Page 12 of Atlas of Unknowable Things

“I did some googling and came across a blog post about Professor Casimir and her recent trip to Essex. She talked about a statue they found, and she mentioned that she brought it back to Hildegard. Is that right?”

No one spoke for a moment, and I couldn’t tell if they were confused or considering. Finn sat down and tented his fingers. He looked over at Lexi, who looked at Dorian, who shrugged and continued making cocktails.

“This is the first I’m hearing of it,” said Lexi at last.

“It said she brought it back with her?”

“I don’t think she would have been able to bring something back from an excavation site,” said Lexi. “I don’t know much about archaeology, but I doubt it’s just finders keepers. Wouldn’t she have had to leave it with the rest of the finds?”

This was something I had considered, and the whole thing did seem unusual, but I didn’t know what kind of facilities they might have here.

It seemed possible that they would have been able to conduct further research on campus.

It still didn’t explain why Isabelle was there in the first place, though.

Something was off about the entire thing, though I couldn’t place my finger on what.

“I saw her office. It seemed very empty.”

“Yes, I packed up her things,” Dorian said.

“Why pack up her office so soon? It doesn’t seem like the space was needed.”

“Well, it was,” Dorian said, setting gleaming ruby cocktails before Aspen and Finn.

“And where are her things now?”

“Storage,” Dorian said quickly.

“Would I be able to look through them just to see about the relic? I mean, if there is an important artifact on campus, surely you don’t want it shoved into some box in a storage space.”

He frowned. “I don’t think we could authorize that.”

Heat rose up in my cheeks and I could feel myself gearing up for a fight.

I’d always had a problem with authority, but especially when it felt unearned.

What right did the librarian have to hold dominion over Dr. Casimir’s things?

But I knew arguing would get me nowhere, so I tried to be civil about it.

“Then could one of you look through and make sure you didn’t miss the statue? She described it as representing thirteen female figures in a circle, with a two-faced being at the center of the circle. You can probably understand why that would be important to me.”

“Your coven,” said Aspen.

“Exactly. Depending on when it dates from, it could be pretty important.”

“I think it would be fine for you to look through her things,” said Aspen brightly, “but the storage space is in Denver. We can try to arrange for you to get down there in a few weeks if you want, though.”

“Denver?” I said, the wind swiftly leaving my sails as I realized the space was hours away. “Sure. That would be great.”

Lexi set her napkin on the table and excused herself. I half wondered if she was going to go scold a cook somewhere.

Dorian turned to me and smiled. “How is your new living space? Everything to your liking?”

“Actually,” I said, setting down my glass, “I found the strangest thing today. Down in the basement.”

Dorian froze, his fork nearly to his mouth. “Seriously?”

“Yeah. There were these stairs down to it and—”

“The gate wasn’t locked?”

“It was open,” I lied. “And inside was the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen. All these glass bottles hanging from the ceiling. Is that like an art thing? Or an experiment?”

Finn and Aspen exchanged confused looks.

“No,” Dorian said, “not an experiment.”

His attention drifted, and I got the sense that these bottles had some other meaning to him. Just then there was a commotion in the kitchen and Lexi emerged with a tray of salads.

“Hope you’re hungry,” she said brightly.

“Lexi,” he said, hesitation in his eyes, “Isabelle had witch bottles in her basement.”

Her hand shaking, she set the tray of plates clattering down on the table. “No.” She locked eyes with Dorian, aghast and amused all at once.

“Yes,” he said with a broad smile.

I looked on, completely confused, and then as if finally noticing me, she snapped out of it, smoothed down her skirt, and sat. I tried to get a sense of where Aspen and Finn stood on witch bottles, but they both seemed preoccupied with their salads.

“How curious,” Lexi said, taking a sip of her wine before nodding to me. “Please, Robin. Eat up!”

I stared down at the salad. The vegetables were crisp and glistening with a dressing I knew I could expect to be the perfect combination of savory and sweet. Laid across the top were thinly sliced pieces of some kind of meat.

