(30) Ashes To Ashes

I've gotten myself into a situation I don't know how to get out of again. To be clear, this is far from the first time that's happened. But I've also never painted myself into this kind of corner with quite the same stakes, never having tangled with a fallen angel cult before, and all that. I have no special powers. I likely couldn't fend off one of the teachers around me, let alone all four together—and they'd probably call for backup before I threw my first punch.

I almost laugh at the very possibility of punching teachers. What would that even accomplish? I can't carry Barnabas's limp body. I'm cut off from Exie and my other allies. I might land myself another dressing-down from Massingham himself, but I doubt he'd be so lenient a second time if he caught me having eavesdropped on his cult ritual. If his school and colleagues are trying to maintain their illusion of beneficence, they'd do well to silence me.

I still have more matches in my pockets, but there's nothing to light that wouldn't harm me and the person I'm trying to save. I'm not at the point of lighting a teacher on fire directly yet, so that's off the table. The pew and desk in the room, meanwhile, are both hardwood that I doubt would combust without kindling, and the walls, floor, and ceiling are all stone. I don't want to suffocate myself on fire-smoke anyway.

I have no other weapons. I have no backup plan. I can do nothing except crouch and wait, ignore the ever-growing burn in my paper-folded limbs, and wait for something to change around me. I know Exie is probably trying to reach me, but she didn't want to raise too much mayhem with this plan lest the school drop its nice act and punish the whole student population. If she can't get me out, though, I may need to take matters into my own hands. If it comes down to survival, I'm willing to fight. I'm willing to burn things. I'm probably willing to ditch Barnabas to his fate if it's my only way to get away, though the thought puts a whole crown of thorns around my throat. I know we've made it through this whole investigation thus far without any significant failures, but I don't want this to be the first one. Not when someone's life or sanity is on the line.

Which leaves me sprinting in mental circles until I'm nearly startled off the crosspiece of the bed by a knock on the door.

My vision blurs from my suddenly raging heartbeat. If that's Massingham, I might have to witness the whole cult ritual up close and personal, when there's nothing I can do about it. That dove might even misfire and come for me; I've certainly seen evidence that Massingham doesn't have much control over his paper creations if something goes wrong. If it's Exie outside, meanwhile, she might save me from my pathetic position having done absolutely nothing but get Barnabas moved from one locked room to another. If the knocker is one of the school's other students, the possibilities are as varied as the student body itself.

It could be another teacher. It could be the demon himself. I run through seven years of speculation in the seconds it takes one of the teachers to walk to the door and say something through it, then crack it open. In that moment, all my thoughts desert me.

It's Clarice.

The teacher grabs her by the arm and sweeps her inside. There's a dove on her shoulder. The paper dove that Massingham released, its wings a little smoke-stained, but otherwise intact. Time slows down as the teacher locks the door again, and the dove spreads its wings. It hovers in front of my friend—my friend—and I move in slow motion, lurching out from underneath the table, reaching for the demon's paper minion. I scarcely hear the teachers' cries around me. My hands brush paper—

Clarice drops.

There's no sound. No scream. No flicker of recognition in her blank, almost serene gaze as her body crumples over me, taking me to the ground with her. My limbs scramble back of their own accord, leaving Clarice to roll limply to the stones. I freeze beside her. Above me, a fluttering announces the doves return as it coasts down to land on Clarice's chest. I lay a hand beside it. There's no heartbeat. She's just gone.

This can't be happening.

I scarcely feel the hands that grab me. Clarice's lifeless body shrinks before me, but it's me who's moving, dragged backwards across the floor. I can't make my limbs obey me. Maybe the demon got me, too. Maybe I'm about to die. My parents will finally get what they paid for: I'll be terrified into tameness like every student victim before me, back to the days of Exie's brother, and likely even further. Something jostles my wrists. I'm being tied. I don't know where they got the rope from. I don't care.

Two teachers take Clarice's body by the arms and ankles and move her to the pew, laying her down gently like she's just sleeping, not gone to God. No, nobody here is passing by God's table. They're being taken somewhere else; some middle plane of the afterlife where the demon lurks to judge them and send them back again. What happens if they fail that judgment? How can they fail it? Does he simply kill them if they do? Questions—critically important questions—swirl without answer inside my mind as I watch the dove re-settle itself on Clarice's shirt buttons like it's nesting there. I want to burn it. To catch it and shred it into a thousand pieces, never to reassemble itself again.

