Chapter 38 #2
“Viv—” In the hallway, Reid’s hand wraps around my upper arm, tugging me back. “Fuck, Viv. I care about you.”
In spite of everything, my heart flips on itself. But all I can do is yank myself out of his grasp. I need to get away from Reid. Away from the sting of his words. From the guilt I feel about lying to him. “I just need some space, okay?”
The stairs of Elkfore surge up at me as I speed down them and toward the gateway.
The news of Lyra’s disappearance has sucked Harker into a tailspin.
Students murmur and whisper amid a fog of panic.
I check my phone to find an email informing me that all classes that aren’t held within the walls of Old Campus are postponed indefinitely, which means no coliseum or Field Training, and all sporting events are canceled too.
Nothing that might draw a crowd. Half of my professors are following up with emails reworking course loads amid calls from worried parents.
As I pass through the rotunda, my eye catches on the glass case.
I pass that photo of my father every time I enter and leave the school.
Usually—despite whatever happened here or soon after that made him change his name—the picture spreads a comforting warmth through me.
He walked these halls. He ran on these fields.
He made friends here and learned and became the man who raised me.
But today the black-and-white photo carves something bleak and raw right through my heart.
All I feel is shame. Reid was right: I couldn’t stop Lyra from being kidnapped.
I couldn’t find Kitty. I couldn’t save my dad.
Someone at Harker is brewing a syrabraxa, and I haven’t been able to do anything to stop them.
I never even got to the bottom of who my dad’s killer was, and that was the only reason I came to this school in the first place.
Maybe if I hadn’t spent so much time here making friends and learning to accept what I am…
falling for a demon…I’ve been so selfish.
“You’d be ashamed,” I mutter at the grainy image.
But my dad only beams, hoisted on the shoulders of two teammates: number fifteen and number twenty-six.
Sweat and dirt coat his face, and he’s got a lacrosse stick raised high overhead in that blind joy you only ever get to feel for a split second.
The beat right after Oh shit, I did it and right before So what happens now?
It reminds me of that photo in my apartment I love so much.
The one of the girl on the swing moments before she leaps off.
The triumph in her eye that she’s made such a brave decision, a hair before the fear creeps in.
It’s not an easy shot to get. Curiosity and perhaps a bit of envy drive me closer to investigate the photographer who captured it. I lean so close my breath fogs the glass and I have to smudge it away with my wrist.
I squint at the plaque beneath. David Caddel wins Harker Lacrosse Championship for the Marksmen, 1994. Also pictured: number fifteen, Tim Hawkins; number twenty-six, Edgar Driscoll. Photo by Stevie Lancaster.
Edgar Driscoll…The dean? Was friends with my dad? Now that I think about it, that makes some sense. If my dad were alive, they’d be the same age. They have a similar demeanor. Tough but not unkind.
I study the image of him and Edgar grinning at each other.
Maybe the biggest mistake I’ve made was never confiding in the dean in the first place.
Knowing my dad purposely kept this place from me, changed his name after graduating…
I was so hesitant to trust anyone here aside from Reid and my friends.
But Reid trusted Edgar Driscoll in his darkest moments.
And my dad trusted him too. A photo can tell you a lot.
I can see the respect—the admiration—in both their eyes.
It’s time I asked for a little help.
The sun has set and the air is as cold as a sleepless night when I reach the dean’s cottage.
My joints ache and my breath is coming in clouds of swirling steam.
I knock on the dean’s door once, and though I can hear the kettle singing on his stove, the dean takes his time answering.
I have to rap my knuckles—already raw from windchill—a few times before he wrenches it open.
His eyes are ringed red, his beard scrubby like untamed grass.
“Miss Abbot,” he grunts.
“Rough day?”
He rubs his bearded jaw. “You could say that.”
“I think I know where Lyra Roth is. Can I come in?”
His gruff eyes widen, but he steps aside and gestures for me to enter.
Inside, I take a seat on his cracked leather couch.
His cabin is better decorated than Reid’s.
Larger, of course, and filled with potted plants and little herb gardens in windowsills.
More ornate while still rugged, with animal pelts and thick thermal blankets and a pair of muddied boots by the door.
A lacrosse stick is mounted on the wall, just like my dad’s in my room.
That kettle is still screaming on the potbelly stove, and he stomps over to turn it off before coming to sit down across from me.
“What do you know about a club in Astera called Fever Dream?”
Dean Driscoll leans forward an inch, a hint of a smile on his lips. “I knew you were bright.”
My heart stumbles over a beat. “The owner—that crime boss—he’s a deviant?”
“Not sure. The guy keeps a low profile. He’s deep in the pockets of Astera’s mayor, its CEOs and chairmen…They keep his identity well-protected. All the criminal operations are done under his alias, the White Stag.”
The White Stag…Wasn’t Nora talking about him being one of the biggest poppy dealers in Astera? All the white antler graffiti South of the Chasm…Hadn’t Ingrid, another hunter from Reid’s Field Training class, feared him?
