Chapter 17

I was relieved when Rigel’s face morphed back into its usual calculating expression. Jumping into action, he shoved the directions into the front of his pants.

I grimaced. “Gross.”

“It’s not like they’re going to strip-search me. Now come here.” Before I knew what he was doing, he had me by the shoulders and was pressing me into the bookshelf. “Look like you’re enjoying this.” He leaned in like he was about to kiss me.

I caught him by the throat with the side of my cane, keeping his face a safe foot from mine. “Don’t you dare.”

“I’m sorry, do you have any better ideas?” he hissed, shoving my cane down to chest height.

“No, but it doesn’t make you kissing me any less gross.”

“What are you guys doing down here?” came a familiar voice, making my stomach roil.

Rigel turned, and I peeked over his shoulder to find none other than Professor Faun looking at us in shock.

“Oh, you know, we were just looking through the histories and got distracted,” Rigel said, smirking suggestively.

I wanted to melt into the stone and disappear for eternity. Even the carefully stern expression on Professor Faun’s face couldn’t spare me. He either knew we were lying or thought I was a harlot. Neither was preferable, but if I was really unlucky, he probably assumed both.

“There is a curfew, as I’m sure both of you are aware,” he said firmly, still refusing to look at me.

Rigel stepped away and made a point of straightening out his clothes, blithely unaware of the tension fermenting in the tunnel. “Yeah, sorry about that, sir. We’ll head back.”

“You go on ahead,” Professor Faun told him. “I need to help Agnes straighten out her leg. Otherwise, she won’t get out of here until tomorrow night.”

Surprised, I looked down, expecting to find my foot dislodged. It had come a little loose when I’d tried to keep pace with Rigel but wasn’t messed up enough to affect me.

Despite the obvious lie, Rigel nodded. “Oh, okay.”

“And if you’re not in your own room by the time we get out of here, I’ll report you to Ephraim. Understood?”

Rigel glanced between us, voice slow and bewildered. “Of course, Professor. See you Monday.”

He hurried past Professor Faun, throwing a confused look over his shoulder at me before rounding the corner out of sight.

We listened to his retreating footsteps in silence until they were gone, the light fading until it was only centralized around us.

Slowly, his hand came up to his face, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Do I want to know what you were really doing down here?”

“Coursework,” I said weakly.

“Was it the mice?” he asked, walking closer. “Please tell me the truth.”

“That’s rich coming from you,” I said, raising my leg to present my tied foot. “Don’t you need to fix my foot that’s so messed up I can’t even walk?”

He tipped his head, stepping even closer until our legs brushed, spooking me. I set my foot back down and tried my best to continue looking up into his face.

His voice dropped. “You might think you want to find what’s at the end of these tunnels, but not all questions have good answers. You don’t understand what lives down here.”

Savoring the excuse to turn my face away from his, I looked around. “Books?”

He let out a long breath, tickling my neck. “Just because the tutoring sessions are over does not negate the things I’ve asked of you.”

“Why not? Apparently, I’m fully capable of defending myself now.”

“Agnes, please,” he sighed. “I had to weigh the risks. I hoped that you’d be smart enough not to endanger yourself at the first available opportunity.”

“Sorry to disappoint.”

He tipped his chin up, clearly needing to look away from me to center himself. “Promise me that I’ll never catch you somewhere like this again, especially by yourself.”

“Why?”

“Just promise me,” he said, voice strained.

“Okay.” I shook my head. “I promise.”

He sighed. “Good.”

I was confused until I saw the look in his eye a moment before his mouth rammed into mine. It stunned me at first, not just because I hadn’t seen the kiss coming but because it was so aggressive. You might have thought he’d been holding back for a long time.

I was afraid to move, even though I desperately wanted to. I didn’t want to spook him. But when his hands came up, knotting themselves in my sweater and pushing me back against the books, I took the chance.

It was surreal to suddenly have the opportunity to touch skin I was so familiar with from a distance. Even though my eyes were closed, my fingers knew exactly where to go from all the hours I’d spent taking him in. I was aware of every hair and divot before I even touched it.

