Chapter 11 #2
“He’s got a girlfriend, anyway,” I muttered.
Her eyes widened in surprise. “Quelle surprise! So he’s acquired a few brain cells after all and moved on from you. Honestly, I never thought he was going to get his balls back.” She slow-clapped, she actually slow-clapped. “Good for him.”
“Well, as illuminating as this conversation has been, I have to get going. I’m busy with the investigation and—”
“For sure, I totally get you! See you in the next council meeting.”
I stopped, and she watched as I digested the information, savoring her victory and the stupefied look on my face.
Luce put a hand to her chest, shocked. “Oh, you didn’t know? I’m on the council, too.”
She paused, waiting for the information to sink in, and I felt my knees almost buckle beneath me. The empty seat, Dr. Strauss’s empty seat … was now filled by Luce Montgomery.
“I just want you to know, Cella, that whatever direction you decide to take this investigation in … I will be behind you one hundred percent.” Luce was going to make my life hell, that was clear enough. She’d make this investigation even worse, block me every chance she got.
“See you in a few days.” She blew me a kiss and walked away, whistling.
Too many things were tumbling into me at once, and I felt overstimulated and raw, as though my nerves had been sliced open with a razor. I’d never wanted to hurt anyone. And I never again wanted to be the person who lost control and did just that.
Just the thought of doing Magic again put me into a cold sweat. Max had been asking since the first day I’d come back. But I just couldn’t do it. It left me so vulnerable, so wide open. Stripped me of every ounce of my hard-earned independence of Max.
Because no matter what I wanted, when we did Magic together, we were connected.
We were, just like the stories said, one half of each other’s Magical soul.
And that terrified me. I was terrified to give him more power over me than he already had, power I’d been fighting tooth and nail to get back over these past few years.
I stumbled across the grounds while the sun sank below the Sangre de Cristos and the sky bled scarlet.
Back at Ludlow House, the double doors of Josephine Ludlow’s old powder room opened onto a balcony off the back side of the house.
From there, I had a view of the other buildings on campus, including House Torlaine.
I watched as a group of girls walked in, the hinges of the door groaning as it closed behind them.
My eye caught on something above their heads.
There was some sort of marking on the cattle skull over the door.
Graffiti? I’d have to get a better look the next time I went to my room.
I’ve added here the notes of Dr. Luce Montgomery, assistant professor at S it feels like all I ever get is doubt.
I’m used to people sneering, thinking I’m the pretty Native American girl who couldn’t possibly be a real scientist.
Well. I’m also used to the shocked look on their faces when I prove them wrong.
And this time, I will prove them wrong. This fungus exists, and I’m going to find it. I have a map, thanks to the help of the local mycological community (what little one exists here), and all I have left to scour is the last quadrant.
It’s here. It has to be. It’s the only place I haven’t searched.
April 8th
My search today yielded much of the same.
Signs of fox activity around the crumbling structures of the campus perimeter, rodent skulls littering the canyon—might be a source of organic material?
The only thing of real interest was the person I ran into behind the Phi Kat house, Dr. de Vries’s TA and Marble County’s own mini-celebrity, Basile Samir.
His father’s the Egyptian real estate mogul Amir Samir, who owns one of the largest development companies in the state.
As a forester myself, that makes him my mortal enemy, but his son …
perhaps there’s still time left for him.
Doesn’t hurt that he looks the way he does, either.
Basile has this easy way about him, utterly relaxed in trousers and a breezy linen shirt, like he should be lounging on a sailboat in the Mediterranean.
With his father’s strong, regal Egyptian nose and his Italian mother’s dark, glittering eyes, he looks like he belongs in a smoky jazz club, sipping a bourbon, with Louis Armstrong or Billie Holiday playing in the background rather than on a college campus. Or better yet, in my bed.
I know him more from his Instagram and TikToks.
Some of his eighty-thousand followers are there for the thirst traps, hoping to catch a shot of him with his shirt off, but a lot are there for the math shit, too.
Supposedly, he came up with a mathematical proof of the existence of parallel realities, worlds that live alongside this one.
Naturally, it was a magnet for controversy.
Some people insisted it proved that Heaven and Hell existed.
Other people thought it could be taken further, to examine multiverses.
If there was another reality out there like this one, how many were there?
Could you get to them? A whole host of mathematicians and physicists had come forward to weigh in on it; about half of them dismissed his work as pseudo-science metaphysical bullshit conducted by an amateur grad student.
The other half were cautiously optimistic.
He had a right to be suspicious of me snooping around behind the Phi Kat house, especially with everything going on.
Campus was on edge while they underwent an investigation.
I recently learned it was being led by Cella Gibbons, the bitch that set me on fire.
But that’s a whole other can of worms, and I won’t waste what little time I have on it here.
Tomorrow, I’ll continue my preliminary search of the western half of campus.
So far, it’s mostly just a lot of charred wood.
Not firewood, but it looks like it’s been burned deliberately, in some strange, swooping pattern I’m not familiar with.
Could be indicative of some sort of cult activity.
I’ll report it to Dr. Robetresse. Magicians historically do have a proclivity to cults, if for no other reason than safety, but the practice is strictly forbidden at S&B. *