I’d done things without any instruction before. Maybe I could do it again.
My head jerked up when someone stepped inside.
“Oh, sorry, no one is ever in here.”
Mary-Beth stood there, looking ready to turn out of the room, when she realized who I was.
“Hey,” I said, offering her a smile. “You don’t have to run away. There’s plenty of room in here. Borden and I were just working on homework.”
“You sure?” she asked. Awkwardly, she looked from Borden to me and back again. She’d seen Nathaniel and I together plenty of times, but here I was, alone in a room with another guy, just me and him.
“Of course, please,” I said, nodding her in.
She offered a smile and walked in, sitting on the other end of the couch from me, and taking her things out.
“Borden, this is Mary-Beth Foster,” I said. “Mary-Beth, Borden Stewart.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” Borden said with a nod. “Foster, is that any ties to the Foster Room?”
“Guilty,” Mary-Beth said, her eyes dropping in slight embarrassment. “I mean, really I shouldn’t even have been able to get into Alderidge, but when your grandparents donated millions and have a whole room named after them…”
“You’re from those Fosters?” I asked in awe. “I’m a Latin major.”
“You’re welcome?” she said awkwardly. The Foster room was filled with Latin books, a large portion of them donated by the Foster family.
“Sorry, that’s just…” I didn’t know how to finish the sentence. I’d already made things plenty awkward.
“No, it’s fine,” Mary-Beth said. “My family’s a bit obsessed with books, too. I’d dare say like, a third of the books here came from my family. Latin, fiction, academic. Even useless fairy tales. When Grandma runs out of room in the house, she sends them here.”
I shook my head with a laugh. “Did you inherit her love of books?”
Mary-Beth shrugged. “Maybe not her same level of obsessiveness. But yeah, I’ve read a few books in my day.”
I chuckled and smiled. This was… nice. And weird. I hadn’t hung out with other kids my own age in forever, except for Nathaniel. And here I was with two others.
And like normal college students, we each got to work on our homework.
An hour passed and I wrapped up my Latin work. Another passed and I completed my Humanities homework.
And just as I closed my last book, my stomach let out a ravenous growl.
“Dinner time?” Mary-Beth asked as she raised an eyebrow at me with a smile.
“What time is it?” Borden asked as he checked his very expensive-looking watch. “How is it already six?”
Just then, Nathaniel walked in, and if he was surprised to see Mary-Beth, he didn’t show it. The inclusion of Borden into our group seemed to change him. He was open. More accepting. Honestly, he kind of reminded me of Dad sometimes. It was hard to believe he wasn’t already a professor.
“Think you can skirt out of work early?” Borden asked as he started packing up his things. “We’re all going out for pizza.”
“We are?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
“I am dying for pizza,” Mary-Beth said, all agreement and on board. “If I have to wait two minutes longer for food I am going to die, Margot.”
I laughed and shook my head, joining them in packing up my stuff.
“Mrs. Walker just told me to head home, actually,” Nathaniel said. “And I can’t remember the last time I had pizza.”
“What are we waiting for then?” Mary-Beth asked as she slung her bag over her shoulder.
I gave Nathaniel a look, one that acknowledged how bizarre this felt to me too, that we were going out with… friends? But he just smiled and slid his hand into mine as we turned for the door and followed Borden and Mary-Beth out.
It was even colder outside when we stepped out. The wind had picked up a little bit and snow threatened to fall from the sky. But we walked quickly, hurrying toward the pizza shop just down the road from Alderidge.
We all stumbled through the door as snow began to blast from the sky. The hostess took us to a booth toward the back, took our orders, and brought drinks.
“Mary-Beth is one of those Fosters,” I said to Nathaniel, raising impressed eyebrows.
“This doesn’t need to be a thing, Margot,” she said. “I really wish you wouldn’t make this a thing.”
“Foster,” Nathaniel said, and I knew exactly where he was headed the moment he said her name. “Irish.”
Mary-Beth nodded. “Mostly. Great-great Granddad was Scottish. Actually, I’m pretty sure I have an ancestor who was killed in Salem. How grim and cool is that?”
Instantly my eyebrows shot up toward my hairline and I looked at Nathaniel.
There was a spark in his eyes. And Borden looked just as surprised.
“I do, too,” I said, my words coming out a little breathy with shock. “Mare McGregor.”
“That actually sounds familiar,” Mary-Beth said with a smile. “Hey, we must be like, second cousins or something like that.”
“I think that would make you third cousins, twice removed,” Nathaniel said, his tone reflective.
“Nice to reconnect, cuz,” Mary-Beth said playfully. She reached for her cup and held it up. It took me half a second to realize she was making a toast. I awkwardly raised my own cup and touched it to hers. But my mind was now racing a million miles a minute.
I was dying to ask more. I needed to know if there were any witch trials in Ireland. I needed to know just how direct of a descendant of Mare Mary-Beth was, though I was pretty sure she wouldn’t know.
I needed the glamoured telekinesis book.
I needed to test Mary-Beth right then.
But I couldn’t do any of that.
I had to act normal.
I had to pretend this was nothing more than an evening out with friends.
So, for an entire hour, the three of us faked it. We held it together. Until finally, at eight, Mary-Beth declared that she needed to head back to her house.
“Thanks for the pizza,” she said, smiling. “We should do this again sometime.”
“We will.” All three of us responded with the exact same words.
She just laughed and headed to the door, and we all watched her as she turned the corner and walked down the sidewalk.
“She’s got to be one of us,” I blurted the second she was out of sight.
“Ireland was different from England and Scotland. They had very few witch hunts. But I know I’ve read the name Foster among the ones that did take place,” Nathaniel let out all the words he’d been holding in this entire time. “And if she really is related to Mare McGregor, that would mean she has mage blood on both sides.”
“We have to tell her, too,” Borden said. “She’s one of us. She…we need her.”
We each stared at one another for a solid ten seconds while we thought through this. “I can test her tomorrow during class,” I said. “I’ll bring the glamoured book to class and ask her if she can read it.”
“With her family, there’s a chance she can just read Gaelic,” Borden said. “But still. And you’re right, Margot, we need another way to easily test people. If Mary-Beth is one of us too…”