Chapter 8
8
A BEEPING SOUND drills into my skull. I lurch upright to play whack-a-mole on the nightstand until I slap the clock alarm. “Ughhhhh. Too bright.” I drop back and fold the pillow over my face. My brain is a fragmented, floating thing. Fruit in a Jell-O mold.
“You’re unbelievable,” Alice says from her side of the room.
“My eyes hurt,” I whine. “My optical everything hurts. The rods and the cones, Alice.”
“Well, it’s time to get up.” Alice’s voice drips with acid. “Unless you want to add skipping classes to your streak of delinquency.”
I frown, dropping one side of the pillow. “What’s your problem?”
Alice stands up from her bed, fully dressed in a skirt and blouse. She’d been waiting to berate me until my alarm went off. An ambush by an evil librarian. “My problem? You almost got us kicked out of school our first night here, and on the second night you don’t come home until one o’clock in the morning!”
I squint at her. “No, I didn’t. I mean, yes, I did. To the first thing. But no to the second thing.”
Alice bares her teeth. A fierce evil librarian. “I can’t believe you got blackout drunk.”
I sit up, shaking my head. “I didn’t.”
“You’re delusional!” Her screech makes me gulp. I hate it when she gets upset. I hate it when we fight. “Some blond guy brought you back here, stumbling and slurring. He said you’d partied too hard in Little Frat Court. A frat house, Bree? Seriously?”
That makes me jump out of bed. “Alice,” I say slowly, walking toward her with my hands outstretched for peace. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I didn’t black out.”
She stamps her foot, and if I wasn’t so rattled, I’d laugh. “Isn’t that exactly what a blackout drunk would say the next day?”
“Well,” I say, considering. “Yeah, but—”
“I know it’s our first real freedom. You always hear about people going to college and drinking too much, not knowing their limits. I just didn’t think you were that…”
Suddenly, I don’t want to laugh anymore. “You didn’t think I was that what , Alice?”
She crosses her arms and sighs. “Pedestrian.”
I blink. “Did you just Jane Austen me again?”
Alice breathes slowly through her nose. “This is what everyone says happens. You go to college with a friend, you each find some new… group or whatever, you drift apart. I just didn’t think it’d happen to us.” Alice snatches the handle of her bag and stomps to the door. It’s the resignation in her voice that does me in, and the blow she delivers right before she walks out. “You need help.”
Tears fill my eyes almost before the door shuts behind her; then comes a rush of burning anger. My hands ball into fists, nails digging red half-moons into my palms.
Five minutes later, while brushing my teeth in the hall bathroom, I let out a scream so loud the girl next to me jumps.
“What the hell?”
“Sorry,” I mumble through a mouthful of toothpaste. The gash in my lower lip is so deep that when I spit, crimson blood and foamy Crest swirl in the sink in equally disgusting harmony. In the mirror, I draw my lip down to check the damage. “I bit myse—”
Another stab of pain. Then, I feel a strange, fluttering panic, like I’ve just tumbled down a staircase, but instead of hitting the floor at the bottom, I tip forward—into memories.
Where is he?
Genetics 201 starts in five minutes, and Nick isn’t here.
I’d arrived early to make sure I wouldn’t miss him and have been hovering near the back row of the large lecture hall as students stream in. A girl with stringy black hair scoots by, blocking my view of the door momentarily. After she passes, I see Nick in a blue T-shirt and jeans, walking along the back wall toward the corner of the room.
I weave through the incoming flow of students to follow him. When the clock strikes eleven, a thin, middle-aged man wearing a gray tweed suit steps up from the front row to cross the creaking wooden floor. He pauses at the lectern and frowns as the others and I continue to find seats.
“As the board states, this is Genetics 201. Not Geology 201. Not General Anthropology 201. Not German 201. If you are here for any of those classes, please exit now and take some time to review both the class abbreviations and the campus map.”
Amid a low wave of laughter, half a dozen students stand and shuffle down their long rows toward the exit at the back of the lecture hall.
