I catch up with him again, and we run through the building for the exit.
* * *
I work through five more items on the list without much trouble—and without any sight of a hound. The only one that catches me off guard is the one about the books. To reach the “floor with no books in sight,” I’d had to find the extremely well-hidden door to the roof on the eighth floor of the library.
I’m not particularly fond of heights.
And it took me twenty minutes to find the jewelry box inside a vent pipe.
Sel, on the other hand, had kept himself occupied by walking on the four-inch-wide raised brick perimeter of the roof, perfectly balanced. While whistling.
I keep waiting for him to jump, grab, or try to kill me again, but he seems content to watch me struggle with riddles and run from one end of the campus to the other. It’s unnerving. I’ve never spent any amount of time with him that wasn’t filled with threats, mesmers, or intimidation.
Once we’re back outside, I check my bag: the jewelry box; the mug from the piano; a flashlight from the fountain in front of the graduate school building; a very hard-to-spot tiny metal key that had been wedged between a pair of bricks on the journalism building; and a candle that had been tucked in the crook of a statue’s arms.
I look up to find Sel studying me again, as if he’s waiting for me to turn demon by accident.
“Where are the hounds?” I ask, and he shrugs.
“I created them, but I gave them a little push to make them more independent. I felt one earlier near the Campus Y, but it didn’t catch your scent.”
“Oh, lovely,” I drawl. “Were you going to warn me a bloodthirsty hellhound was nearby?”
He scoffs. “Why would I do that?”
I groan and look down at the list for another clue. “ ‘I was the first and my rest is the oldest, let there be no debate.’ ” I pull my cheek between my teeth.
Sel, perched on one of the many low stone walls around campus, watches me with hooded eyes as I puzzle through the riddle. I’m certain he’s been figuring out the riddles before I do and enjoying not telling me the answers.
I check my watch. I have an hour left, we’re in the middle of the campus, and there’s no use walking until I figure out where to go.
I pace back and forth and Sel’s eyes, glittering in the darkness, follow my steps. “ ‘I was the first and my rest is the oldest, let there be no debate.’ Just my luck this is some sort of uber obscure medieval crap.”
A hoarse bark of laughter escapes Sel, and we both blink in shock at the genuine, uncontrolled sound. The sound of someone who’s not used to laughing. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him express anything other than carefully aimed barbs, seething irritation, or dry sarcasm. He must see the thought on my face, because his expression goes stony in a heartbeat. Like he’s flipped a switch inside.
I walk to the edge of the wall down a few feet from Sel and look out over the campus. I start at my left, my eyes following the line of buildings in front of us: the low dining hall, the towering library breaking the skyline, and the Bell Tower striking three thirty.
My eyes track back to the left of the Bell Tower. “ ‘I was the first and my rest is the oldest, let there be no debate.’ ”
“While it’s quite poetic, it’s not a cantrip, Matthews.” Sel saunters over, shadows clinging to his gliding shape. “Repetition will not make its meaning clearer.”
“Shut up.” His left eye twitches in silent reproach.
I have a feeling I know where the next object is, but I’m not quite ready to go there. It feels too soon. But what choice do I have?
I sigh and gesture for him to follow. “Come on.”
* * *
The first was a young DiPhi boy buried in the late 1700s.
That’s what Patricia said. And, thanks to Alice, I know DiPhi is the very old campus debating society. I desperately wish I’d asked Patricia to point out the grave marker during the day, because searching for it at night is like looking for a certain shade of blue in the ocean.
The graveyard is poorly lit by intermittent lampposts, and the wide hedges and hills make it slow going. As apprehensive as I thought I might be, the graveyard actually feels… familiar to me now.
Each time I check over my shoulder, Sel is there, a silent figure blending into the shadows in one moment, limned by golden light in the next. I think I hear him chuckle, but the sound is carried away on a gust that whips dirt and twigs into my face.
“You’ve never seen me harm Nick, so why do you still think I’m Shadowborn?” I don’t know why I ask. Maybe because with me in the lead, I don’t have to look him in the face.
“You’re immune to mesmer.”
“Not true,” I retort, hiking up a particularly long hill.
“Lies.” He doesn’t miss a beat. “You wield the Sight too easily for someone who has only recently received it. You Saw the isel at the Quarry.” That surprises me, but I don’t show it. He strides up the hill with frustrating ease, and when he reaches the top to look down at me and Nick’s coin on my chest, there’s casual contempt in his eyes. “And you have enthralled Nicholas.”
I sputter, heat filling my cheeks, and tuck the necklace away. “What? Enthralled?! I—no—he—he… That’s…” Sel raises a black brow. A curious hawk, watching a frantic mouse skitter back and forth.
He makes a soft, dismissive sound in the back of his throat. Not wanting to hear any more about Nick or any sort of thralling, I turn and walk down the hill to the next section of graves.
“In addition, the timing of your appearance,” he begins, following behind me, “is too convenient. Demons are crossing through Gates at increasing rates at not only our chapter but also the others embedded in schools up the coast. It’s all but inevitable that the Table will be gathered, but Nicholas is vulnerable. Symbolic. If anything happens to him before Arthur calls and he claims his rightful title, the Order will go to chaos.”
I walk the aisles, looking for the marker on the ground in the oldest section. “I thought you hated Nick.”
Sel falls in step beside me. “Nicholas’s petty childhood concerns and daddy issues have never been of greater importance than the Order’s mission. He should have been preparing himself for the Call instead of whining about his duty.”
I stop walking at that. “I don’t think his mother getting mesmered so severely that she doesn’t remember her own child is a ‘petty childhood concern.’ She only wanted to protect him.”
“She tried to kidnap him.” He stares at me, his tone even and eyes opaque. “And the Line is Law.”
I shake my head in disgust. “Unbelievable.”
I step around him and continue down the aisle. I’m grateful that Sel at least stops talking, leaving me to look for the marker in silence. A flap of heavy wings interrupts my crunching steps as I walk over leaves and yellowed fescue, long dead from the heat of summer. I turn to point out the grave section to Sel, but he’s gone. The aisle behind me is empty.
“Sel?” Stillness and wind are the only replies. Doubt drops into my stomach.