Page 49 of The Lies We Conjure
A little smile creeps at the corners of her mouth. Her skin is bare and as perfect as magic can make it, any sign of last night stripped away. “Great minds, Auden.”
“Let’s get Evander—”
“Already tried.” Winter nods over her shoulder, reddish-blond ponytail swishing. Of course she did. His suite is between hers and mine. “He’s not there.”
I can’t decide if I’m annoyed, frustrated, or mad. Maybe just tired. We should be doing this together. As a team. “I guess either he’ll find out because we’re successful or because we can cross it off the list. Let’s jet.”
We’re stepping onto the starburst tiles of the garden walk less than a minute later.
Ursula’s shroud is undisturbed to the right, as hard and smooth as the night before, the deep, reddish brown of the Colorado soil blanketing the small fall of her body.
Beyond, the table is in shambles, shards of porcelain and glass glittering in the meager light. White-jacketed waiters lie crumpled in the grass, and the magical fairy lights that edged the garden from twelve feet up litter the garden perimeter like a fallen police line. All evidence of Ursula’s spells collectively failing or taking effect.
All of it detritus of our terrible night.
We don’t discuss it.
Past the lawn’s edge, Winter and I veer left onto the manicured beginnings of a path that will become nothing but bare earth and gravel in a mile or so. It’s a trail as old as the house itself, one that leads up a steep incline to a small peak called Mercy’s Point.
Normally, I’d only willingly suffer through a run like this in the name of training for lacrosse season. But this morning I plan to suffer through gasping breath and screaming quads to inspect what Shadrack Hegemony himself installed at the top of Mercy’s Point more than a hundred years before I was born.
A chapel.
An outdoor chapel—with pulpits facing both east and west, for sunrise or sundown services, and general devotion. It’s the only place on the grounds even remotely religious.
We worship.
We make it a mile, lungs heaving in the altitude and incline, before I catch a scrap of a red Walton-Bridge lacrosse jersey up the trail and know that it’s confirmation that we’re on to something.
“Evander!” I try to shout, but it comes out in a half wheeze because though I’ve had a month to adjust to the altitude, I am running uphill on a suspicious amount of rest after the second worst day of my life.
He doesn’t even flinch at the noise.
“Either he’s got his AirPods in or he’s being a straight jerk,” Winter grumbles, tone indignant and determined. “Coach Rose’s weekly hill repeats are about to come in handy.”
She puts on the jets. With a groan, I follow. My jog shifts into an all-out, mountain-climbing churn of steps. It’s not a sprint—we’re not super athletes, and it is a sixty-degree incline at eight thousand feet—but it most definitely is a race pace.
“Evander. Ulysses. Hegemony!” I grunt out as we close in on his broad back.
When he doesn’t acknowledge that or our footsteps, Winter slams on the brakes, sticks both fingers in her mouth, and whistles so loud that every dog in Grand County probably just started barking. That fails to work also, so I pelt him with a pine cone. It bounces off the back of his head.
Evander finally turns around. He does not have his headphones in.
We gape at him, breathing hard while walking the final ten feet or so to meet him on the trail.
Though I’m not sure I slept, I’m pretty damn convinced Evander spent his entire night pacing the halls. He hasn’t shaved, dark stubble lining his jaw, and somehow even the beads of sweat dotting his temples look utterly exhausted.
I elbow him in the ribs. “Jesus Christ, man, did you think we were Kaysa’s ghosts?”
“Don’t hand him a viable excuse forignoring us,Auden.”
Rather than defend himself, Evander draws a water bottle from a pack around his waist and takes a swig. As soon as he lowers it, Winter snags it for a drink of her own. “I assume you’re here because you had the same thought I did.”
“We worship,” I confirm.
“Can’t believe I didn’t think of it the moment we read the clue.”
With that, his single-mindedness slides back into place. He turns around to keep climbing toward the summit, which is about another mile, but Winter isn’t done. She shoves the water bottle to my chest and jogs past Evander before making sideways progress so she can both move forward and eviscerate him at the same time.
