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53
The forest is a breeze thereafter. Luke suffers no terrors in the night, though he’s quiet and reflective as we walk together, what happened to him at the loch perhaps his ultimate nightmare. Eventually, we emerge from the black corridor of trees, at once noticing the Union flag on Lochkelvin’s highest turret colliding in the wind with the deep blue of the Scottish saltire. As we make our way toward the grounds, the braziers appear in the distance like amber scribbles. I never had the chance to see this bit last year, and I’m astonished to find the other students still milling around, no longer holding hands and chanting, but still talking to each other, a couple of them covertly slicking back alcohol when the teachers aren’t looking.
Rory’s dark blond head is easy to pick out among the crowd, and I make a beeline for him. When he notices me, his expression turns alert, scanning both our faces for any hint of trouble or failure.
I hug him so tightly that he almost goes flying to the ground. His arms wrap around me and he breathes me in like I’ve been gone for days.
“You made it,” he mutters into my hair, pressing kisses all over my head. “It worked?”
I nod, though I don’t offer any details, instead pulling out the small gray stone I’d lifted from the loch. It looks innocent, like it had never been a crazy neon color. At the sight of it, Rory visibly sags with relief and draws me in for another tight hug. The others are surrounding us now, curious. I note Finlay nudging himself companionably against Luke’s arm, and although Luke doesn’t return the gesture, he doesn’t move away from it either. Danny stands on his other side, watching me with awe.
“How long were we gone?” I ask, my lips caressing Rory’s fair strands. I’m amazed they’re all still here, waiting for us.
Rory pulls away with a thoughtful frown. “Fifteen minutes?”
Luke meets my gaze, incredulous. There’s no way we only spent fifteen minutes in that forest. That’s insane. Indeed, Luke seems entirely irritated by the idea, and in happier times I could hear him drawl,Yeah, I promise you, sex with me lasts longer than a quarter of an hour.
But I’m not shocked anymore. I feel distinctly unshockable right now, after all that I’ve seen — and I suppose there’s power in that, in never being caught off-guard again.
“I trust everything went according to plan this time,” a cold voice says behind us, with an annoying amount of emphasis placed on the latter two words. We turn to find Baxter, who stands tall and domineering, with that ugly shrunken head attached to her crook. Given I’m not exactly on her Christmas card list, it says something that she can’t bring herself to even acknowledge Luke.
Too tired for this, I show her the stone as answer, because I doubt she’d ever believe me if I only said so. She peers down at it, still unimpressed.
“Good. It took you long enough.” She claps her hands together and begins to usher the students indoors, her billowing black robes snapping at our ankles as she sweeps past us.
She leaves an angry silence in her wake.
“Dozy auld bat,” Finlay snarks.
“Youdiddo good,” Rory pointedly tells both of us, taking my hand in his as I pocket the stone once more. He pats Luke affectionately on the shoulder, and it’s then that his eyes slide up to his face, lingering when he realizes Luke’s crown is missing.
They stand together like that for a long moment, wordless communication passing between them, Luke’s expression angry and determined and above all hurt, Rory open and listening and saying nothing.
I hold the stone inside my pocket, deriving an unusual comfort from it. I wonder what will become of it, and secretly hope that I’ll get to keep it as a memento.
“We should go inside,” Rory murmurs, his thumb tenderly stroking the ball of Luke’s shoulder. He gives his fellow chief one final squeeze before looping his arm around mine.
We walk behind the remainder of the students, the last stragglers at the back, as teachers in black robes douse the braziers. Trails of smoke rise from them like a message.
“I’ve been thinking,” Rory begins, in a voice so quiet that only I can hear it. We’re a small distance from the other chiefs as we walk toward the castle doors. “Last year. I think I get it now. Why it never worked. It wasn’t because of you — it was because ofme.” When I turn to him in askance, he elaborates as though it pains him: “The ritual failed because I was a cocky shit last year. Because I forced you to do it. That’s not how it’s supposed to happen.” He pauses. “I thought I was more important than the forces that are present in Lochkelvin. I’m sorry for what I put you through.”
He sounds genuinely contrite, and I know it’s what I deserve after his accusations of me being the one who fucked everything up. The threat of humiliation he’d shoved upon me that night last year, when he’d forced me to undergo the ritual or release a video of what had been, then, my worst and most heartbreaking moment. Along the way, I’ve collected worse moments and greater heartbreaks, and I’m all too aware that last Samhain is a whole lifetime ago, when Rory had been a harder, more obnoxious brat and I had been a permanently scared girl.
It’s funny, the way time stretches and rushes at different points in life. That last year could only be a year ago yet still feel like an eon.
“Thank you.” I’m grateful, honestly. It feels like a reprieve, that my past self is vindicated. Because no one could have done what I’d had to do, under duress, isolated and afraid for months on end. It had been an impossible task. Looking back, although the outcome had been undesired, I’m still proud of what happened and all that came after — because it built my resilience in ways I never knew I needed.
Beside us, Danny is still dressed in his dopey squirrel costume and talking animatedly to Luke as though he were wearing his ordinary school uniform. My mouth twitches at the sight.
“I’ve been having a thought of my own,” I say, and Rory raises an eyebrow. “The costumes. Why would Finlay and I have been spared?” I let the question hang before answering, when Rory is not forthcoming, “It’s you, isn’t it? You choose the costumes.”
He neither confirms nor denies my hypothesis, instead threading his fingers together and arcing them overhead as he lets out a magnificent yawn.
As we step into the Lochkelvin entrance hall, the lion and unicorn still in direct conflict with each other, one thing is clearer to me following our journey to the loch: the question now is notdid the ritual workbut, having supposedly performed everything correctly,do rituals work at all?
* * *
Iwake earlier than ever, with a knot of tension in the pit of my stomach. It’s November and rain beats at the tower like an attack, an invasion. I bury my head beneath my pillow, trying to return to sleep, and dream in disturbed fragments — of Luke rocking back and forth, of a crown traveling like a discus far into the horizon before winking into oblivion. Benji’s eyes, for the first time in forever, mocking and sharp. The glint of a silver dagger. Luke on his knees before me in what seems like a recreation of our time beside the loch — but when I look down, I realize it’s not his crown that’s missing but his entire head. As I jerk back, his body slowly falls forward onto the stones and over my feet, and I realize then that I’m holding Luke’s head between my hands, his handsome face alive and acrid as he scorns, “You did this to me.”
