Chapter 14 Atticus
Atticus
Silence is safe.
—Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White
Today calls for pizza. Lots of pizza.
When Dorian and I heard about what happened at the Rosette—word spreads fast on campus—we were sick with worry for Raven and rushed to find her.
We found her safe and sound outside the library, where a group of advanced wizards were reassembling the broken stained-glass window, the tiny fragments sparkling like glitter as they floated up into the air. Good as new.
We spend the rest of the day at my place, sprawled on the window seat, gorging on extra-large pepperoni pizzas, just like old times. A fire demon can set a friendship back to rights, who knew. Raven explained what happened, the evidence—ash and the smell of sulfur—still on her clothes.
“I found out more about your mystery woman, too,” Raven says to Dorian. His eyes widen, and he freezes, a slice raised to his lips. “Her name was Adelina Ward.”
“Ward,” he repeats.
“Aspen mentioned she was the daughter of some rich family who donated to the school, but I don’t know anything more than that. The Rosette doesn’t have any more info.”
“How’d Aspen know about her, then?”
Raven shrugs. “He’s good with the archive. He remembered seeing her name. But it seems like her files are missing now. He invited us to St. Ad’s Halloween party, by the way.”
I nearly fall out of my seat. “You mean St. Adolphus Hall? The secret society?”
Raven smiles at me curiously. “Yeah, you’ve heard of it?”
“Professor White warned me that they were trouble, but I’m dying to know what those rich kids get up to.”
“So you’re coming? Both of you?”
“Aspen will be there?” Dorian asks. He can’t hide the edge in his voice, no matter how casual he tries to be. I don’t have to be able to read his mood to know that.
“He’s my…date.” She tiptoes around the word as she averts her gaze, raising it slightly to look at me, gauging my reaction.
I’m not sure how I feel. She’s moved on.
I can’t be surprised. I shouldn’t be. What went down between us, on this very window seat…
Maybe it’s best we don’t mention it again. Pretend like it never happened.
“Sure,” Dorian says after a long moment, watching me. “We’ll come.”
Raven beams. “Oh, and it’s a masquerade,” she says. “Atticus, think you can paint us some masks?”
Dorian is still staring at me, unaware of the vast sea of unsayable things between me and Raven. When he looks at her, his eyes soften. We’re almost back to normal. Almost.
“Sounds fun,” I say, and pop a rogue pepperoni in my mouth. “Can’t wait.”
—
Professor White clicks her tongue. “Shame,” she says.
“What?” I ask, momentarily confused as I look up from her schematics.
For a fleeting, heart-stopping second, I thought she was talking about me, but Professor White is frowning at the collapsed scaffolding inside Arches. “It seems that our efforts are stymied once again.”
Right. Back to work.
Apparently during the night, more of the scaffolding fell.
No one knows how it happened, but Professor White suspects shoddy craftsmanship this time, although she is still looking for the saboteur on her team.
Now she shakes her head, as if she’s disappointed in the scaffolding.
“I’ll have to complain to Warden Stone about the people he hired.
If he’s not taking the restoration seriously, then I’m not sure why I’m here. ”
She runs a frustrated hand through her hair and whips the pencil out from it. Over her shoulder is a single-strap musette made of faded brown leather. She opens the flap, retrieving a notepad. I spy a black book in the bag made of darkened leather, with gold foil glinting on the spine.
“What book is that?” I ask.
Professor White is so busy writing in her notebook, she starts as if she’s forgotten I was here.
“What? Oh, this? It’s an old reference text.
I found it in the archive.” She turns her attention back to her notes, writing and speaking at the same time.
“Arches was originally built to house a new department of magic dedicated to the art of creation. But it was never used. It’s been largely empty since.
I’m pulling every book I can find on the subject.
” She sighs as if burdened by a great weight.
“Bindings were once common practice in architecture. They attached certain elemental forces to the structures. Arches contains some unique bindings related to living things, creatures from other planes, demons and such…”
I’d felt those spirits when I first visited the site, but I had no idea how they were used to build Arches. “May I take a look?” I ask, hopeful. “Maybe I can research the subject for you.”
“Of course, I will lend it to you when I am done. Although be careful, the spells contained in this book are quite powerful. Using them without the proper training can be dangerous. Sometimes”—she glances in the direction of the Rosette—“magic is dangerous even in the hands of our staff.”
Raven had told us how the lesson had gone wrong. The professor’s incompetence led to student injuries and the building being damaged, but she didn’t get fired. Average teachers would kill for that kind of job security, I bet.
“Now,” Professor White says, straightening herself. “Shall we inspect the damage?”
She climbs the scaffolding, and I follow, the ramp wavering beneath me.
It creaks and groans, and I throw my hands out to steady myself.
I’m worried about the soundness of the structure, but Professor White doesn’t seem bothered at all.
Five floors of scaffolding have collapsed into a heap of twisted metal and wood, and yet she strides onward confidently.
“We’ll have to rebuild everything,” she says, marching ahead. “Have the workers install the beams into the putlog holes properly this time.”
“You think they weren’t installed properly?” I ask. The putlog holes are little slots in the wall where the building supports the scaffold.
“Of course not. I’m under a tight deadline, and I know the assembly crew had only a day to get it done. Warden Stone trimmed the budget, forcing us to accelerate the timetable. If he didn’t have the final say in my tenure, I’d give him a piece of my mind.”
I allow myself to smile, since her back is to me. She’s fighting the bureaucracy, one scaffolding at a time.
“I can oversee the repairs, if you’d like,” I say. “I’ve had experience with these kinds of things.”
Professor White looks me up and down. “Sounds like a plan. Follow along.” At the top of the remaining scaffolding, we survey the work.
She’s prattling about how much this will set us back when I notice something peculiar about one of the putlog holes.
I kneel close to the hole, letting her ramble while I inspect it.
My skin goes cold when I realize what’s wrong.
“Um, Professor White?” I ask.
She spins around, her mouth half-open as if she’s about to make another point, when she sees what I’m looking at. “My goodness!”
The hole where the beam sits is crumbling, the stone turning to sand.
“This wasn’t an issue with the scaffolding,” I say.
“No, it’s the building itself,” she says thoughtfully. “We need to work faster.”