And as she stood with her fingers against the cold, smooth stone, she felt a breath on her cheek, exactly as if someone was standing beside her.
She whirled, staring around her in the shadowy grove.
The trees were tall and still, the air heavy.
There was no one there.
But there was. She could feel it, a presence like eyes, like touch.
“Zachary?” she whispered.
The slightest wind breathed through the shrubbery around her, brushed teasingly at her clothes, slid into the cloth like fingers. Robin gasped.
The breeze lifted her hair, caressed her cheeks, breathing into her ear. Robin closed her eyes, turned her head into the touch, even her heartbeat suspended.
The wind rustled again through the trees—and was gone.
Robin opened her eyes.
The grove was still, and suddenly colder, the sky almost completely dark.
Her face was flaming, but she trembled with cold. And then, suddenly terrified, she turned and ran from the circle of trees through the grove.
She pulled the heavy front door of Mendenhall closed behind her and stood beside the wall of mailboxes in the dim hall, flushed with strange feelings, not all of them fear.
It was Zachary.
The longing—she’d felt it. It was real, and intense, and—
Pleasurable.
Her legs felt light and weak and her breasts ached as she remembered the touch of wind under her clothes.
Someone touched her back in the dark and she twisted around, freaked.
A shadow towered in the dark hall.
She shrank back against the coat rack, barely bit back a scream—and then she recognized Patrick.
His face was tight in the shadows of the entry hall, his voice curt, distant. “We need to huddle. All of us. The Columns at eight.”
Robin nodded, speechless. And then for a moment, something flickered in Patrick’s eyes—stark, intimate—
Terrified.
Her gaze locked with his.
Then he turned sharply and walked off, leaving her in the dark.
CHAPTER TWENTY
On the north edge of campus, just before the woods, lay the overgrown ruins of sunken gardens. Low walls rimmed a crumbling stone plaza; dead vines crawled up the twisted columns of an arbor. In daylight, it was a haunted forest, in moonlight a dryads’ circle, a place of ghosts and broken hearts and fever dreams.
Being of no obvious practical use, in comparison to a sports facility, for example, the Columns had long ago fallen into disrepair. The regents saw no reason to funnel money into rebuilding the structure. But students knew and loved the Columns for their desolate privacy, and found any number of illicit uses for the spot, as evidenced by the glitter of broken glass, the wrinkled ends of smoked-out joints, the pale deflated balloons of used condoms.
As if by some mutual unstated agreement, the five of them had all gone over separately. Patrick was there alone when Robin arrived. She stood in the dark of the arches, watching him sip from a flask as he tended a small fire he’d built in the middle of the flagstones.
She stayed back, hidden by a tangle of vines, and watched as the others appeared, materializing one by one in the arches of the arbor, pale in the darkness, like ghosts themselves. She knew their shadows instantly: Lisa, with her wild mane of hair; Martin’s small stooped silhouette; Cain, moving between the weathered stones with lanky, catlike grace.
Then Patrick looked up the wide, low steps as if he’d known all along Robin was there. She stepped forward with a surge of excitement and anticipation.
None of them spoke as they gathered in the dancing light of the fire. But their eyes met and held, a silence more intimate than words.
Patrick looked around at them in the ruined courtyard. His voice was flat. “Things are still happening, right?”
“Yes.” Robin spoke first, and Lisa echoed her.
“Oh yeah.”
Martin nodded once, and Robin frowned toward him. He’d said nothing had happened to him. Had he lied to her? Or was he just going along to encourage the others to talk?
A cold breath of wind gusted through the courtyard. Robin shoved her hands deep in her pockets and shivered.
Cain turned toward Robin with that direct gaze of his. “What happened with you?”
Robin thought of the grove, the feeling of being touched.
She knew she was blushing and looked toward Lisa, who was crouched beside a granite column, smoking. “Yesterday we were in the kitchen…with my roommate…”
Patrick looked quickly across at her in the firelight.
Cain shot an oblique look at him. “His girlfriend.”
Patrick bristled at Cain’s accusing tone. “Yeah, so?”
Robin continued hastily, hoping to defuse them. “Waverly was arguing with Lisa—and the coffeepot shattered in her hand.” She looked at Lisa, who leaned back against the granite pillar and smoked without speaking, veiled and withdrawn.
Something’s wrong, Robin thought. What?
Cain sounded skeptical, as usual. “I’ve seen glass break on hot plates before.”
“Hell of a lot of stuff breaking,” Patrick retorted.
Cain ignored him, turned back to Robin in the shadows. “Anything else?”
Robin thought of the grove again, the intimate touch of the wind, the overwhelming sense of presence. But how could she explain it? She knew only that she hadn’t imagined it.
“It’s just…a feeling,” she began.
“Someone watching. All the fucking time,” Lisa said vehemently from the steps. She took a shaky drag from her cigarette, then ground it out on the flagstones. She wouldn’t meet Robin’s eyes.
Martin looked from Lisa to Robin, eyes intent behind the glimmer of his glasses.
Robin watched Lisa, wondering. “Yes…” she said, slowly. “Tonight I swear I felt someone in the grove. Really…like a presence.” She blushed again in the dark.
Cain studied her in the firelight, frowning. “Maybe there was someone in the grove.” He looked pointedly at Patrick. Patrick flipped him off.
“But it felt real,” Robin protested. “I mean, not real. Not…human. But there…” She trailed off lamely.
Patrick stepped forward. “Well, this is real.” He tossed a blue book down on the rough stone of a low wall.
Robin recognized the Ancient Civ test. “Rupert’s midterm.”
Patrick opened the book toward the light of the fire to show her the inside cover. A big A+ was marked in red, followed by several exclamation points and a paragraph of glowing comments. Robin looked up at Patrick.
“That’s great.”
“Yeah, great. Only I didn’t write it.” His face was pale. “I thought I fell asleep. When Rupert called time, I totally freaked. Then I looked down and—” He flipped through the pages of the blue book. Robin stared, startled.
The whole book was filled with dense, small, perfect writing, even the back cover.
Patrick lifted uneasy blue eyes to Robin’s. “It’s my writing—but it’s not.”
They all crowded around to read:
The Terem of the Shattering was in the first Tzimtzum when the light of the Einsof entered the Kelim of the ten Sephirot. The first Partzufim could not bear the illumination of Chochma and were shattered into pieces, resulting in the expulsion of the broken Kelim below the worlds to the Churu Klipot, the place of darkness below Malchut. After the shattering of the Kelim the light departed from the Chalal and rose above, returning to the Emanator, while in the Achar Kach, the Aviut of the Klipot remained, touched by the light of Chochma, like a smear of oil upon the lamp…