Chapter 20
Ellory had only a few hours before she needed to be at Powers That Bean.
Usually, she would spend those hours taking a long shower, doing last-minute homework, or—if she was ahead in her assignments—streaming a new show so that she had half a chance at making conversation with her classmates.
A lack of free time meant her knowledge of pop culture was a couple of months behind at best, and the people she hoped to endear herself to were usually talking about the latest episode of things she’d never even heard of, let alone found time to start.
Today, however, she spent those hours at Bancroft.
It had been two days since Hudson had planted the idea in her mind, and her attempts to suppress it had only made it more insistent.
Magic. No, her magic. Could there truly be such a thing?
Bancroft still bore the scars from her last visit, a circle of cracked dirt and dead grass.
Winter’s premature chill had driven everyone to the gymnasium, where the indoor track would provide them with whatever exercise the weight room and rock-climbing wall didn’t.
There was no one to see her squat and press her gloved hands to the soil.
She expected a jolt like lightning up her arm, a heat like touching a pot with her bare hands, perhaps even a shimmer in the air that faded when she looked directly at it.
But nothing happened. The ground was cold.
Ants scuttled out of her way, disappearing into the grass.
Blackened dirt clumped beneath her nails, but that was all.
That was normal. If not for the fact that she had somehow caused this…
Even as she thought it, Ellory’s mind wanted to again reject the idea of her magic.
There had been a time when Ellory had believed.
She checked the back of closets for a hidden road to Narnia, she left windows open for Peter Pan to take her to Neverland, and she stared unblinkingly at her bedroom lamp in an attempt to develop Matilda’s telekinesis.
Magic was something that hummed in the veins of the world, and if she could only find a way tap into it, she would feel it in her own blood, this endless possibility and limitless power.
Even America had seemed like a magical place when she’d first flown over it, all rippling greenery and smooth gray lakes, mist-topped mountains and red-brown fields, bigger than several Jamaicas put together.
A land of dreams—where she was the dream of her ancestors, every breath another word in her evolving story.
But her parents, and Aunt Carol, expected her to grow out of it.
Belief in things that only she could see was childish, and speaking to the dead was a cause for concern.
She stifled any magical potential to pursue a concrete future, proving her worth with grades and certificates, ribbons and trophies.
Warren had brought that potential roaring back. The university was steeped in the occult, calling to that deadened part of her that the world had forced her to forget.
Still, it was easier to accept the existence of magic than to accept that she could wield it.
Ellory reminded herself to channel the confidence of a mediocre white man and got back to her feet.
Another quick glance confirmed she was alone.
She frowned at the circle, fingers twitching restlessly at her sides.
Maybe magic was a matter of intention. That day, she hadn’t wanted the ball to hit her in the face.
That morning, she’d wanted desperately to be able to breathe.
In the orchard, she had wanted to find her way.
Life had taught her many times that wanting and having were two different things, and they rarely intersected for people like her.
But maybe magic was different. Maybe it was that invisible line between have and have-not.
She thought of grass, thick and green, crawling over the dirt in an eruption of slender blades.
She thought of rich soil brimming with its own kind of life, worms and beetles, fungi and bacteria.
She thought of stones and caps, of sticks and discarded wrappers, the debris of the day-to-day stretching across the quad.
Unbidden, the words from the hidden museum floated across her mind: memory and creation.
She remembered what Bancroft had once looked like, held that image in her head, and imagined herself nudging her present to match that past.
Doom clawed across her skin. Her neck burned with fresh soreness. Her hair quivered in a sudden gust of wind almost strong enough to carry her off her feet.
Ellory clenched her eyes shut, breathing through the nausea and unease.
And then it was over. She opened her eyes.
The circle was gone, replaced by a carpet of grass that cupped her sneakers.
It was the wrong color for November, a vibrant viridian that was more common in spring.
The quad around it had faded as autumn trudged on, speckled with red and gold leaves blown from the surrounding trees, and it made the formerly burnt circle look unnatural.
