13. Chapter 12
“You’re sure you don’t wanna come?” Maeve asked from their bathroom.
She leaned over the sink to get a closer look at her shimmering purple eye shadow in the mirror.
The matching short, strappy dress was stunning on her glowing skin.
And thanks to the body glitter she applied, she was extra sparkly.
“Positive,” she said, cozy on the couch under a blanket and one of her textbooks in her lap.
“I get it.” Maeve applied one last layer of gloss on her lips before flicking the light off. “Your assessment was spooky.” Her face scrunched into a grimace. “Pretty sure I would’ve failed if I wound up in a morgue. Damn things are scary as hell.”
“Yeah, it was…a lot.” Ivy swore a layer of cold was still on her skin.
What was more concerning was how the letter from Briar was in there.
And how it led her to the casual task of breaking into a professor’s office.
She figured finding out what happened last year would involve some digging, only she didn’t think it would involve breaking what was likely a rule within the first week.
“Well, I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow over breakfast,” Maeve said with a bright smile as she sat on the couch next to her to slip on her shoes. “I probably won’t be later than twelve-thirty, but I’ll be quiet so I don’t wake you up.”
Ivy made a mental note of the time. She’d have to be back no later than twelve fifteen to make it into bed before Maeve got back. “Who knows? Maybe I’ll still be reading.”
Maeve laughed. “It’s the first week! Relax a little, even if it’s just going to the lounge to watch some TV. And that’s coming from someone who loves to study.”
“Maybe.” She wished homework was all she had planned for a Friday night. It was her usual way of spending the evening over the last year since Briar left.
“All right, I’m going to go,” Maeve said, rising from the couch and grabbing her jacket from the hook near the door. “Have a good night, Ives.”
Ivy smiled softly, a part of her a little sad that she couldn’t join.
She wasn’t too keen on parties, they always involved interacting with too many people for her liking.
She liked smaller groups. Even though they’ve only been living with each other for a week, she’d grown closer to Maeve.
They’d grab dinner together most nights to talk about their day, about books, and Maeve’s family a lot, considering she had six siblings.
It was nice having another friend. But it sucked having to keep this secret from her.
By the time the clock struck eleven thirty, she had changed from her pajamas into an all-black ensemble.
Subtle enough not to catch anyone’s attention, but could blend in as “party-wear” should she run into anyone.
She ran through some of the old pointers Briar attempted to drill into her during their brief shoplifting phase, most of which revolved around playing dumb.
It might have worked for a fifteen-year-old pilfering hot red lipstick from a department store, not so much for a twenty-six-year-old graduate student breaking into their professor’s office.
“This is such a stupid idea,” she muttered to herself. But she had no choice. With one last nod to her reflection, she walked out of the bathroom and out of her apartment.
She made her way across the dark campus, her arms wrapped around herself to quell the nervous nausea pooling in her stomach.
The paths and buildings took on a new shape in the darkness—the sharp edges obscured and softened by the night, only revealing pockets in a streetlamp’s glow.
She’d check over her shoulder occasionally, her mind playing tricks that the shadows held quiet observers of her movements.
She passed a couple of students coming from Belarune who must’ve gotten drunk too early in the night and were stumbling home, and the distant sound of music was in the air.
Between the pulsating beats, nature’s own band played a song of cicadas, frogs, and owls into the night.
The School of Nature buildings were ahead.
She’d need to be quick to avoid getting caught.
Linden Hall—where Thorne’s office was—was one of the smaller buildings facing the side of Belarune Hall, where the party was being held.
It’d probably be smarter to check for a back entrance to Linden.
Looking over her shoulder one last time to check nobody was watching, she stepped into the long strip of grass between the buildings.
She kept to the shadows. Otherwise anyone passing by would notice her.
A faint glow came from the back corner of the third- and fourth-floor windows of Belarune, casting some light on the ground.
When she reached Linden, she spotted a small set of steps leading to a door on the left side of the building.
She tiptoed up them and jiggled the handle.
Locked. She expected it to be, but wanted to check to be sure.
Perhaps it could be opened with only a simple unlocking spell?
She waved her hand across the handle, reaching for her magic to bend the lock to her will.
A small click sounded, and when she twisted the knob, the door opened.
She pushed it open and quickly got inside. Thorne’s office was down the hall and to the right. Ivy hurried and soon came across the frosted-windowed door with Thorne scrawled in silver letters. Hopefully, the professor was as trusting a person as she seemed.
