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54
Rory staggers back, staring at Dr. Moncrieff in open-mouthed horror. He says nothing but it’s clear a million thoughts are racing through his mind.
The knot in my stomach automatically quadruples in size, to the point I think it may have erupted, coating my insides with the nausea that’s abruptly rushing up my throat.
Ritual.This is the ritual.
“Fuck,” Dr. Moncrieff mutters uncharacteristically as he watches us, his expression softening slightly as he takes in our stunned reactions. He looks awkward as he gently suggests, like a guidance teacher new to the role, “Would you like to come inside?”
But Rory’s shaking his head like this isn’t happening. He clutches his golden hair with desperate fingers. “Dead?” he asks tightly, his sharp gray eyes pinning Dr. Moncrieff into place like nails. “Or murdered? There’s a difference between the two.”
“Details haven’t been released.”
“I thoughtyou’dhave inside information,” Rory snarls. He runs an agitated hand down his face, pacing in front of us in tense circles. After a full minute of this, he stops and stands to attention. He meets my eyes, ignoring Dr. Moncrieff entirely. “I think I know where he is.”
When I don’t follow, Rory grabs my hand and hauls me away from the politics classroom, my feet having fast turned to lead. We climb stairway after stairway, and they all blur into one until it feels like we’re climbing into space. My head feels like concrete, my thoughts frozen and stiff. Neither of us says anything, because the implications of this news — it’s a development too big, too vast, to be formed into words.
We pass Danny and Finlay, who give us weird looks when we fail to greet them. They watch in curiosity as we march upstairs, the world suddenly too dark that all we can do is try to block it out.
Eventually, I find we’re on the seventh floor, and curiosity slops into my brain. It’s late enough at night that moonlight glances milk-white and mystical along the thick paving stones across the floor. Rory’s footsteps haven’t slowed once — even now, as we reach the girls’ tower, he’s making a beeline for it, quick-marching all the way there.
I don’t understand why Rory thinks Luke’s hiding out in the girls’ tower. Where, exactly? Because asifArabella would even let him consider it. But then I realize Rory’s stopped at the foot of the staircase — and that it’s not the girls’ tower he’s gazing up at but the dusty old fireplace in the foyer, the one I’d seen far too much of earlier in the year, when Benji had been hidden inside it those many months ago.
My throat tightens. Surely Luke isn’t…?
Rory crouches, sweeping a sprinkling of soot between his fingers. He knocks at the wall, and in a low, troubled voice he asks into the secret cavity, “Luke — are you in there?” No reply is forthcoming but it doesn’t stop Rory. He presses the hidden switch located beneath the mantelpiece, the way I did all those months ago, when a confidential dossier had been thrust into my existence and I’d had to figure out what the hell to do with it.
The grate rotates, revealing a person-sized gap. Rory stoops low, peering into the darkness ahead. And then his shoulders fall, the tension slaking off him. He glances at me over his shoulder and murmurs, “He’s here.”
The pity I feel for Luke at that moment is overwhelming. To run here of all places — in the dark, in the dirt, where Benji had scavenged and barely survived. I follow Rory and crawl into the gap, remembering its tightness, remembering its thin supply of air. Remembering how, either way, I could have changed the world. How Benji assumed he already was —I’m making a better world for sweethearts like you.
Luke lies slumped against the rough stone wall, a classic picture of despair. A small stub of a candle lights up his drawn face, its wax melting messily onto the soot-covered slab by his school shoes. A battery-powered radio lies propped against a brick, and I recognize it as the one from the chiefs’ dorm — the one Benji had listened to over winter break, the one whose electronic music I’d danced to when I’d been Rory’s to command. Right now it’s on a frequency so extreme it gives out nothing but soft pure static.
“You shut the fireplace,” Rory chides, stepping carefully across to his friend. “That’s dangerous. What if I hadn’t checked in here?”
Luke barely responds, his head lolling sideways. Rory tugs out the brick by the radio, passing its bulky weight across to me and gesturing at the entrance to the fireplace, where it’s being kept open by the blade of my foot. Placing the brick into position, I settle beside Rory, the three of us cramped and hugging our knees in this tiny little alcove. I haven’t missed this place at all.
“I’m sorry, old friend,” Rory says softly, leaning into Luke. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
Luke stares sightlessly ahead as Rory leans his head upon his shoulder. It’s in Rory’s tone what he knows. The news that seems unspeakable to mention right now.
I lower my head onto Rory’s shoulder, wondering if I should even be here. Maybe Luke wants privacy. Maybe he never wants to see me again. I wouldn’t blame him after the ritual. A stupid ritual that, for ceremonial sake, seems to have claimed his mother.
“Until today, I’d never felt this feeling before,” Luke murmurs, his voice sounding small. Neither of us asks to clarify what he means, and a full five minutes later Luke mutters, “I don’t want to be me anymore.”
My heart sinks to my shoes. The candlelight flickers, casting mysterious shadows across the wall in front of us. Luke’s stomach growls, and I note there’s no food here, not even from the days when this had been Benji’s shelter. He hasn’t been seen all day. He must be starving.
“Shall I go to the kitchens?” I offer, anxious to leave because this is all my fault, Luke’s pain right now is all my fucking fault.
Luke doesn’t answer, and for a moment I think he’s rightfully ignoring me. “No,” he eventually says, his voice croaky, his tone hollow. “I can’t eat.”
We wait for Luke to speak, lulled by the soft hiss of radio static. It’s something to focus on while Luke remains silent, a background soundtrack to the patterns on the wall that twist and distort into dreamlike visions.
“I wanted to feel how he’d feel,” Luke murmurs, speaking so slowly it’s as though he no longer registers the speed of passing time. “It’s why I’m here. Because he’s the one who did this to me, and I want to see how monsters are made.”
I pick nervously at my fingernails. Does he know more than we do, that Antiro had been involved? He sounds so broken, so hurt. I just wish everything could be okay again.
But I suppose when you’re dealing with high-status people, it’s high-stakes all of the time.
