Chapter 7

Most of the first week was as stressful as it was exciting. Arlie and I kept close, going to class and meals occasionally. It was a bond forged in our shared fear of exploring too far outside our comfort zone.

On Friday, when we walked into Corporeality Hall, we found Professor Algenette waiting for us on the ground level in front of the blank stone wall that obscured most of the bottom floor.

“Everyone here?” She asked as we huddled in front of a wall. “Close enough. Today, I will be introducing you to the vault.”

A quiet murmur of excitement rolled through the room as Arlie and I exchanged glances.

It was our third class, both oddly soon and yet late to be introducing something new.

“How do you get in?” Arlie whispered, eyes leaving mine to scan the blank wall.

“Excellent question,” the professor said, our voices not quiet enough to be disguised by the din. “Once you pass this class, you’ll be given a key, but until then, free rein of the vault is pointless. The vault houses most of the artifacts that have been brought over from the mortal world. You will be checking out a singular item today to practice your manipulation abilities, and you will be expected to bring it with you to every class.”

Professor Algenette turned, pulling a bulky iron key from her pocket. She slid it into a hole hidden in the rough texture of the stone wall. Once she turned it, there was an odd sucking sound, like a sudden draw of breath. Then a wooden desk appeared in front of us. Sitting behind it was a bald man, leaned back in a leather desk chair, mouth agape and snoring.

“Wilhelm!” Professor Algenette barked, causing the man to leap awake and assume a fighting stance.

“What time is it?” he gasped, realizing he had a rather sizeable audience.

“What time do you think?”

Sniffing, he straightened out his jacket. “It was a long night, the new year and all. I had to get everything tagged and sorted and . . .” He turned to the rest of us, his excuse escaping him. “You need to get in?”

She rolled her eyes. “Obviously.”

He sat and began typing on his bulky desktop computer, the loud clatter of thick plastic keys echoing against the glass walls behind us.

“Introduce yourself.” Professor Algenette sighed impatiently.

I got the sense this wasn’t the first time this conversation had taken place.

He blinked at her before turning to the rest of us and putting on a loud, unctuous voice. “My apologies. I am the great and powerful Wilhelm, keeper of artifacts.”

“He’s the guy you talk to if you need anything from the vault,” the professor clarified.

He gritted his teeth. “I was getting to that part. You never let me—”

She put a hand up to silence him. “We really don’t have time for this right now.”

“We could be past it if you would just let me say my speech. I spend a lot of time rehearsing.”

Professor Algenette scoffed. “Yes, I’m sure it ate into your precious beauty sleep.”

Arlie managed to cut off their squabble. “Does checking something out mean we get to keep it?”

Both faculty members jumped, as if having forgotten they had an audience.

Wilhelm shook his head like a cartoon, trying to refocus his attention on the task at hand. “Some things are consumable, like pencils and paints. But you’ll have to return most of these things by the time you leave for your residency.”

He returned his attention to his computer, typing more things in before waving at the wall. A new door appeared so fluidly it made you doubt it had ever been missing in the first place.

Professor Algenette opened the heavy wooden door and ushered us into the dark room.

Once inside, the temperature plummeted, and the footsteps of the students created a chorus of echoes. The shift was jarring, making most of us huddle around the light of the doorway, as if, by stepping into the darkness, it might swallow us whole. Before anyone could summon the nerve to mention it, lights overhead flickered to life, revealing row after row of shelves, displaying every kind of item you could imagine.

“Have a look around,” Professor Algenette said, shooing us further into the labyrinth. “Your job is to find something that feels familiar to you. When you’ve made your selection, come find Wilhelm or me.”

Looking to the side, I found the back of Arlie’s head as she beelined for a giant wall of musical instruments. I let my eyes scan them. Mahogany guitars and woodwind instruments with gleaming sterling hardware. None of it called to me, so I continued forward. Most of what I passed looked familiar.

One girl was doing her best to balance on a skateboard before falling through to the ground below, and a boy tapped the heavy metal buttons of a typewriter.

I found an aisle that seemed to consist of crafting items: bundles of fabric with tomato needle cushions and dainty scissors or a nearly spent sketchbook with colored pencils and watercolor paints. What caught my eye was an angry snarl of yarn with a crochet hook stabbed through the middle.

