Odin's Murder

The girl on the floor whispers, “Huginn.”

She holds out a marble, silvery with a blue thread running through the glass. I get lost in the shiny, in the spiral, clouding into darkness as we slide away from Julian, released by his deeper darkness, and then Memory slips away, and I’m left cold and alone.

I wake up again.

This time I’m back in the girls’ room, and morning has pushed past the window. Memory is no longer beside me, but standing by the wall, a broken pencil at her feet. She’s wearing only my t-shirt and her eyes are wild, darting everywhere. Sonja’s package is mashed in her hands.

“Memory?” I rub the sleep off my face. Half a dozen symbols have been sketched onto the wall.

“Julian isn’t in the hospital.” She blinks, eyelids still heavy. “He’s in the well.”

22.

Mission

“Are you okay?” Ethan is looking at me like he’s never seen me before. The bruises on his face have ripened dark under his skin. One cut is open, a trickle of blood drying at his temple.

“I had a dream.” I look around the room. Not too much damage, a few drawings on the wall. I inhale, sharp, clearing my head. “Faye didn’t come back.”

The boy on my bed sits up, then stands and steps close, catching my chin in his hands. He looks deep into my eyes, but his regard is clinical, and I look away when I realize he’s looking for drugs. He lets go, hand sliding down my shoulder and arm to catch my wrist. He takes the package from my hands as he nods to the wall. “What is all this?”

I turn to the scribbled mess, rubbing the heel of my hand on my t-shirt before I remember I’m wearing his. I brush at the graphite smear of the pencil lead. “I’m not sure. It’s from my dream. We were surrounded by these. They’re runes, like what Faye reads. This one is for Huginn. This one, Muninn. That one is perth. I can’t remember what Faye told me this one is.”

“You’re sure she didn’t come back?

Nothing on her side of the room has been touched. “Yeah.” I take a deep breath, but it doesn’t calm me. “And I don’t think Julian is in the hospital.”

“You said that.” He isn’t skeptical though. “You think he found the well?”

“I think he’s been there all along. I think Anders is lying.”

“The dream.” he asks. “It was Julian’s.”

“Did you see it?”

His face twists, but he nods, once. “I don’t remember much. I never saw him. But I saw those.” He points to the markings on the walls, then holds up Sonja’s present. “What’s up with this?”

“I must have picked it up in my sleep.” I run my hand over the address. “He’s not hurt, just pissed off.”

“You know this? And you know where he is?”

“It feels like a cave.” I press my hand to his face, fingertip pressing on his bottom lip. “Look.”

He closes his eyes, and I see the movement of his pupils behind his lids, like he’s dreaming. “It’s been built, though. Walls. And chains?” His face pales as he opens his eyes. “Fuck.”

I nod. “I bet he went looking in the chapel. Maybe he found a way in, and got stuck inside.”

“Or he was told to go there, and got locked in.” He pulls away from me, fishes out his socks and shoes from under the bed. “Pretty effective damage control for a plagiarism accusation.”

“I think it’s worse than that,” I whisper, as a memory clicks into context, a comparison, like Faye’s untouched stones on her desk. “Anders lied. About his hand.”

“The bookshelf accident?”

“Yeah. I was in his office. And all the books were in exactly the same place they were in the other day. You don’t have an injury accident with furniture and replace everything picture perfect, down to the dust.”

“I can’t see your brother going quietly, not with someone he suspected of academic misconduct or whatever plagiarism is called.”

“N