“WHAT ARE YOU waiting for?” Ken asked barely a second after Taehyung had left with Seo-joon. “Let’s go.” He tugged on Jin’s hand.
“Go where?” Jin asked. His heart was still pounding from the conversation with Taehyung—and from the view of him leaving. The shape his sculpted shoulders cut out in the hall seemed to be bigger than Taehyung himself.
Ken rapped lightly on the side of Jin’s head. “Hello? The library, like I said in my note …” He took in Jin’s blank expression. “You didn’t get either one of my notes?” He slapped his leg, frustrated.
“But I handed them to Jung-hwan to pass to Jungkook to pass to you.”
“Pony Express.” Jungkook wedged his way in front of Ken and presented Jin with two folded scraps of paper held between his index and middle finger.
“Give me a break. Did your horse die of exhaustion on the road?” Ken huffed, snagging the notes. “I gave you those like an hour ago. What took so long? You didn’t read them—”
“Of course not.” Jungkook pressed a hand to his broad chest, offended. He wore a thick black ring on his middle finger. “If you remember, Jin got in trouble for passing notes with Yoongi—”
“I was not passing notes with Yoongi—”
“Regardless,” Jungkook said, lifting the notes back out of Ken’s hand and delivering them, finally, to Jin. “I was only looking out for your best interests. Waiting for the right opportunity.”
“Well, thank you.” Jin tucked the notes into his pocket and gave Ken a what-are-ya-gonna-do shrug.
“Speaking of waiting for the right time,” he said, “I was out the other day and saw this.” He produced a small red velvet jewelry box and held it open for Jin to see.
Ken nudged around Jin’s shoulder so he could get a look.
Inside, a thin gold chain held a small circular pendant with a carved line down its middle and a small serpent’s head at the tip.
Jin looked up at him. Was he making fun of him?
He touched the pendant. “I thought, after the other day … I wanted to help you face your fear,” he said, sounding almost nervous, afraid that he might not accept. Should he accept? “Only kidding. I just liked it. It’s unique, it reminded me of you.”
It was unique. And very beautiful, and it made Jin feel strangely unworthy.
“You went shopping?” he found himself asking, because it was easier to discuss how Jungkook had left campus than it would have been to ask Why me? “I thought the point of reform school is that we’re all stuck here.”
Jungkook lifted his chin slightly and smiled with his eyes. “There are ways,” he said quietly. “I’ll show you sometime. I could show you—tonight?”
“JK, honey,” a voice said behind him. It was Hoseok, tapping his shoulder. Jin stared at him jealously.
“I need your help setting up,” Hoseok purred.
Jin looked around and realized they were the only four people left in the classroom.
“Having a little party in my room later,” Hoseok said, pressing his chin into Jungkook’s shoulder to address Jin and Ken. “Y’all are coming, right?”
Hoseok, whose mouth always looked sticky with lip balm, and whose blond hair never failed to swoosh right in the second a guy started talking to Jin. Even though Taehyung had said there was nothing going on between them, Jin knew he was never going to be friends with this guy.
Then again, you didn’t have to like someone to go to his party, especially when certain other people you did like would probably be there.…
Or should he take Jungkook up on his offer? Was he really suggesting they sneak out? Only yesterday, a rumor had flown around the classroom when Jules and Phillip, the tongue-pierced couple, didn’t show up for Mr. Bogum’s class. Apparently, they’d tried to leave campus in the middle of the night, a secret tryst gone wrong—and now they were in some type of solitary confinement whose location even Ken didn’t know about.
The weirdest part was, Mr. Bogum—who usually had no tolerance for whispering—hadn’t shut the madly gossiping students up during his lesson. It was almost like the faculty wanted the students to imagine the worst possible punishment for breaking any of their dictatorial rules.
Jin swallowed, looking up at Jungkook. He offered his elbow, ignoring Hoseok and Ken entirely. “How about it, kid?” he asked, sounding so charmingly classic Hollywood that Jin forgot all about what had happened to Jules and Phillip.
“Sorry.” Ken butted in, answering for both of them and steering Jin away by the elbow. “But we have other plans.”
Jungkook looked at Ken like he was trying to figure out where he’d come from all of a sudden. He had a way of making Jin feel like a better, cooler version of himself. And he had a way of crossing his path right after Taehyung had made him feel exactly the opposite. But Hoseok was still hovering beside him, and Ken’s tug was growing stronger, so finally Jin just waved the hand still clutching Jungkook’s gift. “Um, maybe next time! Thanks for the necklace!”