I reached out to it on impulse, as if it were mine and I’d left it there by accident. But my hand sank through it. I tried again, concentrating as hard as I could, which allowed me to nudge the bundle, though I had about as much impact as a light breeze.

I went to find Professor Algenette, and she brought me a woven bag to carry the yarn and hook in before guiding me to the line forming in front of the desk.

I marveled at the selection of different objects, including full-sized bikes that had to be pulled along on a cart. When I got to the front, Wilhelm asked me my name and eyeballed my object.

“You can keep whatever you make with the yarn, but the hook and spare material will have to be returned.” I nodded as he stamped a slip of paper and shoved it into the bag with the crochet stuff. “Keep track of this receipt.”

I found Arlie in the sitting area outside of the vault, and she showed me a small instrument called a mandolin, which she, apparently, knew how to play.

“It’s just a hunch, as I can’t exactly check.” She sighed, eyes scanning the instrument hungrily.

We dropped off our new objects after the class period timed out and then went to lunch, where we ate jam on bread while watching an upperclassman play fetch with Ephraim’s Tasmanian tigers Kazak and Malak.

Next, we had the introduction to our third and final class for the year, and I still wasn’t sure about it. Interpersonal Exploitation sounded borderline nefarious. I couldn’t even begin to guess what the class would be like.

Walking into the cathedral, I was stopped by a mob of first years, all huddled around a map tacked up onto a board by the door. Room 2 was in the basement, tucked between two rooms labeled Do Not Enter.

I was expecting the worst after that, but when we all filed inside the room, what we found was disarmingly normal. It had a similar look to the other two classrooms, but smaller, with a shorter ceiling and no windows. Instead, someone had painted fake windows onto the stone, making the different vistas look odd and lumpy.

The teacher was a stern, meaty woman with short hair and hands that came to rest on her hips as if by their own gravitational pull. Professor Beck was written on the board next to her, so I wasn’t surprised when she didn’t waste her breath introducing herself to us.

“What do you think this class is about?” Professor Beck asked once we were all settled into our seats. After a beat of silence, she continued, as if she hadn’t expected an answer. “We’re all familiar with the mortal understanding of ghosts? Can anyone give me a definition?”

Rigel piped up, safeguarding his show-off reputation. “A ghost is someone who maintains a connection to the mortal world to haunt a place or person.”

She smiled. “That is correct but also largely untrue.”

His brows furrowed. “Correct but untrue?”

“Exactly. It’s largely a fabrication but intentionally so. We want people to think it’s their dearest granny who kept them calm while the firefighters pulled them from a burning building. We want gentrifying house flippers to think that it was the crotchety sanitarium nurse who keeps scaring the shit out of them. But in reality, it’s simply one of the people in this room. Our job relies on performance. Sure, the practical skills are more exciting, but in order for our job to be impactful, we need to know how to properly put those skills to use. Any questions?”

Silence.

She walked to her blackboard, erasing her name and replacing it with a flow chart.

Objective > Personalization > Utilization

Once finished, she turned to us and pointed to the first word. “This is the method we use, lovingly called the OPU method. First, you must establish the Objective. This one is relatively obvious, as it is the defining feature of each house.” She pointed to the second word. “Next, we have personalization, where you gather details about the mortal—or mortals—that apply to the objective.” She then pointed to the final word. “And, lastly, you need to decide the best way to utilize your skill set to properly meet the objective.” She drew an arrow from the last word all the way back to the first. “Any questions?”

Met with silence once again, she continued. “Today, we will work on a few simple warm-up exercises to get everyone in the right headspace. But before our next class, I want you to visit the archive under the library and pick out a volume. Eventually, most of our weekly visits will comprise you all presenting your case studies and receiving feedback. It doesn’t pay to be shy, so you’ll have to get over that quickly.”

“Shouldn’t we be split up by house, then?” someone behind me asked. “Surely, what the other houses do isn’t relevant to us.”

Her eyebrows danced with excitement, as if she’d been waiting for someone to ask that question. “It’s good to have a well-rounded understanding of why we do what we do. Tunnel vision doesn’t make for good hauntings. Not to mention, it is likely that a few of you will change houses when the time comes.”

“Then, why sort us at all?”

