Chapter 29 Atticus
Atticus
Silence is of different kinds, and breathes different meanings.
—Charlotte Bronte, Villette
My legs stop working somewhere around the garden. I don’t remember leaving Stone’s office, I don’t remember descending the marble stairs or passing under the ivy trellises. I don’t remember anything. It’s like I’m operating on strings. But now they’ve been cut, and I’m left hanging by nothing.
Fired. It’s over.
I’m vaguely aware of my location—a garden in the quad, surrounded by Greek statues.
In the middle is a stone fountain and cold-looking benches that might as well be carved out of ice.
The fountain is empty, and the statues stare down on us, their gazes filled with reproach.
Dorian collapses onto a bench, fists in his hair, elbows on his knees.
Raven leans on a statue, her back to me, rigid, angrier than I’ve ever seen her.
Me, I’m numb. I’ve been hollowed out. There’s now a hole in my chest.
I start to pace. I still taste dirt, and ash, and my own blood. I’m chewing a hole on the inside of my cheek, and I welcome the pain. It’s the one thing I can control now.
My mom is going to be so disappointed. I can’t face her. I don’t even know how I’ll be able to break the news. Maybe I should just go into one of the steady magical trades. Being a psychic for the police department pays decently. Give up my dreams. They were stupid anyhow.
“But I don’t want to go to Paris!” Raven wails, then looks at us in a moment of sheer self-awareness and starts laughing.
It’s so absurd that for a moment Dorian and I laugh, too.
“Why do you have to go to Paris?” Dorian asks.
I raise my eyebrow. This is the first I’ve heard of this. I guess there are some secrets she can keep, even from me.
Raven sighs. “When we decided we were going to get jobs here, my parents tried to talk me out of it, but I wanted to come so badly, even if they disapproved. So I lied and told them I was taking a gap year in Europe. I wanted them to think that I was thinking about other schools. I’ve been sending letters to my cousin in Paris to mail home to my parents.
Now I have to go there. Otherwise they’ll kill me. ”
Dorian and I exchange a look. “They’re not going to kill you,” he says.
“No, they will,” she says, laughing again. “So I’ll have to go.”
She’s so spoiled, and she doesn’t even know it. Unlike me and Dorian, she can bop off to Europe. Without a degree from Sibylline, I’ll never get the kind of magical job I want. And what about Dorian? His mom’s on Medicaid. That’s the only thing keeping her alive. What is he supposed to do now?
“I just—I don’t want to leave you guys,” Raven says as tears form in her eyes.
And right then, I forgive her for still having the world at her feet. Seeing her sad makes me want to burn down the whole campus. Sibylline can hurt me all it wants, but it can’t hurt Raven.
“We’ll figure something out,” I promise. All for one and one for all.
Dorian folds her into a hug. He soothes her with quiet murmurs, and she wraps her arms around his chest and cries into his shirt. I don’t want to feel jealous of her, but I do.
My back aches, my head pounds. A migraine is coming on, and all I want to do is sink into bed, pull the covers over my head, and hope that this was all just a bad dream.
A figure approaches, wearing a gray uniform and a shiny badge. A security guard. “I’ve been asked to escort you to the public streets,” he says. “This campus is private property. You need to leave.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I say, throwing up my hands. “Whatever.”
Dorian and Raven walk ahead while I trail behind, determined to stay on Sibylline’s stone path for a millisecond longer, as if hoping to absorb some last bit of magic from the atmosphere. But the security guard pushes me firmly in the back, making my wound twinge, urging me forward.
I turn, look up, and see Stone watching us from his office window. Backlit, his body stands rigid as if carved from marble. I sneer at him, and the guard shoves me again, harder. Stone watches as we’re escorted all the way to the street and the gate closes behind me.
The clang of hard iron rings out in the cool autumn air as the lock slams into place, banging like a judge’s gavel.
—
We slide into our favorite booth at the Acroteria, thankful that it’s just outside the limits of the campus.
I’ve done my best to wash off the dirt, filling the bathroom sink with sand, which still lingers here and there, in my cuticles and under my nails.
I pick at them idly while Dorian orders a pot of tea to share.
Raven sits across from me, her chin resting on her palm as she gazes out the large window.
The streets are empty. Classes should be starting right about now.