Leaving Jungkook and Hoseok confused in the classroom behind them, Ken and Jin booked it out of Augustine. It felt creepy to be alone in the dark building so late, and Jin could tell from the hurried slap of Ken’s sandals on the stairs in front of him that he felt it, too.
Outside, it was windy. An owl crooned in its palmetto tree. When they passed under the oaks alongside the building, straggly tendrils of Spanish moss brushed them like tangled strands of hair.
“Maybe next time?” Ken mimicked Jin’s voice. “What was that about?”
“Nothing … I don’t know.” Jin wanted to change the subject. “You make us sound very posh, Ken,” he said, laughing as they trudged along the commons. “Other plans … I thought you had fun at the party last week.”
“If you’d ever get around to reading my recent correspondence, you’d see why we have more important things on our plate.”
Jin emptied his pockets, rediscovered the five uneaten M&M’s, and shared them with Ken, who expressed a very Ken-like sentiment that he hoped they had come from a sanitary place, but ate them anyway.
Jin unfolded the first of Ken’s notes, which looked like a photocopied page from one of the files in the underground archive:
Jung Hoseok
Jeon Jungkook
Kim Seokjin
Lee Junghwan
PREVIOUS LOCATIONS:
All in the Northeast, except for L. Junghwan (Orlando, Florida)
Kim Taehyung
Min Yoongi
Park Jimin
PREVIOUS LOCATIONS:
Los Angeles, California
Jin’s group was noted as arriving at Sword & Cross on September 15 of this year. The second group had arrived March 15, three years earlier.
“Where’d you get all this?," Jin asked.
“I dug it out from one of the boxes Mr. Bogum brought down the other day,” Ken said. “That’s his handwriting.”
Jin looked up at him. “What does it mean? Why would he need to record this? I thought they had all our arrival dates separately in our files.”
“They do. I can’t figure it out, either,” Ken said. “And I mean, even though you showed up at the same time as those other kids, it’s not like you have anything in common with them.”
“I couldn’t have less in common with them,” Jin said, envisioning the coy look Hoseok always had glued to his face.
Ken scratched his chin. “But when Jimin, Yoongi, and Taehyung showed up, they already knew each other. I think they came from the same halfway house in L.A.”
Somewhere there was a key to Taehyung’s story. There had to be more to him than a halfway house in California. But thinking back to his reaction—that washed-out horror that Jin might take an interest in knowing anything about him—well, it made him feel like everything he and Ken were doing was futile and immature.
“What’s the point of all of this?” Jin asked, suddenly annoyed.
“Why Mr. Bogum would be collating all that information I can’t figure out. Though Mr. Bogum arrived at Sword & Cross the same day as Jimin, Taehyung, and Yoongi …” Ken trailed off. “Who knows? Maybe it doesn’t mean anything. There’s just so little mention of Taehyung in the archives, I figured I’d show you everything I came up with. Hence exhibit B.”
He pointed toward the second note in Jin’s hand.
Jin sighed. Part of him wanted to quit the search and stop feeling embarrassed about Taehyung. The pushier part of him still yearned to get to know him better … which, strangely, was far easier to do when he wasn’t technically present to give him new reasons to feel embarrassed.
He looked down at the note, a photocopy of an old-fashioned card from a library catalog.
Kim, T. The Watchers: Myth in Medieval Europe. Seraphim Press, Rome, 1755.
Call no: R999.318 GRI
“Sounds like one of Taehyung’s ancestors was a scholar,” Ken said, reading over Jin’s shoulder.
“This must have been what he meant,” Jin said under his breath. He looked at Ken. “He told me studying religion was in his family. This must be what he meant.”
“I thought he was an orphan—”
“Don’t ask,” Jin said, waving him off. “Touchy subject with him.” He ran his finger over the book’s title. “What’s a watcher?”
“Only one way to find out,” Ken said. “Though we may live to regret it. ’Cause this sounds like possibly the most boring book ever. Still,” he added, dusting his knuckles on his shirt, “I took the liberty of checking the catalog. The book should be in the stacks. You can thank me later.”
“You’re good.” Jin grinned. He was eager to get up to the library. If someone in Taehyung’s family had written a book, it couldn’t possibly be boring. Or not to Jin, anyway. But then he looked down at the other thing still in his hand. The velvet jewelry box from Jungkook.
“What do you think this means?” he asked Ken as they started walking up the mosaic-tiled stairs to the library.
Ken shrugged. “Your feelings on snakes are—”
“Hatred, agony, extreme paranoia, and disgust,” Jin listed.
“Maybe it’s like … okay, I used to be scared of cactus. Couldn’t go near ’em—don’t laugh, have you ever pricked yourself on one of those things? They stay in your skin for days. Anyway, one year, for my birthday, my dad bought me like eleven cactus plants. At first I wanted to chuck them at him. But then, you know, I got used to them. I stopped flipping out anytime I was near one. In the end, it totally worked.”
