28. Chapter 27
Ivy and Ezra walked into Galraine the following morning, coffee and breakfast in hand.
But before they could go to the lecture hall for history, she noticed a bright orange flyer on the bulletin board.
She slowed to a stop. It was only an advertisement for the Halloween festival at the end of the month. There was something missing though.
Callum’s poster was gone.
She snapped her attention to Ezra. “Did you see th—”
“Yes,” Ezra said, his voice low. “Security came by early this morning to let me know they found a letter in his things he was going to send to his parents. It…it said he was running away.”
Ivy’s heart sank. “No, there’s no way,” she scoffed. It couldn’t be real. They heard him scream. “It has to be fake. Maybe it’s the same person who’s writing the letters to me.”
Ezra only shrugged.
Her eyes felt like they were going to fall out of the sockets with how hard she stared at him. “You don’t believe them, do you?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “It’s plausible. I didn’t know him that well.”
She shook her head, pushing past him to go toward the classroom. Quick footsteps came from behind as Ezra caught up with her, and his hand came to her elbow. She slowed and glared at him.
“I’m not counting out that something worse happened either,” he whispered. “All I’m saying is I don’t know. And neither do you for certain.”
“Not yet.” She clenched her jaw and turned away from him. He was right. And she hated it. Neither of them knew Callum. But security finding a letter, of all things, was too convenient.
Between classes, studying, preparing for the exam, and homework this week, Ivy barely had time to think of anything else, let alone get the entire group together to look at the blueprints Ezra had copied.
Ivy tried on her own, but she didn’t understand what all the different pieces and icons meant.
Thankfully, all five of them had time after she and Liam had finished their work in the lab today.
She grabbed the clipboard, a fresh inventory sheet from Abbott’s desk before making her way to the cabinets at the back of the room.
The professor had her laboratory meticulously organized, with each cabinet holding one to three ingredients by type.
Ivy would first mark how many of each were left before going into the back room to grab any stock from last week.
Once the inventory was finished, she’d fill out the order form for Abbott to sign.
Cabinet after cabinet was the same as it had been every week.
Once she reached the one for the bottles of sweet enfantium, she noticed it was nearly empty.
The ingredient was a flavor amplifier, as the flower took on the scents from its surroundings to blend in easier, so it was in many things like coffee sweetener or medicine, but she hadn’t seen so much used before.
She opened the second cabinet, which held more of the same, and only a few bottles remained.
“Um, Professor?” she said, glancing over her shoulder where Abbott sat. The professor tore herself away from the essay she was reviewing.
“Yes, Ivy?”
“I noticed there’s hardly any sweet enfantium left. Was there something wrong with them?”
Abbott waved her hand and shook her head. “No, no, nothing like that. There were some last-minute changes to the Halloween festival, and I needed to provide more than expected on top of the normal requests from the kitchens.”
“Oh, alright,” she said, marking it on the page.
It made sense, but she couldn’t believe something as large as a school-wide festival would make a change requiring such a big order at the last minute.
What if Abbott hadn’t been so particular in her maintenance of these ingredients?
She tutted her tongue as she finished with those cabinets and moved on to the rest.
Once she finished taking inventory, she moved on to scrubbing equipment, of which there was an abundance.
She assumed it also had to do with the warfare exam coming up.
Abbott extended the open lab hours for students this weekend.
Even she and Maeve took advantage of them.
Of all the beakers, cylinders, and vials, there were a few flasks which still had drops of liquid clinging to the bottom.
The liquid was an iridescent pink that glittered in the overhead light.
She brought one of the flasks to her nose, and the faint rose extract emanated from the glass.
That was an odd flavor or scent to have for Halloween.
Then again, she rarely went to any parties in the past, so maybe Arcania had something special involving roses.
Nature had several gardens around campus featuring them.
She shrugged it off, running the flask under the water to rinse the remnants away.
It wasn’t until after sunset that she and Liam finally left the lab.
They met the other three at the dining hall for dinner.
Liam sat next to Maeve, of course. He seemed to be developing a bit of a crush, and either Maeve was oblivious or completely uninterested.
Ivy sat in the empty seat between Ezra and Rhea before picking up her fork to devour her dinner.
“These essays have been killing me,” Maeve groaned, pushing the pasta around on her plate with her fork. “I hate to say it, but my professor for that class is a total buzzkill.”
“I know what you mean,” Liam said, swallowing his last gulp of soda. “My labs this year got me so knackered I’m going to lie in bed for the rest of the day after this.”
Ivy watched silently as her friends chatted about classes, homework, and the small moments of peace they found outside of it all.
What would it be like if Briar were sitting next to her? Would all of her friends also be Briar’s friends? Would people crowd the table, vying for Briar’s attention? Any time they were together, everyone somehow flocked to her.
Instead of joining in the conversation, she drifted off into her own mind.
“Bye everyone!” Briar blew a double kiss to the table of their peers. There were several who protested her leaving or groaned with disappointment. But Briar stood anyway and grabbed her bag. “Come on, Ivy. Time for class.”
Ivy rose from her chair and followed Briar out of the dining hall. “We don’t have class though.”
