Page 110 of Bone Year

“I’ve wondered every time I’m in that building,” I say.

“What do you think is up there?”

“I have no idea. That’s the problem. I’m a professor’s daughter, and I’ve lived at this school on and off my whole life, and I don’t know what’s on that floor.” She shrugs, and her breath plumes white. “And that’s only one place. You know how many parts of this campus I’ve never been in? Easily half. There are whole wings that don’t appear on any map they’ll give a student.”

“So we don’t know.”

“We don’t know.”

“Great.” Ellavee stops walking. “Well, there’s one way to find out whether it was a vampire.”

Lux and I turn. Ellavee has that look. The one she gets when she’s up to no good.

“No,” Lux says immediately.

“Hear me out.”

“No.”

“We know where the morgue is. We did our first autopsies in the rooms right outside it. It’s past midnight, the academy is in chaos, half the faculty is running around the main hall, and Cane counted us on our way in. That means no one is looking for any of us for the rest of the night.”

“Ellavee,” Lux sighs.

“If it was Malric, she’ll have fang marks and blood under her nails if she scratched him. If it wasn’t him, she’ll have something else. Either way, we’ll know more than we know right now, which is nothing.”

“Ellavee, if we get caught in the morgue—” Lux runs a hand over her face.

“We won’t get caught,” I say, because Ellavee is on to something. The professors aren’t going to tell us any more about what happened. We need to find out for ourselves.

“That’s what people say right before they get caught,” Lux says.

I am swaying slightly on my feet, and the snow is coming down, and the key at my throat is warm against my skin where it’s usually cold. “I want to see her.”

Lux looks at me.

“I want to see her, Lux. I didn’t say anything before. I owe her this much.”

“Mae—”

“If I don’t see her, I’m going to lie in bed and imagine her, and what I imagine will be worse.”

Lux sighs, acquiescing. “Fine, but if we get caught, I’m blaming all of you.”

“Deal.”

“Especially Ellavee.”

“Fair.” Ellavee shrugs.

We take the long way around, staying off the main paths, and by the time we slip into the patient wards building through a side door, I’m sober enough to be afraid and drunk enough to keep moving anyway. The wards are quieter than I’ve ever seen them. A single mender sits at the desk with her chin on her palm, reading. She doesn’t look up as we pass the landing below her.

The autopsy rooms are on the basement level, the same ones where we cut into the crawler on our first day. The corridor looks different at night. The sconces on the walls glow the same pale blue, but something about the silence makes my skin prickle.

“I used to know where the morgue door was in the daytime,” Lux whispers.

“Middle of the corridor,” I say. “Left side. Heavy door.”

“Show-off.”