“But anyways,” Regina said, finishing a story about some senior Tess didn’t know. “I finished that big request and delivered the books for you.”
That for you was enough to get Tess’s attention, since it implied both that Regina was doing Tess a favor and that she didn’t believe doing work was her actual job, but the rest of the sentence sent Tess’s heart hammering. Her eyes snapped away from her laptop screen to Regina’s face. She looked too helpful, and there was something cruel in her eyes.
“What books?” Tess asked, fearing the answer.
“The ones in the first-floor cage. I put them in Eliot’s office.”
As Regina prattled on, a vein of icy dread opened in Tess’s brain and leached throughout her body. Part of her thought it was odd that Regina was calling Dr. Birch “Eliot,” as if they were friends, but then again, it was like Regina (and most of the students at Falk, really) to suck up like that. But worse: All those sticky notes. All those insults.
“Did you, uh, happen to take the sticky notes off of the covers?” Tess asked.
Regina blinked at her for a second. “No … should I have?” Tess would’ve thought Regina was innocent if she hadn’t caught the smirk at the end of the question.
Regina knew exactly what she was doing.
Tess swore and pushed away from the desk. “I have to go … Are they in his office?”
“Yeah,” Regina said, “but he already came in and grabbed some of them, and I think he locked the door.”
What, was Regina just camped outside Dr. Birch’s office? Either way, this was bad. Very, very bad. There was no way to get those books back now. Tess’s face glowed hot with shame.
Maybe he hadn’t seen them yet, but he was going to. And Tess doubted very highly he would keep his mouth shut about it, especially since he had already decided to hate her.
But there were still books to shelve, and Tess found she wasn’t past hiding in the stacks for the rest of the day. Perhaps the rest of the year, if it meant avoiding Dr. Birch entirely.
“Okay,” Tess said, fumbling for her headphones. “I’m going to, uh, finish up that stack of books. Let me know if you need anything.”
Regina only smiled. Tess wanted to punch her.
Tess’s crisis continued past Mathilde’s office, down the stairs, and into the cage. I could lose my job for this, Tess thought. Or, even worse than losing her job: she could make her great aunt regret she’d ever gotten Tess into Falk in the first place.
After all Mathilde did for them, this was how Tess paid her back. Hot shame curled in her veins.
Maybe he wouldn’t notice. Or maybe he wouldn’t know it was her. For one piercing second, she considered pinning it on Regina, but she immediately knew she couldn’t do that.
One thing was certain, though: She had no idea how Dr. Birch would react. And until then, she could only wait.
Though they were creepy, Tess felt oddly comfortable in the stacks. The smell of paper, the loneliness of it, reminded her of her father’s short-lived shop.
When her father had owned the shop, Tess spent weekends there when she didn’t have gigs to play. It was her favorite thing, to curl up in the beaten window seat and read or listen to music. She loved the stationery shop with a deep, intrinsic part of her, the same way she loved her cello. And more than anything, it symbolized so much for her dad: his own dream come true.
Tess reached the bottom cage and rested her forehead against one of the shelves. She curled her fingers against the cold metal, rubbing her thumb against the leather binding of one of the grimoires. She breathed in deep, taking in the dust and paper and ink, the horribly unsettling feeling of being isolated underground, the awareness of just how alone she truly was.
Maybe she liked it in the stacks because these books were set aside and forgotten. They meant nothing to anybody, and yet they continued to exist.
five
Eliot
ELIOT WAS FEELING SIGNIFICANTLY BETTER BY THE TIME HE made it to Jessop. He’d had nearly twelve hours of sleep and successfully managed to avoid his father for the entire time he’d been back on American soil. The sky was back to dismal clouds, which was a relief, and he knew when he eventually got to his new office in Jessop, there’d be books inside.
Things were looking up.
He walked to Falk as the first drizzle of the morning broke through the clouds. He had an umbrella but chose not to use it, welcoming the fat, lazy drops splattering the shoulders of his sweater and dampening his hair.