“Even if we could find him,” Driscoll says, “the Elders don’t want us to take him out.”
“What? Someone is running all number of illegal trade and business from an Astera nightclub frequented by mortals and hunters alike, and the Elders have instructed you and the Citadel hunters to keep him alive…Why?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. The Elders aren’t the most forthcoming bunch. But if this White Stag were coming after Harker…” The Dean’s face shifts into something raw with untapped rage. “I’d certainly press the issue.”
I steel myself. I’ve come this far. “The night the wraiths attacked Elkfore, a friend of mine left school. Kitty Briggs. But her letter saying goodbye was suspicious—”
“Suspicious?”
I take a breath. “A lot about her disappearance wasn’t as clear-cut as it seemed.”
The dean grunts, bringing his head to his hands. “It just gets better and better.”
I grimace. I don’t envy the day this man is having. “Now today, with Lyra…both girls frequented that club. Fever Dream.”
The dean’s expression doesn’t change as he listens, but his entire body has gone as taut as a harp string.
“I can’t exactly tell you how, but I know someone stole the asphodels that are kept at Harker. Whoever did left behind evidence that they spend time at Fever Dream too. I don’t know if this White Stag is infiltrating the school—”
“It’s not possible. If he’s mortal, he’d have no way of getting in. And deviants can’t access the campus without the wards being adjusted—”
“Fine, then perhaps a student is working as his accomplice. Or a professor. It just all seems too strange to be unrelated.”
The dean crosses his arms. They’re as scarred as they are tattooed. And not lines of pale white—jagged gashes, uneven swaths of skin, burns and gouges. “Kitty’s Peter Roydon’s cousin, right?”
“The one and only.”
I’m not sure the dean is capable of smiling, but his lips do twitch a little as he rubs at a scar on his neck. “He’s a good kid. Smarter than every student here and braver than most too.”
“I think he’d only agree with you on the first part.”
The dean shrugs his large shoulders. “Better that way. If he knew how strong he was, he’d be insufferable.”
A smile tugs at my mouth and I feel a strange pang in my heart.
For all his gruffness, Dean Driscoll does remind me of my dad.
Tough on the outside, and even tougher on the inside, but under that, perhaps a layer of something warm.
Even knowing they were close, I can’t bring myself to tell him his teammate was my dad.
Old habits die hard, I guess, but until I figure out why exactly my father changed his name and kept Harker from me, I can’t let anyone but my friends know I’m his daughter. Not even Reid.
Still, I can’t help but say, “My dad played lacrosse too.” I gesture at the dean’s lacrosse stick on the cabin wall. “I have his stick on my wall just like that.”
“I bet he’s mighty proud of you.”
The simple words squeeze my throat with emotion. I cough once to clear it and say, “He was.”
I don’t add what follows in my head. Who knows if he still would be?
But it’s like Dean Driscoll knows from the expression on my face. “Wherever he is now, I’m sure he still is.”
“I’m not sure I’ve lived up to his legacy. I’m struggling to…be what I think he wanted me to be.”
“From what I can tell, you’re doing just fine. Thank you for coming to me with this information, Miss Abbot.”
I stand to leave. “What are you going to do about the White Stag?”
“Appeal to the Elders. Force them to change their stance on this guy so we can investigate Kitty’s and Lyra’s disappearances.
Figure out if he’s deviant or some mortal kingpin.
Beat them senseless until they admit why they’re keeping him out of our clutches.
” When I balk, he frowns. “Kidding, of course.”
“They haven’t listened to you before.”
Driscoll scratches at his beard, then eyes me carefully. “I’ll prove to them he was involved in these girls going missing, like you said. And the asphodels being stolen from Harker grounds…”
“Well, thanks,” I say at the door, blood thrumming. I know what I have to do. “For everything.”
But Driscoll stands. “Miss Abbot. You are not to go to Fever Dream. That’s clear, right? It’s my job to take care of these students. Not yours.”
“I know,” I assure him. “I wouldn’t think of it.”
His brows turn in. That gaze is brutal. “Miss Abbot—”
But I’m already out the door. I can find proof that Lyra and Kitty are tied to this club without even breathing the same air as this White Stag.
I’m a proof-getting machine. When I bring that information back to the dean, the Elders will have no choice but to let him and the Citadel hunters take the fucker out.
And even if Reid won’t go with me, I won’t be by myself.
As I leave the cottage, I shoot Sophia a text: Still up for Fever Dream tonight?
She writes back a minute later. Def. Meet at the Gateway in 20?
We can go to my place in the city to get ready.
Aye aye captain. I’m bringing the white two piece set for you.
Fine, I write back, knowing better than to argue with the queen consort of clubbing.
A minute later she writes, Brace yourself. It has sparkles.
A sinking feeling runs through me. Of course it does.