Chapter Two #2
I stared at the double doors. The air beyond them had that late-summer taste, like apples that weren’t quite ready and a storm that might not come.
“What if it is that simple? What if it’s always been to call him and then cut him off from what he thinks he owns?”
Keegan’s answer was a pause and then a quiet, “Predators are simple. It’s the prey that builds friend circles and tea tables and makes it complicated enough to survive.”
“You sound like your mother,” I said before I could call the words back, and then braced for the flinch.
He didn’t flinch. He just breathed out, heavy and slow.
“Maybe, there is more in common than I give credit.”
We stood there long enough for the hallway to forget we were there. Somewhere, a cart squeaked as a book sprite steered it through the stacks, humming a lullaby only the books knew.
“Okay,” I said, straightening. “We make the ground. We set the fence where we want it. We leak the right rumor and let it carry. We call him by offering him exactly what he thinks I’ll never give him.”
“Which is?”
“Me,” I said again, and the word didn’t feel like surrender. It felt like the opposite. “But on our terms.”
Keegan reached to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. “Every ring of that plan ends with you in the middle.”
“I’m the hinge, remember?” I tried to smile. “Doors need those.”
He made an unhappy sound that was ninety percent growl and ten percent dissertation.
“Hinges are meant to be surrounded by wood and walls, not left out for anyone’s hammer.”
“You’re the walls,” I said. “Nova’s the locks. Ardetia’s the warning bell. Stella’s the entire, terrifying HOA.”
That coaxed a reluctant huff out of him. “And Twobble?”
“The raccoon who steals the contractor’s sandwich and survives all apocalypses.”
We were still working out which metaphor had offended who when the echo of quick steps tapped down the corridor.
A moment later, Skonk came skidding around the corner like a rumor in shoes. His ears were flushed a cheery pink, his vest was missing a button, and his grin was unnervingly absent.
“Don’t panic,” he panted, which is what you say when you want everyone to panic.
He leaned both hands on his knees, sucked air like a bellows, and then shot a look at me that made my stomach drop to my shoes.
“What did you do,” I asked, “and can it be cleaned with club soda?”
He shook his head so hard his ears flapped.
“Not me. Well, me later, probably. But now…news. Reconnaissance. Intelligence.” He thumped his chest. “Espionage Skonk at your service.”
Keegan straightened, all the softness gone from his edges. “You went to Shadowick.”
“I did not,” Skonk said primly, and then corrected himself because honesty sometimes visits goblins on Tuesdays. “We did not. Luna and I have been busy with reconnaissance.”
I blinked. “You and Luna. How and why are you with Luna?”
My pulse sped up.
“The knitting lady has range,” he said solemnly, which felt like a sentence I would embroider on a throw pillow. “We have contacts. We have birds. We have…a guy. Anyway, I wasn’t with her per se.”
Keegan’s fingers brushed mine, a silent wait.
Skonk’s grin did not arrive. “If your grand plan is to lure Gideon out of Shadowick, you’ll be luring a ghost,” he said, each word clicking. “Because he’s not there.”
The foyer absorbed his statement and offered us our reflections again, a little more blurred than before.
“Not there,” I repeated, my mouth suddenly dry.
Skonk shook his head, eyes bright with the kind of excitement that belongs to disaster.
“Shadowick’s got its own problems, but Gideon?” He snapped his fingers, once, sharp. “He slipped the net. He’s somewhere else, and the somewhereness is the problem.”
Keegan’s hand tightened around mine. “Where.”
Skonk grinned finally, but it wasn’t his usual impish delight. It was sharp and thin, a knife-smile.
“That is the question, isn’t it?”
He rocked back on his heels, pleased and grave at once, and the chandelier above us trembled as if a draft had slipped through a closed window.
“We never stepped foot in Shadowick,” he added, almost proud, as if that tidbit would earn him a gold star. “Didn’t have to. But wherever Gideon went, he didn’t go alone.”
I felt the butterfly at my hip flare.
“Who’s with him?” I asked.
Skonk’s gaze flicked to the staircase where Elira should have been.
To the doors where the last students had vanished into the safer part of the day.
Back to us. He lifted one finger and then thought better of it, shoving both hands into his vest pockets like he didn’t trust them not to make trouble before his mouth could.
“That,” he said, softer now, as if the walls were the ones who shouldn’t hear, “is why Luna is not with me.”
Silence dropped like a stone into a well. The ripple went out, kissing the corners of the hall, touching the doors, brushing the edges of my heart.
I swallowed and felt how loud it sounded. “Skonk.”
He straightened, shoulders squaring with a dignity that looked ridiculous on him and absolutely correct at the moment.
“We found a trail,” he said. “But before I tell you where it leads, I have to tell you what followed it.”
He lifted his chin and waited, and every lamp in the foyer seemed to lean closer, their flames thinned to listening points, the Academy itself drawing breath and holding it.
And that was where the quiet stopped being kind.