CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
JAMES ALREADY MISSED ELLIOTT, AND it hadn’t even been three days that they were apart. James had taken the Kingshead Express train back to Connecticut by himself. He arrived at AEscwulf College on the Yuletide, enveloped by mounds of crystalline snow.
He visited Finch for the Yuletide, gifting him Nils Eriksson memorabilia, before Mr. and Mrs. Hudskin brought him home.
James grasped the edge of the sink tightly, forcing himself to keep it together. He had his fifth interview round speech on housing economics to give in front of Congressman Pittman in order to impress him enough to make him a political aide.
Except, James couldn’t focus on his speech. He was nauseated.
Every morning, he kept expecting Elliott to be beside him. Instead, there was a bare sheet. The sight of it nearly killed him. Dark thoughts beleaguered his brain.
Was Elliott dead? Had James only dreamt he saved him?
It was pathetic, but bundling some of Elliott’s old clothes with his scent still on them and covering them with a blanket beside him seemed to cure him in the mornings afterward. He watched old VHS tapes of Elliott drumming at night before bed.
It embarrassed him, but he used Elliott’s hairbrush, his notebooks, his blankets, so there wouldn’t be dust on them. He wore Elliott’s ties with the teeth marks at the bottom from Elliott’s habit of always nibbling on his tie ends the way some people bit pens.
Most senselessly of all, he moved all of Elliott’s belongings into his dormitory, which only made the torpedoed room even more of a hectic disaster.
James kept everything with him still.
James would sleepily drag himself to the Winterthur Hall Common Room, anticipating the sound of the coffee machine and Elliott drumming with his Walkman in his ears and a pair of drumsticks in his hands as James waited for his shot of caffeine.
Elliott could play any drum solo by ear.
The entire Common Room would hear Earth, Wind & Fire at six in the morning as soon as Elliott played the albums by memory.
However, when James stepped past the grandeur of the bookshelves, the reticulated windows, and the antique fireplace, no one was there.
Everyone had gone home for the holidays.
Except for one other person.
“Oh, precious Apollōn!” A soprano voice trilled outside of James’s disorderly dormitory a week later.
James had spent the entire New Year in solitude in Winterthur Hall as the somber snow fell outside.
He hadn’t eaten much. He hadn’t drunk anything in celebration.
He kept himself isolated. Professor Ilaria grasped him. “Oh no. I hear you are leaving us?”
“I’ve applied for the congressional office of Congressman Pittman. I have a speech to give him, and because he rowed crew, I invited him–”
“Barbaric. That sport is a bit beneath you, isn’t it?” Séverine smiled nonetheless. She never could remember what water sport he even played. “Alas. I must give you a parting gift! You’ve seen the feeble, weak pupils I must endure. I don’t know how I will find another such as you.”
She handed him a parchment.
James studied the empty paper enclosed in a creamy, thick envelope. “It’s blank.”
“Ah! I’ve forgotten.” She wrote an A on the parchment. “You’ve passed. Well done.”
“Was the theater production my final examination?” James asked.
Typically, Ilaria crafted him a torture examination for his assessments.
One year, she forced him to analyze hemotoxic, neurotoxic, cytotoxic, and myotoxic serpent venoms and rearrange them according to fatality.
The boomslang was the most lethal of all, its envenomation caused internal and external bleeding out of every orifice.
He’d seen live victims with bloodied eyes–the ears and mouths gorged with blood.
The brain hemorrhaged uncontrollably, before several victims went into cardiac arrest in agonizing pain.
By the end of the examination, he had to match the venom to the live serpent. If he’d failed, he would’ve been bitten and potentially died himself. In the examination, he only thought of his mother who died of a brain hemorrhage.
Of course, Séverine had the antidotes that were reconstituted from milked serpents sent from a snake farm facility. However, she indulged in the flair of peril with great delight. She was over-dramatic to a threatening extent. She knew of his mother’s death. She exploited tragedy to her will often.
She’d never failed to give him a dire, dangerous examination before.
Until that winter.
“No, your final examination was not the play, I’m afraid.”
James’s eyebrows knotted as he shut his mid-century suitcase. “What was it?”
“Your greatest accomplishment of the winter was the murder of Lucien Montclair, wouldn’t you agree?”
James’s blood ran cold.