Ivy tried the handle, and it opened. Thorne didn’t even have it locked.
A part of her felt guilty for breaking in.
So far, the professor had been very sweet, kind, and incredibly passionate about plants.
She was one of Ivy’s favorite professors.
Was it technically breaking in if the door wasn’t secured?
Yes. Yes, it still counted. But sweet or not, she needed that essay.
She slipped inside, closing the door softly behind her.
Thorne’s office was as cozy and green as she thought it would be. The little space reminded her of her old apartment, with all the plants and books she’d crammed inside draped all in warm colors. Patchouli and soil hung in the air. Dim moonlight lit the room faintly from the window behind the desk.
The perimeter of the room had bookcases, half filled with books and the other half with plants.
Ivy searched through the bookcases, pulling at various ones as if they would give way to a villainous lair hidden beneath the school.
But nothing was there other than books on botany and bodice-ripper novels.
A small chest was in the corner, which must hold gardening supplies, judging by the pair of worn gloves sitting atop it.
There were likely only layers of dirt in the gardening box anyway.
She moved over to the desk, which had neat stacks of paper, organized pens, and some quills on top, and pushed the burnt-orange chair back far enough for her to kneel on the ground before it.
She started with the left-side drawers, which only contained copies of lesson plans, blank assignments, and various faculty memos.
The center drawer contained basic office supplies.
She opened the top-right drawer, and her hope dwindled as there were only more books, pens, and random knick-knacks shoved inside.
“Please let this not be for nothing,” she whispered, pulling the last drawer open.
There was a green binder at the top with 1997 written on a label in the center.
Flipping it open, there was a page for each of Thorne’s classes, with the students’ names and a list of assignments.
She found her name a couple of times, though her row was empty since there had been no assignments turned in yet.
She placed the binder on the desk and pulled out the next one, which had the last year written on the front.
Swallowing roughly, she flipped through it until she spotted Briar’s name on the eighth page.
At the start of the term, she had near-perfect scores, but the last three assignments were less than half the full score.
“What the hell happened?” After those failing scores, there were two empty boxes. A lab and the final. All of which were dated in the last two weeks of the fall semester.
“So you disappeared before finals.” The last grade Briar had received was for an essay with a date of December 3.
That must be the one Thorne mentioned. She searched through the rest of the binder, but there was no essay.
Her hope was barely hanging on by a thread as she pulled out the last binder in the drawer. But there it was.
THEORETICAL EFFECTS OF PSYCHEDELICS IN ARCANE MYCOLOGY
BY brIAR MAYCLAIR
In the corner was the corresponding “F” written and circled in red.
She pulled out the essay and swallowed roughly as the anxiety in her gut sent waves of nausea through her.
It was real. The essay was real and in her hands.
She flipped through the pages, examining the handwritten paragraph, the red marker highlighting weird misspellings, bold letters, and symbols written in random places.
Except they weren’t random at all. Not to her.
Embedded in the essay was one of Briar’s ciphers. Though Ivy didn’t recall her ever using symbols before. But Briar always wanted to create her very own method for hiding her most secret messages.
Ivy sighed. Of course, with her life in danger, Briar decided it was the perfect time to create her own cipher that Ivy had never seen before.
Throughout their teen years, Ivy would find random messages shoved into her locker or hidden in her textbooks.
But they’d only use the existing methods for ciphers.
It was how she decoded the one from the assessment so quickly.
When they were younger, Briar would hide the key somewhere—tucked inside a picture frame, under the mattress, and sometimes in a book.
She flipped to the back of the essay and read the reference page line by line, searching for any clues.
When she reached the last book referenced—A Mystery of the Mind: A Theory of Psychedelic Alchemy on Arcane Thought by Ulissa Funke—she squinted over the text and noticed instead of the letter “l” in the author’s name, it was the number one.
That had to be the answer. The key to her cipher must be in that book.
It was the only book on the reference page with anything odd.
She folded the essay in half and tucked it into her inside jacket pocket before carefully returning everything where it had been.
She rolled her shoulders as she walked away from the desk, her stomach still roiling despite getting what she needed. It couldn’t be that easy, could it?
She inspected every inch of the office one last time, making sure not to leave even a single red hair behind. Once she was satisfied, she left, closing the door behind her quietly. But, as she turned, a guttural scream came from outside.