He’d always been partial to rain. Anytime it rained when he was younger, his mother, Caroline, would wait until his father went to work and then pull Eliot out into the garden. She’d turn the music on loud in the house, and the sound would float out to them. She would take one of her tinctures and charm them both to be water repellant. They’d dance and spin and fling water droplets off leaves at one another. They’d hide in the dry place beneath the willow, still shimmering with the tingle of magic, and listen to the pattering drizzle mix with the drums of whatever song she put on. Under the willow in the rain, they’d talk about magic. Those were the times he liked best.
The R-named girl (bloody hell, he really had to do a better job remembering people’s names—it made him seem unobservant) was in Jessop again when he entered, staring at her phone, book unread and pushed to one side.
“Good morning,” Eliot said to her, and she flashed him a smile that was too perfect for spontaneity.
“Good morning,” the girl said. “I finished those books and put them in your office.”
“Ah, wonderful. Thank you.”
“Of course.” The girl paused, and Eliot had the weighted feeling she wanted to say more, so he pretended to examine a flyer at one end of the desk while she decided whether to keep speaking. “I didn’t know that Tess disliked you so much.”
Eliot frowned. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about. Who is Tess?” He had an idea of who she was—the specter on the stairs yesterday—but that wasn’t enough of an explanation.
“Tess Matheson? She works here?” The girl must not’ve seen the recognition she was looking for in Eliot’s eyes, because she continued, “She’s Ms. Matheson’s niece. She moved here, like, right after spring break with her sister. You know, she’s that prodigy cellist or whatever?”
This story sounded familiar, but Eliot couldn’t pick apart the details. Spring break was rough for him; he’d gone back home, only to find his mother was doing worse, and then he had to come back so quickly after. He’d spent the rest of the spring semester in a haze of anxiety, worrying that each buzz of his phone would be a call from his mother’s caretaker. It was no wonder he hadn’t been involved in the gossip when Tess and her unnamed sister arrived with the spring sunshine.
“Why don’t you think she likes me?” Eliot asked.
“The notes,” she said. “You’ll see them.”
Eliot waited for clarification, but the girl went right back to her phone. He climbed the stairs to the third floor and unlocked the door to his office.
There were floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on one side, already stocked with anthologies and dictionaries and ethnographies that Eliot would have to pick through later. A huge desk and comfy chair stood in front of a window that looked out over campus. And there, next to the radiator, were two carts full of books.
It was everything Eliot wanted.
He set down his bag and ran a hand over the wood of the desk. It was smooth, polished by years of use.
Not even being in Pittsburgh could crush his spirits now.
The first order of business was unpacking. Eliot fumbled through his bag, awkwardly heavy with his trove: a bone he’d managed to take from a forgotten crypt in the English countryside; a variety of crystals acquired both from his mother’s collections and shops around the world; small vials of dirt from Hyde Park and Frick Park and the Himalayas and a handful of other places; a feather from a crow; three scales from a long-dead viper; a collection of other bits and b
obs that would hold no significance to anyone else, but to Eliot were sources of power. Carefully, he unwrapped the leather-bound notebooks of his mother’s spells and notations she’d written over the years. Though Jessop was full of grimoires, none were as precious to him as these.
If only they held the answers he needed.
He sat down at his desk and reached back for a book. It didn’t matter which one—they were all important; they’d all come across his desk at some point. He had the pleasant sense of focus that came with the beginning of a job, that signified there was work to be done and one way or another, he would accomplish it.
There was something there, on the cover of the book. A Post-it note. Yellow against the black cover, teal writing boldly slashed across it in a slanted, uneven cursive.
Eliot Birch is a bland, wrinkled, crap-coated mailbox flag.
He read it once, then again. It didn’t make sense for a few reasons. First and foremost, he was not bland. When he was actually trying, Eliot thought he was quite an interesting person.
