Chapter 33 #2
Rectangular objects leaned against the walls, covered by tarps.
Ellory tugged one free to reveal a portrait, newer than anything in the room.
It was painted in the same style as the ones of the Warren founders in the museum, but this one was labeled DEAN ARTHUR O’CONNOR I.
Stasie’s grandfather frowned at Ellory from the center of the oil painting.
A crow was perched on the windowsill behind him, which, like the painting of Howard McElking, had sunlight streaming through the glass.
Ellory freed another portrait. This one read DEAN PRESTON COLT and featured a younger version of the professor she’d come to know so well, a snow owl cupped between his hands.
He was in front of a stained glass window that she recognized from the Warren Communiqué office, and, like in Richard Lester Odell’s portrait, a moonless starry sky in different shades was on the other side of the glass.
The third and final portrait was of Dean Nathaniel Graves, a stern-looking white man with curly black hair and narrow black eyes. A hummingbird hovered by his shoulder, and he gazed out a window into a midnight sky empty except for a crescent moon.
My father is a cruel man, Hudson had said. Ellory was looking at a painting of Hudson’s father, a man deeply entrenched in magic, who had, nonetheless, gaslighted his own son into believing it didn’t exist.
Disgust made her hands shake. She wanted to carve his portrait up, but she took pictures of all of them instead.
Arthur O’Connor was the only one of the three who had ever been dean of Warren University as well, and there was no reason for these portraits to be commissioned, let alone here, if Colt and Graves had been deans at other schools.
They had run one of the three magical disciplines of the School for the Unseen Arts: evocation, incantation, and divination.
Colt was part of this, just like her vision had warned.
And he was, at least, close enough to answer her questions—whether he wanted to or not.
If she could figure out how to tie this back to the paper, to weaponize the silence between his answers, she might get him to reveal more than he’d intended.
It had worked for interviews with tight-lipped sources during high school.
The trick was never revealing how much you already knew.
A scream cracked the silence of the schoolhouse.
Ellory jumped, whirling around, but she could see no one in the dim room.
The scream ricocheted off the walls, building upon itself, until it sounded like a chorus of panic.
She turned and turned, but no matter where she looked, there was nothing.
Just that endless clamor, a ghostly wail of ancient pain.
Clapping her hands over her ears, she stumbled toward the door.
A rectangle of light beckoned her to freedom until a shadow filled the space.
Ellory skidded to a halt, her ears still covered, squinting at the figure limned by the sun.
She could feel eyes on her, but the person was silent, and if they heard the screaming, they were unaffected.
She got the sudden urge to put some distance between her and this stranger, and she gave in with three large steps back. The figure didn’t move.
“H-hello?” she said, her voice swallowed by the screams that still deafened her. “Who are you?”
The shadow charged toward her. This time, Ellory was the one to scream.
She threw herself to the side, narrowly avoiding being tackled by a person she still couldn’t see.
She could no longer blame the sun for casting them in shadow.
Their form was nondescript, as if her eyes hadn’t adjusted to the darkness.
Their face was blank, not in expression but in features: They had no nose, no eyes, no mouth, just sunken crevices where those things would be.
Their skin was corpse gray, and as she watched, their muscles swelled and their legs elongated until they were six feet, seven feet, eight feet tall.
Their nails were needle sharp as they reached for her.
But this was not the person who had attacked her on the quad or at Moneta.
This was no masked enforcer. This twisted creature was an assassin.
Ellory rolled back onto her feet and ran.
The floor shook as the monster chased her down.
The scream that had weakened her abruptly cut out, leaving Ellory with nothing but her quick breaths and desperate steps to keep her company.
Her pursuer was as silent as a cemetery: no breathing, no growling, no threats.
Her heart leaped to her throat as every rumbling step brought it closer and closer and closer…
The door had never been so far away.
Talons pierced the back of her jacket, scratched her spine.
Ellory threw herself into the sunlight, her face wet with tears.
A clawed hand stretched out, only to dissolve upon contact with the outside air.
One minute, the monster was stretching the foundations of the door, desperate to drag her back into its lair, and the next minute, it was gone in a flutter of black spots that clouded her vision.
Still, she kept running, cutting through the tall grass and past the tree line.
Then and only then did she slow enough to glance back again.
The monster was gone, but so was the clearing, the building. In their place was a thicket, and the winding path that led deeper into campus. Her heaving breaths combined with the sound of rushing water, a sign that she was close to the riverbank.
If not for the sting of the scratches and the chill wind that had already found the hole in her only winter coat, Ellory might have thought she had imagined it all.
She fell into the grass beside the path, pressing her hands against her closed eyes. “Holy shit.”
“Are you okay?!”
Her blurred vision resolved itself into an upside-down Hudson Graves.
There were twigs and dirt in her hair, and she was pretty sure she was bleeding, but this was just as unbelievable as the danger she had escaped.
Ellory was so confused that she allowed him to pull her to her feet.
He dusted off her sleeves and then reached for her hair before seeming to realize what he was doing.
He cleared his throat, stuffed his hands in his pockets.
“I followed you,” he said gruffly. “I saw you heading into the woods alone, and I thought maybe—you might need—I don’t know.”
Ellory noticed, belatedly, that he was dressed in the kind of clothes people typically went running in: stretch leggings and comfortable sneakers, a long-sleeved breathable shirt and headphones wrapped around his neck. Sweat beaded at his temples, and his coat was nowhere to be seen.
“I don’t need you,” she heard herself say. “But I’m glad you’re here.”
Slowly, invitingly, she tipped her head forward.
Hudson studied her for a moment and then stepped closer to pick the debris out of her hair.
Ellory wanted to fold herself against him, to close her eyes and know that she was safe, but she held herself still before she embarrassed herself again.
His touch was gentle and focused. She let that soothe her frazzled nerves instead.
“What happened?” he murmured.
“I think I found one of the buildings for the School for the Unseen Arts,” Ellory said.
“I did a summoning spell, and it led me to a clearing with a schoolhouse in it. I think it might have been the oldest one, going back to Letitia Rose’s time.
” She told him everything she had found inside but excluded the portrait of his father.
She would tell him, eventually, but not now, not like this.
She thought of how small he’d sounded on the balcony, recounting how many lies his family had told him, and she didn’t want to cut him with another one when he was already so worried.
“I think something terrible happened there. That scream…it was like the death echo of Malcolm Mayhew’s murder.
It was awful. If this is where Tabby died, then she was in incredible pain the whole time. ”
Hudson cupped her cheeks, his thumbs caressing her damp face. Her breath caught. She hadn’t realized that she was still crying, and now she was paralyzed by the look in his eyes, the protectiveness of his touch, the safety she’d found in his company.
“I’m so glad you’re okay,” he whispered. “So, so glad.”
“I’m getting mixed signals here,” she whispered back.
Hudson laughed, more breath than sound, more relieved than amused. “I care about you, Morgan. Isn’t that obvious by now?”
Ellory was frustrated with him, and perhaps she always would be, but she couldn’t deny he was right.
It was obvious. He had worried about her, and he was here.
Every time she called him, he was there.
Even when she didn’t call him, he was there.
She had spent her entire life living for other people, embodying her parents’ hopes, keeping track of her aunt’s medicines, making her own meals even when she worked late.
She didn’t need Hudson Graves, or anyone else, to take care of her.
But damn did it feel good that someone wanted to.
“We need to talk to Colt,” she said, shuddering at everything she had just seen. “Maybe he’s the key to tying all this together. And, even if he isn’t, I want to know whatever he knows.”