Page 108 of Veil of Night & Flames

“The rate of spread’s doubled,” Riley says. “It was eating inches a day. Now it’s feet.” She clicks. “And check out these video clips from last night.”

We all lean in to see the horror play out on her screen. A low four-legged shape crossing dead grass and folding back into the trunk. Something taller, for half a second, at the edge of the frame, that doesn’t read as any animal I know. And a third clip where nothing crosses at all—the camera just glitches hard for nine full seconds, the picture tearing into bands of static, then settles on a patch of grass that’s dead now and wasn’t before.

I look at the dark fingers reaching for Hamilton Hall and the dead plants that surround the Widow Maker, and I shiver. “It’s a freaking Hellmouth.”

“Pretty much,” Cora says.

“How many crossings in all?” Chase asks.

“Six in two nights. All small, all gone again by dawn.” She closes the computer. “And here’s the part I hate. They’re getting braver about when. First crossings were three, four in the morning. Last night’s late one was five-forty. Sunrise was six-fifteen. They’re walking right up to the edge of daylight.”

“Soon they’re going to come through in the day,” I say.

“Oh, yeah,” Riley agrees. “On the quad. With a zillion undergrads walking between classes. And it’s gonna be soon.”

Chase sets his mug down. “How’s the admin delay holding?”

She shrugs. “Your guy moves like lightning. He’s already got the area fenced as a soil-contamination study, and I think he seeded the rumor that it’s a chemical leak from the old groundskeeping shed. And while all that’s great to keep students off the freaky dead spots, it doesn’t stop the critters from coming.”

“No,” Chase says. “It doesn’t.”

“Okay,” I say, trying to sound optimistic. “Let’s make a plan.”

So we do. A tossed-together, very thin plan wherein Chase watches the Widow Maker overnight and trades off with Whistler the second Whistler can manage a watch. That, however, is still days away.

Riley will keep the cameras live, and since she’s already got an alarm set to notify her if there’s motion, she’ll ping everyone if any critter comes through during the day.

Since our biggest problem is the now urgent possibility of the barriers collapsing, Tia’s digging into the older Guardian material, like lore about how the barriers got built in the first place and what force holds them up. Because if there’s a way to slow the fall, it’ll be in the bones of how the barrier was made in the first place.

As for my job…

“Class,” Tia says. “You need to park your ass in a classroom.”

“What? No. Give me real work.”

“You go to class,” Tia says.

I stare at her.

“Don’t even try. You’ve got a psych test on Thursday, you’ve missed two seminars, and if you flunk out, the king wins by default, because you lose the version of you that’s in the Real. And that’s what we’re trying to save, right? The buildings and the lawn and the dining hall and all our classes.”

And the worst part is she’s right.

“Fine. I’ll go to class.”

“Good,” Tia says. “And don’t worry. The Widow Maker will still be ending the world when you get back. It’s reliable that way.”

Chapter

Thirty-Two

I’m breathless by the time I reach the science building, because of course I overslept even though my alarm went off right on time.

The thing about alarms is that you have to actually haul your ass out of bed. Instead, I turned the thing off, then looked at Chase asleep next to me, then decided that snuggling was the best choice for the morning.

Which is why my legs now ache and my lungs are burning.

But I made it, and now I shove through the flood of students coming down the stairs, mutter a quick sorry to a guy whose coffee I nearly spilled, and duck into Valdez’s lecture hall with about ninety seconds to spare. I drop into my seat, jostling the girl beside me, and when Valdez and her TA start setting tests face-down on every desk, I’m actually ready for it.