CHAPTER 10
After that, Emma felt like she was living on fast-forward.
Her nights were sprinkled with glitter. Each one brought a new party.
Lounging in someone’s rooms, candlelight sparking from crystal glasses and luxury watches.
Or out to a club, where every bottle came with a sparkler on top, and every dance with Jasper made her heart shine brighter.
Nobody spoke of the Society. Not to her, at least. But she felt the secret hovering just beyond her reach.
Every event felt like a step closer to being trusted.
She saw it in the way the boys had begun to roar her name when she arrived, just like they did with Julia.
Or how they all treated it as a given that wherever Jasper was, she would be invited too.
It felt like acceptance. Maybe even liking.
Without realizing, she had stopped thinking of the party crowd as Jasper’s friends. They finally felt like her own.
Night after night, she plundered the magic chest of Helena’s clothes.
In a vintage Halston jumpsuit, she sat behind the velvet ropes at a nightclub for Antonia Viacelli’s birthday, thigh to thigh with her circle of trust fund socialists and Turner Prize darlings.
A leather blazer and shorts saw Emma through a harrowing Tatler shoot for “Inspiring Women of the Future.” Helena’s silver chain-mail dress shimmered down the carpet at the private screening of Atticus Tremaine’s new short film.
“You’re getting quite a reputation as a looker,” said Julia, as they sprawled on Emma’s bed with the University newspaper. “Look at those long legs of yours, all over the society pages.”
But Emma always felt best in her own clothes. In bed, hunched into a disgusting old sweater, she pored over her research. The initial data she’d gathered at the river stacked up. She almost had a complete case for how to use the Colefax-Lee funding over the coming two years.
“I’m impressed, Emma,” her mum said one night. Emma was holding the phone to her ear with one hand and typing up her latest dataset with the other. “I showed what you sent me to the others at the station, and they agree. Professional work.”
Her laptop screen had gone blurry. Emma blinked back the tears. “Thanks. Coming from you, that means a lot. With time to recruit volunteers, the full trial could even start in spring.”
“You sound so happy,” Emma’s mother said. “Confident. This project has been good for you.”
“It has. I just know there’s something behind this flood. And with this project, it feels like I’m a breath away from finding out what it is.”
“That’s the beauty of science, ladybug.”
Soon after, a shy email on Emma’s part had led her to Dr. Asima Banerjee.
A round, unabashedly loud woman, she was just as fascinated by the anomalies in animal behavior after the flood as Emma.
They spent many a morning in her office in the Department of Natural Sciences, debating theories over coffee.
“Climate change, you think? Faugh! It’s definitely happening. But does it explain everything here? Flooding and frogs mating in the fall, and more besides? The caddis flies have been doing things you wouldn’t believe. Otters practically tap-dancing along the banks. Strange times.”
She nodded at the jar of frogspawn sitting on her office desk. “Thanks for bringing your samples. We’ll keep them in the lab. See if anything exciting happens.”
“No problem,” said Emma. “I wondered, would you take a look at my first species survey? I want your opinion before I send it to the foundation.”
When Dr. Banerjee finished studying the document, she let out one of the laughs that seemed to roll up from her belly. “Stellar. Good as anything my third-year zoology students turn in, the lazy sods. It’s a shame you’re not on my course.”
“Do you—do you ever get people switching?” Emma murmured.
“We do,” she said. “They have to start from the beginning, from first year. But the people who join us often find they love it.”
She handed back Emma’s data with a smile.
Emma wandered from the faculty with an unfamiliar lightness in her bones. She was so distracted, she had to rush to make it to the Great Hall on time.
Formal dinner at Gabriel was a special occasion.
Candlelight flickered from oil paintings and crystal glasses.
Courses came on silver platters, and guests in dinner jackets and academic robes.
Emma usually avoided it: The grandeur and Latin made her nervous.
But tonight she was there for Nat. As one of the college’s highest-achieving scholars, he had been chosen to read the ancient opening ceremony for the dinner.
It was an honor granted to only ten students a year, and Emma had been determined to be there to cheer him on.
She hadn’t seen enough of Nat, of late. Rehearsals had him at the theatre at all hours.
He fidgeted behind the lectern, academic gown ironed to a crisp, looking like a large and very nervous bat.
Emma waved, then ducked into the last empty space at the long tables.
The only people nearby were a trio of academics.
Emma recognized tweed-jacketed Dr. Peasewhisker, the Gabriel College bursar.
With him were Professor Aguilar, chic and chignonned, and a cheerful, curly-haired older woman Emma vaguely placed among Gabriel’s history dons.
Emma hadn’t meant to listen, but the dining benches pressed them all so close, she couldn’t avoid it.
“Decent wine tonight.” Dr. Peasewhisker smacked his lips.
“Better without the extra legs, I imagine.” The curly-haired woman’s eyes twinkled.
“Alison.” Dr. Peasewhisker groaned. “Sorry, Beatriz, you’ll not be up on the latest gossip.”
“Do tell.” Dr. Aguilar curled manicured nails around her wineglass.
“High Table at Granville College last night. Cellar master uncorks what should’ve been the finest claret.
A ’45 Bordeaux, no less. But what pours out—directly over the Sumatran president’s shoulder, mind?
Spiders. A flood of spiders. Imagine the chaos.
They think the flood must’ve got to the wine cellar. ”
Emma’s interest sharpened.
“Hearing a lot of that these days.”
