Who’s ready for an incredibly unsurprising piece of news.

Everyone say it with me now:

We went back to Bird and his friends study nook.

It’s been bugging me for weeks, so honestly the fact that we waited this long is a god damn miracle, but yesterday after dinner Bass, Rook, Andie and I were walking through the fountain square and nearly ran into Adrian as he rushed by us. He knocked my shoulder on his way by, his long coat billowing behind him, and though he looked back and mumbled some apology, he was so distracted, he didn’t seem to realize who we were. His eyes were wide, glazed, and red-rimmed.

I couldn’t focus on my homework I was so busy thinking about his strange, harried, haunted expression.

“Alright,” Bass finally said, closing his book. “We’re all thinking it, right?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Andie said without looking up from their book. But then, when none of us answered they added, “I’m sure he’s just been working too hard.”

“Doing what though?” Rook said, one long finger holding his place on the page.

“Research?” Andie suggested. “I don’t know, all the seniors are busy!”

Bass and Rook both looked at me, waiting. I closed my book, too, and just said the thing I’ve been wondering all week: “Do you think he’s trying to continue their studies?”

“After it got five people killed?” Andie hissed as a Saint Niveus junior glared at us from the stacks where they were shelving books. “Are you crazy?”

“It’s not really about whether she’s crazy,” Rook said quietly. “It’s about whether Adrian’s crazy.”

None of us said anything to that for a moment.

“I don’t know what the harm of trying to find out what they were studying is,” I said. “Other people know what they were doing. It’s not like finding out will put us in any direct danger.”

“You’re right,” Andie said. “You don’t know the harm of trying to find out what they were studying. For all we know, discovering what they were up to very well could put us in direct danger.” It sounded like they’d been at the very least imagining having to give this speech for a while, if not practicing it outright.

“Sure,” Bass said. “But…” His eyes darted between me and Rook, and he slowly began to smile.

“Damn it,” Andie sighed, knowing that the game had been lost. They snapped their book shut. “Fine.”

Cut to ten minutes later and we’re downstairs, hands over our ears while the disembodied voices of Bird, Katharine and the others bellowed at Adrian to leave their studies alone. Bass wasn’t able to break the ward — “I’m a witch, I don’t know how alchemy works!” — but he was able to muffle them enough that they murmured at us rather than bellowing.

“Now what?” Andie whispered.

But it’s not like we went down there with a plan. Rook slid into one of the chairs around the table, and dragged a book titled, Witchcraft and Other Externally Sourced Magics towards himself. Bass picked up a book called Death Magic: The Cycle, and The Space Between and fluttered through the pages.

I turned towards their wall of notes.

There at the top were the words LIFE DEATH FROM WITHIN FROM WITHOUT which still means nothing to me. Underneath, smaller, and in a loose, broad letters, it said PARIAPSIS IS COMIN BOYS NOW’S THE TIME.

I don’t know what any of it means, and by the end of the evening none of us had any better idea at what they were to than we did before. Still, without even discussing it, we all went right back downstairs again today after we got through feeding Polecat dinner.

And tonight, in a drawer, I found Bird’s notebook.

Andie had long gotten ago gotten frustrated with our searching and was doing actual homework on the desk, and while looking for spare paper, they opened a desk drawer, pulled out a notebook, tore a page out of the back and tossed it aside.

It happened to land in front of me. And I saw the handwriting — that same loose, broad-lettered scrawl, and I opened it.

Right there on the front page it said Robert Pennington 2020/21 Thesis Notes 2. And under that in tight, jagged letters: Bird, never shutting up.

“Look at this,” I said and the others gathered close. We flipped pages, awestruck.

“How is this still here?” Bass asked.

“It’s the second volume,” Rook answered. “They must have missed it.”

And that turned out to be the limit for Andie. “We should give this to a professor,” they said.

“Are you crazy?” I replied. “This is what we’ve been looking for!”

“How are we gonna give this to a professor?” Bass added, putting on a sarcastic voice:“’Well, we were snooping around downstairs, trying to figure out what killed some grad students…’”

Andie opened their mouth to argue back, but didn’t need to, because instead Rook betrayed me.

“We should leave it for now,” he said, and he must have seen the outrage on my face because he added, “if Sorely knew this existed, she’d never have left it for us to find.”

YEAH DUH.

“Can we just think about it for a night? Decide what to do with it in the morning?” Rook said, and when I wasn’t convinced, he said, “they died for what’s in this notebook. Let’s just give it a night.”

Bass agreed to that readily, and Andie deflated but agreed as well.

So what did I do? I waited until we decided to back up to Minnow house, and slipped it into my book bag when no one was looking. Am I a betrayer? Maybe. I’ll deal with that tomorrow.

I haven’t been able to look through it yet, as Andie’s still awake, reading. But the moment they’re asleep, I’m reading that notebook if it takes all night.