Chapter 19

Piper leaves Julian’s office wondering if they’ve made a big mistake. Not in keeping things from the police, but in keeping things from Isabel. She should know. She has to know. If something this huge and this terrible is happening in the department, she has to know. And this will make her accept, finally, that Lu’s departure wasn’t a betrayal, but an act of desperation. That Lu is out there somewhere, needing help.

It’s just that it would all make so much more sense if Jack hadn’t been the one who was killed. Lu and Jack are on opposite sides—who would have targeted both of them?

Maybe Jack wasn’t toeing the line. Maybe one of the historicists couldn’t stand the thought of another person abandoning their cause.

Maybe, a voice says from the back of Piper’s mind, Lu wasn’t toeing the line.

But Piper shakes themself out of that thought immediately, picking up their pace as they cross the street. Whatever Lu’s transgressions—assuming she even committed any transgressions—no one in the presentist camp would threaten her. And of course, of course none of them would kill someone.

Piper walks home in a sort of haze. The gravity of the situation doesn’t entirely sink in until they’re back in their apartment, looking at all the traces of Lu that still linger even in her absence: Lu in the stick-on Victorian wallpaper, Lu in the armchair, Lu in the poker and the slipper of tobacco and the false fireplace. They realize that they’d meant to walk back to campus, to at least see Isabel and make up their mind about telling her more, but their feet had guided them here.

They gaze at the thrift store carpet. That could have been Lu they’d found lying on the floor with her throat slit earlier that week.

They choke back a sob.

Sinking into a chair, they bury their head in their hands. They want someone to tell them what to do. How to fix this. If they go to Isabel’s office, tell her everything, they can put their heads together and maybe Piper will cry and Isabel will squeeze their wrist the way she does sometimes, one hard quick squeeze, reassuring and firm, and Isabel will know what to do. She always does; she’s always so sure. Together, she and Piper can band together to save the person to whom, in their own ways, they are both devoted.

But Piper can’t feel that certainty anymore, that rock-solid conviction that everything they do is part of some noble crusade. They’re perched on the uncertain edge of things now, and so is the department: the threats to Jack and to Lu, the threats crossing the sacred lines of battle—if anything could crack the department right down its already gaping faultlines, split it wide open in shattering shards of chaos and take-no-prisoners conflict, surely it would be that.

Isabel and Sarah and Jordan and Fatima all need to know what might be coming.

Piper’s fingers twitch to send a group text, to call an emergency meeting. But something stops them—that unwelcome current of doubt. They think of Julian, and Charles, and how much easier it will be for them to get people to talk if the department doesn’t close ranks. How much more likely it will be for them to find Lu safe and whole.

Hot, bitter guilt twists in Piper’s stomach at the thought of lying to their friends and colleagues. But Lu—this is for Lu. Piper can keep quiet, if that will keep Lu safe.

A little later, Piper is staring at a cup of ginger tea, willing themselves to hydrate, when their phone buzzes. It’s a group text from Isabel to the core presentists. For a bizarre second, Piper thinks it must be about Lu and their recent discovery.

Emergency meeting. More admits declined. 30 min.

Piper closes their eyes. Shit. That’s…that’s bad news, and on top of everything else…

They rub their forehead. It’ll take them twenty minutes to walk to campus, and they’ve barely eaten all day. The weather has turned nasty again, snowy sleet dripping from the sky as the temperatures hover around freezing.

They dump their tea into a travel mug and grab a granola bar from the cupboard. They still have no appetite, but they shouldn’t go into this meeting on an empty stomach. They’ll force it down on the way. They step back into their snow boots and, peering outside, decide on a waterproof jacket over a heavy sweater and shove an umbrella into their bag in case the temperature rises and the sleet turns to rain.

Then they trudge back down the stairs and out into the cold.

Isabel is pacing when Piper arrives in her office. Jordan and Sarah are conferring to each other in hushed voices.

“Hey,” Antonio says. His face is grim. So is Phoebe’s.

There aren’t enough chairs, and the office is cramped, but Isabel shakes her head when Phoebe asks about relocating to the department library.

“I don’t want to be in a public space for this.”

The grad students exchange glances with each other. Piper feels a flutter of nerves in their stomach.

“Where are Fatima and Katie?”

“Fatima can’t make it,” Sarah says. “She says she’s in the middle of a family thing.”

Isabel frowns. “That’s not great.”

Katie appears in the doorway, flushed and out of breath. “Sorry. I was in Squirrel Hill. Had to hop a bus.”

“Thanks for hurrying,” Isabel says. “That’s everyone, then. Katie, the door?”

Katie shuts the door. Immediately the office feels different—smaller, closer, more hidden. They’ve raised the drawbridge, shuttered the windows.

“Who’s declined now?” Jordan asks.

Isabel takes a breath. “Scott. The early modernist.”

“Oh, shit!” Antonio says, face falling. “I thought I was really making progress with him.”

“You were. It’s not your fault. The other three admits who declined aren’t ours—two are Pace's, and one is a current B.A. student who was probably going to leave after a year or so anyway.”

The group lets out a collective sigh of relief. “So there are still more,” says Katie. “That twentieth-century Britishist Phoebe’s been talking to. And we can always try and sway some of the admits who don’t know what they’re doing yet. I mean, it worked with me.”

Isabel shakes her head grimly. “We can hope so, but this is bad news. This means that the fallout from that email Elena Gutierrez posted online is spreading.”

There’s an uneasy silence. “At least it’s affecting the historicists, too. And not just us,” Antonio ventures.

“We need to get them to open house,” says Jordan. “That’s crucial. Admits don’t usually decline before open house if they’re planning to attend. Elena and Scott both were.”

Isabel looks at Piper and the other grad students for a moment. “Any rumors about who sent that email?”

Piper swallows. Guilt washes through them instinctively, even though of course the secret they’re keeping has nothing to do with the email. Isabel’s gaze is just so keen, so probing. Judging by the others’ faces, the same thing is happening to them.

“No,” says Phoebe softly. “We’ll keep listening.”

Isabel’s eyes linger on them for a moment longer. Then she nods. “Good. Any information, anything at all, come to me.”

Piper feels guilt pooling in their stomach again, and this time it sticks. They think of Lu’s locker, and Jack’s locker, and five orange seeds. They look at Isabel; there are lines around her eyes that Piper can’t remember seeing before, and her wild hair is pulled back into an uncharacteristically severe bun, not her battledress ponytail but something sterner and stiffer. Her nail polish has been chipped down to just a few stray splotches here and there. Piper feels a rush of loyalty and shame. They bite their lip, the words itching to leave their mouth.

“Hold it together, friends,” Sarah says. She puts a hand on Isabel’s shoulder and squeezes. Isabel looks at her gratefully. “We’ll make it. We always have before.”

Jordan nods. “We’re fighting the good fight, folks.”

“Let’s work really hard from now on, okay?” Isabel says. “Contact the remaining admits, ask them what they’re thinking, let them know how much you like being here. And we’ll hope for no more bumps in the road.”

The words die in Piper’s mouth. Surely Lu being threatened by the same person who murdered Jack is, to put it lightly, very much a bump in the road.

Then, suddenly, they look around the room, startled. Jordan, in his pristine button-up, has his head bent, conferring with Isabel; Sarah is talking quietly to Katie and Phoebe; Antonio is checking his watch. It didn’t occur to Piper until just now that there’s a chance—a very small, highly unlikely chance, to be sure, but a chance—that one of these people, their people, their little band of warriors, is a murderer.