“The houses you’re selected for upon arrival are based off who you were when you got here, and the skill set you brought with you. But people change, even the dead. Sometimes, this is a good thing. Sometimes, it isn’t, and it’s a choice you should take very seriously.”

Once that was covered, she passed out a packet to each of us.

“All right, everyone take a look at example number one.”

I glanced at the paper, finding the first block of text.

Sally is a 20-year-old woman who was very close to her grandmother. But six months after her grandmother’s death, she is in a traumatic car accident.

Professor Beck gave everyone a minute to read over it. “How might a Custos comfort her? Any guesses?”

“Take the form of her grandmother and appear in the car with her,” someone offered in a quiet voice. “We should remind her to keep calm or maybe distract her with something her grandmother knows she likes.”

Professor Beck’s eyes lit up. “Excellent! Now, let’s say Sally was actually drinking and driving and caused the accident, injuring someone or totaling a car that isn’t hers. How might an Iudex convince her to do the right thing?”

“Take the form of her grandmother and show disappointment in her,” a student in the back called.

“But what if that inspires shame, and she still doesn’t take accountability for her actions?”

Someone else spoke up.

“What if her grandmother was disappointed but insisted she still loves her and knows she’ll do the right thing? She can bring up some specific instance in the past where she remembers Sally doing something nice and can tell her that she’s not inherently bad and is capable of doing the right thing, even if it’s not pleasant.”

“Amazing! Okay, next. Let’s say Sally has actually hit a pedestrian and left them to die in the street. How might an Ultor punish her?”

Rigel finally chimed in. “They could take the form of her grandmother but disfigured, like the pedestrian, and appear in her room every time she goes to bed.”

“Fantastic! All right, and last but not least. Let’s say poor Sally has tragically died in said car accident. How might a Messor escort her to the afterlife?”

“Taking the form of her grandmother and telling her everything will be all right and that they get to be together again.”

“Very nice! This is the gist of this class. But you’ll find that not every issue is quite so straightforward.”

We ran down the clock doing more exercises before she released us.

While unsure how I felt about the presentation aspect of it, I found it fascinating.

I debated going straight to the archive to get a jump on the assignment, but Arlie and I were stopped by Blair on our way out of the cathedral.

“How are you ladies feeling about the party tonight?”

“This is the first we’ve heard of such a thing,” Arlie said, affecting the same grandiose accent.

“Well, then, please allow me to be your escort.” He did a theatrical bow, and I had to hold in a laugh, but when my eyes slid to Arlie, I found genuine amusement.

They descended into conversation, and I got the sense my presence had been largely forgotten. I decided I would attend the party. Despite not understanding what that would entail, I wanted to try my hand at socializing.

I parted ways from Arlie and Blair and returned to my room to set everything down and get prepped for the evening. But halfway through, I heard a knock at my window as I nervously combed my hair.

Upon pulling the blinds apart, I found a note stuck in the window crack. Pulling it out, I unrolled it to reveal a hastily scrawled message.

Aggie, come find Blair and me at the bonfire later, he wants to hang out alone for a bit ; ). I’ll try not to make you too much of a third wheel, but no promises. Xoxo

I rolled my eyes. I still wasn’t sure what to make of her, much less friendship in general. Sure, I gravitated toward Arlie, and I assumed she felt a similar way about me, but how close could two people get when they feel so disconnected from their own humanity?

I spent a few quiet hours playing with the marble I’d been given at my first object manipulation class. I’d gotten to where, if I gritted my teeth, I could shift it from palm to palm without it falling through my hand.

Through the wall, I could hear music, actual music that sounded like it was coming through a speaker. It was Lindy’s room, another person I wasn’t completely sure about.

Once night settled, I ducked back out of my dorm. It was a cool evening, but almost everyone was out in groups, laughing raucously and sloshing their drinks into the grass.

I kept my head down as I followed a few other people headed to the bonfire. When I emerged into the clearing, the party was in full swing, and before I knew what was happening, I had a drink in my hand, ladled from a large vat.

Looking around, I finally spotted Arlie in a group, Blair’s arm around her shoulders.

Weaving through, I was relieved to see her face light up when she spotted me. She got up and hugged me, and I had to hold my cup out to keep it from soaking both of us. She already reeked of the liquid, and it wasn’t a fate I was keen to share.