“So you’re saying Jungkook’s gift,” Jin said, “is actually really sweet.”
“I guess,” Ken said. “But if I’d known he had the hots for you, I would not have trusted him with our private correspondence. Sorry about that.”
“He does not have the hots for me,” Jin started to say, the gold chain inside the box, imagining how it would look on his skin. He hadn’t told Ken anything about his picnic with Jungkook because—well, he didn’t really know why. It had to do with Taehyung, and how Jin still couldn’t figure out where he stood—or wanted to stand—with either of them.
“Ha.” Ken cackled. “Which means you kinda like him! Cheating on Taehyung. I can’t keep up with you and your men.”
“As if anything is going on with either of them,” Jin said glumly. “Do you think Jungkook read the notes?”
“If he did, and he still gave you that necklace,” Ken said, “then he’s really into you.”
They stepped inside the library, and the heavy double doors thudded behind them. The sound echoed through the room. Mr. Bogum looked up from the mounds of paper covering his lamplit desk.
“Oh, hello, guys,” he said, beaming so broadly that Jin felt guilty all over again for zoning out during hisblecture. “I hope you enjoyed my brief review session!” he practically sang.
“Very much.” Jin nodded, though there had been nothing brief about it. “We came here to review a few more things before the exam.”
“That’s right,” Ken chimed in. “You inspired us.”
“How wonderful!” Mr. Bogum rustled through his paperwork. “I’ve got a further reading list somewhere. I’d be happy to make you a copy.”
“Great,” Ken lied, giving Jin a small push toward the stacks. “We’ll let you know if we need it!”
Beyond Mr. Bogum’s desk, the library was quiet. Jin and Ken eyed the call numbers as they passed shelf after shelf toward the books on religion. The energy-saving lights had motion detectors and were supposed to turn on as they crossed each aisle, but only about half of them worked. Jin realized that Ken was still holding on to his arm, then realized he didn’t want him to let go.
The guys came to the usually crowded study section, where only one table lamp burned. Everyone else must have been at Hoseok’s party. Everyone except for Junghwan. He had his feet kicked up on the chair across from him and seemed to be reading a coffee-table-sized world atlas. When the guys walked by him, he looked up with a wan expression that was either very lonely or slightly annoyed at being disturbed.
“You guys are here late,” he said flatly.
“So are you,” Ken retorted, sticking out his tongue dramatically.
When they’d put a few shelves between them and Junghwan, Jin raised an eyebrow at Ken. “What was that?”
“What?” Ken sulked. “He flirts with me.” He crossed his arms over his chest and blew a brown curlicue of hair out of his eyes. “As if.”
“Are you in fourth grade?” Jin teased.
Ken stuck his pointer finger up at Jin with an intensity that would have made Jin jump if he hadn’t been giggling so much. “Do you know anyone else who would delve into Kim Taehyung’s family history with you? Didn’t think so. Leave me alone.”
By then, they had reached the far back corner of the library, where all the 999 books were arranged along a single pewter-colored bookshelf. Ken crouched down and traced the books’ spines with his finger. Jin felt a tremor, like someone was running a finger along his neck. He craned his head around and saw a wisp of gray. Not black, like the shadows usually were, but lighter, thinner. Just as unwelcome.
He watched, wide-eyed, as the shadow stretched out in a curling strand directly over Ken’s head. It came down slowly, like a threaded needle, and Jin didn’t want to think about what might happen if it touched his friend. The other day at the gym had been the first time the shadows had touched him—and he still felt violated, almost dirty from it. He didn’t know what else they could do.
Nervous, unsteady, Jin stretched his arm out like a baseball bat. He took a deep breath and swung forward. He bristled at the icy contact as he knocked the shadow away—and clocked Ken upside the head.
Ken pressed his hands against his skull and looked back at Jin in shock. “What is wrong with you?”
Jin sank down next to him and smoothed the top of Ken’s hair. “I’m so sorry. There was … I thought I saw a bee … land on your head. I panicked. I didn’t want it to sting you.”
He could feel how utterly, utterly lame this excuse was and waited for his friend to tell him he was crazy— what would a bee be doing in a library? he waited for Ken to walk out.
But Ken’s round face softened. He took Jin’s hand in both of hiss and shook it. “Bees terrify me, too,” he said. “I’m deathly allergic. You basically just saved my life.”
It was like they were having a huge bonding moment—only they weren’t, because Jin was wholly consumed by the shadows. If only there were a way to push them from his mind, to shrug the shadow thing off, without shrugging off Ken.
