Page 26 of Atlas of Unknowable Things

“I’ve heard that about academia. It isn’t for everyone, apparently.”

He took a swig of his water. “I don’t mean academia. I mean this place in particular.”

“Why? What is it about Hildegard?”

“It’s old, really old. And it has roots that go back even further. And there is always a kind of schism between the old ways and the new—two paths, if you will—and my sister got really paranoid about one of the paths, let’s just call it a heavier one.”

“I’m not sure I understand what you’re talking about.”

He looked at me squarely. “We’re starting to see this all over the world in all kinds of different groups.

What was once secret and taboo is coming to the fore, unafraid to hide anymore, and that’s what she feared was happening with Hildegard, with the governing bodies of the institution.

” He gazed out over the trees below. “She just decided she didn’t want to be part of it anymore—of any of it.

” Pursing his lips, he looked over at me and then shook his head.

“You must miss her.”

“I do. But,” he said, clapping his hands, “listen to me going on. We came up here to swim. The lake is off-limits, so this is the closest spot for free swimming. Might as well take advantage.”

I looked at him sideways, deciding to see what I might be able to tease out of him. “Seriously, no one ever goes out to that island?”

He shook his head. “The lake, the island, it’s all off-limits. The higher-ups don’t want us going near any of it.”

“And you never question that?”

“It’s not my job to question it. Come on,” he said, jumping up. “Last one in’s a dialectical materialist!”

The watering hole wasn’t much to look at, but it was a dream to swim in.

There was a low rock with a trickle of a waterfall spilling into the pool below, and although it probably wasn’t safe, we spent the afternoon jumping off it, cannonballing and drenching each other.

A relaxed sort of exhaustion settled over me as we headed back down the mountain.

We made it home just as the midday sun crested and began its descent into afternoon.

I spent the rest of the day leisurely perusing my research and trying to think about anything I might be missing.

Eventually I found myself thinking about silphium.

I knew it had to have some significance somehow, but as far as I could tell, the topic led nowhere.

Every source I consulted told me much the same thing: It was an extinct wonder drug.

What was I supposed to get from that? What could an extinct plant have to do with Isabelle?

Eventually I got hungry, so I closed my computer and got cleaned up for dinner.

Up at the house, I found the others on the terrace, sipping champagne from delicate flutes.

They were laughing, and Aspen, her hair done up in an elaborate twist, looked decidedly like a 1920s socialite.

Her charm bracelet, dangling from her delicate wrist, glinted in the dying summer sun, and as I approached, the sparkle from it caught my eye.

“There you are,” she exclaimed, holding up her glass. “Your ears must have been burning.”

“Champagne?” Dorian asked, motioning to the bottle cooling in a bucket of ice.

“Finn tells us you had a nature excursion today,” said Dorian.

“We did,” I said, taking a glass of champagne. “We hiked up to this cool overlook and then went swimming for a bit. It’s such a pretty area.”

“I love that spot,” gushed Aspen, pressing her mostly empty flute to her heart.

“I despise nature,” said Lexi, elegantly slouched in a rattan chair. “So nature-y. It’s disgusting.”

“Did you see any birds?” asked Dorian. “I’m something of a secret birder.”

“Is there any other kind?” Lexi laughed, raising her glass in a faux cheers, sending champagne sloshing out onto the stones.

Finn began enumerating birds (red-tailed hawk, rosy finch) while I sipped my champagne (dry, very bubbly), but soon I could feel Lexi’s eyes on me. “So, Robin, we were just discussing the nature of evil.”

“Breezy topic.”

She shrugged. “It passes the time. What are your thoughts?”

“On evil?” I laughed. “I don’t think I have any.”

“But surely you must have some. You study witch hunts,” said Dorian. “Do you not think the people who burned innocents alive were evil?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t. I think there are evil acts, and I think people can behave in evil ways, but I don’t know that a person can be, like, evil exactly. Only flawed enough to commit an evil act.”