Nick flops into a wooden seat in the very top row in a move that somehow manages to look graceful. I speed toward him, slipping into the seat directly beside him at the end of the aisle. “Nick, short for Nicholas.”
He jumps. “Bree. Hi.” I don’t miss his quick glance at my forearms. “How’s my peer mentee?” His smile is so fascinatingly genuine that I probably would have believed him if I didn’t know any better. He pulls up the small writing surface attached to the armrest and slaps down a composition notebook that looks like it got wet at some point. He pauses, squints. “I didn’t think you were in this class.”
“I’m not. I asked the dean for your schedule.”
A smile breaks across his face. “Who’s creepy-clever now?”
I snort. “Still you. By the way”—I lean back in my chair—“I’ve never gotten blackout drunk in my life, and I’d die before I set foot in a frat house. Tell Sel to mesmer better next time.” I sit up, eyes wide. “Wait, was that a frat house? I thought you said we couldn’t join them.”
Nick’s brow lifts a fraction, his eyes widening, but he doesn’t respond.
Any further conversation is interrupted when the professor clasps his hands together. Nick faces front, and I smother a frustrated growl. The professor serves all 150 of us a long-suffering gaze. “Now that everyone who is supposed to be here is here, my name is Dr. Christopher Ogren. We will be taking roll today and randomly throughout the semester”—groans all around at this—“by sending around the roster. Please initial beside your name and only your name.”
“Nick—” I begin, turning to him.
He silences me with a finger, then points to the front of the room. “I’m trying to pay attention.” His tone is serious, but I catch the slightest twinkle of humor in his eye. Without another word, he bends over his composition notebook and starts writing who knows what.
Unbelievable.
I lean over and hiss, “I made myself remember.”
His pen stops moving, but he doesn’t raise his head. “Remember what?”
“Are you seriously—” I’m cut off when an olive-skinned boy with a buzz cut passes the roster to our row. I grab it and scribble you know what! before passing it to Nick.
“Your handwriting is atrocious.” He signs his initials before passing the clipboard down. Irritation is a barely contained scream behind my gritted teeth.
Dr. Ogren calls our attention again. “All right, let’s begin with a thirty-minute pretest.” Groans again. Dr. Ogren smiles. “Relax, it won’t be graded. It’s just an assessment to see, generally speaking, where everyone falls in their knowledge before we begin the term, or what you remember from the last time you studied genetics. Work with a partner, share your ideas, record your answers.”
“Work with a partner” is easily the second-worst classroom phrase after “group work.” But today I couldn’t be happier to hear it.
“Partner?” I ask primly.
Nick studies me, evaluating his options. “Fine.” He opens up to a fresh page in his notebook.
The TAs distribute large stacks of worksheets. I grab a copy and send the rest along. We spend the first few minutes actually reviewing the pretest. The worksheets are fairly straightforward and a combination of multiple choice and short answer. Nick is as smart as he is good-looking, because of course he is, but he hasn’t covered the material as recently as I have. I stow my questions for now and take the lead to help move things along.
“We’re at the short answer portion now”—I flip my own notebook over to a blank page—“and we’ve got to write these together.”
“Mmm, yeah.” Nick scratches at the faint white-blond stubble on his chin. “I’m not one hundred percent sure on this one…” He reaches across and taps his finger over question ten.
“?‘Common DNA processes include replication, transcription, and translation. At a high level, describe the distinct functions of these processes.’?”
“I can’t remember the difference.”
“It’s easy to get the terms mixed up. Replication is making more DNA, transcription uses DNA to make RNA, and translation has to do with ribosomes. They use RNA to make protein.” I sketch a diagram on my notebook. “Visuals help.”
Nick examines my drawing, and his eyes flicker up to mine. “Visuals do help. A lot, actually.” I’m unprepared for his small, appreciative smile. Even at a low wattage, it is warmth and sunlight and summer and entirely distracting and it makes me squirm in my seat.