The morning is unusually dark, the sky crammed with storm clouds that refuse to give up their rain. Greedy.
I still can’t get a proper read from Raven. Like the clouds outside, her aura is opaque, and the longer I look at her, the more frustrated I get.
“So you just wanted to keep Adelina’s journal?” I ask, breaking the silence between us.
Raven’s gaze slides to me. “I didn’t want to give it up. I couldn’t. It’s the last book of magic we might ever get our hands on.” She bites her lip, a prick of white flashing behind red. “It’s important.”
“That book is evil,” I tell her. “It was used to hurt people.”
“It’s just a book.”
“Is it?”
Raven scoffs. “There’s so much more we don’t know about this magic. You want to throw it all away?”
“Maybe some things aren’t supposed to be known.”
Raven stares at me. She’s changed since we’ve come here. Sometimes it’s like she cares more about magic than how dangerous it can be. But I can’t bring myself to say it. She, of all people, should know how words can be used to hurt just as they can be used to inspire.
“We can’t keep it,” I tell her. I hold out my hand.
For an agonizing moment, she stares at me, her breath fluttering in her chest. Reluctantly, she slides the journal across the table toward me.
I can tell it’s taking a lot for her to give in, but I’m grateful she listens.
She’s right in a way, it is just a book, but it feels like a loaded gun in my hand.
I slide the book into my bag, lean back in the booth, and take a breath. A gust of wind kicks up wet leaves, splattering them against the window. Almost dying and getting fired in the same day has me feeling empty.
I can’t stop thinking about what I saw in Warden Stone’s office. “He knew what a malum was; he didn’t ask us to define it. Stone knew,” I say.
“You think Warden Stone’s responsible for everything that’s happened?”
“Didn’t you see that illustration on his desk? The body on the pentagram?”
Her eyes widen. “What? No.”
I don’t want to believe that Warden Stone could be responsible for the malum getting free, but I don’t know what to think anymore. Who would believe us anyway?
Dorian’s voice cuts in. “Look at this.” He’s come back to the table, a ceramic pot of steaming tea in one hand and mugs looped around his fingers in the other. He carries a newspaper tucked under one arm, and he drops it onto the table. It’s the school paper, The Tyrian. “I saw it on the counter.”
The Tyrian is magically imbued and updates in real time.
“ ‘Another mysterious accident ends in tragedy,’ ” Raven says, reading the headline aloud. Her eyes are round when she meets my gaze. My whole body goes cold.
“Another student is dead,” says Dorian, jabbing his finger at the article. “Their body was found this morning. All classes are canceled until further notice.”
It explains why the campus was empty.
Raven leans over the newspaper, her eyes moving across the page. I know she doesn’t want to miss any detail. She scans the article three times before she leans back in her seat. “The malum…It has to be.” She holds her head in her hands.
“Hey, it’s not your fault,” I say. “We did what we could.”
Her jaw hardens, and I know my words give little comfort.
Another student is dead.
The student smiles at us from their picture. Nerdy, with square glasses, innocent. It feels like an ice pick has been stabbed into my chest. I know all too well what his final moments were like. No one deserves to die like that. No one. My eyes burn just thinking about it.
When I blink away the tears, I notice something in the photo. On his jacket, he’s wearing a pin with an eye and a star—no, a pentagram. I recognize the symbol.
“He was a member of St. Ad’s,” I say. My mind revs like an engine.
Raven nods.
“And Pippa, the one who died from the archive, she was trying to join them, too, wasn’t she?”
“Yeah, I think so,” says Raven.
“You think the killings are related?” Dorian asks.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” says Raven.
Professor White always seemed suspicious of them, told me to stay away. Maybe it was for a good reason. But then I remember seeing Aspen that day at Arches.
“Aspen is a member,” I say. “He has connections to all of the victims. I saw him lurking at Arches after it fell, like maybe he was looking for an entrance to the tunnels. He has access to restricted grimoires. Do you know for sure where he was last night? And the night Pippa died?”
Raven goes still, staring at me. She’s rendered speechless.
“You think Aspen is involved?” Dorian asks me.
“Maybe he knows more than he’s letting on.”
“But what would Aspen want with the malum? Why use it to kill kids from St. Adolphus Hall?”
