Chapter 23
The nurse put Hudson in charge of monitoring Ellory for the next twenty-four hours, assuming that they were together and ignoring their fervid protests to the contrary.
Ellory was given Tylenol and a lecture from Hudson before he took her to the student center, where she received a six-pack of ginger ale, an ice pack, a bottle of water, and a second lecture.
She let Hudson preach about the dangers of leaving her phone behind, because they were in public and she was more concerned with checking every nook and cranny for more masked figures.
But as soon as they were back in the car, she glared at him.
“You can do magic,” she accused, “and you didn’t tell me.”
Hudson paused with his hand on the keys. Instead of starting the engine, he dragged that hand over his face. “I didn’t know.”
Violet-gray clouds had overtaken the once-blue sky.
Gentle rain began to fall, plinking against the roof like an intermittent drumroll.
They were still in the parking lot of the student center, but the streets had emptied in light of the weather.
There was no one to witness Ellory and Hudson in his Barracuda, arguing about the esoteric turn their lives had taken, and there was some comfort in that.
Ellory opened her water, downed her pills, and stared through the wet windshield.
For a while, the raindrops provided the only sound.
“I didn’t want to watch you die,” Hudson murmured. “But I was too far away to do anything about it…until I wasn’t.”
“Yeah, I understand that,” said Ellory, remembering Malcolm Mayhew and the murder she couldn’t prevent.
Her frozen limbs had forced her to bear witness to something that haunted her to this day, and she wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
“What I don’t understand is how. How could you not have known?
How could you listen to everything I told you, everything I experienced, and not…
?” Confide in me, too. Ellory’s throat was tight with an emotion worse than anger.
She was hurt. Hurt that he hadn’t trusted her the way she’d been forced to trust him.
No, she hadn’t been forced. She’d wanted to. Maybe she’d even needed to.
“I’ve always believed in the unbelievable,” said Hudson, “but it feels different when it’s me. Surely you can understand that, too.”
Ellory knew he was referring to how hard she had fought against the idea that she might have magic, even after she’d accepted that magic did exist. But it still wasn’t enough to mollify her.
He could have shared his suspicions. He could have admitted he had questions at all.
He could have done anything but show up to help her again and again while keeping such a large part of himself hidden from her.
If he could cover this up, what else was he hiding?
He knew her, but had he ever allowed her to know him?
Hudson started the car. She stared out the window as they pulled onto Falstaff Road, driving south back to Moneta Hall.
Soon, he would foist her off onto Stasie—or, more likely, Tai—and go back to ignoring her, leaving her frustrated under the guise of letting her rest. He was reliably unreliable, while she had been attacked for the second time this month by people who wanted to silence her at any cost. Ellory’s eyes traced the angles of his face in the mirror the graying sky had turned her window into.
Rain carved his reflection in half, making him look like both monster and man.
“What were you doing at Moneta?” she finally asked. “I thought you were busy ‘studying.’”
“Boone told me you’d left the Communiqué office, but you weren’t answering your phone. I…worried.”
“Tell Boone to mind his own business.”
“I mean, I’m the one who asked how you were doing, but I’ll relay the message. Why weren’t you answering my calls?”
Ellory remembered again that her phone was still—hopefully—in a heap on the sixth floor with the rest of her things. She had put it on Silent before going to the newspaper office. “Why would I? You said you were done.”
“Morgan,” he sighed.
“Don’t. Don’t talk to me like I’m the problem.”
“No, I—you’re right. I’m sorry. I did say that. And I shouldn’t have. That’s why I was asking about you. I come with a peace offering.”
Hudson tipped his head toward the back seat, where each turn caused a stack of books to slide from one side of the vinyl seating to the other.
A battered tote bag was on the floor; it had clearly made a valiant effort to contain the books before sinking out of sight, defeated.
It was joined by a pair of black soccer cleats, tied together by the laces, and Hudson’s Montblanc sling, each pocket zipped tight.
“I pulled these from my shelf because they mention secret societies and esoteric traditions. Maybe you’ll get more out of them than I did.”
