Chapter Twenty-Two
Arthur’s mind had been racing for hours.
He hadn’t heard from Dahlia since the night before, when he’d dashed off a frantic text every hour after he’d returned to Atlantia only to have her finally tell him she was going to shut off her phone if he didn’t stop bugging her.
She didn’t realize that it was all replaying in his head, over and over—Maggie collapsing as that bright burst of light struck her palm, Maggie in and out of consciousness as he tried to wake her, Maggie curled in his arms as he raced her back down to the basement.
When he let himself put down the guilt, never for very long, he thought about Maggie’s apartment. It was so lived-in and so Maggie, he’d wanted to sink into the couch beside her and call it home. He shook that thought away before it had a chance to turn into longing.
He tried to distract himself by looking over the notes he’d taken in the Annex, but he could barely read his already messy handwriting as the words swam across the page.
He was exhausted. He’d barely slept the night before, but he couldn’t get his body to still.
It was in constant movement, with his leg bouncing up and down and his fingers tapping against the ancient, pockmarked wood of his childhood desk.
“Arthur, I can hear you fidgeting from out here,” came his father’s voice, carrying down the short hallway from the living room. “It’s seven in the morning.”
“Sorry, Pop,” he called back, and that strange feeling of time folding in on itself appeared again.
After a moment, he heard the shuffling sounds of Barry getting up from his recliner and walking down the hall. “What are you working on, kiddo?”
Arthur looked up to see his father leaning in the doorway, looking much the same as he’d looked for Arthur’s entire childhood.
He wore his park ranger shirt, unbuttoned to reveal an ancient undershirt with holes around the neck, but now his hair was silver gray, and his face had deep lines from too many days in the sun.
Arthur wanted to tell his father everything, but he couldn’t bring himself to share his failures with Barry.
The bubbling panic he felt when he thought of the pall, of the way dissolving it and sealing the fissure had evaded him, of the damage he’d caused.
The danger he’d put Maggie in corroded everything, caustic and burning.
“It’s just a tricky equation,” he said, as if that could possibly cover everything.
If I tell Maggie the truth, the odds of her wanting nothing to do with me are…
If I refuse to let Maggie back into the pall, the probability she will go in there herself without me is…
If I race back to Maggie’s apartment and confess how I feel, the chance that she will kick me out before I can finish my sentence is…
“Hmm,” Barry replied, his wiry frosted eyebrows knitting together in a furry V.
“I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one of your homework problems get you this worked up.
” There was a time when that little joke would have felt like a barb, but Arthur had long learned to let it go.
“Is there anything I can help you with?”
Arthur was a little ashamed when his first instinct was to scrunch up his nose and dismiss his father, but then he looked down at the journal in his hands.
If there was one thing his father knew well, it was the Wilds.
“Pop,” he began, and his dad walked into the room, sitting on his old twin bed with the worn quilt Lane had stitched for him in another life.
“What do you know about the river confluence in the Wilds?”
Barry took the journal from Arthur’s hands, flipping the ancient pages with a delicate touch.
He read the passages Arthur had marked and looked at his son thoughtfully.
“More of an annoyance than anything,” Barry said.
“Your brother would know better than me, he’s done all the extra wardsmith training, but every ward around the confluence point where the three rivers meet has extra fortifications to account for it. It can get dicey over there sometimes.”
“And Rory would know what these extra fortifications are?”
“He should. Otherwise, what did I pay for all those extra classes for?” Barry grumbled.
He turned the page in the journal again.
“Oh, now, even I know what this is.” He held the opened journal out to Arthur, tapping a page with a drawing of a vining plant snaking up a tree trunk.
“Gloaming creeper,” Barry read. “We’re always looking for more of the stuff.
A decoction made out of it can really boost a rune near the confluence, but gods below, is it hard to find. ”
Arthur’s mind was suddenly awake, whirring to life.
When chalk, paint, or ink was infused with a decoction made from a plant or mineral with known magical properties, it made the spell stronger or could counteract confounding variables.
He’d tried plenty of decoctions to improve his dissipation spells—gold to strengthen the bonds of the magic, vervain and yew to block interference coming from the fissure into the next world—but none of them had accounted for the confluence.