He also wasn’t wrinkled. After all, Eliot was only seventeen. He had none of his father’s worried creases or his mother’s laugh lines.
And lastly, what was a crap-coated mailbox flag? He didn’t understand.
Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the other yellow squares. They were all over the first cart of books, written in the same hand, inked in the same teal color. He pulled them all off, scanning them, tossing them to the ground. By the time he reached the last of them, the notes blanketed the carpet around him like crisp autumn leaves.
Who even had the time to insult him this much?
And who cared about Eliot enough to write what had to be dozens of sticky notes about the finer points of his breeding?
Tess Matheson. That was her name—the girl who’d done this. Who had some sort of problem with him. If only he had any idea what that problem was.
Eliot sat down heavily. Something that bothered him more than any of the questions was how he felt. Because Eliot, who’d spent enough of his time with horrible, angry, malicious people, never considered himself to be one of them.
The puzzle of his thoughts was a constant nuisance into the afternoon. He tried to do work, to pull the grimoires and scan the contents, to check the spells, but he kept getting distracted by some new turn of phrase that stamped the sticky notes near his feet. He stared down at his hands. His mother’s wedding ring was around his pinky; he usually twisted it when he was upset or anxious, but he couldn’t bring himself to touch it now. It was like the metal was conductive, and touching it now would transfer all of those bad things someone had written about him straight to his mother’s brain.
He had to know why Tess hated him, and he was going straight to the source. Eliot got up and shuffled through the sea of Post-its, back to the door. He peeked out over the reading room. The girl’s dark hair from this morning was gone, replaced by blondish-brown that he recognized from the staircase.
Tess.
He stepped back to compose himself. Eliot straightened his tie and pulled at his sweater, making sure his shirt was fully tucked underneath. His father never taught him much, but he did beat one thing into Eliot: when cornered, it was imperative to remain as charming as possible. Eliot ran his fingers through his hair, taming the dark curls, and pulled out an award-winning smile from his back pocket, slipping it on like sunglasses to disguise the thunderstorm in his eyes. Tess Matheson had no idea who she’d decided to battle.
six
Tess
BUT REALLY, TESS MATHESON HAD NO IDEA WHO SHE‘D decided to battle.
She’d hidden in the stacks, shelving books for nearly an hour before Regina summoned her to watch the desk while she went on lunch break. It was absolutely the last place Tess wanted to be, but the rules required someone to be within shouting distance of the reading room at all times, and Mathilde had some sort of meeting about funding.
So Tess sorted through her email and studiously thought of anything other than Dr. Birch. She had a few requests for private engagements in her inbox, forwarded from Alejandra. It was something she was trying. Except the first one was a wedding offering to pay in “exposure :)” so Tess shut her laptop and dragged out a book instead.
It was ten minutes past the time Regina should’ve been back when the boy walked out of one of the upstairs offices. He surprised Tess for three reasons: first, because nobody came into Jessop during the summer and second, when they did, they were almost always curmudgeonly old men either looking for the bathroom or there to recount tales of Falk’s glory days, back when it was an all-boys school. This boy did not fit into that category. And third, because she’d thought she was alone. The unexpectedness of his appearance set her on edge immediately.
He looked to be about her age, with a navy sweater over a collared shirt and a smartly patterned yellow tie. He had the kind of nose Tess’s mother would’ve called stately and dark brown eyes Nat would’ve cut from a magazine and pasted into one of her “Painting Inspiration” scrapbooks, which she kept because she was too hipster to have a Pinterest. His curly hair was arranged like he’d tried to tame it a few times and had been only marginally successful. In short, he looked like he’d stumbled into Jessop on accident—or, maybe more fittingly, like he was meant to be in Jessop when it was something else, when it wasn’t just summer and no students were here.
“Hello,” the boy said, striding across to the circulation desk. “Are you Tess?”
She felt disarmed. She’d never seen this boy before, she was sure—or had she? Her first couple of months at Jessop were a blur of faces, mostly sophomores that shared her classes. The longer she looked at him, the more uncertain she became. There was something in the twist of his mouth, the glint of his eyes, that looked familiar, but out of place on his face.
