Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“Anything on curses taking place over the cycles of the moon? Could be something there?”
I’d looked up the hex Dr. Oswold had cast on the student at her former school, but it didn’t have any similarities to Dani’s.
In fact, from what Max had reported from her previous school, Rose’s spells were decidedly less serious.
They included hexing her frenemy’s phone to spam her contact list, making all their pink clothes bleed in the wash, a spell so their Starbucks order was always wrong.
Nowhere near the same profile as the hex on Dani.
That, combined with records confirming she was at a conference out of the country the week of Maya’s murder, dropped her significantly down on our suspect list.
“Sure, maybe she’s a werewolf,” came the dry reply.
I’d recruited Vern’s help, but he was exhausted, too. And when Vern was tired, he was even crankier than usual.
He looked sadly at the three-day old mascara smudged beneath my eyes and the threadbare sweater that, judging from the wide berth everyone gave me, was starting to smell. “I’ll come up with another one if you tell me why you’re killing yourself trying to do this.”
“I’m not.”
“Now you can pretend all you want, but it sure doesn’t look like you’ve given up on people to me.
All I see is you trying your damnedest to save that girl.
Don’t get me wrong; nothing warms my heart more than seeing you in your old studies again, but this is too much.
You’re pushing yourself too hard. One dead girl is enough, you should go back to your room. Rest. Eat. Bathe, for all our sakes.”
Because I can’t was what I wanted to say.
There was a girl beneath the terrifying voice, and the levitating, and the blood, a girl who was probably alone and scared, and I couldn’t bear to leave her.
How different might things have been for Aaron if he’d had a friend?
If there had been even one person who’d doggedly refused to leave his side?
My phone buzzed in my pocket. A blinking notification showed two missed calls from Mom. How she knew I was in town was beyond me.
I shoved it back in my pocket.
Vern arched an eyebrow. “You haven’t seen them yet?”
I grunted.
“You can’t avoid them forever. Seeing you would do her a world of good, Cella.”
I blew out my cheeks. “Check on one more book for me, and I’ll go get a sandwich. Deal?”
He only sighed and shuffled away down the aisles.
“What’s that?” Max asked, sliding next to me. I stuffed the slip of paper in my pocket.
“Nothing. Got a headache.”
I’d been finding notes at the table increasingly more often, strings of numbers that didn’t make any sense to me.
At first, I thought it was Vern, leaving Dewey Decimal codes for books to check or maybe even page numbers, but neither of those lined up.
As far as I could tell, the numbers were gibberish.
I considered briefly that it could be Max, but I couldn’t take the way he’d been looking at me lately, a mixture of pity and confusion when he found I’d spent another night in the library.
Somehow, I didn’t think asking him if he was the one writing me nonsensical notes would help.
I even hid behind the shelves a couple of times to see who was leaving them, but no one came into this corner of the library except for me, and I never saw who it was.
“Probably just the poor lighting in here,” Max said.
“What?”
“Your headache.” He cast me a funny look again. “You should get some fresh air.”
I didn’t want to admit how nervous I was, scared of all the things happening to me.
I strived to be the girl with all the answers, but now I couldn’t account for the dreams I was having, for the terrifying messages in my shower, for the carvings above my bed.
Something was happening to me, and I was afraid.
“You know you can talk to me, right?” Max said, voice softening. “One of the perks of being a dimidium, you know. You don’t have to go through any of this alone.”
“Why is everyone on my case today? Maybe you get too much fresh air,” I snapped, hard enough for him to drop it.
Field Journal of Dr. Luce Montgomery
I went to see Basile at the Phi Kat house to ask if he wanted to go into the canyon with me.
Every time I go down there looking for the fungus, I can hear chanting, loud enough to hear over the rush of the Cimarron River, though I can’t pinpoint its location.
Sometimes it seems like it’s right around the rocks from me, but maybe it’s just the way the sound echoes down there.
Either way, I’m not eager to go alone. But when I stopped in to see him, he seemed preoccupied.
I was about to walk into Basile’s bedroom when I heard voices. I hesitated, hovering outside the doorway.
“What were you thinking?” came Basile’s smoky voice, low and deep and tinged with an emotion I hadn’t witnessed on him before.
I couldn’t quite imagine his features all twisted in anger.
“You know we can’t afford this kind of negative attention right now.
Not with the funding hanging on a string and Ellendale not taking an interest in anything. ”
“I didn’t think they’d see it.”
“You’re right, you didn’t think. You act like you’re one of the greatest minds to ever bless our halls, but I swear you don’t ever think.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say.”
“For how much shit you stirred, you’d better be.”
I shifted my weight, and the floorboard beneath me squeaked loudly. Shit.
A pause, then, “Get out of here. I’ll deal with you later.”
I moved to the side of the door. Basile looked even more flustered than the boy who’d just walked out of the room.
I flicked my hair behind my shoulder and walked in. “What was that about?”
He sighed and rubbed his temples. “We have a meet in a few months, and if we don’t get any of Ellendale’s funding, we’ll have to do some serious fundraising of our own.
I don’t want to have to cancel; those kids have been preparing for months.
And now Cella and Max are hounding us, thinking one of our members has something to do with that girl. ”
I quirked an eyebrow. “Well, do they?”
“No,” he said emphatically. “Grant is just an idiot. Doesn’t think before he talks, or posts. He’s going to get himself into trouble one of these days.”
He’s lying.
It appeared as a whisper at the back of my mind, a voice I could no longer discern was the fungi or my own.
Something about the way he turned his eyes down before looking at me or the way his heart sped up imperceptibly, something I shouldn’t have noticed, something I shouldn’t have been able to hear, yet somehow, I still knew …
Grant had done something, and Basile was trying to cover for him.
I left shortly after, resigned to going into the canyon alone.
Key observations: Perhaps my newfound spidey senses will help me locate Agaricus cataphractus? Lord knows, I’ve tried everything else.