“You’re here!”

“Yeah,” I said, unsure why she was so excited.

Taking me back over to the group, she pointed to a few new people, identifying most of them as Reapers. So, they must have been Blair’s friends.

A spot was cleared for me between Blair and another man named Tom, who eyed me up and down. My stomach turned while I squeezed between them, and I let my eyes wander, afraid of what would happen if I looked at the new man directly.

“Looks like Lindy’s already working hard,” Tom said, and the rest of the group snickered.

I followed their gaze to the other side of the clearing, where Lindy was leaning against a tree. Standing over her, hand braced on the bark above her head, was Rigel.

Arlie snorted. “She can have him.”

Tom scoffed. “I wouldn’t wish that on anybody.”

“I think he can hold his own,” I said before sipping my drink.

It was sweet in a way that reminded me of sour fruit and maple syrup.

“I don’t know. He went down pretty fast after Agnes clocked him.” Arlie laughed, but the upperclassmen didn’t seem amused.

I looked back at Rigel, and he seemed to sense all the eyes on him because he turned his head and shot us all a wink. In the glow of the firelight, I noticed the cut lining the bottom rim of his eye socket was still there.

“It’s been a week. Shouldn’t that cut be healed?” I asked, watching him dip his head to whisper in Lindy’s ear.

Blair coughed. “Yeah, that’s the problem. It’s why we’re not allowed to fight each other. Our bodies don’t heal like they do in the mortal world. Once you’re injured, you stay that way.”

I turned to him. “No shit?”

“Wild, right?” He sighed. “Don’t worry, though. No one blames you. You didn’t know.”

Shame coursed through me, and I looked at the ground.

Arlie came to my rescue.

“Well, that sucks. How is anyone going to take me seriously if I can’t fight them?”

“I suppose you’ll just have to use your big-girl words.”

She scoffed.

“But we don’t carry over any injuries from our mortal body?” I asked.

“Correct.”

“So, Professor Faun . . .”

He nodded. “Whoever—or whatever—removed his head did it after he died.”

A chill went through me.

“What could have done that?”

“We’re not the only thing out here, babe. There’s a reason we don’t leave campus unless we’re old enough to protect ourselves.”

I took a larger gulp of my drink, nearly finishing it. “Yeesh.”

Tom took the cup from my hand. “I’ll get you a refill.”

I opened my mouth to refuse, but he was already on his feet and back over at the vat. The buzzing in my head was surprisingly pleasant, so I decided it might be nice to lean into it like everyone else.

I knocked back a couple more drinks. Head swimming, I blinked, and we were back on campus, running around in the chilly, damp grass without our shoes. I didn’t even remember when I’d taken them off, but the cool sensation of dew between my toes made me feel more alive than I had since arriving in purgatory.

Arlie chased me with a long tree branch, poking me in the back every time I slowed down enough for her to catch me. Part of the game included me doing a wild twist and stealing the slender whip of wood and turning it back on her until we were both worn out.

We lay there, catching our breath, before Blair and Tom appeared next to us.

Their words floated right past me as I looked up at the sky. The stars were still moving, as if they were light as cotton buds, a gentle breeze swirling them together. It was beautiful, but it made my vision swim.

Pressing my cheek into the cool grass, I focused on something bright in the distance. It took a moment for my eyes to focus on the spot of light, but as it hopped closer, I realized what it was.

“Mouse,” I heard myself say over the roaring in my ears.

It scurried even closer until I could make out the twitch of its whiskers and flick of its small luminescent tail. But as soon as it was within reach, it scurried away toward the darkness.

“No,” I said, rolling onto my front and pushing myself up. “Come back.”

I had to prove I wasn’t making it up. I had to know where they went. But it was so small and fast only its bright glow gave me any awareness of where it was going.

I looked up in time to avoid smashing into the heavy iron gate as the tiny mouse skittered between the bars. We both froze, as even my heavily inebriated brain knew I couldn’t go any further.

“Where are you going?” I asked the mouse as it gazed up at me with its large black eyes, the swirling stars almost hypnotizing.

A crunch in the foliage nearby made the mouse scurry in the opposite direction. I barely even had the time to be afraid before an icy hand wrapped around my ankle, yanking me off my feet.