A Lesson in Thorns (Thornchapel #1)(7)

Anyway, I vowed to myself before I came here that I wouldn’t compound my stupidity by falling in love for real.

Here’s the thing: I finished high school at sixteen and crossed the stage for my bachelor’s at twenty, crossed it again for my master’s just this year. I have a mother who taught me every myth she knew, I have a father who loves me, I have friends who like me and colleagues who respect me. And I am hopeful and reckless and curious, but I am not stupid.

And I am not going to do something as stupid as fall in love with Auden Guest.

All at once, my defenses are back, and I’m able to return his smile with a steady one of my own, even if my heart won’t slacken its frantic fluttering beat.

God, I’m so tired. It hits me suddenly, like a heavy sack thrown over my shoulders, bending my knees and making my head droop. “Auden,” I say, the last syllable of his name breaking on a yawn.

“Proserpina,” he says warmly. “You must be tired after your trip.”

“Yes,” I say, heroically fighting back another yawn. “And you can call me Poe.”

“Poe,” St. Sebastian repeats, as if to himself. As if to memorize it.

Auden’s smile grows lazier and maybe more dangerous, even as he pointedly ignores St. Sebastian. “Poe then,” he says, his eyes never leaving my face. “I’m surprised you recognized me.”

There’s no point in completely lying, because nothing matters with Auden and nothing ever will. So I settle for part of the truth. “I looked you up on Instagram before I came here,” I inform him.

He makes a face. “Oh, that thing. I’m a little embarrassed.”

“You shouldn’t be,” I say, and I mean it. It’s the kind of sparsely updated account that speaks to a mostly unself-conscious life. A handful of selfies from his days at Cambridge, a few pictures of him with his rowing team. A picture of him smiling in his undergraduate graduation robes with his family and then a picture of a German shepherd puppy named Sir James Frazer. It hasn’t been updated in the last year and a half, unlike Delphine’s, which is updated almost daily—to say nothing of her stories.

And okay, yes, I looked at everyone’s social media before I got on the plane, everyone except for St. Sebastian Martinez, who doesn’t have a single social media account, who barely exists at all, according to the internet.

There was Auden of course, with his indifferent profiles displaying the slenderest peek of his charmed, rich-boy life, and then there was Becket Hess—or rather Father Becket Hess—who’d only just been ordained last year and been sent here to Dartmoor to shepherd an idyllic little parish. Then there was Rebecca Quartey, with her impeccably professional account showcasing her work in the last year as a landscape architect, and Delphine Dansey, who as far as I could tell didn’t have a job, or if she did, it was simply to be pretty and happy in lots of different pretty and happy locations.

“Trust the librarian to do her research before she came,” Auden says.

“I am a bit surprised to see you, though—Mr. Cremer made it sound as if he’d be the one to greet me . . . ?”

“Oh that,” Auden says, waving a hand. “I was here anyway, and besides, I was looking forward to meeting you again after all this time.” He takes a step forward, and for a moment, I think he’s reaching for me—maybe for my hand or to pull me into a hug—but he’s only reaching for one of my suitcase handles. “Let’s get you settled then, and show you around the place—”

“Oh, there you are!” comes a voice, and all three of us turn to see a beautiful, plus-sized blond woman and a tall sandy-haired man, both white, coming toward us.

Delphine and Father Becket—Delphine in a blouse, knee-length skirt and tights, and Father Becket in his priest collar—reach us in an explosion of chatter and greetings, and suddenly I’m pulled into hugs and given kisses, and then another voice comes from the far end of the hallway, and a slender black woman with braids coiled in a crown and an iPad tucked under her arm joins us too.

Rebecca.

And just like that, we’re all together again, all six of us, and there’s more hugging and exclaiming, except I still don’t hug Auden and he still doesn’t try, and St. Sebastian stands apart from it all, hovering in the doorway like a vampire cursed not to come inside.

I look at them all for a minute as they talk at me and then talk at each other and then argue about who’s talking too much. How strange to think that we’d all been children together—for a summer at least—that we’d seen each other cry and fall out of trees and shout and laugh. Looking at them now is dizzying—like I’m seeing the past and the present at the same time.

“I can’t believe you were just sneaking in without telling us,” Rebecca says, giving me another warm squeeze, while Becket asks when I arrived.

“Oh, just now,” I answer. “The cab just left.”

“Auden, why didn’t you send the car for her?” Delphine chides. “A cab for a friend, now really!”

“Well, Cremer offered the car, but she declined.”

“We could have gotten her too, you know—”

“She probably wanted to nap,” Rebecca tells Delphine. “Or work, and she wouldn’t have been able to do either with you talking at her face for an hour.”