Chapter 16
Three days out of the infirmary and I have figured out exactly two things.
One: my shoulder is healing faster than I expected, which is a witch's body for you—faster than a human's, slower than a vampire's. I have been in this sling long enough to fantasize about taking it off and not long enough to do anything about it.
Two: the bandage on my neck itches.
I am in the kitchen scratching around the edge of the gauze with the tip of my left pinky—because the nurse said no scratching and I am compromising—when the knocking starts.
Not knocking. Pounding.
I freeze. The pounding at the door doesn't stop.
Whoever is out there is going to come through the wood if I don't open the door, and the only people authorized to be at my door right now are my enforcers, my training supervisor, and one headmistress who I have not seen since the infirmary and who would not pound.
So that leaves my enforcers, who do not pound, and Aamon, who does not pound, and—
"Calypso Dellaby!"
—Nellie.
I make it to the door faster than I have moved in three days. By the time I get the latch turned she has hit it twice more, hard enough to rattle the frame.
She is on my porch in her grey academy uniform with her arms crossed and her brown curls pulled up in a knot that suggests she did it angrily, and the moment she sees me she grabs my one good arm and yanks me into a hug.
"You absolute maniac."
"Nellie—"
"You took too damn long to open the door."
"I sent you a message twenty minutes ago. I told you I was getting dressed."
"Twenty minutes is enough time for a person to lose consciousness if they were going to lose consciousness, Calypso. That is basic—"
"That is not basic anything—"
"It is now. New rule." She pulls back and holds me at arm's length and her dark eyes do a sweep—the sling, the bandage, the bruise above my eyebrow that has gone the color of a bad sunset. Her mouth does something complicated. "I thought you'd passed out."
"Nellie."
"I thought you'd passed out and I was going to find you face down on the floor, Calypso, and I was going to have to tell my mother that you died on my watch, do you understand? Do you have a conception?"
I do, actually. I am realizing it in real time the way I always realize things—three seconds after I should. Nellie pounded on my door because she was scared I was hurt. I have not had a person worry about me like that for a long time. The last person who did was Mom, was Lila, was—
I roll my eyes hard so I don't have to feel it.
"I'm fine, you drama queen, get in here."
She sweeps past me into the cottage like she owns the place, which—after a week of dropping by for tea, leaving tins of her mother's ginger cookies on my counter, and staring at my counter-rune for forty-five minutes trying to make sure it, in fact, works—she basically does.
She drops her bag on my couch. Toes off her shoes. Plants herself in my kitchen.
"You're coming to the unveiling tonight."
"No."
"Yes."
"No, Nellie. I have a sling. I have a bandage. I'm cleared to attend classes tomorrow and I would like to attend them having slept and not having spent an evening watching Leopold Vassard do whatever it is Leopold Vassard is going to do tonight—"
"It's a bonfire."
"Cool. Still no."
She sets her hands on her hips.
"Calypso. Attendance is mandatory for all enrolled students, and you have been cleared to be an enrolled student as of seven o'clock this morning, and the headmistress has personally signed off on the assumption you'll be there—which I know because Odette is friends with the bursar's wife and she texted me an hour ago.
So now I am here to drag you out of this cottage.
Because if you skip an event with your name on the attendance list on your first day cleared, you are giving Leopold Vassard a free shot to spin a story about you, and I am not letting it happen.
" She is breathing hard by the end. "Also you can't sit here for nine more hours alone and I refuse to let you.
Call it friendly concern. Whatever you need. "
"…fine."
"Good." She moves toward the bedroom. "Where are your formal blacks?"
"Wait. Hold on. What is the unveiling, exactly? You said the Revel was on All Hallows'."
"Oh, sweet child." She comes back into the kitchen with my one black dress over her arm.
"Tonight isn't the Revel itself. Tonight is the unveiling.
Theme drop, formal invitations go out, a hundred and fifty outside guests fly in to inspect us.
Old families. Council. Dignitaries. And then we all get to enjoy a month of activities. "
"Activities?"
"Activities." She lays the dress on the couch. "Pre-Revel salons. Charity dinners. A tasteful ball or two. Each one hosted by a different old family at a different historic property, but the whole month is technically Vassard's. He's at the center of all of it. King of the festivities."
