Chapter 8
EIGHT
GWENNA
The next day, after class, I can’t bring myself to go back to Camlann House right away. The air there feels tense, worried. From whatever happened with Lanz—to Lanz?—but also in general. Like everyone’s on edge. Too many…masculine egos clogging the air, or something.
So, instead, I bundle myself tighter in my scarf and head to Cornubia Hall.
“Well,” Morgan says, cracking open the door to her suite. “Look who’s out and about.” She’s wearing just a tiny baby-blue T-shirt and sweats, despite the fact that it’s close to freezing outside.
“Hey,” I say. “Can I come in?”
“Sure. Please.” She throws the door wide and beckons me in.
The place is its usual colorful disarray, with the heat cranked to just about subtropical—explains the T-shirt—but the air smells slightly acrid instead of its usual sweet and perfumey.
Something on the stove, I realize. Shedding my coat on the couch, and debating losing my sweater, too, I tiptoe over to peer at what’s bubbling: brown, thick, suspicious. I wrinkle my nose.
“Is that a…potion?” I ask.
“What? No.” I turn around to see Morgan’s face fall.
“It’s supposed to be lentil soup.” She scowls at the pot, pushes past me, and stabs at it with a wooden spoon.
“I thought it was a soup kind of day.” She nods at the window, where sleet is lashing the glass and the campus lampposts have come on even though it’s only around 1 p.m.
“Oh,” I say hurriedly. “No, totally.”
Morgan fixes me with a look. “Gwenna, A, I’m not stupid, and B, you’re a bad actor. Goddess, this smells like indigestion feels.” She snaps off the burner and shoves the pot back off the heat. Then shrugs. “Oh well. I have bread, at least. And fancy cheese. You want?”
“Sure.”
Morgan finds a paper plate and slaps together a rudimentary cheese board, which she drops on the coffee table along with a paper-wrapped baguette.
“So what’s going on?” she asks, curling her feet under herself on the couch. “How are you?”
“I’m…hanging in there,” I answer, taking the armchair opposite her. “For now.” And that is how I feel: like I’m dangling at the end of a rope. Like I’m holding on for dear life.
And maybe I am.
God, it really is hot in here. I have a T-shirt on under my sweater, but it’s low-cut. Not in a scandalous way; I don’t think it even shows any cleavage. But low-cut enough to show the edges of my scar. The one over my heart.
“Mm.” Morgan leans forward and rips a hunk off the baguette, which she throws at me. “Think fast,” she adds, too late, and the bread hits me square in the lap.
On the other hand, I think, it’s just Morgan.
“Um, thanks.” I pop the piece of bread in my mouth and slide the sweater over my head. Morgan grabs some bread for herself, along with what looks like half the slab of Brie, and settles back into place.
The air feels better. If she notices the scar, she doesn’t comment.
“And how are they doing?” she asks at last, swallowing. “Generally.” She blinks. “Collectively?”
“The guys?” For some reason, I feel myself blush just saying that phrase. The guys. “How should I know?” I answer, a bit defensively.
“How? You’re their…” She trails off, and it’s like we can both sense the absurdity of the word girlfriend in this context.
“You’re theirs,” she says simply. Then frowns. “Or they’re yours, I guess.” She pauses again, then nods. “Yeah.”
They’re mine. My stomach does a little flip.
She isn’t wrong, I suppose.
I tuck some hair behind my ear. “They’re fine. Or, no.” I give my head a shake. “God, what am I saying? They’re a mess. All of them. Kingston and Kai are picking at each other—”
“Typical,” Morgan sighs.
“—and Cal’s speaking even less than usual, which hardly even seems possible. And Lanz…” I trail off.
His face in the kitchen.
Pale. Pained. Almost angry.
Just leave me alone.
“I think Lanz is sick, or something,” I finish.
Morgan’s brows draw together. “Sick how? Like, barfing sick, fever sick—”
“No,” I say. “Not exactly. I’m not sure. Nerves, maybe? He basically fainted in the kitchen today.”
Morgan considers. “Mm. He always was a ball of anxiety.” She shrugs. “Has he tried Xanax?”
I laugh in spite of myself. “Morgan!”
“I’m just saying! Mallory swears by it.” Morgan cackles. But her grin fades when she looks back at me. “That bad, eh?”
I nod, wordless.
“You’re worried about him.”
“Yes,” I admit out loud.
Very. And I’m not sure I quite realized it until just then.
“Hm.” She pops to her feet and brushes over to the kitchenette, where she bangs open one, then two, cabinet doors, rummaging for something.
Of course. Why hadn’t I thought to ask her earlier? Morgan does magic. Healing stuff. She’d given me that salve for Kai, when he…
I can’t even finish the sentence. But for Kingston, too. Those tonics and things.
Of course she’ll know what to do.
“Try this.” Whatever it is, she unceremoniously chucks it at me. “Apimancy.”