But if this vine—the gloaming creeper—could help with warding runes around the confluence, it would stand to reason that it would help with their dissipation runes.
An antidote of sorts to the havoc the convergence had caused.
If they factored the planetary conjunction into the calculation, if Maggie added to the incantation translation…
it might all work. “Where does it grow?”
“I can’t get precise with it. I just know it when I see it,” Barry said. “That’s above my pay grade. Rory’s, too. You might want to check in with someone at that school of yours. They might know better.”
Arthur was already pulling up the directory for the botany department as he said a hurried “Thanks, Pop.”
When Arthur looked up from the directory and scrawled Dr. Silva’s name and number on his notepad, Barry had a thoughtful expression on his face. “Why’s your work taking you into the Wilds, Son?”
Arthur had never felt more like a coward. “Just some troublesome spellwork at the school. It’s nothing important.”
Barry looked like he was going to say something, but he just reached out a hand and squeezed Arthur’s shoulder. After a moment he sighed and said, “Well, don’t work too hard. And turn off the lights when you leave.”
“Sure thing, Pop,” Arthur replied. When he heard the recliner creak and groan, Arthur pulled out his phone to the conversation he’d started with Dahlia.
Arthur: Anything?
Dahlia Hawberry, PhD: For the last time, I will message you when she wakes up
Arthur: Sorry, just worried
Dahlia began typing a response and then she stopped, only to start back up again.
Dahlia Hawberry, PhD: I know
Dahlia Hawberry, PhD: I won’t forget, I promise
—
Dahlia finally texted him a few hours later when Maggie rejoined the land of the living, and the vise that had tightened around Arthur’s chest loosened, just by a bit.
By then, Arthur had already emailed and received a response from a Hawthorn botanist named Kel Silva, who had agreed to meet with him and Maggie the next day.
All Arthur wanted to do was race to Maggie’s apartment to see for himself that she was feeling better, but he didn’t know how Maggie would feel about the intrusion. He stared at their text conversation for nearly an hour before he settled on the message to send.
Arthur: Hey
Magnolia Linden, PhD: Hi
Arthur: Are you feeling up for more detective work tomorrow?
Magnolia Linden, PhD: Only if you buy me a black trench coat and promise to call me a dame
When Arthur finally saw Maggie again outside Ulmus Hall, he wasn’t sure he remembered how to breathe.
She was maybe a little pale, but she looked like she had gotten enough sleep to fight off most of the effects of the pall sickness.
She had pulled her auburn hair back, with loose strands falling around her face, and she was wearing a black long-sleeved shirt that showed her shoulders, the swell and dip of her breasts.
If Arthur thought he was wound tight with wanting her before, he was mistaken.
He wanted to sweep her into a hug but gave her space instead. He pushed his glasses up and then swept his fingers through his hair, hearing every parent figure in his life say, Stop fidgeting, as he tried to give his hands something else to do.
“I’m happy to see you upright.” He thought about kicking himself immediately. Why did he open his mouth?
But she laughed, a light sound he wanted to bottle for dreary days.
“Yeah, me, too,” she said, and there was something different about the way she spoke.
Tender, tentative. Something he couldn’t really name.
And she looked at him with an intensity that Arthur didn’t know how to read.
After a moment, she dropped her gaze and reached into the tote bag she had slung over her shoulders.
“I brought this back for you. Thank you for letting me borrow it.” She held his tweed jacket out to him, but he didn’t want to take it.
It had been a gift. It had been the one thing Maggie had asked of him that he could do easily.
“Oh, I—” he muttered, stopping before he could say something he would regret. “Why don’t you hold on to it?”
“I couldn’t—”
“It’s fine,” he said, interrupting her. His voice sounded strangely tight even to his ears. She looked at him with an expression that was a little confused and a little curious but slid the jacket back into her bag. “Did the sleeping aid help?”
She nodded, holding on to the straps of the tote bag like they were a lifeline, and he wondered, for the thousandth time, what she was thinking. “A perfectly dreamless sleep.”
“Good.” He looked her over again, searching for something, anything, to indicate she was still feeling the effects of the pall. Satisfied that she really was feeling better, he nodded toward the building in front of them. “Shall we?”