23. Chapter 22
When they left the exam room, they were too tired to do much else. Liam went back to his apartment in Grovers Hall, while the three of them went back to Embry. When they got to the third floor, they noticed the crime scene tape was gone from Ezra’s door.
“Looks like you can sleep in a bed tonight,” Maeve said as she pointed over at it as they passed to get to their own apartment.
“As much as I appreciate you letting me sleep on your couch, my back will appreciate having a mattress again.” He sighed, running his hand through his damp curls. “I’ll just, uh, get my things then.”
Once they were inside, Ivy leaned against the kitchen counter, tearing open the letter that was left behind after the exam, while Ezra grabbed his things.
When she pulled out the letter, it wasn’t really a letter at all but instead a torn page from a book.
At the top of the page was the name Ulissa Funke. Her eyes widened.
This was from the book Briar had used in her essay. She flattened the page out on the counter before inspecting it more closely. Scribbled throughout the front and back were three symbols she recognized from the cipher.
“What’s the message say this time?” Maeve asked as she came out of her bedroom, having changed into dry clothes.
Ezra stepped out of the bathroom with the handful of things he had in there and tossed them into the bag. “Any more threats?”
“No, actually, I think it’s a few letters for the cipher,” Ivy said as she scanned the page.
She moved to grab the essay from her desk.
She flipped the essay over to where she’d scrawled out the extracted symbols in the order she found them.
Beneath that was the alphabet. Between the letter she’d received today and the essay, she could make out the letters L, E, and D.
The vowel was certainly the most helpful, but there was still so much left to decode that there wasn’t anything she could decipher yet.
“I wonder if this means you’ll unlock more of the cipher with each exam.” Maeve hummed as she tapped a finger on her chin.
“Possibly,” Ivy said. “Waiting a month between each message would take too long.”
“A month will go by in no time at all,” Ezra said behind her as he zipped his bag closed.
“For us, maybe.” Ivy turned to face him. “But what about Briar? Or Callum? Or any other students? The last letter slid under my door said there would be more who would disappear.”
“We’ll go to the library in the morning to see if they have anything that can help you crack the message,” he said before he yawned.
“And what if someone goes missing again and we’re not ther—”
“Ivy,” Ezra interrupted, his shoulders slumping. “If someone goes missing again, then the police will investigate that too. If we’re to make any progress in finding out what happened to your friend, we need to rest. We can’t do anything right if we’re exhausted—physically or mentally.”
She crossed her arms. “We can—”
“He’s got a point, Ives,” Maeve said quietly. “We’ve been through a lot. Clearly, the statue spoke to all of us, judging by Liam’s reaction, and I wanna to sleep it off.”
Ivy shifted her attention between the two. Maeve’s normally bubbly personality was like someone had taken a pin to it. Did the statue say something different to everyone? Or was she missing something from what it told her?
“Okay,” Ivy whispered. “We’ll regroup another day.”
Maeve nodded before she turned to make herself some tea, and Ezra moved toward the door with his things. Ivy followed and leaned against the frame as he walked out into the hall.
“Hey, before you go,” she called out, stepping out behind him.
He turned to face her, and the obvious exhaustion was settling into his body.
Though she wasn’t entirely sure it was only physical.
His magic weakly brushed against hers, so faint she could almost ignore it if it wasn’t still so foreign to her.
But it was more in his eyes. They were always full, as if whatever he was feeling took up so much space inside him that it couldn’t help but pour out.
Now they were hollow, as if something inside him had shattered.
“Thank you for helping me today,” she murmured, stepping closer to him. “I, uh, I’m scared of heights, and I wasn’t prepared for it. Clearly.”
“We all have things we’re afraid of,” he said with a half-smile. “I’ll talk to you later, Snapdragon.”
Ivy spent the rest of Friday and most of Saturday in her room.
She tried to talk to Maeve in the morning about what happened at the end of the exam, but Maeve dodged the question, saying she had a hair appointment to get her braids out.
She couldn’t find Ezra around either. He didn’t answer the door when she knocked on it.
She could probably figure out how to find him with their magic, but… maybe he wanted to be left alone.