“Oh, people can be evil,” Dorian said with a disconcerting grin. “I know it for a fact.”

“How can you know something like that for a fact?”

“Because I have stood here on these very grounds and I’ve looked it in the eye. And let me tell you, once you see it, there’s no way to mistake it for anything else.”

The group grew quiet. A straggler bee buzzed around the flowery weeds that sprouted up between the flagstones at our feet. High in a tree, a bird called—a quick whoop followed by three short trills.

Finn cleared his throat. “On that note, let’s go in to dinner.”

Later that night, I was cleaning up around the cabana when I realized I still had Finn’s sunglasses. I decided to return them and say good night. I was starting to feel like we were becoming friends, and when you’re stranded in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of weirdos, that’s no small thing.

I found him sitting on his couch drinking a beer.

He seemed different, pensive, and I realized he probably didn’t want me bothering him.

Just because I was lonely and wanted to hang out didn’t mean he felt the same.

So I put his sunglasses on the sideboard and was starting to leave when he said something odd.

“There was no dig.”

A thick silence enveloped the space around me. “What?” I said carefully.

“There was no dig, Robin. There wasn’t even a blog post.”

It was the same story Aspen had tried to foist on me, but this was different. His words hit me hard. Annoyed, I pulled out my phone and searched for the post. I would just show him. But when I tried to find it, I couldn’t. It didn’t seem to be there anymore.

“It’s gone, isn’t it?” he asked with a cruel smile.

“I know what I saw. I read it myself.”

He closed his eyes, frustrated. “No, I’m not saying it didn’t exist. I’m saying it was a plant.”

“A plant? To what end?”

“To get you here.”

I stood there, stunned. “What? You’re joking.”

“I’m not.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

He raised his beer. “Better to live a short noble life than a long selfish one.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means be careful of the company you keep.”

I stared at him, a heavy suspicion sinking into my bones. I’d thought he was my friend, but clearly I was wrong. For some reason he wanted me to stop nosing around about Isabelle and the relic. If anything, that only made me more determined to find it.

He stood up and set his beer bottle on the counter with perhaps too much force. “I gotta go to bed.”

He walked me to the door, but once he opened it, he looked at me pointedly. “You don’t believe me. I can see that. But let me ask you this. What happened to you right before you found the blog post?”

“I don’t know. I was working on my dissertation.”

“Were you with anyone?”

“Yeah. I was staying with my cousin Paloma.”

He put a hand on his hip. “And did Paloma start acting strange?”

My spine went ice cold. “How do you know that?”

“Look,” he said, shaking his head, “it wasn’t housekeeping that cleaned up those witch bottles. And my guess is they were serving a purpose. I would watch my back if I were you.”

When I left Finn’s, I didn’t go back to my cabana, but instead walked down to the lake and stared across the dark expanse to the island.

I was beset by a confounding mixture of emotion.

I didn’t believe for a second that Finn was telling me the truth, and I found myself feeling unexpectedly angry, but I was also hurt—too hurt for this to really be about Finn.

Once again, I was back to Charles Danforth and the sickening sadness that enveloped me whenever he came to mind.

It was ridiculous the way my heart refused to let go of him, how desperately I clung to the pain of it, as if moving past the pain would mean losing him forever, but that’s where I was.

It was sad but true. A friend can break your heart more brutally than any lover.

Staring out at the island, I began to grow increasingly frustrated.

I’d been told repeatedly not to go in the lake and that the island was off-limits, but why had I listened?

Clearly Finn was lying to me. Probably the others were as well.

They were stopping me from finding the relic, they were making me doubt the post I’d seen, and from the beginning they had directed me to stay out of the water and away from the island.

But just because the boat was missing didn’t mean I couldn’t get to the island.

I was a strong swimmer, and it wasn’t too far.

Screw their rules. I was going out to that island if for no other reason than those assholes told me not to.