Jin had a strong, uneasy feeling about this light gray shadow. The uniformity of the shadows had never been comforting, but these latest variations were a new level of disconcerting. Did it mean more kinds of shadows were finding their way to him? Or was he just getting better at distinguishing them? And what about that weird moment during Mr. Bogum’s lecture, when he’d actually pinched a shadow back before it could enter his pocket? He’d done it without thinking, and had had no reason to expect that his two fingers would be any match for a shadow, but they had been—he glanced around the stacks—at least temporarily.
He wondered whether he had set some kind of precedent for interacting with the shadows. Except that to call what he’d done to the shadow hovering over Ken’s head “interacting”—even Jin knew that was a euphemism. A cold, sick feeling grew in his gut when he realized that what he’d started doing to the shadows was more like … fighting them off.
“It’s the strangest thing.” Ken spoke up from the floor. “It should be right here between The Dictionary of Angels and this god-awful Billy Graham fire-and-brimstone thing.” He looked up at Jin. “But it’s gone.”
“I thought you said—”
“I did. The computer had it listed as on the shelves when I looked this afternoon, but we can’t get online this late to check again.”
“Go ask Junghwan out there,” Jin suggested. “Maybe he’s using it as a cover for his Playboys.”
“Gross.” Ken whacked him on the thigh.
Jin knew he’d only made the joke to try to downplay his disappointment. It was just so frustrating. He couldn’t find out anything about Taehyung without running up against a wall. He didn’t know what he’d find inside the pages of his great-great-whatever’s book, but at least it would tell him something more about Taehyung. Which had to be better than nothing.
“Stay here,” Ken said, standing up. “I’m going to go ask Mr. Bogum if anyone’s checked it out today.”
Jin watched him traipse back up the long aisle toward the front desk. He laughed when Ken sped up to pass the area where Junghwan was sitting.
Alone in the back corner, Jin some of the other books on the shelves. He did a quick mental run-through of the student body at Sword & Cross, but he couldn’t think of any likely candidates for checking out an old religious book. Maybe Mr. Bogum had used it as reference for his review session earlier. Jin wondered what it must have been like for Taehyung to sit there, listening to the librarian talk about things that had probably been dinner-table topics of conversation when he was growing up. Jin wanted to know what his childhood had been like. What had happened to his family? Had his upbringing at the orphanage been religious? Or was his childhood anything like his, in which the only things pursued religiously were good grades and academic honors? He wanted to know whether Taehyung had ever read this book by his ancestor and what he’d thought about it, and if he liked writing himself. He wanted to know what he was doing right now at Hoseok’s party and when his birthday was and what size shoe he wore and whether he ever wasted a single second of his time wondering about him.
Jin shook his head. This train of thought was heading straight for Pity City, and he wanted to get off. He pulled the first book off the shelf—the very unfascinating cloth-covered Dictionary of Angels—and decided to distract himself by reading until Ken came back.
He’d gotten as far as the fallen angel Abbadon, who regretted siding with Satan and constantly bemoaned his bad decision—yawn—when a blaring noise rang out over his head. Jin looked up to see the red flash of the fire alarm.
“Alert. Alert,” a monotone robotic voice announced over a loudspeaker. “The fire alarm has been activated. Evacuate the building.”
Jin slid the book back on the shelf and pulled himself to his feet. They’d done this kind of thing at Dover all the time. After a while, it had reached the point where not even the teachers had heeded the monthly fire drills, so the fire department started really setting off the alarm just to get people to respond. Jin could totally see the administrators at Sword & Cross pulling a similar stunt. But when he started walking toward the exit, he was surprised to find himself coughing. There was actual smoke inside the library.
“Ken?” he called out, hearing his voice echo in his ears. He knew he’d be drowned out by the piercing shriek of the alarm.
The acrid smell of the smoke dropped him instantly back into the blaze that night with Yi-jung. Images and sounds flooded his mind, things he’d stuffed so deep inside his memory they might as well have been obliterated. Until now.
The shocking whites of Yi-jung’s eyes against the orange glow. The individual tendrils of flame as the fire spread through each one of his fingers. The shrill, unending scream that rang in his head like a siren long after Yi-jung had given up. And the whole time, he’d stood there watching, he couldn’t stop watching, frozen in that bath of heat. He hadn’t been able to move. He hadn’t been able to do a thing to help him. So he’d died.
He felt a hand grip his left wrist and spun around, expecting to see Ken. It was Junghwan. The whites of his own eyes were huge, and he was coughing, too.
“We have to get out of here,” he said, breathing fast. “I think there’s an exit toward the back.”