We speed through the remaining five short answer questions and finish with ten minutes to go. Ripping a sheet out of my notebook, I scribble down a few words. When I shove the sheet into his hands, he braces himself like the paper might explode on contact. I watch his eyes dart over the list of words— Shadowborn, Legendborn, Page, Onceborn, mesmer, Merlin, Kingsmage, aether —before he crumples the page in his fist and shoves it into his pocket.
I lean into his space. “I’m not gonna let it go.”
Nick takes a slow, steadying breath, still facing straight ahead. “How are you… doing this?”
“Not sure.” I push against the wound in my mouth. “Pain, I think,” I murmur. His eyes snap to mine in concern, but I wave him off and whisper, “Better question: How do the Merlins do it?”
He shakes his head. “Whatever questions you have, I promise you, the answers aren’t worth it. You should act like last night and the Quarry never happened.”
“Pens down!” Dr. Ogren directs our attention back to the front of the classroom.
“Can’t do that.”
He turns to me then, his eyes flashing a warning. “Here’s what’s gonna happen: I am going to ask Dean McKinnon to assign you another mentor, because if we’re seen together on campus, it’ll raise suspicion. You are going to stop asking questions and move on with your semester, because this conversation is over. I’m sorry, Bree, but that’s final.” He turns back to the front of the classroom as if that’s that on that. Like he’s just handed down a decree.
I can’t help but snicker into my palm.
He catches it and scowls. “What?”
My smirk grows to a full-blown grin. I lean in close again until he tips his head toward mine, then whisper, “We may have experienced a life-threatening demon attack together and you may have saved my complete and total bacon—again, thank you—but this isn’t over. I don’t know who you think you are, but you can’t tell me what to do.”
His shocked expression is wonderfully satisfying. I shove out of my seat and push down the row until I reach the aisle and the exit.
Time for Plan B.
It takes all of five minutes to look up a list of historic homes near campus on my phone, and there are a lot. But it only takes one minute to pick out the house surrounded by woods: the Lodge of the Order of the Round Table. Not a fraternity. A historic secret society. My mind flies to robes and chants and rituals in catacombs, but before I can keep researching, my father calls.
Oh.
God.
No use in hiding.
“Hi, Dad…”
“I don’t wanna hear it.”
Oh, he’s pissed.
“Why didn’t you call me back last night? What is your word worth right now?”
What is your word worth? Another family saying. “Not much,” I mutter. “I—”… think there’s something we don’t know about Mom’s death. Know for a fact that there’s a secret network of magic users who can wipe memories and —
“You what?” he demands.
I grit my teeth and lean into a lie. “I flaked. I got caught up with some people I met at dinner and just forgot. I’m sorry.”
“What’s going on here, Bree?”
I tell him the parts of the story that would most likely match the dean’s; when I know what happened that night, and I can prove it, I’ll tell him the rest. He’s still angry. “We have an agreement, kiddo. You take care of business, you can stay. If you can’t do that…”
“Then I come home.” I sigh. “I know. I made a bad call. It won’t happen again.”
During Statistics, I skim through Google results, marking the pages that seem most helpful.
There are five known secret Orders associated with the university, all organized around a central theme—the Gorgons, the Golden Fleece, the Stygians, the Valkyries, and the Round Table. The first three use stories from Greek mythology. The Valkyries, from Norse. The Order of the Round Table is the only society to draw their name from a legend—King Arthur.
I’d shoved that list of words at Nick to get a rise out of him. To get him to crack. But now I tumble the phrases around and slot them into place with what I know of the legend. It’d be easy for someone to dismiss the King Arthur connections as a medieval fantasy about chivalry and honor that the Order founders assigned to themselves to feel bigger, older, greater than they are. But this isn’t fantasy. This is real. So, I have to ask: Is the Order based on the legend? Or is the legend based on the Order? I know “Merlin” is a title, not a person. Nick mentioned Pages. Sel’s a Kingsmage. How much of the story is true?
