Shades of Darkness (27 page)

When it was five, I put on my coat and left for what was easily the most stilted dinner I'd had at Islington. My stomach turned with the thought of what we were about to do and how difficult it was to act normal with Elisa at the table. I tried to focus on making idle chatter about the upcoming production of
Marat/Sade
. It didn't work—the play was filled with sex and death and revolution, which really didn't take my mind off things.

At five fifteen Ethan and Oliver excused themselves. At five twenty, Chris left to “get some work done.” Which left Elisa and me alone for a few minutes while I waited for enough time to pass before I could leave without being suspicious.

“He's really cute,” Elisa said. I nearly choked on my fry.

“Who?” I asked, though of course I knew who she was talking about. It's not like Islington had gotten any fresh meat in the last twenty-four hours.

“Chris,” she said. “I can tell he likes you.”

“Oh yeah? What gives you that opinion?” Not that there was any doubt in my mind that he was crushing. I was just trying to play it cool.

“The way he looks at you. There's chemistry between you.” There wasn't a hint of her usual joking demeanor, and all color had left her—she was in all black, and the somber clothes reflected in her voice. The way she spoke . . . it didn't sound like she was excited—it sounded like she was delivering another eulogy.

“What, are you psychic now?”

She shrugged and poked at her Caesar salad, not looking at me.

“It's pretty obvious. You guys start leaning toward each other when no one's watching.” She tapped the side of her head. “But Elisa is
always
watching. Elisa always knows.”

I shook my head and laughed, grateful for that one small crack in her dreary facade. I knew it was an act, but hey, that's what she was good at. That's what we
both
were good at.

“Wow, okay, I'm going to go talk to Maria about switching roommates now. Apparently mine just turned into a creeper.”

She giggled slightly and took a bite of salad.

“He
is
cute,” I admitted. That was the only admission she'd get, too.

“Mmhmmm.” I glanced at the clock and tried to think of an excuse to leave, but I felt bad leaving her there by herself.

And then, almost like clockwork, Cassie came over. She sat down with a mug of hot chocolate and a cookie and proceeded to cry on Elisa's shoulder. I excused myself a few seconds later.

•  •  •

Islington had a lot of secrets. That's what happens when you put four hundred teenagers in a small area with no real escape. It wasn't just the students, though—the very grounds were steeped in their own histories. Cabins in the woods with unlocked doors where the potheads would go and smoke, practice rooms that were definitely used for more than practicing . . . come to think of it, most of Islington's secrets had to do with getting wasted or getting laid, or, if we're being honest, both at the same time. The campus was our prison, but it was also our secret benefactor: Ask nicely, and you might find your way around some of the administration's more stifling rules.

It was little surprise, then, when—halfway through spring term last year—Ethan pulled me into a closet in the ceramics studio to show me a ladder leading up to the roof. We'd spent many late nights out there, bundled in thick coats and watching the stars turn. We'd even seen the aurora once, and in that moment I figured that if heaven existed, that's what it looked like.

Chris and Ethan were already there when I arrived. With everyone at dinner, the studio was empty: Not a single throwing wheel was taken, and the silent air was chilled and smelled of clay. I tried to push down the idea of Mandy's ghost lingering in the corners, working eternally on the project she never got to truly debut. It didn't work.

“About time,” Ethan said, giving the splattered clock on the wall a knowing look. Everything in this room was coated with clay, some of it probably from the early days of Islington.

“I'm two minutes late,” I said. “Elisa was making small talk.”

“Whatever, boss,” Ethan replied. Chris just chuckled to himself, watching us with amusement.

“Shut up,” I told him, and pushed past them toward the back room.

The closet stored all the old equipment and clay: Potter's wheels were stacked together beside rain barrels filled with water and hidden clay. A single bare bulb hung from the ceiling, but I didn't bother clicking it on. Chris closed the door behind us and I flicked on my tiny keychain flashlight, a must-have when living in the woods.

There was a metal ladder in the far wall, hiding behind a few cardboard boxes. Ethan moved toward it and shuffled the boxes aside, trying to be quiet but ultimately failing.

“You sound like a drunk rat,” I muttered. I kept an ear near the door, straining to hear if anyone was coming in to finish work.

Ethan just grumbled something under his breath. Then, after another shuffle, said, “Got it.”

“Ladies first,” I said, gesturing to the now-clear ladder. Ethan rolled his eyes and began climbing. He pushed open the small door at the top and climbed the rest of the way out. Then he leaned over and whispered “clear,” before disappearing again.

I looked at Chris.

“He's taking this
Mission Impossible
thing way too seriously,” I whispered. “Of course it's clear. It's the fucking roof.”

Chris chuckled, which made me feel warm; I shoved the feeling aside and gestured him toward the ladder.

“After you,” I said.

He winked.

“Enjoy the view,” he replied. I smacked him on the shoulder.

But that didn't mean I didn't, in fact, enjoy the view when he climbed. His ass looked quite nice in those jeans. From an artistic perspective, of course. He had good musculature.

Before I could start feeling like a perv, I grabbed the first rung and climbed up after him, making sure I didn't look up until he was on the roof.

