Page 32 of Night and Silence

“On it,” he said, and wove his hands through the air, chanting the lyrics to some old sea shanty while the smell of steel and heather rose around him and burst, covering us all in the veil of his recast don’t-look-here.

We walked to the false wall together, Madden returning to all fours and pressing his nose to the ground as he looked for a replacement trail. I looked back only once, as we reached the exit. The little house was standing again, balanced on the edge of the porch, with its blank picture window eyes fixed on us, watching us go.

We stepped into the brick. The house, and the garden, and the impossible courtyard disappeared, and we just kept on walking.

EIGHT

GILLIAN’S CAR WAS GONE when we got back to campus. The police had probably towed it away to some impound lot for further study, and while I’d been anticipating its absence, expecting it and seeing it were very different things. I paused, taking a moment to catch my breath, before approaching the caution tape. It was still in place, campus security standing watch to make sure the students who loitered nearby, craning their necks for a glimpse of something forbidden, respected the fragile barrier.

We were less on the “respect” train than the “bring Gillian home” express. We ducked under the caution tape without hesitation, trusting Quentin’s don’t-look-here to protect us. Madden sniffed his way around the site while I gathered chunks of bloody glass from the ground, following the siren song of my daughter’s pain. Some of the pieces had barely a drop clinging to their surface, but I found them all the same. I couldn’t have missed them if I’d tried.

By the time Madden came back to the rest of us, my pocket was full of glass and my fingers had been nicked six times, forcing me to do some quick juggling to keep myself from bleeding on the ground. Strictly speaking, the campus was such a jumble of bodies and their associated fluids that it was almost certainly a forensic dead end: I could bleed everywhere, and it wouldn’t necessarily point any fingers in my direction now that the car was gone. However, I preferred to be careful when I could.

“Well?” I asked Madden, voice pitched low. The student body hadn’t spotted us yet. I wanted to keep it that way. “Did you find a second trail?”

He hesitated before wagging his tail, once. So he’d found something, but he wasn’t completely sure it was right or useful. That was fine. We could figure it out when we got there, and it wasn’t like we had anything else to go on.

My phone rang.

“Shit,” I muttered. Heads began to turn, and eyes began to focus as nearby students heard the sound. Empty air normally doesn’t come with cell service. “Everybody move.”

Quickly, we ducked back under the caution tape and hurried away from the crime scene. A few people tracked us, confused expressions on their faces, but most continued looking at the place I’d been when my phone began to ring. Magic has its uses.

My phone was still ringing. I pulled it out and swiped my thumb across the screen without checking the caller ID. No one has my number who shouldn’t—literally. I’m not sure my number even exists. I got it when Devin gave me a phone, and I’ve held onto it through a dozen of April’s “upgrades.” I’ve never seen a bill. If there’s a mortal cellular company that has my business, I don’t know about it.

“Hello?”

“Is this a bad time?” Walther sounded weary, like he’d been pulled out of bed far too early for any civilized man. Given that it wasn’t even noon yet, I couldn’t fully blame him.

“No, it’s not. Bridget got ahold of you?”

“Dragged me out of a department meeting with a story about a student in distress. I’d kiss her if she weren’t married, not my type, and glaring at me.” He audibly yawned. “Okay, I’ve had like, five cups of coffee and this is as awake as I’m getting. Are you still on campus?”

“Yes. Do you need me?”

“That depends. How’s your nose?”

I paused for a moment, focusing on breathing. “A little stuffy, but mostly okay. My eyes itch more than anything. Quentin still sounds congested, and so does May.”

“Got it. Yes, I need you. You should all come to my office as soon as possible.”

“Why?”

“Allergy medication.” He hung up with a click. I lowered my phone, staring at it. Something about his tone—

“Okay, everyone, come on; we need to hurry.” I shoved my phone back into my pocket and started walking faster.

Quentin gave me a sidelong look. “Why?”

“Because Walther didn’t tell me to.”

His eyes widened. “Oh,” he said, and matched me step for step.

Walther is a lot of things. “Overly dramatic” doesn’t make the list. If anything, he has a tendency to downplay bad situations, acting like there’s nothing to worry about when there’s really everything to worry about. He already had the allergy medication ready for us. That told me it was something we needed to take.

“Drop the don’t-look-here when you have a clear opportunity to do so,” I said. Quentin nodded and, when we were briefly shielded from the rest of campus by the side of a building, snapped his fingers and let the spell go. There might be cameras. If there were, we wouldn’t appear out of nowhere, more go from an unfocused spot on the film—or whatever cameras used these days—to a focused one.

May jumped when the spell dropped, shooting me a sharp look. “What’s going on?”