“I stopped arguing with you,” Posey said. “I never actually agreed to do what you said.”
With one stupid phone call, Charlie had almost gotten herself killed. What would happen if Salt somehow heard Posey’s story and linked it to Hermes?
“I was careful,” Posey insisted.
“Take it down. Whatever you put out there—take it down.” Charlie looked around for Posey’s laptop as though she could toss it into Nashawannuck Pond and somehow that would remove what she’d posted from the internet.
“It wasn’t online,” Posey insisted. “It was an encrypted chat that deletes everything after it’s read.”
Charlie sat down at the table. Her head was throbbing. The events of the last twenty-four hours were too much. She wanted to curl up in a dark hole and maybe engage in some screaming therapy.
“Forget about all that for a minute,” Posey said. “Because that’s not the part I want to talk to you about.”
“Fuck,” Charlie said, lacking any more coherent response.
“There’s a graduate student over at UMass. Madurai Malhar Iyer. He’s been working on a doctoral dissertation on quickening shadows. The guy who told me about him had been trying to get Malhar to talk to him for ages, but Malhar kept blowing him off.”
Charlie had a feeling she knew what was coming next, and that she was going to hate it.
“I knew you weren’t going to agree to meet him, so I wrote to him and said all that stuff that happened to you happened to me. Only…”
Charlie stared at her unhelpfully.
“Only I can’t go alone,” Posey finished.
“Why not?”
“Because it didn’t happen to me,” Posey said, as though that should be obvious.
Charlie stuck a fork into her sister’s ramen and let the hot chili sear her mouth as she ate it. “That sounds like a big problem for you.”
“I told him we could meet him at the UMass library tonight to talk,” Posey finished, voice lilting up in the manner of someone who wants to ask something without asking it. “Tonight.”
“No—no,” Charlie said, holding up her hands. “No way am I going. That’s not happening.”
Posey narrowed her eyes. “Busy with something? Planning on ransacking the living room?”
Charlie got up. “Last night was real bad and I definitely don’t want to discuss it with a stranger today.”
“You lied about meeting Katelynn. I know you did. You were looking for something and you didn’t want Vince to be here when you did it.” Her threat was implied, but effective nonetheless.
They stood staring at one another. Charlie’s hands had unconsciously curled into fists so tightly that her nails were pressing into her palms. “Don’t do this.”
“I don’t have a car. At least drive me,” Posey said. “Please.”
Charlie groaned and headed for her room.
“Where are you going?” Posey called after her.
“To get my coat.”
She passed Lucipurrr, tail lashing, staring at one of the walls near the bathroom. Sometimes you could hear mice scrabbling in there, and it set the cat on edge. She supposed they were all on edge, these days.
Back in the bedroom, Charlie tried to put it into a semblance of order—making up the mattress with new sheets to give her the alibi of cleaning if anything was out of place.
As they pulled out of the driveway, Charlie’s thoughts were a jumble of memories of Salt’s murder of Rand and the ease with which Vince had covered up a murder the night before. Had he killed for his grandfather? Had he killed that girl they found dead in his car for Salt? Had he killed her for himself?
Vince had been careful, and thorough, and unnervingly competent—but he hadn’t seemed as though he’d liked murder or was eager to do it again. She had a hard time imagining him hurting someone for fun.
Of course, it’s not as though she would have easily imagined him standing in the middle of the sort of gala that she’d only seen on television, wearing an outfit likely to cost more than her car, and guzzling Champagne that was allowed to use the capital C because it came from the right region of France. It was possible that Charlie had a severely stunted imagination.
“So tell me about this guy, Malhar,” Charlie said, to distract herself.
She shrugged. “I don’t know that much. He seemed nice over chat.”
“No offense, Posey, but there are a lot of graduate students in the Valley, and they’re just that, students. What makes you think this guy has that much more information than you do? I mean, you spend every night online doing research. You’ve probably read a million accounts of quickened shadows.”
Posey’s frown deepened. “I don’t do research, though. People can make up stories, or exaggerate for attention. Videos can be faked. I might know a lot, but so many things I’ve thought were real turned out not to work. Meanwhile, he’s authenticating the information he gets. He has proof.” Posey shifted uncomfortably in her seat. Possibly because the seats were, like everything else in the Corolla, kind of busted. “Speaking of which…”
“What?” Charlie said.
Posey made a face. “I might have exaggerated some things too—”
“For his attention.” Charlie looked out the window at the darkening sky. “I guess you got it.”
After that, Posey was silent all the way until they crossed the Calvin Coolidge Memorial Bridge.
The University of Massachusetts rose like a surprise city in the middle of nowhere, complete with a football stadium, tall buildings, traffic jams, and a miniature Stonehenge. If you took a wrong turn at a farmers market you got surrounded by a swarm of students, arriving every year like locusts, thirsty for beer and boba tea. Students were the lifeblood of the Valley, and if Charlie resented them, she knew she needed them as much as anyone if she wanted to keep slinging drinks.
And soon Posey would be one of them, and go on with them to a future full of possibilities. At least, that was the hope.
Charlie parked in an enormous lot, one that was marked with some letters that might or might not mean she was in the right place.
As they got out, Charlie once again regretted her leather coat’s lack of warmth. The sun slipped low and red in the distance. They could see the lightning farm over in Sunderland, harvesting energy with ominous crackles and strikes.
“You okay?” Charlie asked.
“I just can’t imagine coming here every day,” Posey said.
They stood there for a few seconds until Charlie reminded Posey that she was the one with the directions. She frowned at her phone for a while. “I think we’re supposed to go toward that pond.”
They got lost twice, wandering through the campus, passing clumps of students in UGGs and pajama pants. A Black woman with an on-point eyeliner game sat outside the student center, reading a feminist translation of Beowulf. A white boy tried to hand Charlie a flyer for an anime festival. Three guys in team sweats jogged by.
Vince had gone to a school like this, sitting in lectures, learning to fence. A more expensive university, one that was supposed to spit him out ready to rule over the less fortunate.
He’d had everything. Money. Privilege. Power.
For the first time, Charlie wondered what could have possibly made him run away.
* * *
Madurai Malhar Iyer was waiting for them in the lobby of the library. He was a tall guy, young, with brown skin, wearing wire-rimmed glasses and a flannel over a t-shirt, slender in a way that spoke of spending so much time studying that he forgot to eat.
“I’m Posey,” Posey said. “And this is my sister, Charlie.”
Malhar signed them in as his guests and led them into a study room in the back. “Thanks for agreeing to meet me so quickly,” he said as they walked through the stacks.
Posey nodded, obviously a little embarrassed. She wanted to impress him, Charlie realized.
Malhar swung his bag over his shoulder and set it down on the table, removing his laptop and a notebook. Several pens fell out, an apple rolling behind them. “Do you want anything? There’s a coffee machine, but it’s not very good. The hot chocolate is okay, but someone told me they got a boiled roach in their cup.”