Chapter 32 Atticus
Atticus
Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.
—Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
One, one, two, three, five—I’m counting to block out the noise. Eight, thirteen, twenty-one, thirty-four… I’ve been walking for so long, I’ve lost count of the times I’ve started over.
I haven’t gone home yet. I haven’t slept. All night and day, I’ve wandered the outskirts of campus, looking at the skyline, my heart burdened by an immeasurable shame. I can’t believe I’ve been so stupid. My friends both hate me, and it’s all my fault.
The gray clouds promise more rain, making the air feel colder. Wet leaves lie plastered to the cobblestones, and a murder of crows stares down at me from leafless trees.
It’s starting to get dark, which helps me slip back onto campus. I keep my head low, just in case a security guard notices me. But I have a reason to be here.
Professor White heard about what happened and reached out, sending me a letter that appeared in my hand, just like the day Sibylline rejected me.
Her letter, on the contrary, was far more welcoming. She wants me to come by Mansart Hall so she can give me something, maybe a goodbye present, maybe a recommendation. Who knows? Either way, I have to pick up my things from the office anyway. Who would I be to decline?
A black cat sits on the stairs to Mansart Hall, watching me with vivid yellow eyes.
I look up and down the street, but no one else is around. The cat hisses when it sees me, and blocks my path.
“Sorry, friend, I need to get in there.”
But still it doesn’t move and tries to keep me from going further.
I keep trying to walk around it, and it keeps trying to stop me from entering the building. Finally, in frustration I pick it up and move it out of the way.
The black cat gives me one last baleful look before taking off at a sprint and disappearing into the night.
Mansart Hall stands before me, dark and dreary.
Warden Stone be damned. I trudge up the stairs and walk inside to see it one last time.
But no one is here. The office is empty.
There’s the sound of movement from the back room.
“Hello!” I call.
A head pops out from behind an open door, dark gray hair and a pencil sticking out of the bun. Professor White. “Oh, Atticus, just in time!” she says. “I’m so glad you came.”
I rush toward her as she emerges, closing the door behind her, clutching a leather-bound book. Her clothes are unkempt; there are bags beneath her eyes. I must look worse, though, because she grows concerned when she sees me.
“You look…Well, you look awful,” Professor White says.
“I don’t know who else to tell,” I say, looking at the office for the last time.
Then I pull Adelina’s journal from my bag.
I’m done with Sibylline. I’ve abandoned my dream.
This is all I have left of it, and I just want to rid myself of it.
I realize now why I came here to Mansart Hall.
For this to be truly ended, I need to give the journal to someone I trust. I hold it out for her to take, and her pencil-thin eyebrows rise.
“What is it?” she asks.
“Me and my friends, we found this in the tunnels, under Arches. It belonged to a wizard who did something terrible a hundred years ago. She created something she called a malum, a thing that needed magic to survive. It killed students, feeding off their life force…” I’m rambling.
I must sound insane. “The malum is still alive. I’m sorry.
I didn’t mean to tell all of this to you.
I just wanted to give this to someone. I thought it might somehow be better in your care. ”
Professor White stares at me for what feels like an eternity. Her aura is a jumbled mess, like a tornado—it swirls.
“Okay,” she says. “I’m glad you came to me. I know what we should do now.” She beckons me to follow her, taking me deeper into the office, toward a back room.
I follow, expecting to find others, but the room is empty. I thought she was taking me to meet someone.
Professor White locks the door behind us.
I swallow a lump in my throat. Why is my heart pounding so hard?
“You came here to give me the journal, so hand it over,” she says, insisting.
I hesitate. Her eyes sparkle with something I’ve never seen in her before, something not right.
She’s always been passionate—maybe some would call it obsessed—when it comes to her work, but the look in her eyes now has a sharpened edge to it.
Before I obey her, I take a breath and extend my power, reaching into her thoughts.
I don’t expect to have easy access to a seasoned magician’s mind, but as she stares at me, everything comes into focus.
It’s as if I’ve wiped a dirty lens clean, and finally I can see what’s been standing in front of me all this time.
I listen and hear her thoughts: I can finish everything.
My breath catches in my throat. “What did you say?” I ask.
Professor White looks startled, but she recovers, frowning. “I said, give me the journal.”
“I never told you it was a journal.”
Professor White stands frozen, her hand extended toward me. The look of urgency on her face disappears, and a frown takes its place. “Ah.”
My heart pounds with growing panic, but I try to keep calm.
“I just remembered, I have to go. My mom is waiting for me, she’s picking me up,” I say, reaching for the door.
I turn the knob, but it’s locked, not with a bolt, but with magic.
The keyhole glows when I try to twist it. “Can you let me out, Professor White?”
I spin around, throwing my back against the door, holding the journal tight to my chest as her thoughts wash over me: Atticus doesn’t suspect me.
He knows nothing. They are as loud as if she’s spoken them.
He doesn’t suspect a thing. There’s no evidence I tore down Arches. Calm him down. Get that journal.
I’m still trying to turn the knob, but she’s shaking her head. “Come now, Atticus. Let’s be done with this.”
But I know the truth. I know what happened.
“It was you. You were the one who sabotaged the project. You tore down Arches. You set the malum free. Why would you do that?”
Professor White smiles, though she looks somewhat surprised.
“Are you in here?” she asks, tapping her fingers against her temple. “Don’t you know telepaths are banned from Sibylline? You didn’t, did you?” She laughs. “The school doesn’t let anyone like you in anymore.”
I grip the journal with all my strength, my fingers going numb.
“I guess there’s no use hiding it. You’ll just read my mind anyway,” Professor White says.
“Yes, I orchestrated the fall of Arches to release the malum. I’d think you would understand.
You are an architect. Like me, you are a builder and a dreamer.
Don’t you want to do wonderful, impossible things?
Don’t you want to explore the limits of magic?
That’s what I’ve done. The malum is just the start of my grand design. ”
It’s like I’m in Arches all over again. Everything has come crashing down around me.
No no no, this can’t be happening. Professor White has been nothing but kind, supportive! She’s done nothing but help.
Then it hits me like a brick in the gut. She’s been using me. I was an easy target. Desperate. I’ve been blinded by my own pathetic need to impress her. I didn’t think…
I squeeze my eyes shut, blinking back tears. “Why? What’s all of this for?”
“Want to know a secret?” Professor White asks playfully, like a schoolgirl.
“When I was a student here, I barely passed my courses. I didn’t have a natural gift of my own, not like you and your friends.
But with a malum, I can absorb magic. From chaos comes everything.
I can bolster my own magic, channel from the malum into myself, take from those undeserving of it and put it to better use.
” She steps toward me, her eyes alight with conviction.
“I can make things, just like the great creators did. I can build anything.”
“You can’t do this,” I say. “You have no idea what you’re tampering with.”
“Yes, Atticus,” she says. “I do.”
From behind her, a shadow moves.
Fear bolts me to the floor. I can’t move.
The malum emerges from her own shadow.
“I just need a little more magic,” she says. “Arches had to fall to set the malum free. But I have plenty of work left to do. Now…” White holds out her hand again. “Give me the journal, Atticus. And I can make this a little less painful for you.”
The malum hisses, and my blood runs cold.
I squeeze my eyes shut.
My magic allows me to enter the minds of other people. I do it with ease. I slip into their thoughts and listen. Now I attempt something I have never done.
I reach out.