The website says little about the societies beyond stating that they exist, and almost nothing about the Order of the Round Table—except that it’s not only the oldest society on campus but the oldest known secret society in the country.
I have to hand it to the Legendborn; their cover is perfect. Public frats and sororities advertise their rush, host parties at their homes, and have social media accounts, but collegiate secret societies simply… exist. And not just at schools, but out in the world, too. There’s a Masonic lodge not ten minutes from my parents’ house. The casual outsider would never expect to learn what a secret society gets up to, who its members are, or how they recruit. By unspoken agreement, we all just accept that it’s not public knowledge.
Maybe the Order of the Round Table recruits sorcerers called Merlins and demon hunters called Legendborn?
I look up. Seated all around me are students who have no idea that they’re walking through two worlds every day. One world with classes and football games and student government and exams, and another with Shadowborn and mesmers and aether—and hungry demons from a hell dimension that want nothing more than to devour them. An isel could be flying above my professor’s head at the front of the lecture hall, feeding from her energy, and no one here could see it. No one but me. And them.
After class, I walk through campus and past its northeastern edge to the Battle Park forest reserve, on a mission to find a house I’ve been inside but never seen.
Growing up Black in the South, it’s pretty common to find yourself in old places that just… weren’t made for you. Maybe it’s a building, a historic district, or a street. Some space that was originally built for white people and white people only, and you just have to hold that knowledge while going about your business.
Sometimes it’s obvious, like when there’s a dedication to the “boys who wore the gray” on a plaque somewhere or a Rebel flag flying high out front. Other times, it’s the date on a marker that tips you off. Junior high school field trip to the State Capitol? Big, gorgeous Greek revival architecture? Built in 1840? Oh yeah, those folks never thought I’d be strolling the halls, walking around thinking about how their ghosts would kick me out if they could.
You gain an awareness. Learn to hear the low buzzing sound of exclusion. A sound that says, We didn’t build this for you. We built it for us. This is ours, not yours.
The Lodge has a black-and-white historic site marker right at the open gates. Original mansion constructed in 1793 —the same year as Old East. My dorm is an antebellum building. Not built for people that looked like me, but definitely built by them. And the Lodge…?
I take a deep breath, ignore the buzz, and walk up the long gravel driveway. After one turn, I see it.
The place is a freakin’ medieval castle. A dark sorcerer’s keep, sitting isolated on a wooded hill in the middle of a forest. Four circular stone towers at each corner rise to conical points with fairy tale–style blue-and-white flags at the top.
And, like the trail that led me here, it’s coated in a faint, shimmering layer of silver aether.
I hadn’t realized the wisps I’d been watching filter through the trees were aether and not sunlight until I saw it gather in eddies on the Lodge’s gravel driveway. When I reach the brick steps, I touch the iridescent layer with a tentative hand. As my fingers pass through the shimmer, I feel a push away from the tall double doors. An insistent nudge urging me to move on. Not sinister, exactly, but intimidating. A subtle warning slipped between the folds of one’s brain, just like Selwyn’s message.
Leave.
My hand lingers inside the enchantment. The now-familiar clove and smoke scent rushes toward me. “Different casters use aether to do different things.” Does that mean this is a… signature? If so, the bright smell from my bandages had to be William’s.
Selwyn’s signature is so rich here I can taste it: the whiskey Alice and I stole from my dad’s liquor cabinet last summer. Cinnamon cloves. A campfire banked low in the woods and smoke carried on winter wind.
After several heavy raps of the bronze lion door knocker, I glance down at my clothing one last time. What does one wear to stake out a secret society? I’d settled on comfort over fashion: jeans, a fading Star Wars T-shirt, low boots. My curls are in a cute bun, high and full on my head. Nothing that screams “spy.”
The door opens to reveal a pixielike girl with short dark hair in a flowy dress and leggings. Her large dark eyes rake over me, then dart around the steps and up the drive, like she’s looking for someone else. “Who are you?” she asks, not unkindly.
“I’m Bree Matthews. Nick told me to meet him here.”