Rawlins #2
As Rawlins headed in, he looked under every hat and hood, hoping to catch sight of Ellsbeth’s face.
It had been three days since they had spoken, in the charged moments before the police arrived at the Banestooth house, when they had hastily agreed on a story to tell, and on what they would keep secret—their research on writ magic and obscuration, their entire romantic and sexual relationship.
Rawlins knew they would both be scrutinized closely for the foreseeable future, and if they were going to maintain the lie, they needed to act as if they had no connection beyond being student and teacher.
He had deleted all their previous correspondence and refrained from texting or calling, since any communication could be monitored or subpoenaed.
But if he were to run into her, purely by chance, surely it would not be suspicious for them to converse briefly in public.
He caught the eye of a dozen students, all of whom stared at him with a mixture of awe and fear while giving him a wide berth.
He had been a recognizable figure on campus for his whole career, but this was different; he could feel the nebulous horror that his presence evoked.
Even if he was not being accused of any crime, his proximity to such violence had lent him an aura of darkness, and people retreated from him as though it might be contagious.
Rawlins entered the arcane mechanicals building and headed straight up to Lennox’s office; her assistant had him wait while she finished up a call. A minute later Lennox beckoned him inside, closing the door and gesturing for him to sit. “How are you holding up, Tad?”
He ignored the question and the offer, preferring to stand for what he needed to say. “First, I just have to know…” He leaned in, watching her reaction, as he asked, “Did you know?”
Lennox shook her head indignantly. “About the murders? Of course not. You really think I was aware they were killing girls, six blocks from here? Although…” Her voice became small, and she looked at the floor. “I wish I’d asked more questions.”
“When Bertie died,” Rawlins prompted her. “The autopsy…?”
Lennox sighed, and when she looked back up at him, she appeared exhausted.
“I was trying to protect the school. After everything with Max—the last thing we needed was another scandal, do you understand?” She used the heel of her hand to rub at her temple.
“It was Paul, actually. Gallway came to me, offering friendly advice. It’s just a tragedy, he said.
And he was right. It was. He said that there was no use in stirring up trouble, bringing in the media, hurting the family.
” Her lip curled and she made a hard little sound halfway between a laugh and a sob.
“If I had known what was happening, I would have killed him myself.”
Rawlins knew Lennox well enough that he did not doubt her sincerity. He took a seat, a gesture of peace. “I’m sorry. It’s been a tough few days.”
“I can imagine,” she said. “What a nightmare.”
He leaned forward and got to the point. “I’m here to tender my resignation. Effective immediately. I can get it to you in writing, but…I wanted to let you know in person.”
“I see…” Lennox pursed her lips, looking as if she were not entirely surprised but also calculating how to proceed.
“It’s the best thing for the university,” he went on. “My connection to what happened…it will overshadow any teaching I do for years to come. The college has to move on.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to take a sabbatical?” Lennox asked. “Go away, finish your book, come back in the fall?”
“No…I’m done here. It’s not just the distraction my presence would create, it’s…”
He looked out the window at the bare trees collecting snow on their branches as he searched for words. “It would hurt too much. Being in a classroom. Talking about mechanicals, when I know…where it can lead.”
Lennox sighed. “You will certainly be missed. We’ll draft a statement to share tomorrow, and I’ll figure out who can take over your classes.”
“Thank you,” he said. “I’ll send all my lecture notes and syllabi, which should make it pretty easy.”
“Much obliged,” Lennox said, pushing back from the desk, assuming their meeting was over. “And if there’s anything else you need, just let me know.”
“There is, actually,” he said delicately, remaining in his seat. “A favor to ask, regarding…Ellsbeth.”
“Right, the girl,” Lennox said, with a pitying shake of her head. “Quite an ordeal. I’ll suggest a semester off, keep her funding in place, and hope she comes back in the fall.”
“She won’t want the time off,” Rawlins said.
“She’ll prefer to keep working. I just…need you to look out for her.
