Chapter 15
Helshire had a splendid Great Depression.
The Mortons and Lindqvists had already woven themselves into the sinews of the college, keeping it flush with funds and students. But as Europe staggered toward another war, the Seths and Wolvaardts began to send their best and brightest.
A friendly competition fueled Helshire’s expansion.
The original buildings were augmented by Main Hall and Quad dorms (Morton money), then Ogden and Rockefeller (the Lindqvists, hence the Viking friezes).
The Cold War brought another boom—the sciences at Dewitt (a Seth bequest), and the Terraces (the Wolvaardts, who hated the Dining Commons food), until finally the Old Campus became redundant. The forest was allowed to reclaim it.
Nothing human goes unused though.
Even ordinaries have their rituals in the dark.
Sebastian led me through the Terraces, which were still pulsing with music, and into the clearcut that follows the power lines out of town. The forest loomed around us, quiet and cold.
The first sign of the Old Campus was a statue, a seated woman with one broken hand held aloft, alone in a field.
By legend, Helshire sophomores had to visit her at midnight the day they chose their majors or remain forever virgins.
The ritual was still observed, despite the eye-rolling of proud asexuals.
We went into the forest, passing stone walls and a chimney—an old gatehouse, or a professor’s home. Next came an ancient well sealed with recent concrete.
Finally we reached Halcyon Hall, the largest of the old buildings. The trees huddled close to it, and ivy climbed its walls up to the third-floor balconies, pulling at the chimneys.
Sebastian stopped and took out his phone.
He waved its lit screen, cutting a Z across the night.
“How often do you come here?” I asked, but he only shrugged.
From the second-floor balcony, a cigarette lighter flared in answer, inscribing a bright circle in the dark.
“Lindqvist traditions, Lindqvist codes,” I said. “My mother thinks they’re fucking with the Belmonts.”
“She’s living in the past,” he said, then tried to lighten it with a smile. “You know me: friends everywhere. The Lindqvists are just another constituency.”
Complications all the way down.
We went carefully across the ragged front porch, through a doorway. As my eyes adjusted, the dark walls resolved into tattered wallpaper, water stains, and layers of graffiti. The building smelled like animal rot settled into wood, like an old butcher’s block sweating blood on a summer day.
We came to a stairway with graffiti carved into the wood.
“Stick to the steps with words,” Sebastian said. “The rest are booby-trapped with rusty nails.”
I climbed carefully, stepping on corpse, seepage, charnel, squelch. Words that made ordinaries shudder. The sort of trick Peter would have enjoyed.
Voices drifted down from above.
The second floor was in better shape, with only a few holes big enough to fall through. A circle of candles, recently extinguished, that I’d smelled on Sebastian’s coat.
Two silhouettes waited for us out on the balcony, wearing generations-old leather and tweed. Unlike us, the Lindqvists had kept their horses. Their longboats too.
“Jessica Morton.” Xavier strode inside, spreading his hands in welcome.
“Xavier Lindqvist,” I said. “What a lovely ruin.”
He smiled. His sister Bianca didn’t.
“Old Helshire belongs to all of us,” he said. “Pity we never see you here.”
“Archery keeps me busy.”
He mimed an arrow going into his chest. The morning after we’d hooked up, I’d eliminated him in the first round.
Bianca glared at Sebastian. “What did you tell her?”
“It was Gertie, who I warned you about. I’m here to do this the right way.”
“The right way is to be invited,” Bianca said. “She hasn’t been.”
Sebastian sighed. “Jessica knew Peter better than any of us. She’s not the aunties’ pet you think she is.”
“Really.” Bianca turned to me. “What’s your favorite class?”
“Forensic Accounting.”
Xavier pulled the imaginary arrow from his heart, made a dying sound.
“Just because you put forensic in front of something,” Bianca said, “doesn’t make it sexy.”
“Math is the music of reason.”
“Accounting is the canned peas of math,” she said. “And you Mortons are all accountants at heart.”
“My grades beg to differ,” Sebastian said.
“You’re adopted.”
“So I’m told.”
“Tell me what’s going on.” I was already blooded—on a member of my own family. My secrets were better than theirs. “Do you seriously think you can scandalize me?”
“We think we can’t trust you,” Bianca said. Her hands were in her pockets, as always. As always, I wondered if she was holding a weapon.
Sebastian stepped between us. “Jessica just wants to know what you were doing with Peter.”
“Okay,” Xavier said. “How about a show of good faith? If you want our secrets, Jessica, tell us one of yours. Like…whatever happened to those lovely children? Yvonne, Tillie, Katie, Olive, Tobias, Zach, and Ramsey?”
“Seven children,” Bianca chimed in. “All gone at once. And the rest of you, suddenly different.” She took a step closer. “Except for the little accountant, unfazed.”
Sebastian put a hand on my shoulder. The proper response was to ignore this prying, as if it didn’t matter. The other families could never know what Uncle Max had done—it sent the message that we were prone to madness and despair.
But I couldn’t let a Lindqvist make light of our dead. My hand drifted toward the knife in my jacket.
Voices rose from the forest below.
We froze, listening.
Five or six ordinaries, their voices pitched with drunken, nervous excitement. They dared each other to take the next steps—onto the creaky porch, into the darkness inside, across the rotten floorboards.
“Midnight feast!” one said, ending in a hiss that made the others giggle.
We heard them settle in. Something heavy thumped to the floor, bottles clinking inside. They were having a picnic in the dark.
Bianca’s breathing grew audible. Her hands twitched in their pockets again—she was gearing up to send them running.
Halcyon Hall really was the Lindqvists’ home.
What if I made it mine too?
I raised my hand to pause her. Phone light was coming up though one of the holes in the floor, shadows twitching on the ceiling. I took a few silent steps closer, peered down.
The interlopers were directly below. I saw sandwiches in white paper wrappers, the glint of beer bottles. They prattled about the croquet team’s latest match, about how everyone really should take Civilization in Question. One declared that the Old Campus wasn’t nearly as scary as everyone said.
As the others watched, I drew my knife and slid the blade across the heel of my left hand. An arc of red opened, blood pooling in my palm.
I spread my fingers a little, to let a few drops trickle through.
Bianca’s eyes were bright.
There was more prattle below, then a boy’s voice drifted up.
“Guys. Is it, like, raining in here?”
“I felt a drop.”
“Um, it’s warm.”
I leaned back, so when the ordinaries shone their lights up, all they’d see was a ghostly pale hand floating above the hole.
“Shit! That looks like blood!”
“No way.”
“Dude, look. It’s red!”
I tipped my cupped hand, letting more spill.
“It’s on the fucking sandwiches.”
A scramble then, the clatter of bottles kicked and rolling, a coat dragged across the floor. One of the boys shouting, “Leave it! Just get out!” The thump of the picnic hamper overturned. Someone stumbling as they ran.
I pulled out my flask, loosened the top with sticky fingers. Equal parts rum, bourbon, and Amaro Meletti, with mole bitters. An angry chocolate bar. I swished it around, then pressed my tongue to the cut. The alcohol lit bright fire along the crescent wound.
The ordinaries clamored across the porch, through the trees, their shouts fading into the night’s open mouth.
Sebastian handed me his handkerchief, took the flask, and swigged.
As I bound my wound, I turned to the Lindqvists.
“On this blood, I promise not to reveal your secrets.”
Bianca bowed. “The little accountant solves an equation. Maybe there’s some Peter in you after all.”