But as Ellory stepped back to admire her handiwork, she at first felt nothing but a rush of excited pride.
Magic. She had done magic.
A hysterical laugh escaped her. No matter how many times she rubbed her eyes or turned away only to look back again, the grass remained there as if it had never been gone.
Her head began to ache, a tightness similar to the stress of studying too long—but worse.
The image of Bancroft, lush and bright beneath the summer sun, faded.
It felt as though her mind were wiping itself clean like a blackboard, erasing old information without making space for anything new.
Ellory looked down, and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t remember anything but the blackened pit that Bancroft had once been.
This vibrant new lawn she had conjured was brand-new to her, even though she had reconstructed it from memory.
Pain flared in Ellory’s neck, from an ache to a sting.
Her knees wanted to buckle, but she managed to remain upright.
Remember. Magic ate at her memories, she realized.
To alter reality, she lost her grip on it, recollection by recollection.
Ellory swayed on her feet, dizzy from the implications.
From the soreness. From the weight of not knowing what she’d already lost.
Caw. Caw.
Crows streaked across the sky, ink black against the silver overcast. Below, a pack of passing students watched her from the other side of the field, whispering among themselves.
Ellory would have smiled, but her muscles felt like they were under someone else’s control, and the pain still lit her body like a circuit board.
By the time it became semibearable, the students surrounded her in a half circle of reluctant concern. Two of them hung back, radiating an air of don’t make this my problem, but the remaining three were in the middle of offering to walk her to the health center.
“No, no,” said Ellory, proud of her voice for sounding normal when she felt anything but. “I’m fine. Dizzy for a second.”
“See?” said one of the men in the back. “We’re going to be late if we don’t hurry up.”
“It’s a movie, Brayden,” said the woman in the center, rolling her eyes. “We can start it from the beginning.” She toyed with her phone, searching Ellory’s face. “Are you sure you’re okay? I don’t want to hear later that you collapsed after I left.”
“I won’t collapse. Promise.”
Brayden made an impatient sound. His companion hissed at him to shut up.
It took Ellory five more minutes of calm assurances and stifled flinches to get the group to move on, and by then the pain had lessened even further to an ache that she could live with.
Once she could no longer see the students, she pulled out her phone, already knowing what she was going to see in the blurry, badly centered photographs.
Rem?mber.
Her tattoo was back.
***
“You’re terrible at this,” said Hudson, his voice flatter than the Great Plains.
Once again, Ellory had been hoping to find him working late in Graves Library.
Instead, she’d searched every floor but the basement and turned up nothing but a handful of study groups and one student in a suit taking a video call in a private room.
She lingered outside the building now, her phone pressed to her ear, her free hand tracing her still-sore tattoo.
Magic had brought it forth, which made it likely that her magic—her magic!
—was the thing Ellory was trying not to forget.
That only opened more questions, but it was a strong enough theory for her to reach out to Hudson before her closing shift at Powers That Bean.
And he was, as always, unimpressed.
“I thought I’d be happy when you got your phone back. Now I’m wondering why I called,” she muttered. “I did magic, Graves. Real magic!”
“Or you gave yourself brain damage.”
Ellory rolled her eyes. “I’m perfectly healthy. I can’t imagine how disappointed you must be.”
Hudson sighed as though she were being tiresome.
It was amazing, how belligerent people could twist any situation to blame their own bad attitude on those who had to deal with it.
“I’m happy to be your partner in this supernatural investigation, but I can’t be the only one of us who cares whether you live or die. What good are answers to a corpse?”
The darkened path before her faded into the background as her mind stretched miles away to imagine Hudson Graves as he probably was: Dressed cozily.
Sprawled out on his bed. Brow so furrowed that its grooves were considering buying permanent real estate on his forehead.
Book open in front of him as he took a study break to answer her call.
She could see it perfectly, as if she’d witnessed him like that a thousand times before, and the sudden shiver of familiarity made her tattoo throb anew.