Chapter 23 – — Headmaster Ashmoor, Private Notes #3
“Because I didn’t think she’d want anyone to know, and I didn’t even know who she was until we were assigned leads our first day in the patient wards.”
“That’s why she was staring at you. I remember thinking it was odd,” Ellavee says.
“Yes.”
“So you think Malric wanted to get back at her or something?” Lux asks.
“Maybe, I don’t know. The body was drained of blood and Malric showed up tonight with what looked like scratch marks on his neck.
” I chew on my bottom lip, not liking the idea of Malric or Draven being killers.
I know there are other vampires in this school, but Malric is a known threat.
“I’m just saying, what else drains a person? ”
“Well,” Lux says slowly, “technically quite a lot of twisted creatures can drain a body. Certain hollowfolk for sure can. There’s a thing in the northern bogs my father talks about that I can never remember the name of—”
“On school grounds?”
“That’s the part, isn’t it?” Lux’s pace slows a little. “If it was a twisted creature, it came from somewhere. And if it came from somewhere on the grounds, it came from somewhere they haven’t told us about.”
Ellavee tilts her head. “Or somewhere they have.”
We walk in silence for a stride.
“Lux,” I say, “what do you mean by that?”
“You’ve never wondered why we’re not allowed on the tenth floor of the patient wards?”
“I’ve wondered every time I’m in that building,” I say.
“What do you think is up there?”
“I have no idea. That’s the problem. I’m a professor’s daughter, and I’ve lived at this school on and off my whole life, and I don’t know what’s on that floor.
” She shrugs, and her breath plumes white.
“And that’s only one place. You know how many parts of this campus I’ve never been in?
Easily half. There are whole wings that don’t appear on any map they’ll give a student. ”
“So we don’t know.”
“We don’t know.”
“Great.” Ellavee stops walking. “Well, there’s one way to find out whether it was a vampire.”
Lux and I turn. Ellavee has that look. The one she gets when she’s up to no good.
“No,” Lux says immediately.
“Hear me out.”
“No.”
“We know where the morgue is. We did our first autopsies in the rooms right outside it. It’s past midnight, the academy is in chaos, half the faculty is running around the main hall, and Cane counted us on our way in. That means no one is looking for any of us for the rest of the night.”
“Ellavee,” Lux sighs.
“If it was Malric, she’ll have fang marks and blood under her nails if she scratched him. If it wasn’t him, she’ll have something else. Either way, we’ll know more than we know right now, which is nothing.”
“Ellavee, if we get caught in the morgue—” Lux runs a hand over her face.
“We won’t get caught,” I say, because Ellavee is on to something. The professors aren’t going to tell us any more about what happened. We need to find out for ourselves.
“That’s what people say right before they get caught,” Lux says.
I am swaying slightly on my feet, and the snow is coming down, and the key at my throat is warm against my skin where it’s usually cold. “I want to see her.”
Lux looks at me.
“I want to see her, Lux. I didn’t say anything before. I owe her this much.”
“Mae—”
“If I don’t see her, I’m going to lie in bed and imagine her, and what I imagine will be worse.”
Lux sighs, acquiescing. “Fine, but if we get caught, I’m blaming all of you.”
“Deal.”
“Especially Ellavee.”
“Fair.” Ellavee shrugs.
We take the long way around, staying off the main paths, and by the time we slip into the patient wards building through a side door, I’m sober enough to be afraid and drunk enough to keep moving anyway.
The wards are quieter than I’ve ever seen them.
A single mender sits at the desk with her chin on her palm, reading.
She doesn’t look up as we pass the landing below her.
The autopsy rooms are on the basement level, the same ones where we cut into the crawler on our first day. The corridor looks different at night. The sconces on the walls glow the same pale blue, but something about the silence makes my skin prickle.
“I used to know where the morgue door was in the daytime,” Lux whispers.
“Middle of the corridor,” I say. “Left side. Heavy door.”
“Show-off.”
“I stared at it for too long after my first autopsy.”
We find it. Wide, black iron banded, a lock plate in the center that looks older than the rest of the building. Ellavee tries the handle.
“Locked.”
“Obviously,” Lux breathes.
My hand goes to my throat before I’ve thought about it. The key is warm under my fingers. The oblong bone-pale head, the single vertical line down its center. I pull it out.
“Wait.”
Lux turns. “What?”
“Malric said this key opens something when I need it most. Maybe—”
“Try it.”
I fit the key into the lock. It slides in smoothly, which surprises me. I turn.
Nothing happens.
I turn it the other way. Nothing. I jiggle it, because I am drunk and a little desperate. The key in the lock does absolutely nothing at all.
“Figures,” Ellavee mutters. “Whatever that key opens, it’s apparently more important than a morgue. Great.”
“It’s supposed to know,” I say, a little annoyed. “How does it not know?”
“Maybe it thinks you don’t need this badly enough.”
“I think I need it pretty badly.”
“Tell it that.”
“I’m not talking to a key, Ellavee.”
I pull it out and tuck it back under my sweater. Lux has already moved past me into the small antechamber off the corridor— a desk, a wooden chair, a row of hooks on the wall where spare coats hang, a cabinet.
“Check the desk,” she says. “People who work morgues don’t walk far to get their own keys.”
Ellavee slides the drawers open. I check the cabinet. Lux kneels at a second drawer tucked beneath the desk and makes a small, victorious sound.
“Found them.”
She holds up a ring.
It’s heavy and old and has at least forty keys on it. Brass, iron, one that looks like it was carved from bone. Lux turns the ring in her fingers and frowns.
“This is going to take all night.”
“Can’t you just...know?” Ellavee waves a vague hand. “You’re fae, aren’t you?”
“Yes, Ellavee, let me just know. That’s how being fae works. We simply know things.”
“So figure it out.”
Lux rolls her eyes but closes her hand around the ring and shuts her eyes.
I watch her, fascinated. I’ve seen her summon fae light, but I’ve never seen her do anything else with current.
Her brows pull together. Her hand flares faintly at the edges, a white shimmer, and then one of the keys on the ring glows for exactly one breath before going out.
Lux opens her eyes and separates the key from the rest of the ring.
“That one.”
“How—”
“Simple echo-charm. It’s a trick fae mothers use to find their children’s lost things. Don’t get excited. I can only do it with objects that want to be found, and keys almost always want to be found. It’s why keys are always in the last place you look but are almost never actually lost.”
“You’re a little bit of a mage, Luxanna.” Ellavee sticks out her tongue teasingly.
“I’m fae, Ellavee, and I swear to the gods if you call me a mage one more time—”
“Shh.”
We cross back to the morgue door. Lux slides the key into the lock. It turns with a soft click. The door opens inward, and the temperature plummets. The cold is not the cold of outside, rather the cold of a room that has been deliberately kept that way.