Epilogue

Fall break starts tomorrow. Wren and I are going to drive up to Pennsylvania with Penny. When we get back to Corbin College next week, everything will be different.

Dr. Hendrix will be in charge of Magni Viri. The school appointed her as interim director after the entire board resigned. If O'Connor's death wasn't reason enough, Quigg's threatening to show Magni Viri's historical documents and occult collection to the administration, the press, and anyone else who might care made up the board members' minds. But mostly I think they no longer deem Magni Viri worth investing in now that the ghosts are untethered and we're just ordinary students. They did us the courtesy of covering up the strange circumstances of O'Connor's demise, and then they left. Magni Viri will have to find new funding to stay alive. Dr. Hendrix says she's excited for the challenge.

Not everyone is a fan of the changes—or of the Magni Viri freshmen who caused them. Some of the students have had to alter their research projects since they're too advanced. There won't be any more Sunday night parties in the graveyard. We will all be a little less brilliant.

So it's probably a good time for us to get out of town for a while and give the older Magni Viri students a chance to remember what life is like without ghosts in their brains. I'm excited for the long drive with my friends, a change of scenery, and the chance to meet Penny's family. I promised Mr. Hanks and his sister I'd spend Christmas break with them, but for now, I'm ready to flee the embrace of these green and ominous hills.

But before I go, I have some things to do. First, I delete Cicada from my computer, as well as any emails I sent about it. Then I take my taped and tattered notebook, filled to the brim with Isabella's midnight scrawls, and I carry it outside.

Fall is nearing its end and the trees are mostly bare, with only a brown leaf here and there trembling in the wind. Winter is coming early this year, Penny says. I missed the chance to see her bats, at least until the spring.

I walk downhill toward the cemetery, savoring the way my boots crunch in the dead leaves, the way the air smells like old books and pipe smoke. I enter the cemetery gate and walk its winding paths through the gravestones. It's colder here because of the ghosts. I can practically sense them shivering in the air, craving a warm body to inhabit.

They'll all eventually fade, I think. They won't be able to linger forever without a living host. For now, they cling to Denfeld Hall and its cemetery. They watch us and pine for us. Quigg told me sometimes they whisper secrets in his ear. But they can't get to us anymore. We'll never belong to them again, and they'll never belong to us.

I find Isabella's grave easily, lonely under its tree. I feel a strange burst of tenderness for her, the sad, clever, unloved little girl who grew into a monster. I kneel in front of her grave marker.

"I brought you this," I say, holding out Cicada. "I read it again last night. I'll admit it's brilliant and that it would get me a book deal if I tried to publish it. It might even win me a fancy book prize and turn me into a literary wunderkind. But it's not mine. It's yours."

With a sigh, I lay the notebook on the dead leaves and pine needles that cover her grave. Its pages riffle in the wind as if phantom fingers are thumbing through it. Lily of the valley fills my nose, its springtime scent at odds with the autumn setting.

"I know there is some of me in here too, but not enough of me. It belongs here with you," I say. "It's your masterpiece."

With a hand spade I brought in my bag, I dig a small, book-shaped hole at about the place Isabella's heart should be. I put the notebook inside and cover it with dirt. By the time I'm done, my fingers are numb with cold. I brush the leaves and pine needles back into place.

Then I push myself to my feet and stare down at Isabella's grave. "Rest in peace, Isabella Snow," I say, even though I know she won't.

Her eyes follow me all the way back up the hill to Denfeld, where a white screen with a blinking cursor waits for me to finish what I started.

I have a book of my own to write.