Chapter 75
Returning to Helshire was easy.
My hallmates at Lavernick treated my absence as if it were nothing unusual—a family emergency, a broken leg on a ski trip.
Aaliyah only once brought up that, on the night I’d disappeared, she’d received a mysterious text telling her to throw my laptop in the lake.
She had, and I thanked her with the red-and-black sweater Elizabeth had knitted for me.
We played poker, drank cocktails, and never mentioned my handsome, missing cousin by name.
I’d fallen behind in my classes, but the teachers at Helshire were used to legacies taking time off for special projects. My Econ thesis shifted from the vulnerabilities of electronic banking to something less exciting: the lack of jail time resulting from financial crimes.
Two weeks into my return, Tom came into my room with a huge smile. His roommate, Thomas, had signed. Another family for the pyre.
“You know, I thought this was going to be a terrible year. Mary’s curae. Finding out Gertie had a cult. Sebastian running away. You and Grandma arguing—so unMorton! All of it.”
Tom waited a beat for me to say something. I didn’t.
“But you’re back. You’re one of us again.”
“Yes. And I’m sure you’ll ace your finals, Tom.”
“I will. Without needing to scream.”
I smiled, as if I didn’t either.
I dropped Legacy Bronze Age in Question and went back to Archery, where I hit the bull’s-eyes that I’d missed with Tom.
The Senior Uncommons was empty, with four of our number gone.
(That Xavier would return seemed unlikely; the other three, unthinkable.) I went there sometimes, hoping Regina Lindqvist would appear.
But she never did, and elsewhere treated me exactly as she always had—like a boring girl with whom she shared friends.
She dropped no words containing those four letters lightly into conversation.
We were two careful islands, an ocean between us.
I stayed away from Gertie for her own good.
It was easy now, playing the true Morton. Music felt further away, a buzzing from someone else’s headphones. Maybe the empathogens were still fading from my system. Or maybe I’d cut out the weakness inside me with the price of my escape.
Not with Ziggy though.
With a hug. A snap.
Faraday and I met one afternoon in the Lesser Tea Room.
She was wearing one glove. It was made of black felt, on her left hand (Grandmother, merciful and kind), and covered with silver sequins. She had two more left gloves in her handbag, in case she was struck with the need to change her look.
“I have an entire drawer of them, dear.”
“What do you do with the right-hand ones?”
“I keep them for when it gets cold.”
“Ah, of course.” Winter hadn’t settled in yet, though it was early December. “Do people ever guess why you’re only wearing one?”
“Never.” Faraday moved her hand to demonstrate—the pinkie was sewn to the ring finger; it flexed convincingly.
“Didn’t your family say something at Thanksgiving?”
“Not a word. One benefit of lifelong pretentiousness—new affectations barely register.”
“How lucky,” I said. “Grandmother likes you, by the way.”
Faraday blushed a little. “I didn’t even scream.”
“Well done.” I still cared for her, with the parts of me that had survived Elizabeth’s last test. “I’m so, so sorry this all happened, dear.”
Faraday reached out her good hand. “What matters is that you’re back. And I hope Sebastian isn’t far behind.”
“Does he owe you rent?”
“Don’t be tiresome, darling. Gertie’s letter solved all that. But we miss Bazzy so much.”
I missed him too. It was one thing, being separated from him in my family’s hidden room. But Helshire was the real world, where I needed real air to breathe.
His absence marked every tree, every stone.
“Don’t worry, dear,” I said. “He’ll be dropping by soon.”
Faraday smiled, and I wondered if she would report these words back to my family. I’d already placed Sebastian’s key in the lost and found, to focus the eyes watching our campus on someone sneaking in, instead of out.
I made my escape during the rugby team’s weekly run.
Fall-term finals were starting in a few days, and winter had crashed down on us in a mass of frigid arctic air.
After a semester of wildfire smoke, a nearby murder, and multiple Hellions vanishing, the energy on campus was edgy and curdled.
The final Primal Scream of the calendar year was tomorrow night—the perfect time to escape.
But I’d heard enough screaming for one year.
The Hellcats ran in sweatpants and hoodies. Most wore their hoods up, forming an anonymous mass of rugby thighs and profane marching songs. Every Tuesday, they passed Lavernick just before noon.
I left my family phone in the Sun Parlor, went to the back stairwell, and added a layer of pilfered rugby gear. Then I slipped out the door and into the Hellcat throng with nothing but the clothing under my sweats and the last $100 bill from my bug-out bag.
A few women on the team noticed me, but no one said anything. Rugby wasn’t a legacy sport—we don’t seek out unnecessary injuries.
I wondered how closely the family was surveilling me. I hadn’t spotted any extra Mortons on campus. Perhaps the other legacy students, still loyal, had been drafted to watch the wayward prodigy.
I didn’t look over my shoulder. I just ran.
We flowed up through the Terraces, past Sebastian’s share house from junior year—festooned with pirate flags by the new occupants—and into the clear-cut beneath the power lines. The Old Campus crouched in the forest to our right.
When we passed the statue of the seated woman, the team saluted, mirroring her broken hand. By now, I’d let myself drop to the rear of the pack.
As the trail brushed the edge of the trees, I slipped away.
My rugby gear dropped piece by piece into the tall grass. Soon I was in forest camo patterns, the ruin of Halcyon Hall ahead of me.
I hadn’t seen Peter’s masterpiece since the night of the fire. The top floor had been obliterated, the rest charred black. The husk still fluttered with yellow caution tape, tattered and faded after eight months. My footfalls crunched on splinters of charcoal in the brittle grass.
Peter would have loved it.
Bitter lemon in my mouth.
I didn’t stop, running past the old stables and overgrown tennis courts, then up the path to the derelict gazebo on the ridge. From there, I took one last glance back at Helshire, wondering if the alarm had been sounded yet.
There were no signs of pursuit, no indication that anyone in that cluster of gothic spires, brick towers, and modern steel was missing me.
I could feel my connections to the place, woven over the last four years. My first home away from the estate. My first Primal Scream. My first kill.
More strings for the pyre.
I waited to catch my breath, then turned away and left Helshire for the last time.