It wasn’t until Sunday morning that she finally saw Maeve again. Her dark brown hair was now in a tight curl bob, parted on the side and ending at her shoulders, with peeks of blonde highlights throughout. She sat at the kitchen table with some tea and one of her textbooks with a few highlighters.
“Hey,” Ivy greeted as she entered the kitchen. She grabbed a cup and filled it with water from the sink. “How are you feeling?”
“Better,” Maeve said, looking up from her book. “Sorry I’ve been distant since the exam.”
“Don’t be.” Ivy moved to sit across from her. “I think everyone is pretty shaken by what the statue said.”
“What did it say to you?” Maeve asked, grabbing her tea and taking a sip.
Ivy chewed at her bottom lip as she replayed it in her mind.
“Something about the dead three rising again, but the world isn’t how they want, the Fates magic is in or with unwilling people who can’t wield it, and that, for the first time, the future is in someone else’s hands.
When I asked who, the statue said I would be driven mad if I knew. ”
“Damn,” Maeve mumbled, tapping her fingers against her mug and her gaze dropping to the floor. “That’s…not good. I know there are more disbelievers in the Fates than there used to be, just never thought their theories could be correct. If the Fates don’t have their power, then that explains...”
“Explains what?”
Maeve snapped her focus back to Ivy. “Uh, it could explain the weird things happening. The statue said something similar to me, though it felt more like a threat. She mentioned I would bear witness to our world collapsing.”
“What the hell?” Ivy’s heart lodged in her throat. “I suppose it didn’t give you a timeline?”
Maeve gave a wry laugh. “Of course not.” Silence fell between them for a moment before she spoke again. “This didn’t feel like it was part of the exam, you know?”
“I…I wasn’t sure if I should bring this up or not because I thought I was seeing things at first,” Ivy said, leaning farther onto the table. “But before the illusion faded for good, a pair of hands disappeared into the hedges behind the statue.”
“You think there was someone else in the room with us?” Maeve asked, her eyes going wide.
Ivy shrugged. “I’m not sure how they would be. Wouldn’t there have been a fifth orb as part of the exam?”
“True.” Maeve drank the last of her tea and pressed her hands to the sides of her face with a groan. “I should go to the library early. There’s gotta be something about the Fates losing their magic somewhere.”
“I’ll come with you. I have some time before I have to be at the lab.”
Their search for anything about the Fates losing their magic came up short.
Much of what they found portrayed them as if they were mythological rather than powerful arcane beings who could control the past, present, and future.
There was never confirmation of which argument was true, but she was surprised by only one side being presented here.
At least in the texts they had found so far.
The library was incredibly expansive, even without accounting for the archives below, so finding the exact information would take more time than they had in one morning.
Ivy left for the lab to start her work-study shift. Liam was already there, sitting hunched over one of the desks with a spread of tests in front of him and his bag open on the middle stool. Abbott was similarly at her desk, poring over a notebook, except her posture was much better.
“Good afternoon,” she greeted both of them. She placed her bag on the open stool at Liam’s table. “How’re you doing?”
“Alright,” he said with an easy smile, though his hand covered the answer sheet. It must be one from her class. “You?”
“Same here,” she said. He turned back to the tests in front of him, and before she moved to Abbott’s desk to grab the clipboard, something in Liam’s bag caught her eye.
She paused, turned back to her own, and opened and rummaged around inside so she wouldn’t be caught snooping.
But on her second look, she saw a book that was torn to shreds.
The cover was barely hanging onto the spine, but she could still make out A Mystery of the Mind written at the top.
That was the same book Briar referenced in her essay.
The same one that held the cipher’s answers.
She cleared her throat as she pulled out a piece of gum, popping it into her mouth before she turned away to start inventory.
As she went through it, she had to double back due to her mind being elsewhere.
Was it Liam who delivered the letters? Was he helping Briar?
Or was he responsible for what happened to her?
Despite his majoring in necromancy, he didn’t seem like the type to hurt anyone.
His studies were more focused on the afterlife and spirits than on the dead, because he loved talking with ghosts and hearing their stories.
He also loved sports and reading comic books.
It would be unexpected. Maybe that was the point.
He could stay hidden beneath layers of sweet smiles.