Briefly, he pulled away and kissed my neck, pressing himself against me until all I could feel was the cold stone and his warm body. Then he lifted me and pulled my collar to the side, exposing my collarbone to run his mouth along as well.

As he pressed his lips back to mine, clutching at me, a moan vibrated against my lips. His grip was painful, but I savored it, pushing back as if even that wasn’t enough. I’d thought my delicate peck had been crossing the line, too much for him. But I suddenly got the sense that my silly, shame-filled fantasies had probably paled in comparison to his own.

The sincerity of the kiss was validating. It hadn’t just been me leering after him all these months. He hadn’t considered me a nuisance. There had been some reciprocation, tightly controlled as it might have been.

It was that invigorating honesty I was enjoying. Even when I felt his excitement pressing hard into my hip bone, I was prepared to let him do whatever he wanted. In fact, I was relieved. If this was only going to happen once, I wanted to know which parts of me his eyes lingered on when I wasn’t paying attention. While I already knew everything I wanted, all the indulgent, embarrassing thoughts that had compiled week after week, I desperately wanted to know his in return.

But when I reached down between us and stroked the hard line against his thigh, I finally spooked him. He lurched away, nearly dropping me, and I had to catch myself on a shelf to avoid collapsing.

He retreated until his back collided with the shelf across from me, hand coming up to cover his mouth as if he couldn’t believe what he’d just done.

For some reason, I laughed, the sound coming out breathy and rough. “Don’t look so horrified.”

“We can’t ever do that again,” he said, running his hand through his hair, which I’d messed up.

“Then, why’d you stop?” I asked, eyeing the bulge in his pants, which he adjusted uncomfortably.

“It was a mistake.”

I tipped my head back against the bookcase and groaned. “Can you please take off the professor hat for a second?”

“I’m sorry. Did that strike you as professor behavior?” he asked, voice trembling, as if still in shock.

“You can’t kiss me and then hide behind your title. That’s not fair. Keeping me in the dark at this point would just be cruel.”

To my surprise, he laughed, the sound bitter and dry. “If you really need me to clear things up, every moment since I first saw you has been misery. I was angry on Halloween because I feared never seeing you again and angry on Christmas Eve because being around you is torture. Rest assured, these feelings have violated every good sense and survival instinct I possess. So, no, if you need me to make sense of it for you, I’d need to understand it myself first.”

I blinked. “Oh.” But then I smiled. “Interesting. That always felt like wishful thinking on my part.”

“Wish?” he said, horror lacing his tone. “This is a nightmare.”

The unwavering pain in his voice wilted me. While I empathized with him on a level, the disgust in his words made me feel dirty, like I’d corrupted him.

I scoffed. “Nice.”

Turning down the tunnel, I made it a few steps before I felt his hand on my elbow, bringing me to a stop. “I’m not the only one who would face consequences if we were to get caught. I’m not risking my job, and more importantly, I’m not risking you.”

“How am I just supposed to pretend this hasn’t happened?”

“Very,” he began, eyes flicking to my mouth, “diligently.”

Curling my lip, I smacked him hard in the chest but allowed my hand to rest there. Despite how angry I was, I couldn’t help but feel the contours of his abdomen and the wild thrum of his heart.

How dare he yank me around and then pretend to be the reasonable one.

“We’re so screwed,” I muttered as I turned and limped down the tunnel.

We walked out of the archive slowly, keeping a healthy distance from each other. The sadistic part of me felt like we were letting one of our few opportunities for privacy slip through our fingers. But I didn’t turn around and all but held my breath until we reached the surface.

I’d only just gotten back to my room when Rigel was knocking on my door.

“What?” I said, unable to look at him directly, lest he see the guilt in my eyes.

“What the hell was that?”

I shrugged, subconsciously tugging my sweater down, as if trying to hide the skin Professor Faun had touched. “He wanted to help me with my foot.”

“Bullshit.”

I groaned, realizing he didn’t intend for this interaction to be fleeting. Turning, I limped to the edge of my bed and sat down, letting him follow me in and close the door behind him. “I’m missing a limb, Rigel. Maybe you just don’t get that.”

“You’re being strange,” he said, narrowing his eyes at me as I rolled down my socks and untied my ankle.