The bursar sighed. “Our own head gardener practically banged down my office door once the flood went down, raving about hawthorns popping up everywhere. ‘Just chop them down, man,’ says I. And what does that do, but send him wibbling on about demon trees that regrow as fast as he cuts them?” Dr. Peasewhisker took a long, consoling swallow of his spider-free claret. “I ask you.”
“Hawthorns? Perhaps the fae folk’re taking back their land.” The bright-eyed history don winked directly at Emma, as if to include her in the joke.
“You and your folklore studies, Alison.” Dr. Peasewhisker blew a breath from his jowls, ignoring Emma. “No, I don’t know what things’re coming to.”
“And the porters were complaining of trespassers in the Old Music Room.” Professor Aguilar took a dainty sip of her wine. “Animal masks, drums in the night. Petals scattered all over in the morning.”
The history don chuckled. “Probably just early Samhain celebrants. We’re harmless enough, we pagans. And it hardly takes a criminal mastermind to creep into University buildings after dark.”
At the lectern, Nat lifted the ceremonial book. The dining hall quieted. Emma’s heart swelled with pride as Nat read the Latin, his voice soaring and sure.
It was a quirk of the University that formal dinners started with this weird remnant of centuries past: not a grace, but a bizarre sort of bargain between diners and their food.
Nat was reading the nonsense text with charm and humor, promising their dinner the best of their attention and delight in return for the privilege of eating it.
Nobody remembered the origin of the bargaining tradition, but everyone enjoyed it.
When the last Latin phrase had rolled from his tongue, Nat flopped onto the bench next to Emma. Close up, his eyes were red-rimmed and glassy, and the shadows under them stretched to his cheekbones. Emma felt a twinge of unease.
“What are those rehearsals doing to you? Tolstoy himself wasn’t this tortured.”
Nat rubbed his hands over his face. “This performance is pulling something out of me I didn’t know I had.
The whole play’s special, Em. Inspired. But we’re all drained dry by it.
Hannah, our director? Came to the last three rehearsals with her shirt inside out.
She’s also convinced foxes are following her home at night.
Swears they actually wait for her to leave the theatre.
Apparently, they’re different from normal foxes. Shinier.”
“Shinier?” Emma coughed. “Oh, wow. So you’re all cracking up, is that it?”
“Pretty much,” Nat said cheerfully. “How’re things with you? Tell me tales of the real world, please.”
“I’m going on another photo outing.”
“With Jasper? That’s going well, then?”
“I don’t know, exactly. When we’re talking, I’m sure how he feels about me. His eyes—and sometimes he’s almost said—but then it’s the end of another trip. And he’s gone and still nothing has happened.”
“Ah, that energy like he’s absolutely, desperately in love with you, but he’s not sure whether he left the oven on at home, so he just has to run off and leave you—under duress, darling, of course.”
“That’s it, exactly. How did you know?”
“Em, I hang around with theatre people. What you’re talking about is charm. Tell me, how much do you talk about him, on these trips of yours? And how much do you talk about you?”
“What do you have against him?”
“Nothing. We just met at school.” Nat pushed his dinner around his plate. “Which was not a good time for me.”
“You don’t like him.”
“It’s not that. It’s more the—halo he has.
The world rearranges itself around him. He’s never had to step outside that golden circle of being handsome, and lucky, and universally adored.
And he doesn’t even realize that’s not what everyone else starts with.
He’s happy to assume it’s all because he deserves it.
Never a doubt or a challenging thought.”
“You’d be surprised. Jasper is very conflicted. And complicated.” She caught Nat’s sardonic eye, and a giggle she didn’t intend escaped her. “He is. He just doesn’t spend his entire life questioning himself from his head to his shoelaces.”
“I have never questioned my shoelaces,” said Nat, the picture of injured innocence.
“Only because you haven’t thought of it yet,” Emma shot back.
They traded jokes until the dessert plates were empty and the three academics long gone. The dons had been interesting, Emma reflected. She’d have to sort through all they’d said about the flood. The bit about hawthorn trees could be promising. Any imbalance might be worth tracking in her data.
At Nat’s first yawn over the port, she hauled him to his feet. They wove through Gabriel’s shadowed cloister together, and Nat managed a smile. “I miss you. Isn’t that silly, when you’re right here? You’re just so busy these days. All your new friends. I mean, it’s great, but—”
Emma pulled him into a sideways hug. “Old friends come first. You were right, I did need more people than just you. New friends are fun. But you’re always my favorite. So, how about film night this week? My turn to choose.”
He fixed her with a hawkish stare.
“Emma. Try and pick a film this time.”
“Planet Earth is a film. It’s very film-esque, anyway.”
“I don’t have the energy to argue with you. That’s how dire things are.” Nat groaned as they climbed the last step to the bell tower. “Right. My Golden Age playwrights essay is upon me. Though I may skip this one in the name of sleep, and risk Professor Lindman’s wrath tomorrow.”
Emma watched him go unhappily. Nat had never even joked about missing an assignment before. She would have to check in more often, until that glassy look left his eyes.
But by the time she’d rolled into bed, her mind had already slipped back to Jasper. Their photography trips brought him so tantalizingly close. His hands around hers on the viewfinder. His breath on her neck. It was all building to something, she was sure of it.
As if the heat of her thoughts had summoned him, demon-like, from the void, her phone beeped. And the message made her breath catch in her chest.
something special tomorrow.
can’t wait for you to see it. you’ll die.
Underneath the message, a row of skull emojis winked up at her.