"Lovely."
"And you—" she points a finger "—are technically a unique student status, the only first-year witch on a council oversight track in the history of this academy, and your absence at the unveiling would not go unnoticed.
Particularly not after the library. Devenir would benefit from you visibly being alive in a public place where people can see you are alive. "
I look at the dress.
The dress is fine. Short-sleeved black thing that goes to my mid-calf, one of the three things Marion picked out for me when I left the facility, on the principle that nothing about me should attract attention.
The sling will be visible over it. The bandage on my neck is not going anywhere either way.
"Fine," I say.
Nellie tips her chin up. "That was less of a fight than I expected."
"I'm tired. Don't push it." I grab the dress and change before she decides to push it.
The walk from my cottage to the central quad is fifteen minutes if I take it slow, which I do, because Nellie has slowed her stride to match mine and because my shoulder still complains when I move it wrong.
The dress fits. The sling sits on top of it.
Nellie has done my hair into a low knot at the back of my neck that hides as little of the bandage as possible, which is the point—I am not pretending nothing happened.
I am just walking through the consequences of what happened.
The smell of woodsmoke hits us before we round the last corner, the orange hue of the fire illuminating the night sky.
"Oh," Nellie says, "they went for it."
The central quad has been transformed.
The fountain at the center is gone. In its place is a fire pit the size of a small swimming pool, walled in old stone and stacked with cordwood, the flames already five feet high.
A ring of long tables runs the perimeter of the quad—white linens, candles in glass globes, dark food fitting of a medieval kingdom feast after a hunt, a service line of humans in blacks pouring something the color of pomegranates into long-stemmed glasses.
The trees around the quad have been wrapped in iron lanterns.
Woodsmoke and bodies and the kind of humid October that doesn't bother to pretend it isn't still summer.
The music is something I do not recognize—strings and a low drum, traditional, old.
Students in formal black are scattered everywhere.
Some I recognize from class. Some are seniors I have never seen.
Adults in expensive coats stand in clusters near the fire, drinking and laughing and watching us in a way that suggests we are still being closely evaluated.
The whole quad is lit gold and amber and smells like burning oak and wine and someone's seedy perfume.
It is gorgeous. I can’t deny the pull of it.
"Stay near me," Nellie says. "Don't drink the punch."
"Why."
"Because the punch is doctored. I'll get you a cider. Stay."
She peels off into the crowd. I plant myself just outside the bright ring of firelight, where the heat lets up and the music is quieter. From here I can watch the whole thing.
Three classmates from Magic Theory walk past me without seeing me.
Two upper-year vampires I have never met do see me, and their eyes catch on the sling, then the bandage at my neck, then on me, then they look away too fast to be casual.
News travels. Of course it does. There is a dead Vasreaux in the library and a witch-shaped survivor wearing the receipts, and the entire campus has had three days to invent a version of the story that suits them.
Across the quad, near the fire, a flash of dark red hair I know.
Aamon.
He is in black like always, sleeves down for once, standing with two faculty members I do not recognize, a glass in his hand he is not drinking. Faculty presence. Mandatory. He is doing his job.
He is also not looking at me.
He is doing it carefully. I can clock it from forty feet away because I have gotten good at watching for the way he moves when he is regulating himself.
He turns half a degree toward whoever is talking to him.
He nods. He tips the glass to his mouth without drinking.
His shoulders are level. Everything about him is level, and he has not glanced once in my direction in the four minutes I have been standing here, which means he knows exactly where I am and is choosing to give me a wide perimeter of space.
Say my name, he had said, and I will hear you through the door.
I wonder if he’d hear me call him right now.
I look away.
I scan the crowd because I cannot stop myself.
Zeva is near the entrance to the quad, leaning against an iron lantern post with her arms crossed, doing her best impression of a person who is here for the cider.
Corvin is further out—near the back gate, far enough that I have to find him on purpose.
Corvin is further out—near the back gate.
Far enough I have to look for him on purpose. I file that and keep moving.
Across the quad, near the cider table—Emric.