Page 64 of The Black Table
What happened to you, Gwenna?
I’d seen her at the formal hall. I couldn’tnotsee her, standing out in that red; even if my eyes didn’t seem to snap to her like a magnet every time, I wouldn’t be able to miss that dress. It’s…I don’t know things about women’s clothes. Different. Nothing like the sleek gown that Elena had on—I wasn’t looking, but Elena never seems to miss a chance to force me into catching a glimpse of her. This is…sort of an old-fashioned style, I suppose. Lots of lace, and layers. But it suits her. Even though she’d look good in anything.
Morgan, I think. My first instinct. Except Morgan’s not even here. It’s a full moon. Morgan’s out…witching. Whatever she does on these nights. And why would she do anything to her roommate, anyway? Maybe…
Food poisoning? But no, the odds of that are close to nothing; Caliburn food is top-tier, and the formal dinners even more so. The only way for the food to poison someone is if it had literal poison in…
Oh, my God.
The pieces slide into place before I even fully realize what the picture is, and I clutch at my hair. Elena. She was sitting close enough to Gwenna—I know she was, because she was staring at me the whole time we were there, and I had the bad luck to be facing the student tables. She wouldn’t…
I tear at my hair again, pure fury coursing through me. “How could you?” I mutter and look at Gwenna’s almost sleeping form on the couch. I can’t just leave her here, but if I can find out what’s wrong with her, at least I can figure out how to help. I bend over, tucking my jacket a little more securely around her. At least that’s what I’m telling myself. Not that I want to go let loose on Elena.
I cross campus in what feels like a minute, practically sprinting with a burning feeling at the back of my throat. Disgust. That’s what it is. Disbelief. My shoes ring on the cobblestones as the quads lie empty—everyone either tumbled back to their dorms after the formal haul or cozied up in Porter’s for a nightcap, the official after-party location. And that’s where I head, all but punching open the double doors to the main building and swinging around the worn basement steps two at a time.
I burst through the wood-paneled doors and narrow my eyes in the dim lighting. It doesn’t take long to find her through the stale air of the pub, a few clusters of students in black tie formal lounge in the booths, laughing low—and she’s right there in a corner booth, candlelight playing off her hair as she laughs with her friends. She’s relaxed even as her gaze is as sharp as ever, and something about that fuels the fire in me even higher.
Quickly, obviously, someone notices me: her friend Claire—the blonde one—nudges her and nods in my direction. I don’t wait for Elena to look up; I stride across the pub, my steps ringing on the stone floor, ignoring the hush falling over the tables.
I stop before her at attention. I am intent. “What did you do to her?”
Elena leans back a little, shifting her pint glass from hand to hand, her eyes wide. “Do to who?” she says.
I grit my teeth. “You know who.”
“Oh, your little girlfriend?” Elena laughs.
“She’s not my…” I clench my hands into fists and loom over the table. “Are you serious, Elena? I’m not interested. In you. In…in anyone.” I fumble only slightly. “You know that. You’ve always known that. Why would you think something like this is okay? Poison?”
Her eyes flash. “It wasn’tpoison,” she says. “Not in the sense that it’ll kill her.” She licks her lips. “A little ground-up Dramamine. She’ll be fine in time.”
I don’t care when she’ll be fine. She shouldn’t be not fine in the first place. I tense my grip on the table. “Why would you think this is okay? Just for a stupid crush?”
Elena’s smile goes brittle. “A stupid crush,” she repeats. She snorts. “Don’t flatter yourself.” She leans forward, the candlelight turning her features sharp and shadowed from below. “That girl is a menace.”
Her tone takes me aback, and I withdraw a little, confused. “What?”
“She is,” Elena says. “She set the fire, Lanz. She ruined everything.”
“What are you talking about?” I say, low, slow, dangerous.
Elena glances at Claire. “We looked her up,” she says simply as she sets down her pint glass. “The swim test prank was mean, I’ll admit it. But I noticed that she had all these, I don’t know, burns on her arms, scars. And I thought, that was weird. So Claire here”—she nods at her friend—”looked through a few of her things from the admission file. And that’s when I realized, Gwenna and I are from the same little suburb of Philadelphia. Only her parents are high-powered attorneys. And mine,” she says pointedly, “are a shift nurse and a building inspector.”
She takes a deep breath in through her nose. “I was going to go to Stanford,” Elena said. “My parents had been saving their whole lives. I studied my absolute ass off. I got in early. Everything was ready to go.” Then she swallows, her voice catching a little, and starts again, stronger. “This church in my town just…just burns down to the ground with a girl inside it. They never say who it is, and I never find out—but it was obviously her fault because her parents were connected.”
“That can’t be true,” I grind out. “You’re lying.”
“Lying?” Elena laughs. “Why would I make up a lie like that? Why would I?” She clenches her fist, and I realize a tear is sparkling down her cheek in the dim light of Porter’s.
“Everyone said it was an electrical fire,” she begins. “That it was justbad wiring. That it wasn’t to code andsomeoneshould have caught that in the inspection.” She gives a small, cold chuckle. “The fact that the mental case, diagnosed pyromaniac daughter of two powerful lawyers just happened to be in the church at the same time? Oh, just a weird little co-inky-dink. But surely couldn’t be her fault. Surely.” She giggles, but there’s no mirth in it. “Except it has to be someone’s fault, right? Hm? And it doesn’t seem to matter that the building inspector actually did nothing wrong. That he had a business and a family to support. Nah, who cares?” She shrugs. “Fuck ‘em! Let them drain their life savings in legal fees fighting the negligence charges, right?”
The tears are pouring down her face now, her voice almost ragged.
“Oh, baby.” Claire pouts and hands Elena a cocktail napkin, but Elena waves her away, swiping at her cheeks, and suddenly she’s all composed again. She looks at me, eyes hard.
“That girl ruined my life. She’s a psycho religious freak. She’s dangerous and she shouldn’t be here. She shouldn’t be near people at all.”
Suddenly the pub feels stifling. Conversations pick up again, swirling around me like smoke as my mind races.