I try to get up, but miss the teacher now knotting a torn strip of infirmary blanket around my ankles, too. My attempt to move succeeds only in toppling me over on my shoulder. I writhe across the floor, but it's useless; the pew never gets any closer, and it only takes one teacher to keep me from getting there. Clarice's expression remains serene. How long can a body last before it starts taking damage from not breathing? I'm sure it's been that long already, but Clarice hasn't come back yet. Or maybe it's just my sense of time distorting. I've certainly lost control of everything else.

Another knock sends me skittering. It's a pathetic attempt to escape; I hit the nearest wall and am left to my misery as the same teacher opens the door, far more confidently this time. My stomach drops clean through the floor. Massingham's face shadows in a way I've never seen before as he fixes his eyes on me.

"I wondered," is all he says.

"She was beneath the bed," says another teacher. "Spying."

The headmaster's gaze roves the room, landing first on Barnabas, then Clarice at the back. He's holding the battered red book again. I didn't see him grab it before he left the infirmary, but I guess I wasn't paying much attention.

"He'll wake up soon," says a different teacher, but Clarice isn't a he. The teacher is talking about Barnabas. "What should we do with them?"

"This may work to our advantage," says Massingham. "Bring them to the underneath. We can guide the doves for a pair of days to give the remainder of the student body time to settle. Both these children were supposed to be in the infirmary, were they not?"

Bless my obstinate mind. I still have it in me to prickle at being called a child, and it focuses my careening thoughts a little. A pair of days. A student a day. The school can't carry out this ritual more than once a night, so I'm not about to die just yet. If this "underneath" is some variant of hell, I might be in for something worse than death, but I'm not going to find out until we get there. That gives me at least the travel time to formulate a plan.

I have no plan.

I'm grabbed again. I don't fight this time. My wrists and ankles are both bound, so I'm hoisted unceremoniously onto the same bed as Barnabas with a warning I scarcely hear. I stay there, cozied up to what might be a sane student again, a demon minion, or a permanently mind-damaged shell. I'll have no way to know until he wakes up, and he still hasn't stirred. One teacher checks outside, but the chaos there has subsided. I can't hear shouting, at least, and it's impossible to tell anymore what smoke is from the infirmary and what came from other arson.

Maybe the infirmary fire scared the student body into submission. I kind of doubt it, but nobody tries to intercept us this time as the teachers—more of them now, flocking all around us—wheel the bed down the school's longest hallway. We veer sideways before we reach the chapel. Silence falls around us with the thump of another door, and I look up to find frescos on a ceiling I've definitely stared at before. We're in the library. Wheeling through the library, an experience as surreal as the images of dead Clarice that continue to play across my consciousness, only growing more vivid the longer I stare at the bed-curtain with unseeing eyes. I don't know where we're going, and it's hard to care.

We stop at the end of the library's final aisle. Me and Exie have sat here before. I met Barnabas here, when he came to deliver a map to Exie and return my suitcase key. I almost tear up at the memory, but if me and Barnabas are going down within the next two days, at least we'll go down together. I'd rather be imprisoned with a semi-friendly face than most of the other students. If Barnabas is even home anymore.

More tears leak free. I didn't realize I'd started crying. The bed stops rolling, and a scrape indicates there's a secret passage somewhere here, because of course there is. The bed-curtains fly back. I'm hoisted by arms strong enough to belong to Mr. Ashcroft, but it's one of the librarians lifting me. They must have done this so many times. Then the light vanishes, and we're swallowed by a darkened maw that's familiar even though I've never been here before. Another spiral staircase leads down, eating into the school's foundations like a tunneling worm. For all I've absorbed unwillingly from my father's rants on gothic architecture, I've never known how deep an old cathedral's foundations can go.

When the staircase bottoms out, the teachers' footsteps crunch on wet, gritty stone. Someone holds a candle ahead, but the light is too far away for me to assess the tunnel we're walking through. It's probably carved. If the spiderweb of lines on the map we found in Mrs. Hardwick's office is to judge, the original Cult of Miranda occupied underground tunnels all over what's now this school's property. We have no idea what's in them. We never got a chance to explore. Just one more mystery piling onto all the other things I wish we'd known before we tangled directly with this school because I cared about Exie and she didn't want to see another student taken. A sentiment I admittedly shared, but still. I'm paying for our ignorance now.

I can still see Clarice in my mind's eye.

The teachers finally stop. I didn't think to track our passage, but we've woven enough times that I'd probably have lost track anyway. Only now do I realize I didn't use this transit time to consider my escape options. I've done nothing useful at all. At least the door someone has opened for us doesn't lead to Hell itself. Barnabas and I are dropped unceremoniously on the damp stone floor of a damp stone room, and a door swings shut behind us. A lock clicks. Beneath the door, I watch the faintest flicker of candlelight retreat, leaving us alone together in the darkness.