“I’m exhausted, man. Why are you here?”

“I was curious when you wanted to go back?”

I loosened the strap and pulled my foot off, setting it on the floor with the shoe and sock still intact. “Into the archive?”

“Obviously.” His brows knitted together.

“That could take years. What’s the point?” I asked, pulling off my other shoe and reaching up to peel my sweater over my head.

If he was at all moved by the fact that I was removing layers of clothing, he didn’t let it show. He barely even blinked when I reached up under my shirt and unclipped my bra, pulling it out through my sleeve.

“Are you saying you don’t want to know?”

“Well, our Transparency professor just told me he intends to keep a very diligent eye on me to ensure I’m not sneaking around.”

The memory of Professor Faun’s eyes dropping to my lips as he said it flashed through my mind, but I shook off the mental image.

He narrowed his eyes. “Did he now?”

“Yep.”

“How very”—he eyed me up and down—“attentive.”

I leaned back on my bed but kept myself propped up on my elbows, afraid I would fall asleep mid-conversation if I let myself lie down. “Yeah, well, anyway. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to play Indiana Jones with you anymore.”

Narrowing his eyes, he took me in, and I began to worry.

Could he see the light glint where Professor Faun’s tongue had skimmed my collar bone or the barest imprints of his thumb on my jaw? It felt like the kind of thing he was looking for, like if he searched hard enough, he could find some kind of concrete evidence to blackmail me with.

But he must have come up empty because all he said before leaving was an unconvinced “convenient.”

Now that both Rigel and Professor Faun were pretending I didn’t exist, I had plenty of time to focus on my coursework. Which was probably a good thing, since learning an instrument was much harder than I’d anticipated. Arlie had to break it to me gently that I didn’t appear to have any natural musical talent.

I amused myself just enough not to spiral every time I had to step into the Transparency room. Professor Faun was so talented at hiding any hint of interest—much less attraction—that, after weeks of no contact, I began to doubt it myself.

I’d stare at his lips and chest, trying to imagine myself against him, and the mental image felt surreal, even impossible. There was no way he could have experienced the same thing as me and was carrying on as if we’d barely spoken. It felt too earth-shattering.

Despite how much it made my heart ache, I knew it was probably for the best. In fact, the ideal scenario was that I’d suffered some horny delusion. At least then I wouldn’t have to feel guilty.

It was Rigel’s ire I was suffering from. He and Lindy had returned to full-volume sex regularly, making me hide in the lounge all night for the sake of my sanity. The only benefit was that I’d gotten good at foosball.

His real offense against me was the fact that he began hogging Stacy. She’d shoo me off early because he needed wood-carving lessons, which won out over my need for casual socializing. Occasionally, we’d pass each other on campus and scorch each other with our eyes. But we hadn’t spoken a word since we found the mystery room.

I could always sense when he went down there, feeling his absence in my life like I was lording a secret. But he must have not found anything yet, and I wondered if he would ever give up.

One evening, I went to the lounge preemptively, deciding it might be nice to use my free time to beat Ms. Pacman instead of getting a headache from the wall pounding.

When I’d powered the machine on it had included a leaderboard, the top spot, FAN, was the last player I had to beat. My name, AGS, sat frustratingly one spot below.

I played for a while into the night, telling myself I was getting in some good practice at handling the mortal object. But, really, messing around with buttons and sticks was child’s play. I was just trying to find something, anything, to distract myself.

Thoughts of Professor Faun plagued me whenever I thought about school. And any time while in my room, I’d hear Rigel and Lindy, who reminded me of my missing history.

In my frustration, my finger slipped, and I ran headfirst into Blinky, dying on the spot. Letting my irritation get the best of me, I smacked the side of the machine and turned from it, trying to compose myself.

But just as I paced across the room, the machine started up again. I turned in surprise, watching as a new game began. At first, I assumed it was a malfunction. There was no telling how old it was. It probably had a few bugs. But as the game started back up on screen, I realized the joystick was moving, carrying Ms. Pacman through the tunnels with a familiar ease.

I stepped closer, wondering if I was hallucinating. But as I neared the machine, I caught a whiff of something familiar. It was so faint it could have been something lingering in the fibers of my sweater, carried across campus from when I’d been in his class earlier that day.

