She shivered, but not exactly from fear.
Zachary was baffling. From 1920, but as Cain had said, pretty hip for a ghost. Lonely and charming. Sensitive and scathing. Intuitive and playful—and then the vicious fury at Martin, for no good reason.
There was a mystery here, and it tantalized her.
She thought of the sensitive young man in the yearbook (now concealed under her bed, threatened by dust mice but safe from Waverly’s prying eyes). Surely there was nothing monstrous in that face. Maybe the scary things, the lashing out, were coming out of his pain. He’d died suddenly, horribly; he was confused, frightened, lost, angry. And he, this lost spirit, had been reaching out to them, to her.
But the anti-Semitism, her mind reminded her. Those horrible things he said to Martin.
It seemed unlike him, whoever he was.
But it was part of that whole time, the twenties—
She realized immediately, ashamed, how hollow that rationalization was. It was vile, no matter how you looked at it.
Nothing good could possibly come from that.
Her eyes fell on her open notebook, and a phrase from Professor Lister’s lecture leapt out at her: “Do our demons come from without, or within us?”
She bit her lip, looked quickly away from the words—then realized that across the room, Waverly was turned around in her desk chair, watching her with a narrow blue gaze.
“What did you do around here for three days?” she demanded, obviously suspecting more than studying.
Robin looked her straight in the eyes. “Talked to ghosts,” she said dryly.
Waverly stared at her, then grabbed her overnight bag from the closet and stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind her against Robin’s laugh.
Robin almost went to the library that minute, but then a shutter banged against the window and a spike of fear shot through her—a memory of the rapping, and her own screams.
She shivered, and then went back to Freud.
But the longing continued.
She looked for the others, making needless trips to the laundry and the Coke machine, hoping to run into them, but they seemed to have melted back into the woodwork like whatever phantom they had been talking to.
Then on a blustery Wednesday, she was walking through the maples of east campus in the icy and intrusive wind. The sky through the branches roiled with dark clouds; the wind pushed at her, half-lifted her. Every step was like trying to balance against an invisible, chaotic power. But what she felt was exhilaration, anticipation. She stopped to catch her breath on the bridge over the swollen creek, leaned against the wall with her hair whipping around her, and found herself staring up at the weathered stones of Moses Hall, the philosophy building.
Cain stood on an upper balcony. He was smoking, staring off at the masses of dark clouds over the hills, completely unaware of anything below.
Then he looked down, right at her. Her heart leapt, and she saw him start. Their eyes locked across the distance…electric, and real.
So it did happen. And it’s not over, she realized. Not by a long shot.
The thought was a shiver of excitement and unease.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The clock radio buzzed her awake. She had been dreaming of Zachary: she’d been running in the halls, trying to find him, hearing him call her name…
She settled back on her pillow, thinking back on the dream. It hadn’t been scary, she decided. In fact, it wasn’t an unpleasant feeling at all.
The clock buzzed again and she remembered with dismay that her Ancient Civilizations midterm was that morning.
She threw on clothes she’d left on the floor the night before and grabbed a portable plastic coffee mug along with her backpack.
She left her floor and hurried down a dark set of back stairs that led toward the second-floor kitchenette. Near the bottom of the narrow stairs, she heard feminine voices from below, raised in a fight. One was shrill, with an unmistakable Southern accent.
“I know y’all were up to something while I was gone….”
Robin halted in the stairway door. In the kitchenette, Waverly held the brimming Pyrex coffeepot. Her pert features were twisted in a lethal fury; she advanced on Lisa, who leaned against the counter, looking sleepless and drugged. “You cross me, you bitch, and I’ll rip your cocksucking tongue out.”
Lisa laughed; her voice had a dangerous edge. “And get blood on that little ensemble? Not in this lifetime—”
Robin watched in fascination. She could almost feel the animosity rolling off them in waves. Waverly noticed Robin standing in the doorway, and her voice jumped up an octave. “And what are you looking at?
Simultaneously, Lisa turned away, sick of it. “Do the world a favor and drop dead—”
And as their voices crossed in mutual malice, the coffeepot shattered in Waverly’s hand.
Waverly jumped back to avoid the splash of scalding liquid, but too late. Her silky pink sweater was drenched. She stood speechless, with just the brown plastic handle of the pot clutched in her fingers. All three girls were frozen. Robin’s eyes locked with Lisa’s. Zachary’s name hovered in the air, unspoken between them.
Then Waverly started to screech, holding out her coffee-stained sweater. “Goddamn it. This is Nicole Farhi. It’s ruined!”
Lisa started to laugh, but there was an edge of hysteria underneath. She bolted from the kitchen, running away down the hall, leaving Robin, wondering, and Waverly, wet and ranting, behind.
Robin’s mind kept returning to the incident as she sat taking her Ancient Civilizations midterm in an arena-seated lecture hall. She replayed it again and again: the coffeepot in Waverly’s hand, the tension in the room, the sharp cracking, and the sudden explosion of glass. The energy had been the same as in the séances, like static electricity between her and Lisa, before the pot shattered. And unnervingly reminiscent of her dream that night of her own body shattering.
She was certain it had been Zachary. He was still here.
She stole a look back at Patrick, who was sitting rows away from her in the sea of silent students, always bigger and blonder than she remembered. Ever since the midterm had been distributed, he had been sitting without writing, deathly pale, just staring down at the page of essay questions.
Robin felt her stomach twist in sympathy. She knew he needed this grade to keep his football scholarship. If only he had come to her, she could have helped him study, drilled him on the possible questions.
But there was nothing to be done now. She sent him a silent wish for inspiration and forced her attention back to her own test.
A little while later, she glanced up from an essay comparing and contrasting creation myths.
On the other side of the room, Patrick was bent over his blue book in the awkward curl of the left-hander, writing very quickly, his big hand almost flying across the page.
Robin watched him a beat, surprised. Patrick looked up suddenly, straight at her. His eyes were startlingly blank. He stared toward her, not seeming to see her, and Robin jolted. His hand was continuing to write, as if divorced from his body. Robin stared for a moment, then turned quickly away, chilled.
When she glanced back again, Patrick was bent over his blue book again, writing in a continuous, uninterrupted flow.
She found the Mendenhall lounge deserted; apparently the Hall’s residents were too freaked out by midterms even to zone out to TV. The shadowy groupings of furniture again reminded her of a stage set, waiting for the players.