Chapter Twenty-Seven
She knew he hated the idea as soon as she said it. But she had no idea how much he hated it until Anaya burst into her dorm
room at ten past midnight, ready to murder her for the crime of never telling best friends what perilous danger you are secretly
in, and instead of Bram immediately lying his ass off about everything that had happened, he told her it all in great and
explicit detail.
Then demanded Anaya order her to see sense.
“Go on. Tell her that breaking into Hargreaves’s office in the dead of night is foolhardy and strictly forbidden by me. And
by you, a person she might actually listen to,” he said. And somehow instead of collapsing under the weight of the most unhinged
story to ever exist, Anaya gave her a look.
“He’s right, you know. You’ll get into her office, and it’ll eat you.”
She had to throw up her hands. “Oh, come on. All you’re going to do after he spills that great mess of nonsense is gang up on me?”
“Well, that great mess of nonsense is you not being murdered by a secretly evil Professor Hargreaves. Or not so secretly to
be honest, because, well, she did just let a werewolf eat a student right in front of us,” Anaya said. Then seemed to process
a bunch of stuff all at once, and turned to Bram in a rush of glee and shock.
“Oh my god, is that why you got yourself bumped to the remedial classes? So you could make sure a werewolf didn’t eat her?
It is, isn’t it? That’s why you threw her into a tree!
You know, I thought that was weird at the time. ”
But Mina had to make an incredulous noise for that. “You did not.”
“Did so. Why did you think I’ve been so accepting of you and him having some kind of weird thing? It was obvious you had freaky
soulmate-bond nonsense going on. I have totally read this book before.”
“If you had, could you not have just clued me in a little?”
“I did try. In fact, sometimes it felt as if I could almost tell that you wer—” Anaya started to say. But just as she got
to the point, the delighted light in her eyes seemed to darken. It turned inward, slowly, and her breath caught in her throat.
It was like seeing her own expression in a mirror, when she’d realized.
And sure enough, sure enough, a moment later Anaya spoke the confirmation into the suddenly brimming-with-tense-energy air.
“I’m someone else, too, aren’t I? Somehow, I’m someone else, too,” she said, and now the air fairly near crackled.
She practically saw the understanding pass between them.
And the name was on her lips before it was even all the way through.
“Jyoti. You were Jyoti, and I was your friend Lili. And Frank—”
“He was my guy. He was Will. And we spent all our time in the secret house, the summerhouse under the stairs. The north wing stairs, the invisible door,
oh my god. Is that why I kept thinking there was a door there when I couldn’t see one? Is that how I knew how the dining hall
worked, how I knew that it was relief that sparked me?” Anaya met her eyes, dazed. “We were all friends.”
“We were.”
“Then you both disappeared, and I don’t know what happened after that. I don’t know what happened. I think I left the school;
I think I was frightened—I don’t know,” she said, looking from Bram to her and back, as if they had the answers. But of course,
that part was beyond them. I was dead and he was asleep, most likely sure he was a danger to you, too, Mina thought, even as Anaya had more to ask. “Did someone call me back as well? It can’t have been Will—he’s such a dope.
I adore him, but he’s a dope. Oh, Will, were you okay being a dope somewhere, on your own?”
It didn’t surprise Mina to hear the break in Anaya’s voice then.
Or to see her suddenly sit down, hard, on the edge of the bed. Face in her hands, body trembling minutely. It made her go
to her friend before she’d even thought about it, a gentle touch on her shoulder. And words spilled out, before she could
stop them. “You are the friend my heart has been crying out for all my life. The one I knew was there but didn’t know how
to find. Bram, I knew how to get to him, but you . . . oh god, Anaya, I’m so sorry; I’m sorry I’ve dragged you into all of
this. I didn’t know what I was doing,” she said, words descending into a babble and then finally a break in her own voice.
It made Bram step forward.
Just like he would have done in the past, when his friends were troubled. Once we hugged each other, in the garden of the summerhouse under the stairs. We formed a circle, an unbreakable circle, full
of comfort for all our hurt, she thought, and just as she did, Anaya turned and threw her arms around her. She spoke into her hair, voice thick with
tears.
“Friend, what are you sorry for? You brought me back from being probably murdered by Professor Hargreaves. And now I get to avenge my own most likely terrible death. And Frank’s most likely terrible death. Oh my god, do you think I brought back Frank? Do you think I brought back my big daft Will?”