His tone was different. She was used to his arrogance, his peevishness, his introspection.
This was a clipped discomfort, like he was hesitating over every word while trying to seem like he wasn’t.
The acetaminophen had eased her physical pain, but mentally she still felt out of sync with the hazy world.
Except him, her enigmatic sometimes ally.
“I can’t trust you if you don’t trust me,” Ellory said, closing her eyes.
She was exhausted all the way down to her bones, but she doubted she would sleep tonight.
At least not until she had a theory about why that enforcer had chosen her room to wait in, and if they’d actually gotten inside, and what they had touched or taken if they had.
“You encouraged me to believe in my magic. You gave me a way to investigate Boone. You’ve been there for me twice in the wake of these attacks.
But you hid your magic from me. You didn’t notice that you live with someone who has the ideograms of the Old Masters written on his skin.
And I feel more unsafe right now, in this car, than I did bleeding in that stairwell.
” Her eyes opened, meeting his gaze through the windowpane.
“Out there, I know who the enemy is. In here, I don’t even know you. ”
“Morgan—”
The car came to a stop in front of Moneta.
Ellory unbuckled her seat belt, eager to put some distance between them.
With or without a concussion, she couldn’t think in Hudson’s presence.
Every time she tried to hold on to her anger at him, he inevitably wore her down.
But her anger was a gift and a shield. It had protected her from the person in the mask, and it would protect her from a man who knew only how to lie.
He caught her hand before she could get out of the car.
Ellory stopped, but she told herself it was because the rain had gotten heavier and she didn’t have an umbrella.
With the door open, the evening wind bit through the car, making her shiver.
She reluctantly turned to face him head-on, meeting eyes the dark brown of Southern sweet tea.
His thumb touched her pulse point, and an infuriating warmth suffused her body at the way he was always so gentle with her.
“Should I walk you up?” he asked. “In case that—person is still hanging around?”
“You didn’t kill them?”
“What? No. Do I look like I kill people?”
Ellory stared at him. Hudson scoffed.
“I’m pretty sure I kind of…banished them. If I’d killed them, there would have been a burnt body. And no matter what you think, I’ve never killed anyone before. I wouldn’t be okay afterward.”
Ellory’s foot was getting wet where it rested on the pavement.
She settled back into her seat, but she didn’t close the door.
Hudson deserved for his precious car’s precious internal detailing to get water damage.
He deserved worse than that, but she was too tired for punitive justice.
All the while, he didn’t let go of her hand, and she didn’t make him.
It was the only thing keeping her steady.
“Whatever you think of me right now, I’m on your side, Morgan. I want you to remember what you’ve lost. I want the Old Masters to be stopped. I want…”
I want you. And I’m tired of pretending I don’t.
Yeah? Then do something about it.
Ellory gasped back to the present. She yanked herself from Hudson’s grip and escaped into the rain.
“I need to think,” she said, slamming the door.
On his expression, open in a way it hadn’t been before, eyes tinged with an inexplicable grief.
On the words she’d heard as clear as day, their voices having a conversation they’d never had.
On this emotionally draining day, which was tearing her soul to pieces faster than any magic.
His lips silently formed her name. Ellory turned and fled into Moneta Hall without looking back.
***
That night, Ellory crashed into a slumber so deep that Rip Van Winkle would have been jealous.
She’d told Stasie that someone had attempted to break into their dorm, and she’d listened to her roommate tear security a new one before ordering a camera for the door.
She’d told Tai about her trip to the health center, and Tai and Cody had spent the rest of the night checking on Ellory’s head, leaving notes with time stamps so she would know they’d come to visit.
When she woke up to an empty room the next day, her headache and nausea had ceased, and she felt less wrung out.
Her stress hadn’t fully faded, but she was learning to live on high alert.
By late afternoon, she judged herself healed enough to read, devouring the occult books she’d gotten from Hudson.
The tote bag was waiting outside her door, off to the left so no one would trip over it.
She’d found it on her way back from the bathroom, and her stomach had flipped at this small consideration.
Research was easier than thinking about him and all the tangled emotions his lies had embedded in her.