Page 81 of An Arcane Education
“Wait,” he says too calmly, resting a hand on my shoulder. “I know this is going to sound crazy, but I need you to trust me. You can’t tell anyone about this yet.”
My jaw drops as I jerk away from him. “What? Are you serious? I just discovered adead studentin the woods and you want me to keep it a secret? We don’t even know if this was an accident or intentional.”
Alaric looks over his shoulder to make sure nobody’s approaching before he continues. “Just for a little while,” he pleads. “I’m going to try to find him tomorrow morning, okay? But let me deal with it right now. Please trust me.”
“Deal with it? Alaric, what the hell is going on? How do you expect me to trust you when all you’ve done is keep secrets without giving me any insight into what’s happening, even when I’m the one who discovered the mushrooms in the first place?” My voice rises, verging on hysterical. Is he involved in this somehow?
He runs his hands through his hair, and I notice they're shaking. His voice is low when he answers, “I can’t tell you everything, but I’ll tell you this. I think the mushrooms are part of something larger and more threatening. And if I’m correct, we need to handle this carefully.”
“Okay, so tell me why you think that,” I challenge. “If this is putting me in danger somehow, you should be giving me information, not hiding it from me.”
“Because I don’t know yet,” he hisses. “I have so many pieces of information that are impossible to put together into something that makes sense. But the mushrooms youcollected are not a known species. They don’t seem to exist in any records. Their cellular structure is wrong, their growth pattern is impossible, and the way they seem to affect the surrounding environment is unlike anything I’ve heard of. They’re magically enhanced, somehow, and I’m trying to figure out how and why.”
“Then we need to tell someone who can actually do something about it,” I argue.
“Tell them what? That I've been conducting unauthorized research on potentially dangerous specimens? That I had a student illegally collect samples for me in an area she’s not supposed to be?”
“I don’t know!” I shout. “But you’re asking me to keep a dead body a secret, let alone the fact that it’s my friend’s brother. You’ve been keeping secrets since we met, and I can’t handle it.”
Alaric sighs, his gaze dropping. The frigid wind whips between us, and off in the distance, the chapel bell tolls the hour.
“Give me forty-eight hours,” Alaric says. “I’m going to find the body in the forest then analyze the mushrooms that are growing from his body. Then I’ll go to the administration with the information and tell them I was looking for a specific plant when I came across it. Okay?”
“And how are you going to find it considering you’ve never been able to before? Because I’m sure as hell not going back there.”
“I’ll figure it out. It’s northeast from the clearing, right?”
“Yes. But… we’re just going to leave his body lying there for two more days?” The thought makes me sick to my stomach.
“It’s been there for two days already. Two more won’t make a difference.”
I stare at him with my mouth open, shocked by his callousness. How can he say something so insensitive at a time like this?
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
I shake my head. “Two days. You have to report it, and if you don’t, I’m going in there and dragging you down with me. Got it?”
He nods, and I walk away without another word.
Instead of heading to my room, I head straight to the infirmary in a daze, passing by students going about their normal lives with no knowledge of the tragedy that’s befallen this place. When I reach the infirmary, I promptly vomit into a garbage can at the inescapable image of the mushrooms protruding from Mitchell’s open mouth. I don’t particularly want to be around other people right now with a nurse hovering over me, but there’s no way I can attend my next two classes like nothing has happened, and I can’t risk Max sensing my emotions right now.
My next class in an hour would be with AJ, and most of all, I can’t face him. I think about the worry that’s been weighing on him for days now about his brother’s disappearance, how he’ll react when he hears the news. How I hope he never finds out that I hid the information for days after discovering his brother’s dead body in the woods.
He deserves to know. He deserves closure and time to grieve.
After the nurse checks my vitals and gives me a bed to lie down in, I stare at the ceiling as my mind races.
My father’s letter comes back to my thoughts.Trust no one.
What if I’m making a mistake? What if I am trusting the wrong person? Alaric seems so intent on hiding everything, and I’m still not even sure what his end goal is. He knows I’m naive when it comes to everything to do with this world of magic. Might he be taking advantage of that?
I don’t think so. Regardless of what he’s working on, he must have good intentions. He cares about me; I’m certain of that if nothing else. He may be mysterious, but he’s not dangerous.
Maybe I’m a fool for my faith in him and letting my feelings cloud my judgment, but I’ve spent my entire life following my instincts with good results, and right now, my instincts are telling me to trust him.
As I lie on the thin, hard mattress beneath too-bright fluorescent lights, I wonder how rare it is for a student to die on campus when I recall the story Victor had told me at the party earlier this semester. It might be an urban legend, but now I can’t help but wonder…
He had said that many students have disappeared here over the years with no explanations or resolutions. But how can so many students disappear on a small island without a trace? Except I saw how those mushrooms were eating away at Mitchell’s body and how his body will probably decompose and become part of the earth within a week or two at the rate it’s going. Is it possible it’s all related?