“I am,” she said.
“I think you and I need to have a chat,” he said. His voice was pleasant, kind, and distinctly British. Falk did have a variety of international students, but it wasn’t often she encountered accents like his in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In fact, Dr. Birch was the only Brit she could recall running into at Falk.
“Sure. How can I help you?”
“I’m missing some books I requested,” he said, and his voice was a little more clipped, his eyes harder. Over the collar of his shirt, his neck was bright red.
Something was not right here.
“What name are they under?” Tess asked, voice thin. She hated the fact she thought he was attractive even though he was rude, hated that he was acting like every other Falk boy she’d had the misfortune of talking to.
“They could be under lazy douche canoe or witch-hunting fuckface. I would suspect either.”
Oh.
Oh no.
Tess looked up at him. The boy’s dark eyes were cool as he appraised her. Now, she saw, he had a crumpled ball of yellow notes in his left hand, with a curl of California Teal ink in her own handwriting.
There was nothing she could say. By the look on his face, she knew the rush of blood to her cheeks proved her guilt.
But who was he? Because he sure as hell wasn’t Dr. Birch.
She had to play it cool. Not act until she had more context on the situation. “I’m sorry, can you repeat the name?” she asked, fingers poised on the keyboard as if she needed to look it up.
The boy rolled his eyes. “My name is Eliot,” he said, nearly spitting the word at her. “Eliot Birch. But I suspect you knew that, considering you wrote it all over these notes.”
Another Birch. Oh hell almighty, how had she not known that there was another Birch at Falk?
“I’m … sorry?” she said, testing it out. It sounded too much like a question. Eliot’s frown deepened. But then again, why was she the one apologizing here? “It’s not like I meant to insult you.”
The flash of red spread up the boy’s neck and dotted the high points on his cheeks and darkened his ears. He looked younger this way. Younger and combustible.
“You called me a fuckmonkey!”
“It wasn’t supposed to go to you!”
She had to keep her voice down. Between being late the other day and insulting a student to his face … She could certainly lose her job for this. Her job and her scholarship, and Nat’s on top of that. The only silver lining to this mess was that the notes hadn’t gone to Dr. Birch after all, though she couldn’t be sure Eliot was much better.
Eliot must’ve seen her furtive look towards the back offices because he took a step away from her and a deep breath. His voice was somewhat more level when he said, “Well, then, who were they supposed to go to?”
To lie or not to lie, that was the question. If he was just like Dr. Birch and Tess told him that she thought the books were meant for his dad, she had no doubt he’d be back to tell Mathilde before she’d even taken a breath to apologize. But if she said it was for someone else … maybe she could get away with it.
Except. If he was like Dr. Birch, then she doubted either route would lead her to safety. If she lied, she could be caught, or he could tell Mathilde anyway.
“Well?” Eliot pressed.
“I thought they’d be going to Dr. Birch,” Tess blurted.
There was a silence. She couldn’t keep looking down, not when he was standing there, arms crossed, frozen in silence. His mouth was twisted, but it was somewhere between humor and annoyance, and there was a light in his eyes that hadn’t been there before. And suddenly, he didn’t look quite so angry.
“It seems that you don’t like my father very much,” Eliot said.
“I meant to take the notes off before delivering them,” Tess insisted. She needed to explain herself. She didn’t want to start the next year being known as the girl who called the headmaster’s son a fuckmonkey. “It was about the volume, really, not the—”
“What has he ever done to you to make you hate him?” Eliot interrupted, and he sounded like he was being strangled or holding back a laugh.
She couldn’t say. She couldn’t speak of her embarrassment, of the brief conferences they’d had when he’d called her intelligence into question, of his sarcastic inquiries into her family’s financial situation, of the awful sensation of him leering at her back whenever she passed him in the halls.
The Devil Makes Three Page 3