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Nothing again. She’s elsewhere and I can’t reach her.

Then the fear comes in and it’s one I’ve felt before, the fear of a professor who’s seen students lose themselves in a working and has had to be the one to pull them out, except I can see what’s happening to her and it’s not that she can’t come back, it’s that she doesn’t know she needs to. She thinks she’s still reaching when she’s already standing on the other side of the thing I told her not to cross, and if she keeps walking…

Fuck.

“Saturna,” I say firmly.

Loud.

And just a little panicked.

Her eyes open, big, beautiful, and blue.

And blank.

The room goes still. The others have all come back. Saturna is only halfway back, and I can tell she’s only partially seeing the room, that it’s blending in with whatever world she was just in. Then her eyes find mine and I watch her register where she is and what’s just happened to her. She’s scared, I can see that much. But there’s a softening as she holds my gaze, one I take to mean relief. And if I can be the one to bring her relief, then I’ve done my job.

And then I’m aware that someone else is staring at the two of us. I don’t have to turn to know it’s Sable, which makes me realize that I need to look away. The way I used Saturna’s name to bring her back might have said more than I wanted it to, enough for Sable to notice.

I clear my throat. “Alright then,” I say to the room, my voice finding authority again. “Good. That’s enough for tonight. You’ve all made contact in some form. We’ll go further next week.”

They stand, one by one, some more unsteady on their feet than others, and gather their things.

Saturna is the last to stand. She doesn’t look at me. She hands the splinter back by setting it on the slab beside the velvet pouch instead of placing it in my palm, and I understand the reasoning well enough—she won’t risk another touch because the last time she touched me she recoiled in horror. Frankly, I don’t want that either, though I suppose it’s a small price to pay to feel the silk of her skin.

She leaves before I can do anything foolish like ask her to stay, and the door closes behind her. I’m alone in the tower again.

I snuff the candles slowly. The pocket watch and the velvet pouch I collect; the chalk I leave where it rolled, because I never remember to put the chalk back in its tin and it ends up loose in my coat pocket for a week until I give up and buy another stick.

The staircase down from the tower is narrower than any stair in a well-funded institution ought to be. Whoever built it did it on purpose, probably to discourage first-years from wandering up before they were ready, and I turn sideways where it tightens and come out into the long gallery that connects the tower to the main east range.

Two of the candles in the iron brackets have gone out. The light at this hour is a thin sort of orange that doesn’t reach the ceiling, which is atmospheric and the sort of thing I’d ordinarily find charming, if my nerves weren’t scraped raw these days.

Halfway down the gallery, I see something at the far end.

A figure. Cloaked in the deep-weight red-hooded robe that the teachers wear during the Veil Trial ritual.

They’re standing in the dark at the far end where the corridor turns toward the chapel landing, and are turned toward me, the hood up.

My pulse jumps automatically and I blame it on what I said about my nerves. It’s just a cloak. A staff member taking a shortcut from the lower kitchens, or one of the attendants who sweeps the chapel landing after the Saturday services. A trick of the light where the two candles have gone out and the eye fills in a shape from the dark, which is natural, especially at midnight, especially in a building this fond of its own shadows.

And then the figure moves, not toward me, but away. It ducks around the corner and it’s gone. Silence follows.

I stop walking, my heart still hammering even though I feel a tinge of relief that they left.

I stand in the gallery and I listen to the small hush of a building pretending to be asleep. There are no footsteps, no sound of a door opening or closing. I really should leave it alone, but why does it feel like this person just vanished into thin air?

I force my legs to move again, and I reluctantly walk to the corner and turn.

The corridor beyond and the chapel landing is empty.

They really are gone. But where?

A trick of the candles, I tell myself. A staff member who moved quicker than I did.

And anyway, I’m not sleeping well (though when do I ever?) and I haven’t eaten anything today that counts as food (also not new), and both of those things conspire at midnight in a poorly lit gallery to put shapes in dark places and send a man’s pulse up for no reason.

The…thing in Sogliano has stayed in Sogliano. I know that. There’s no reason for it to have crossed the water. No one at this school knows about the ledgers in my desk or the chart on my wall or the stacked column of whys down the margin of the chart, and even if someone did, they’d have no reason to send anyone up a staircase at midnight to stand in a cloak at the end of a gallery and merely look at me. The notion is laughable, and it’ll look even more absurd by morning when I’ve slept whatever I can manage to sleep.