I fall silent. I don’t know. I start crosshatching on a napkin in front of me, dragging my fingernail into the paper in neat, even lines. My back aches, and I try to hide the discomfort by shifting slightly in my seat. Dorian notices, though.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
“When the monster attacked me…it felt like it wasn’t just cutting me open, but that it was taking something from me.”
Both Dorian and Raven gape at me. “What do you mean, taking?” Raven asks.
“I don’t know.” I wince at the memory of the claws still fresh in my back. “I’m just telling you what I felt. Like it was feeding on me somehow. Not on my blood but…something deeper.”
“Adelina said the malum needed to feed, that it required magic to live,” says Dorian. “Do you think that’s what it was doing to you, feeding on your magic?”
I shrug. “I don’t know…maybe?”
“But you’re fine? It wasn’t able to finish—right?” Dorian asks.
“I think I’m okay. We stopped it, but this isn’t over. It’s still killing people, maybe taking their magic or something, getting stronger every time.”
Dorian takes a deep breath. “What is it we’re dealing with? Chaos incarnate? How do we even stop it?”
It’s a rhetorical question. None of us know. And without access to Sibylline, we might never know. His words hang in the air between us. The gentle clatter and bustle of the cafe echoes around us. My tea sits long forgotten in front of me.
The gloom outside matches the aura over our heads.
“It knows our faces. Maybe it’ll try to come after us again,” says Raven. “If it needs magic, we’re the obvious targets. We have power.”
Dorian folds his hands over his mouth, his gaze distant. I can tell he’s thinking a million things at once.
A small part of me, the part that hurts, wonders aloud. “Maybe we really should let Sibylline take care of things. They specialize in magic. They’re the ones who have been studying the craft for centuries. They can handle the malum.”
Admitting it hurts. But I miss home, I miss my mom, I miss my old bed and my old room. I miss the way things used to be. I miss when we were the Oneiric Society and things weren’t so fucking complicated between us.
Once I’m on a roll, I don’t stop. “I never wanted to be caught up in grand conspiracies or…goddamn shadow monsters!” I bury my face in my hands, mumbling, “Shit. The last moment I felt any kind of real joy, like everything was going to be all right, was when I kissed Dorian. And then everything got worse. So much worse.”
When I lift my head from my hands, Dorian looks stunned. I almost don’t know why, but then I realize what I said.
“You…you kissed Dorian?” Raven asks me, as if she’s unsure she heard correctly. “When?”
My cheeks get hot. “At the St. Ad’s Halloween party.”
“Is this true?” she asks Dorian, shocked.
“We don’t have to talk about it,” he says, trying to change the subject. He won’t look at me. I’m a monster. I just outed him without even thinking. I of all people should know how that would feel.
Raven blinks, eyes misting. She turns back to me, as if looking for the truth, and I sense her pain as my own. I never meant to hurt anyone, but I try to explain.
“You were off with Aspen,” I tell her, “and Dorian and I wanted to test the boundaries of his magic.”
“So what we did that one night…” She can’t bring herself to finish the sentence. “Did it mean nothing at all?”
Dorian stares at both of us—now it’s his face that’s flushed red. “You and Raven…you guys?”
Now I feel like I’m trapped in a cage. No way out.
Raven’s still waiting for me to answer her, so I do. “You didn’t seem like you wanted to talk about it, so I didn’t. You seemed perfectly happy with Aspen.”
“That’s not fair,” says Raven. “You made that very clear. You didn’t want to be with me. Aspen does. Don’t use that against me.”
Dorian finally interjects, raising a placating hand between us. “Please, stop. We’re all figuring things out. We’re still friends. The three of us—friends. Always, right?”
But Raven looks stony. “Not sure what kind of friend would use us like that.”
“That’s not fair,” I say, my voice wobbling. “I didn’t mean to hurt you—”
“Well, you did. Whether you meant to or not.”
I look to Dorian but find no sanctuary. He’s picking at the edges of his gloves, and doesn’t look either of us in the eye.
In trying to have them both, I’ve lost them both.
Outside, the storm rages. The rain comes down in sheets, coating the window.
I want to sink into the cafe booth and vanish. I don’t deserve friends. Maybe I deserve this, this air of hurt and betrayal.
“Right.” I nod. “Then I guess this is it, then. Have a safe trip home.”
Without another word, I walk out of the Acroteria, and no one stops me as I wade into the freezing rain, never once looking back.