“Hello?” I called, my soft voice still somehow filling the room.

I took another step, standing to the side of the machine like a spectator. The player had already expertly sliced through two levels with ease and was barreling toward the third.

I watched in shock as the points on the screen shot up. They beat the number one spot on the leader board before the mystery player finally died. The keyboard appeared on screen, and the joystick moved, picking out the letters F-A-N before hitting enter and securing their spot at the top of the leaderboard once more.

I let out the breath I’d been holding. “Unfair.”

From the empty air, I heard the barest hint of a chuckle. The machine stilled, but I could still feel a presence in front of me, daring me to reach out.

“What the hell are you doing?” I heard from the doorway, making me gasp and clutch my chest.

“Easy there,” Lindy said, crossing her arms.

“Sorry, I guess I was just concentrating,” I said as the machine blinked back to the menu page.

She raised a brow. “Are you trying to master it from behind?”

It took an embarrassingly long amount of time for me to realize I was facing the wrong way. “Yes?”

“Whatever,” she said, not interested in my odd behavior. “Have you seen Rigel?”

“What?”

“I know you guys are like friends or nemesis or whatever, so I was wondering if you two were up to something?”

“Nope, we haven’t spoken in weeks.”

“Huh,” she said, brow creasing. “He said he’d come by, but I haven’t seen him. Weird. Whatever.”

She left without another look back, and I decided it would be safe to return to my room. It might be nice to savor a night of peace while he was off misbehaving.

I took one last look around, desperate for my invisible visitor to make himself known. Because some part of me knew, with uncanny certainty, that it was him. But I was afraid what I was actually feeling was hope, desperate, cloying hope. Because I wasn’t sure I would ever be able to move on like he seemed to have done. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to pretend that nothing had happened.

Thoughts of the visitor followed me around until class the next day. His reign over my mental sovereignty might have continued had someone not been missing from their desk.

Despite my conviction that he was fully capable of taking care of himself, after a week, curiosity over Rigel’s absence bloomed into nervousness. He wasn’t exactly a welcome presence, but anyone’s absence became worrisome at Revenant Academy.

“Have you seen Rigel recently?” Stacy finally asked me, her talons fiddling nervously with the mouse bones.

My heart sputtered, but I tried to keep my face neutral and my hands steady as I crocheted. “Have you not seen him?”

She paused before promptly waving me off. “It’s no big deal.”

The following day, I woke up to another emergency announcement on my floor.

Until further notice, all students will be required to go straight to their dorms outside of class hours. Any students caught outside their sleeping quarters will be punished.

Tension distended in the air as everyone hurried to their respective classes that morning.

“Professor, is there a reason lockdown keeps getting stricter? At this rate, you’re gonna have to teach us how to teleport to class,” Arlie asked Professor Faun, garnering a few chuckles from the room.

I thought the question was rather odd. Was the empty seat in the back not obvious? It had never occurred to me that other people might not be as aware of Rigel as I was. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that he probably liked it that way. Sure, he was a show-off in smaller settings, but he seemed oddly defensive of his ambiguity otherwise. He had no friends aside from Lindy, who was rarely spotted outside of her room.

If Professor Faun was concerned, he didn’t let it show.

“No one needs to worry. We just need to make sure we’re keeping track of everybody.”

For a split second, I was sure his eyes flicked to me. But he continued with his lesson about the benefits of Stage 3 Transparency as if everything were fine.

I lingered at the end of class, pretending to adjust my leg ties, until the last student left the room.

“Is there something you need?” Professor Faun asked, his head resting on his desk while his body was erasing the blackboard.

“I just have a question,” I said, trying to keep my voice casual. “Why did you choose FAN instead of FUN?”

His face didn’t change, but he froze.

He cleared his throat, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw his hand come up to adjust a neck ribbon that wasn’t there. When he spoke, his voice was lower. “Do I really seem like I’m a lot of fun?”

“You want my opinion?”

“Behave,” he warned. Though I was sure I could see the hint of a smile on his lips. But then it fell, and he was all business again. “You’re not planning any . . . excursions, correct?”