” Lennox frowned, not sure what he meant, and Rawlins continued, “Make sure she gets a good adviser. I know it can be hard to convince anyone to take on a new student midway through the year, but she needs someone who can challenge her intellectually—maybe Koenig or Sapersky.”
“I’ll try to help,” Lennox said. “If she’s as bright as you say, it shouldn’t be that difficult.”
“It might, actually. Because the thesis she’s doing…it’s on writ magic.”
Lennox’s eyebrows shot up, and Rawlins continued, “It’s purely theoretical, of course, but—it’s important, rigorous, interesting work.
So you need to convince someone to let her continue those studies.
And when it comes time to publish, I need you to back her.
The work will be strong, I promise, but she needs access, and someone with credibility to stick their neck out and vouch for her.
Now that I’m gone, there’s no one better positioned to help her with that than you. ”
Lennox steepled her fingers, tapping her nose. “Tad…with the controversy I’m dealing with already—these murders, and Max…you want me to defend this girl’s investigations of illegal magic? Even academically—”
“It will be a couple years before she’s ready to publish,” he said.
“And I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think she was a uniquely capable student.
Who will someday be a great teacher and, even more important…
a researcher and a writer. The originality of the rituals she’s designed…
Honestly, I believe Ellsbeth could do more for our field than either you or I ever did. ”
“You must think she’s very special, then?” Lennox eyed him knowingly.
Rawlins tried to keep his voice impassive. “She’s brilliant, and talented, and ambitious. Just like you were. I’m only asking you to make sure she gets the same chance at realizing her potential that you did.”
Lennox considered him, folding her hands on her desk. “Does she know about Max?”
Rawlins sucked his teeth for a moment as he considered lying, but he saw no benefit in it. “She’s the only person I’ve told in twenty-six years.”
Lennox looked away and sighed in exasperation, thinking for a moment. “You were close with her…like you and I were close?”
Again, Rawlins considered a lie but saw no point. “We were close.”
“Jesus, Tad…” She exhaled heavily.
“You owe me this, Maggie,” he said. “After the way things ended between us…this is your chance to make it right.”
Lennox rubbed her temples for a while, until—apparently failing to come up with another excuse—she finally conceded. “I’ll do what I can.”
Rawlins smiled. “Thank you, Maggie. That’s all I’m asking. And I promise: She’ll make you and Newlyn look good.”
The January days were so short that by four, the sun was already starting to dip as Rawlins began packing up his things to leave Newlyn for the last time. He moved quickly to complete the task before darkness fell.
From Lennox’s office, he’d gone straight back to his own.
He could have the department get a mover to pack up and deliver his books, but he needed to clear out his personal effects.
He took diplomas and commendations off the walls now, stacking them in a box, then went through the drawers of his desk, finding it remarkably easy to toss almost everything in the trash.
The accumulated memorabilia of an illustrious career—and it all felt like junk.
As he prepared to leave, his gaze settled on his dish of black licorice candies—paired now, eternally, with the only student he ever had who seemed to like them.
He saw her so clearly, taking one the first day she had come to his office, with that curious mix of nervousness and bravado on her face.
The memory aroused the particular strain of desire in him only she could ever evoke—but now it was undercut with an ache of emptiness, an unfillable hunger.
He popped a candy into his mouth on the way out, savoring the bitterness, letting it get caught in his teeth.
Rawlins kept moving, trying to escape the specter, but found that the entire campus was haunted now, her ghostly presence grazing every place he looked.
He passed through the garden where she had first asked him to be her adviser, and could see it through hazy double vision; in the present, blanketed with snow, spindly tree branches reaching into the gray sky…
and at the same time in the past, just as vivid, with flowers in bloom, and Ellsbeth beside him on the bench, trying to control her emotion as she told him about her sister.
His chest burned with the thought of how callous he had been to her then.
He stopped by the Practicum to return his logs of elementals for whoever was assigned to take over his role.
With the lights low, he could almost see Ellsbeth, standing at the center of the ritual circle.