“I know that,” Briar said with a roll of her eyes. “I was tired of being around them. I’d rather just spend time with you, my real friend.”
Ivy grinned. She wore the title with pride. Out of all the people Briar could be best friends with, she chose her.
Briar linked arms with her and beamed a dazzling white smile. “I’m thinking we get all of our favorite snacks and watch almost the entire first season of Raina the Werewolf Hunter that I have on tape.”
“Sounds perfect.”
“Almost feels normal, doesn’t it?” Rhea asked quietly, shaking Ivy out of her memory, as the others continued to chat.
Ivy turned to her and smiled faintly. “Yeah. Almost.”
“Last year, Briar and I would come here for breakfast every Wednesday because we both had history together at ten. We’d go over homework together, gossip…she was sad you couldn’t be there with us, but she was confident you’d get in next time.”
“Was she okay…for the most part, anyway?”
“Yes.” Rhea sighed and played with the sleeves of her sweatshirt. “And no. I’m not sure what happened in the end. She was paranoid someone was stalking her and wanted to hurt her for—” Rhea held up her hands to make quotation marks with her fingers—“what she did.”
“What she did?” Ivy’s shoulders slumped. What could Briar have done to make someone want to hurt her? She knew Briar had a lot of secrets, some which weren’t even entrusted to her. It stung, but she made peace with it. She never thought they would cause this to happen.
“I don’t know what she meant by it. I never saw her again after that.”
“I wish I could’ve been here for her,” Ivy said. “If I had, maybe she wouldn’t have to hide.”
They stayed quiet for a moment before Rhea spoke again. “Do you think we’re chasing a false hope?”
“Not yet,” she murmured. “I didn’t give up when people were telling me she was dead. I won’t now that I know she’s out there.”
Rhea nodded slowly before turning and meeting Ivy’s eyes. “Good. I agree. She’s still out there, waiting to be found.”
“Oh!” Before Ivy returned to the last of her food, she grabbed her bag and rustled through it to pull out a small vial of purple liquid.
“I made this for you the other day when Maeve and I were in the lab preparing for the exam. It’s a sleeping draught I thought might help with your insomnia if you run out of your stronger medication again. ”
Rhea blinked, her mouth curling into a half smile. “You did this for me?”
Ivy nodded. “The nights are usually the hardest for my parents. Betsy uses this to help them calm down and get to sleep.”
“Thank you.” Rhea gently took the vial from her, staring at it as if it were precious. “This is the nicest thing anyone outside of my own family has done for me.”
“Of course,” Ivy said, putting her bag back at her feet. “A friend of Briar’s is a friend of mine.”
Once they finished their dinner, they returned to Ivy and Maeve’s apartment, where she pulled out the blueprint pages and spread them out on the coffee table.
The group sat hunched over them, poring over the intricate details.
She should’ve grabbed something other than a stupid yellow legal pad.
The color made the ink hard to distinguish, and the paper’s lines sometimes blended with the building’s.
Liam groaned, letting his head fall back against the couch. “I’m going cross-eyed.”
“I can’t make out anything strange on this page,” Maeve muttered, her face barely a few inches away from it. She put it on the coffee table before rubbing her eyes.
“Nothing on this one either,” Rhea said.
Ivy looked over at Ezra with a brow raised. “You’re sure you copied everything correctly? Maybe some of your magic left traces of the ink on you an—”
“I got everything I could see in the moonlight.” Ezra put the sheet of paper he was studying on top of the others.
“That can’t be right.” Ivy pushed herself up from the ground, pursing her lips as she paced around the living room. She brushed her hand through her hair. Again. And again. And again, until there were broken strands stuck in her nails.
“Hey,” Maeve said softly as she stood before reaching for Ivy’s shoulder. “If this doesn’t work out, I’m sure we can find another way.”
“How?” Ivy asked. She shook her head. “If I don’t figure this out now it’s just another day Briar is gone. It’s another day she’s trapped somewhere. She could be alone, or scared, or hurt. And I’m here…playing detective and getting nowhere.”
She glanced at Ezra in time to see his head reel back at his own words being thrown out, and she squeezed her eyes shut. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mea—”
“It’s alright, Ivy,” Ezra said, moving to stand next to both of them. “I know you’re frustrated, but Maeve is right. We still have time.”
“You don’t know that.” Ivy pushed past them, grabbing the blueprints off the coffee table. She crumpled the pages into a ball and tossed them in the trash. “If you’re all so sure there’s another way, feel free to brainstorm and fill me in, but I’m going to bed.”
She marched into her bedroom, shutting the door behind her and pressing her back against it. Every time she made a small bit of progress, it was like she was flung backward again. She flopped herself onto her bed and her bag clattered to the floor, along with everything inside it.
She grit her teeth, pushing herself up to clean, then froze. On the floor, among her books and pencils, was a blue envelope. Sealed. How the hell did it get in there? Didn’t she have her bag with her the entire day?
Ivy reached down with a trembling hand, grabbing it and tearing it open.
YOU’RE NOT READY TO KNOW THE TRUTH
— brIAR