The view of the sky from up here was gorgeous, but it didn't really give any perspective on the campus; the art building was only two stories tall, and the surrounding pines and dorms were much higher. The flat roof was relatively cleared of snow, thanks to the heating running through it that kept everything from accumulating.

Ethan and Chris were crouched low. There wasn't much out here in terms of light pollution, and night was already closing in thick, but the last thing we needed was for security to notice shadows moving about on the rooftop.

“Tell me why we're here again?” Ethan asked.

I hesitated. They were risking their educations to be up here with me, but I couldn't tell them the full truth. If either of them knew about the drawing or the dream, they'd call me insane and cart me off to the school counselor.

“I just want to see it,” I said. “I want to know what happened.”

“The body will already be gone,” Chris said. He caught himself and swallowed hard. “Sorry. I mean Jane. She won't be there.”

“I know,” I said. “But I still want to see. If there's a reason they're locking it up, I want to know.”

“This really is like Scooby Doo,” Ethan muttered.

“Can it, Scooby,” I said. Then I shuffled along the roof, tracing the hallways below in my mind until I reached the painting studio, Ethan muttering the entire time that he was clearly Shaggy in this equation.

Light streamed from the skylight, and I gave a quick thanks to whatever gods were listening that someone had left the lights on—I hadn't even considered that before. Ethan and Chris were right behind me, silent as ghosts, save for the occasional kick of pebbles across the slabs.

I took a deep breath, then crouched only a few feet away from the edge of the skylight. For some reason, standing there, waiting to look at a scene I feared I'd already seen in my journal, I felt naked. Exposed. Like the whole cosmos was breathing down my neck, waiting for me to discover some dark secret. I tried to shake it off as nerves but couldn't lose the feeling. What if there was blood, or if Jane
was
still in there for some reason, staring right up at me? This was the moment that would tell me if my fears were confirmed, or if this was all some big delusion. Was I ready for that truth?

Ethan put his hand on my shoulder. I nearly jumped out of my skin.

“You ready for this?” he asked. He didn't ask if I wanted to leave, though I knew he was thinking it.

“Yeah,” I said. I'd have to face this some time. Class would go on. In a few days, I'd be back in that studio, painting and pretending a body hadn't rested at the foot of my easel. The thought made my skin crawl.

I moved to the edge of the window and looked down.

A thick ring of black paint encircled the space within the easels. It stared up at me like an eye, like a portal to Hell itself, the void within blank and white and crawling with memory. No body. Of course there was no body. But there were notecards on the ground at strategic locations, no doubt pointing out evidence of some sort. Seeing it brought a sick feeling to my chest, a tightening of revulsion like the cogs of some terrible torture device. My vision tilted to the side and I stumbled back.

“Whoa,” Chris said, his arms catching me before I could fall on my ass. “Careful there.”

I glanced back at him, my heart thudding a thousand times a minute.

“Thanks,” I said. I pushed myself out of his arms. “Vertigo.” Which was a lie. I wasn't scared of heights. I was just fucking terrified. I took a slow breath and went back to the skylight.

“Do you think she moved it?” Ethan muttered. “The still life. Do you think she moved it before she died?”

“Must have,” Chris answered. “Nothing else has been touched.”

For a while we just crouched there, staring down at where our classmate and friend had lost her life not a day before. My heart didn't slow down. The circle burned into my mind, along with the words scrawled along the top.

The Tree Will Burn

It was one thing to worry that you'd had a premonition about something. It was another entirely to realize that premonition had been correct. My pulse was heavy and fast in my veins, my breath a beast I couldn't control. I was linked to these deaths after all. And that circle . . .

Maybe I hadn't run far enough away. The ghosts of my past were still here. And they weren't just haunting me—they were striking out.

“It wasn't her,” I said after a moment.

“What do you mean?” Chris asked. Ethan made a noise in his throat, like he was agreeing with me but wasn't certain why.

I couldn't take my eyes off the black circle.

“Look at the paint,” I said. “The circle is hers—the flourishes at the edges are exactly like she'd do. But that's not her handwriting.”
I've seen those words before, hidden in the pages of my notebook.
But this wasn't my doing, just as it wasn't my handwriting.

“She was going to kill herself, Kaira. I don't think she was worried about perfect cursive.”

“No, Elisa was right. She didn't kill herself.”

“So who killed her?” Ethan asked.

Chris sat back. I was still transfixed by the circle and the words above it. I could see the ghost of Jane, almost, splayed out against the white, her hair a fan around her head and her eyes open in confusion.

Who killed you?
I whispered inside.

She didn't answer, of course, but the sudden gust of wind sent chills down my spine.

“I don't know,” I finally replied. “But there's no blood. It doesn't look like there was a struggle. But there's no way she killed herself.”

“That doesn't sound possible,” Chris said. “If she didn't kill herself and it wasn't a murder, why would she draw a circle and just drop down dead inside it? And who would write that and then not report the body?”

I didn't say anything. Helen was the one who found her, but she was innocent. Helen wouldn't hurt a fly.

Someone or some
thing
else had been in that room. But whether they'd forced Jane to draw the circle or done it themselves, I had no idea. All I knew was it wasn't a suicide. And it wasn't a simple murder. This was something beyond mortal doing. I knew this. I'd seen it before.

Only this time, I wasn't the one who'd accidentally called down the gods.