She pulled away then, searched Mina’s face.
She didn’t have to, though, now. The answer was clear.
“I think we might have all brought back each other. For love. And for this. To finish what we started. To make things fair,”
Mina said, and that energy boiled. It bloomed. It became a bracelet of memories and understanding between them, bright as
a new star in the Calabaraian sky.
“I think I’ve changed my mind about going to that office,” Anaya said.
And this time, Bram did not protest.
She could tell he was still nervous about the plan. But it felt as if he was a little less so, knowing that Anaya and Frank
were watching Hargreaves’s sleeping quarters, while they tackled the office. Or not Anaya and Frank, exactly. Jyoti and Will.
Jyoti, who loved to dye her hair pink with magic, and made huge pots of keema for them to all eat in the breaks between terms,
and had a bicycle that flew because she loved the movie E.T. Will, with his dimples and his obsession with televisions and his tendency to blurt out the strangest things.
“I think someone dropped me down a well,” he said, as they stood between the staff quarters and the offices. And then Anaya
dragged him away, half giggling over the absurdity, half thrown by the existential horror of remembering your own death. Just
as they all were. Or at least all but Bram.
He was just unsettled that they were all so fragile, and might leave him again at any moment.
She gathered magic and pushed it into uncovering whether Hargreaves’s door had any kinds of alarms or protections on it, and came up with nothing.
Yet he still made her check and check again.
And after she had, and she had sprung the lock, he didn’t want her to go in.
He put a hand out to stop her. Tried to maneuver her behind himself.
“Please, Lil,” he said. “At least let me protect you a little.”
It was his expression that convinced her, however.
She could see how tense and haunted it was, even in the near darkness of three in the morning, in the east wing office hallway.
His eyes seemed enormous, liquid. That soft mouth was now a tense line again. And when he heard a sound from somewhere down
the hall—just wood settling, nothing more—he seemed to choke while trying to breathe. One hand went out to her, to shield
her.
She had to let him go first.
But she kept hold of him. She prepared herself to yank him back or maybe even throw him through a portal, if she could make
it in time. Draw a circle; that will be fastest, she told herself. Or make a glass wall again, of the sort that stops things getting to him.
And it helped.
But she still held her breath as they stepped inside. Her heart still hammered so hard she could see her own skin jumping,
when she caught a glimpse underneath the V of the shirt of his she had on. She was sweating, trembling. She jerked at the
first shadow she saw and almost flung a fireball.
Only to find a completely empty room.
Quite literally—Hargreaves apparently had almost no furniture.
Just a punishing-looking chair, and a tiny table, and a stunted little shelf with nothing on it.
“No books,” she whispered to him and was heartened to see him look just as mystified and disgusted by this as her.
I now have a partner in crime for all my weird concerns, she thought.
Then squeezed his hand tightly.
And he squeezed back.
Even though this whole thing was clearly a bust.
“Yeah, we’re not going to find a single thing in here. She doesn’t seem to believe in secret drawers. Or keeping records.
Or even having a place to hide the heads of her untold amount of victims, so she could rub them all over herself when she
feels sad,” he whispered back, through the hollow silence.
Much to her horror.
“Jesus. Is that really the sort of thing you thought we might uncover?”
“Maybe. I mean, if she killed you, then purposefully left me to suffer for thirty years, and possibly murdered Jyoti, too,
and maybe Will, she has to be capable of a lot. Who knows what other horrifying things she’s done over the years—and to whom.”
“I did wonder if it was worse than just wanting you to suffer. She wrote a paper once about some vampire blood. People using
it for weird purposes, doing things with it they shouldn’t. And the tone was so . . .”
“So what?”
“Stilted. Strained. I don’t even know how to explain.
It was like looking into something that had been hollowed out.
Completely terrifying,” she said, so far into her thoughts about it that she didn’t see the look on Bram’s face.
She didn’t notice that he was looking past her, at the door.
Body suddenly so tense, it was trembling, like a plucked wire.
One hand slowly reaching for her waist, to surreptitiously urge her behind him.
She even carried on speaking. “Though, of course, not as terrifying as doing something like this.”
Then she looked up and saw.
His still face, the tremor running through him. How almost behind him she was now. And she didn’t hesitate. She was already