Vulnerable and trusting. He stepped into the space, closed his eyes, and could feel the weight of her bound hands resting on his shoulders the first time they almost kissed.
Last, he visited the auditorium where he taught his freshman lecture, retrieving the dog-eared copy of The Arcane and the Ordinary that he kept under the lectern for giving assigned readings.
He stood there for a moment and his eyes moved to the place where he had first seen Ellsbeth, wearing that unfortunate red sweater.
When she was only a girl in a crowd, looking both wide-eyed with curiosity and more mature than the students around her.
Before he could have possibly imagined her talent and potential—much less that she would tear his heart open and change his life forever.
He carried his possessions back to the car, the load growing heavy, and left the Newlyn campus for the last time, turning on his headlights in the half-light of early dusk.
His hands felt stiff and icy on the steering wheel, and he decided to stop at The Puddle Jumper to get a hot tea on his way home.
Some corner of his mind may have also seen it as the final stop on his tour of all the places that Ellsbeth’s memory haunted.
He paused at the glass door, looking into the cozy well-lit café at the table they had once shared.
The one where she had pressed her leg against his and started all this in motion.
Then his breath caught in his throat. She was there.
Not only in memory but in bodily presence, undeniable.
The gray peacoat she’d acquired as part of her project of dressing like a “proper academic” was draped on the back of her chair, and she wore a cream-colored sweater rolled up to her elbows.
She leaned over a table cluttered with notes, focused and diligent, hair tucked behind her ear.
He smiled; he knew the expression on her face well. The way she looked when she was deep in thought, lightly nibbling her bottom lip, practically begging to be interrupted with a kiss. Her mouth moved wordlessly; she was reading something she had written aloud to herself.
This was his chance. A run-in at a shared public place. Perhaps not entirely coincidental, since she would not have come here and sat at that table if she were not hoping he might find her. And he had.
Yet he hesitated out in the cold. There were a million things he wanted to say to her…but where to begin?
He could at least ask her the question that had plagued him for a week before her kidnapping: Did she use obscuration on him?
Had his emotions been puppeted by a ritual?
But as he looked in at her, he realized he already knew the answer.
Desire like this was not the product of any ritual.
As inconvenient and unreasonable as it may be, his love for Ellsbeth was the most real thing he had ever felt.
He could talk to her about the future, he supposed.
Or really, their respective futures, since they would not be shared.
He had set his course already, and he would be leaving Newlyn the next day; he had to go his own way and she had to go hers.
Immediate legal threats surrounding the investigation demanded they steer clear of each other—but even beyond that, he could not be part of her life.
He was disgraced—and if they were together, his reputation would follow her everywhere.
With every paper submitted for publication and every interview for a teaching post, no one would mention their connection, but everyone would silently assess: Do we want to link our institution with all that ugliness?
Even if he explained all of that to Ellsbeth, she would not accept it; she would tell him it was unfair, and she would not base her life decisions around gossip.
But he knew the way the academic world worked better than she did.
He would not allow himself to limit her potential, and he could not possibly ask her to wait for him.
Which meant there was nothing to say but goodbye.
And in truth, their goodbye had been said already, in the Banestooth basement.
Amid the scene of unspeakable violence, when Ellsbeth, her skin sticky with evaporating sweat and shivering under the jacket he put on her, had collapsed against him, burying her head in his chest and surrendering to her sobs.
When he held her close and whispered into her hair, “You’re all right… I’ve got you…”
He did, at that moment. He had her. But he knew that he could not any longer. As the sirens approached, he knew he needed to let go. She was no longer his, in any sense.
So he stood a moment longer at the window of the café where his life had teetered on a precipice, and he had felt himself begin to fall—and despite all the chaos and pain that had followed, he could not possibly find it in himself to regret it. He could never regret her.
Then he turned away, shivering in the cold, and headed back to his car alone. Hoping that she would be all right, and that somehow, someday, he would see her again.