I somehow manage to catch it—or stop it with my body, at least. “Ow.” I pick up the object that’s glanced from my chest to my lap: a small screwtop jar of something golden and viscous. I frown. Apimancy? Apes is bee in Latin, so… “Is this—”
“Honey.” Morgan nods and flounces back to the sitting area.
I examine the jar. “What do I do with it?”
Morgan gives me questioning look. “You eat it?” she says. “Or, not you. One eats it—whoever is ill. Serve to him in a cup of warm milk. He’ll feel better.”
“Because of the magic?”
“Because milk and honey is good for you,” Morgan says. “The magic part is observing the residue left in the cup when he’s done. It’ll tell you what’s wrong with him—or, not you. Me. But you can tell me what you see, and I’ll interpret it.”
I nod, turning the little jar around in my fingertips. “So, like tea leaves.”
“Yep. But better. Bees know things,” she adds sagely.
“Thank you.” My throat feels thick with gratitude. It feels good to have something to do, to have my hands on a solution for once, for however small a problem it may be. “You’re the best, Morgan.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Morgan smiles winningly. “That why you came here? Just to use me for my magic? And my cheese,” she adds, helping herself to another hunk.
“More or less,” I joke. “No, I don’t know. I just needed to hang out. You know, normal girl talk stuff.”
“Mm.” Morgan swallows. “So you’re saying you’re not ready to see my research project, then?”
There’s the tiniest hint of disappointment in her voice. I frown.
“Your…”
My mind jumps back to Easter Sunday, to Morgan and me in my bedroom at Camlann
I did a ton of research. All of this stuff about magical rites and fertility goddesses and the ties to pagan rituals across the world and…
“Oh.” I give my head a shake. I still don’t want to think about it. But Morgan did this for me, I think. And maybe I can get it over with quickly. Beats going back to Camlann, anyway “No, no,” I say out loud. “Of course. Is it…here? Can you show me?”
Morgan’s eyes light up. “Oh, can I ever.”
“No, no, Innana and Ishtar are actually the same.”
Thirty minutes later and Morgan is talking me through what can only be described as a serial killer board.
She’s scribbled dozens, maybe hundreds of notes, names, dates, locations on pastel pink index cards and tacked them in various clusters to a corkboard that’s easily five feet wide and barely rests on her dresser—where she got it, I have no idea.
But I’m impressed.
Some I recognize—Greek and Roman gods and goddesses, a few characters from Irish annals I’d read with Emrys—and some are wholly foreign to me—roughly anything east of Constantinople, plus some of the more obscure Nordic and Slavic traditions.
“Innana”—Morgan extracts the card I’m holding in my fingers and delicately re-spears a pushpin through it—“is Sumerian. Goddess of erotic power, war, and resurrection. But her Akkadian equivalent”—she points to another card—“is Ishtar. The one your church stole for the name of the Easter holiday.”
“Ah,” I say. “Of course.”
I take a step back and settle onto Morgan’s bed to survey the full sweep again.
“So where do we fit into all of this?” I ask.
Morgan shrugs. “You tell me.” She flourishes a pen and another stack of cards. “I’ll write. Start talking.”
I do. This time, it’s easier—easier because it’s Morgan, and easier because I’ve already heard Kingston recite the story once, and somehow that makes it feel more abstract, like I’m tracing over a tracing, playing a little game of telephone.
I cut to the chase, anyway, summarizing what I remember from Moroslav in the church.
Before Kai—
“Got it.” Morgan tacks up a little card that says RUSSIANS, then another one underneath it that says SPRING MAIDEN = DEAD. It’s so matter-of-fact I almost have to laugh.
“What?” she says, irritation lacing her voice as she glances over the corkboard.
“Nothing,” I say. “It’s certainly the most comprehensive conspiracy theory map I’ve ever seen.”
“Oh, bite me.” Morgan rolls her eyes. “Maybe you can keep this all straight in your head, but I’m not that organized.”
I glance around her bedroom, noticing for the first time that I’m sitting on what appears to be unfolded laundry—clean, I hope. Fair enough.
“No, no, it’s great,” I insist. “Really.”
Morgan huffs. “Thank you.” She turns back to the wall.
“So that sort of overlaps with all this”—she waves a hand at the cluster of ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN RITES notes—“but also these”—she gestures at the PRE-CHRISTIAN CELTIC AND brITANNIC area, which takes up a good half of the corkboard.
She taps her pale fingernail to the card reading brID.
“You’ve got your girl ‘Saint’ Brigid”—she draws air quotes—“right?”
Right. I remember that from before the Candlemas Ball. Imbolc, Brid, how all those traditions and beliefs sort of got mushed into Christianity once it took over what would eventually become England and Ireland.
I nod. Morgan looks pleased with herself. She flops back onto the bed next to me, studying her handiwork from a greater distance.