropped the book. Her smile went with it.

Standing in the doorway was Hudson Graves.