I almost say something else. I decide not to.
He moves to pull the next stack from the shelf behind me, reaching across to take it down, and for a moment he's closeenough that I can feel the cold of him all down my left side. My breath catches slightly, not from fear. I'm annoyed that it does.
"You're in the way," I say.
"I'm retrieving a stack."
"Retrieve it faster."
He pulls the stack down and steps back, and when I look at him his expression is still controlled, still exactly what it always is, except for something at the corner of his mouth.
He doesn't smile. But it's the closest thing to a smile I've seen on him, and I'm choosing to notice it the way I choose to notice small things that matter more than they look.
"Faster," he says, setting the stack beside me. "Noted."
I turn back to the records so he can't see my face.
We're nearly finished when the chapel doors open.
Neither of us moves immediately. The sound is wrong, not the creak of someone arriving for a purpose, but a slow drag, like something pushing through a barrier it isn't supposed to cross. The sconce flames gutter and go blue-white, colder and lower than they've been all night.
I come out of the alcove first.
It's at the far end of the chapel, near the main doors. Roughly shaped, the way smoke is roughly shaped before it disperses, but this doesn't disperse. It holds together, pulling inward against its own edges, and the air around it has gone so cold I can see my own breath in sharp, rapid puffs. It doesn't have eyes exactly, but there's an orientation to it, a direction of attention, and it's aimed at me.
Ryder steps out of the alcove behind me and stops at my shoulder.
"Don't move," he says, low and flat.
"I wasn't planning to."
The thing at the end of the chapel shifts, a slow lateral movement that doesn't make any sound. The bone panels on thenearest wall vibrate faintly, a high, thin sound at the edge of hearing.
Then Ryder moves past me, and the death magic that comes off him sharpens from background cold to something actively cutting, and whatever is at the end of the chapel recoils. It folds back on itself, the edges fraying, and in the space of a few seconds it pulls apart and the cold goes with it, bleeding out through the stone walls until the chapel temperature is merely winter-unpleasant instead of wrong.
The sconce flames come back up, orange and ordinary.
I let out a breath.
"What was that," I say. Not a question, exactly.
"A wraith." He's still facing the far end of the chapel, watching the empty space where it was. "A young one. Barely formed."
"On campus."
"Apparently."
I look at the bone panels, still faintly trembling in the aftermath. "Is this a common occurrence?"
"No." Something in his voice has gone tighter than usual, controlled in a way that suggests it's an effort. "It isn't." He turns back toward me, and his expression is exactly what it always is, except his eyes have gone colder than before, a different kind of cold than the magic, something that lives behind the professional distance. "The chapel wards should have prevented entry. Someone weakened them."
"Deliberately?"
He doesn't answer right away. He picks up the last stack of records from the alcove entrance and sets them on the nearest pew with a precise, controlled motion. "Finish the catalog. I need to report this to the Headmaster."
"You're leaving me here."
"The wraith is gone and I've just reinforced the threshold." He picks up his coat from the pew where he left it. "You'll be fine."