Professor Ilaria ran her slender fingers over his cheekbone. “I’ve spent hundreds of weeks in your company, my sweet-inflected protégé. I know when you’ve killed. I tasted it on you.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
You have a spot on you, my Empyrean protégé.
“Let us not have pretense between us, you and I are far too familiar with one another.” Her voice softened. James’s eyes hardened with fury on her. “I was taken with you the moment I laid eyes on you. I could taste murder on your mouth that morning. A fleck of blood on the edge of your lip.”
Lucien’s blood. James couldn’t utter a single word. Merda.
James’s tainted blood always had the after taste of the dilutions and elixirs.
Lucien’s blood was not contaminated with alchemic materials.
She knew the difference.
Right then, Professor Ilaria laid a kiss on each corner of his mouth in his untidy, chaotic dormitory.
She traced his hands with her manicured finger.
“I was astonished that you were rather uncareful. A knife? After I’d gone to extensive lengths to teach you the intricacies of envenomation, toxicants, and banes that leave little to no traces? ”
James maintained his answer. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Ah, but of course you do. You were propelled by motus animi–motion of the soul. Emotion. You were furious and devastated with emotion, I understand. Elliott Archway needed you.” She’d spat his name out loud with slight antipathy and James felt his blood broil inside of him.
“Elliott Archway was selected for the honorarium. You didn’t care that you spilled blood everywhere, did you?
That you were bathed in it? You cared only that he lived.
” She smiled with an intensified malice in her tone.
“Rather, you were motivated by motūs animorum–impulse. Passion. Affection?”
James didn’t dare move, he’d murder her if he did.
“It was so natural for you to kill for him, to slaughter on his behalf, that you couldn’t bear to think straight. You should’ve come right to me.” She sounded stringent after the last syllable. “I very nearly failed you in the final examination for that slight.”
‘I am obsessive and possessive in turns of wretched measure.’ Professor Ilaria had written that line in the tragedian play for James Wilde. She was intolerant of sharing his attention.
She would’ve properly instructed him in premeditated murder. She deserved his attention. You don’t need me at all?
“I can’t get past the fact that you would be careless enough to use a knife.
There were better methods, better protective measures.
Then again, you never liked using protection, did you?
” She inspected a pen. She bit her words into him with an even temperament.
“If I hadn’t been watchful for you with the philosophy women, there would’ve been a batch of little James Wildes running about here.
You’ve slept with several of the actresses as well. ”
James clenched his teeth. “You convinced Lucien to target Elliott for the honorarium. Don’t distract from what you’ve done.”
“No. I was involved in matters long before that. Although, I was hardly surprised by Lucien’s machinations given my expertise is with serpents.”
“When were you involved?” James demanded.
“Who do you think provided the name Finch Hudskin to the rector’s protégé in the first place? I kept a record of where you went on campus and who you visited.” She said it as if it were simple sense.
James saw Finch every weekend. She always tracked her students to ensure their silence and commitment.
Professor Ilaria mused on, “Who do you think let Montclair read the rector’s letters in an intentional oversight to begin with?
For him to learn what you were, what you’ve done, and what you were capable of in a covert cabal that rejected him?
Lucien was embittered with resentment and envy.
A symptom of young men and your pride.” She smirked at him, knowing that Lucien never would’ve never been accepted.
Lucien had the right disposition for the cabal, but he lacked the social acuity and lineage.
Disposition was not enough. “You were greater than him. You needed a true challenge of inner strength and intellect. You’ve succeeded.
It was an honor to have taught you and known you. ”
“You know nothing about me.”
“I know more of you than you will ever know that I know.” Her mercurial simper magnified. “I was nearly angered with you, until I witnessed the way you burnt the corpse. It was brilliant. I knew you had it within you. You delighted me greatly, I was taken with you anew.”
The hurt was still evident in her voice. As deftly as she tried, she couldn’t conceal her despondence. She flitted between emotions without warning.
“I waited for you to inform me of what you’d done. Yet you never did. Why ever not?” I am excellent with secrets, Apollōn. You may speak to me about anything. Anything you desire to tell me at all. Anything you would like from me. She whispered, “Did you not trust me?”
I’ve never trusted you, James responded in his mind with his jaw muscle tensed. I despise you.