Page 46 of White Lights
“I’ll go first,” Yael interrupts her. “Dez, I need you to focus. This is important.” She pours another shot of gin. “Today we lost a troubled soul.”
Dez stares at Yael. Surely her roommate isn’t talking about what Dez just heard outside—
“This isn’t Acheron’s first incident of suicide,” Yael says somberly. “This is a stressful place, and some people can’t handle it.”
“Who?” Simon asks.
“A former student,” Yael says, glancing at Dez. “Apparently, he jumped from the roof of Enoch.”
“That’s why all the last-years were called down for a meeting?” Simon says.
“What’s he talking about?” Dez asks.
“She got this voice memo,” Simon explains: “‘All last-years report immediately to the secret lair’or whatever.”
“Thanks, Simon. I’ll take it from here.” Yael runs her finger around the rim of her shot glass. “Director Moriah called the last-years together so she could break the news. Since we knew the deceased personally. She asked us not to share it with the first-years, as the faculty plans to tell you tomorrow, but I believe in full transparency. And I thought you’d like to know.”
“No,” Dez says with cold clarity.
“No what?” Yael says, brows arched.
“I was out there. I was on the tri with Rafe. The sound we heard. It was like something dropped from the clouds. It didn’t sound like someone leaping off a roof.”
“Have you ever heard someone leap off a roof, Dez?” Yael says.
Dez’s gaze locks on Yael’s. “What was his name?”
Yael swallows. “Charles Costella. You wouldn’t have met him. He was my year, but unfortunately, at the end of last term, he didn’t advance. Everyone assumed he’d left with the other Honorable Mentions. Which is why it’s so upsetting to imagine him lurking around here until now, waiting for the first day of classes to make a statement. He must have been in such pain.”
“This doesn’t sound right,” Dez says.
“Of course it’s not right,” Yael says. “A young man, one of our own, is dead.”
“Did you see the body?” Dez asks.
Yael sits up straight. “I just heard all of this, from Dr. Moriah.”
Dez thinks of the red-lipped woman with the venom in her eyes, and the white snake wrapped around her neck. “Then the director is lying.”
Yael narrows her eyes. “I’m going to do you the great favor of not telling anyone you just said that.”
“Have a sip, Dez,” Simon says, sliding her a shot glass. He wiggles his right hand a little. “Or we could try the slap?”
“Who drinks room-temperature gin, Simon?” Yael says angrily, stalking toward the kitchen. “I’m getting ice.”
When there’s enough distance between them, Simon mouths to Dez: “Dude?”
“They’re covering up something,” Dez whispers. “And I need to know what.”
“Dez,” he whispers back, sounding kind but worried, the way she used to talk to Mo. “It just seems like there are better ways to spend your time than taking on the truly terrifying Acheron administration. Like perhaps getting settled into the cutthroat new graduate program you just got admitted to?”
“I want to talk to Rafe.”
Yael reenters the living room, carrying a bucket of ice and a tray of martini fixings. Simon pops an olive in his mouth.
“For your information, Rafe shares my position, and the director’s position,” Yael says. “He was with me just now at the meeting.” She gives the silver cocktail tumbler a shake, then strains the liquor into her glass. “It’s going to be lonely to die on this hill, Desdemona.”
A knock sounds at the door, and Simon moves to the peephole.