“It is jambon de Bayonne,” said Dorian. “Very delicious. You will love it.”

“Dorian was telling me about your…” said Lexi. “What was his name—oh yes, Charles?”

A spasm in my larynx, and I nearly choked on my food. Why would Lexi ask about Charles? I had barely mentioned him to Dorian.

“Yes.” Slowly I set my fork down. “Charles.”

I’d practiced this moment so many times, and yet it never seemed to go as planned.

Act normal. Adults don’t cry when they get their feelings hurt, do they?

They don’t cry when it turns out the person they thought was their best friend was actually just using them.

And yet here I was again, fighting back tears because someone mentioned his name.

“And where is he now, this Charles?”

The table was silent, everyone seemingly set to hang on my next word. Why should they care where Charles was?

“I’m not sure,” I said. “I think he took a job somewhere. Nevada, maybe?”

“Don’t you know?”

“No, I don’t know. We had a falling-out, and I honestly don’t know the first thing about him anymore. Since that day, I’ve just tried not to think about him.”

“What day?” Dorian asked.

I stared down at my fork, at the light from the chandelier glinting off the tines, and it was like I was back there again—swept back into that memory I wanted nothing more than to forget.

The last time I had seen Charles was in Washington Square Park.

It was night—a full moon—and snow was falling, gathering along the upturned edges of his burgundy cap.

By then I knew what he had done. By then he’d accused me of being overly sensitive, irascible—anything to avoid looking at his own behavior. And this meeting was our final act.

As I stood there that night, the pain in my chest, that monster that tore through me was unlike anything I’d ever experienced.

I’d been through breakups, I’d lost loved ones.

I’d been abandoned by my own father, for Christ’s sake.

But those losses had made sense; there had been clear reasons, something to point to.

This made no sense to me. And I never saw it coming.

He was the brother I’d never had. I had trusted him completely.

And yet he stared at me with utter cruelty.

“Just talk to me,” I pleaded. The words were so simple, much too simple for the expansive crevasse in my heart they represented. “Tell me why you did this.”

He turned and looked away, his gaze fixed on a nearby sundial growing slick with snow.

“Please, it’s me. Talk to me like you know me. Look into my eyes.”

He shook his head. “You want more from this friendship than I can offer.”

A cannonball straight through my chest.

“What the fuck does that mean? You think I want to sleep with you? Please. Get over yourself. You stole my research, Charles. I trusted you and you betrayed me.”

“You’re acting hysterical. It wasn’t your research. It was our research.”

“That’s not true. You know it’s not true. Charles, it’s me.”

“Don’t contact me again,” he said, and as he turned to leave, I saw it there for just a second, a flicker of the old him, and every piece of me wanted to reach for it, to pull him back to that timeline where he had been softness and warmth.

And then that light in him was gone, the goodness in him turned to stone.

Turned to rot. And a terrible guilt welled up inside me.

“Are you not feeling well?” asked Finn.

I blinked and was back in the dining room at Hildegard, the light glaring off the fork. Looking down at my salad, I now found something unsettling about the meat, sliced so thin that muscle striations were visible in the tender pink flesh. Suddenly I became queasy just looking at it.

“I’m afraid I’m not. Would you mind terribly if I went back to my bungalow?”

“Of course not,” Lexi said, though I could detect not only disappointment in her voice, but something else as well. Disapproval, perhaps?

I tried to keep it together as much as I could as I hurried down the path to my cabana.

I could still hear voices and laughter drifting down from the main path.

They sounded so joyful that I briefly considered turning around and joining them again, but instead I went inside, and without even pulling down the covers or turning off the lights, I collapsed into gut-churning sobs and cried myself to sleep.

The next morning, I awoke with swollen eyes and a promise to myself that I wasn’t going to think about Charles ever again.

We’d see how long that would last. I made myself coffee in a French press I found in the kitchenette and took it and my computer out into the patio garden to breathe in the fresh morning breeze.

It really was spectacularly lovely out there.