“Excursions?”

“I’m just telling you that sometimes it’s better to let things go.”

My eyebrows shot up. “Let things go?”

“There’s nothing you can do, Agnes.” His body finished wiping the blackboard and approached us, lifting his head and placing it back on his neck. “I just don’t want you taking any unnecessary risks.”

I stepped back from him. “Unnecessary as in there’s no danger or unnecessary as in lost cause?”

He took a long, slow breath, as if juggling what to say, but I didn’t give him a chance. I spun on my heel toward the door.

After that, I was too shaky to socialize, so I locked myself in my room to do coursework. It was late when I got a knock at the door. My heart sped up, and I got up from my desk to open it but was surprised to find a bored-looking Lindy with a clipboard.

“Don’t look too excited, I’m just doing a head count.”

I checked the hall before dropping my voice. “Did he tell you when he plans to reappear?”

“What are you talking about?”

I blinked at her. “Rigel.”

“Why would I know where he is?”

“Did he not tell you that he’s been going down into the archive looking for your history?”

She shrugged. “Yeah. I don’t know if that’s even where he is now, though.”

“So, he didn’t say anything about intentionally staying down there this long?”

My panic wasn’t reflected on Lindy’s face. “Why would he do that? I’m not his momma.”

“You’re not worried?”

“I’m worried that I’m going to have to do this pointless attendance thing every day for the rest of the year,” she said, checking a little box on the paper in front of her. She turned to walk to the next door.

I grabbed her sleeve, holding her in place so I didn’t have to raise my voice. “Something might have happened to him down there.”

Pulling free, she rolled her eyes. “I’m sure he’s fine.”

I was shocked into silence as she moved on to the next room. The lack of care was not something I expected.

As I closed the door, I told myself I didn’t know their relationship.

Maybe she wasn’t comfortable sharing her feelings with me, a total stranger. But regardless of what Lindy thought, I knew I had to do something. I was the only one who knew where he’d gone or how to get there.

I had to sneak out of my window, which was a much harder task than I’d initially anticipated. I threw my cane out first and slid out after it, hoping nothing bad happened.

I sped through campus, straining under the pressure of maintaining decent invisibility while doing my best not to accidentally punt my foot onto a nearby roof.

Once I’d ducked into the library, I slipped into the archive and finally got a chance to catch my breath. While I had some of the route memorized, I didn’t trust myself to make it the whole way on memory alone.

I had a theory about how to find my way, which I was banking on for an expedient rescue. The only other option was to repeat Rigel’s method, which had taken months.

I made it a quarter of the way there before the clock struck midnight, and I hurried to the next fork to await the mice.

Soon enough, a rumble and light appeared through the left tunnel. The wave of creatures struck me, warming the air as the thousands of tiny bodies darted around my legs. Before the mice petered out, I plucked one of my eyelashes and crouched, placing it in my palm in offering.

One creature leaped into my hand, diving for the hair and snarfing it up without a second thought.

But before it had the chance to run away, I held it up to my face and asked, “Can you please take me to the well?”

The creature blinked up at me, stars twinkling in its rheumy eyes, before scrambling from my hand.

I was about to be annoyed when I realized it was now running in the opposite direction as its comrades. Pushing to my feet, I was just barely able to keep up as it scurried knowingly through each bend and turn.

After a few hours, my feet were screaming, but when we turned that final corner, I froze. A pile of books sat in the walkway, revealing the entrance to the spiral room. Which meant he’d gone in but hadn’t come back out.

“Rigel?” I called through the entrance, trying to hide my relief under a layer of annoyance.

No answer came.

I began the winding descent, where I expected to find Rigel tending to his grueling task. But he wasn’t there. The only discrepancy was a random unfinished history lying splayed on the floor, as if it had been dropped.

Professor Faun had mentioned there was something down there but had never elaborated. But what could it even be? Would they let something dangerous live so directly within the bounds of the school?

I picked up the history, but it wasn’t much of a lead, so I reshelved it and continued my search. Once the book was back, nothing was noticeably out of place. But as I wandered closer to the well, I froze. Somewhere below, I swore I could hear talking.