“What about Ken, and Mr. Bogum?” Jin asked. He was feeling weak and dizzy. He rubbed his eyes. “They were over there.” When he pointed up the aisle toward the entrance, he could see how much thicker the smoke was in that direction.
Junghwan looked doubtful for a second, but then he nodded. “Okay,” he said, keeping hold of his wrist as they crouched down and sprinted toward the front doors of the library. They took a right when one aisle looked particularly thick with smoke, then found themselves facing a wall of books without a clue which way to run. Both of them stopped to gasp. The smoke that only a moment earlier had hovered just above their heads now pressed low against their shoulders.
Even ducking below it, they were choking. And they couldn’t see as much as a few feet in front of them. Making sure to keep a hold on Junghwan, Jin spun around in a circle, suddenly unsure which direction they’d come from. He reached out and felt the hot metal shelf of one of the stacks. He couldn’t even make out the letters on the spines. Were they in the D section or the O’s?
There were no clues to guide them toward Ken and Mr. Bogum, and no clues to guide them to the exit, either. Jin felt a surge of panic course through him, making it even more difficult to breathe.
“They must have already gone out the front doors!” Junghwan shouted, sounding only half convinced. “We have to turn back!”
Jin bit his lip. If anything happened to Ken …
He could barely see Junghwan, who was standing right in front of him. He was right, but which way was back? Jin nodded mutely, and felt his hand tugging his.
For a long time, he moved without knowing where they were going, but as they ran, the smoke lifted, little by little, until, eventually, he saw the red glow of an emergency exit sign. Jin breathed a sigh of relief as Junghwan fumbled for the door handle and finally pushed it open.
They were in a hallway Jin had never seen before. Junghwan slammed the door shut behind them. They gasped and filled their lungs with clean air. It tasted so good, Jin wanted to sink his teeth into it, to drink a gallon of it, bathe himself in it. He and Junghwan both coughed the smoke out of their lungs until they started laughing, an uneasy, only half-relieved laugh. They laughed until he was crying. But even when Jin finished crying and coughing, his eyes continued to tear.
How could he breathe in this air when he didn’t even know what had happened to Ken? If Ken hadn’t made it out—if he was collapsed somewhere inside— then Jin had failed someone he cared about again. Only this time it would be so much worse.
He wiped his eyes and watched a puff of smoke curl out from underneath the crack at the base of the door. They weren’t safe yet. There was another door at the end of the hallway. Through the glass panel in the door, Jin could see the wobble of a tree branch in the night. He exhaled. In a few moments, they’d be outside, away from these choking fumes.
If they were fast enough, they could go around to the front entrance and make sure Ken and Mr. Bogum had made it out okay.
“Come on,” Jin told Junghwan, who was folded over himself, wheezing. “We have to keep going.”
He straightened up, but Jin could see he was really overcome. His face was red, his eyes were wild and wet. He practically had to drag him toward the door.
He was so focused on getting out that it took him too long to process the heavy, swishing noise that had fallen over them, drowning out the alarms.
He looked up into a maelstrom of shadows. A spectrum of shades of gray and deepest black. He should only be able to see as far as the ceiling overhead, but the shadows seemed somehow to extend beyond its limits. Into a strange and hidden sky. They were all tangled up in each other, and yet they were distinct.
Amid them was the lighter, grayish one he’d seen earlier. It was no longer shaped like a needle, but now looked almost like the flame of a match. It bobbed over them in the hallway. Had he really fended off that amorphous darkness when it threatened to graze Ken’s head? The memory made his palms itch and his toes curl.
Junghwan started banging on the walls, as if the hallway were closing in on them. Jin knew they were nowhere near the door. He grabbed for his hand, but their sweaty palms slid off each other. He wrapped his fingers tight around his wrist. He was white as a ghost, crouched down near the floor, almost cowering. A terrified moan escaped his lips.
Because the smoke was now filling up the hallway?
Or because he could sense the shadows, too?
Impossible.
And yet his face was pinched and horrified. Much more so now that the shadows were overhead.
“Jin?” His voice shook.
Another horde of shadows rose up directly in their path. A deep black blanket of dark spread out across the walls and made it impossible for Jin to see the door. He looked at Junghwan—could he see it?
“Run!” he yelled.
Could he even run? His face was ashy and his eyelids drooped shut. He was on the verge of passing out. But then it suddenly seemed like he was carrying him.
Or something was carrying both of them.
“What the hell?” Junghwan cried out.
Their feet skimmed the floor for just a moment. It felt like riding a wave in the ocean, a light crest that lifted him higher, filling his body with air. Jin didn’t know where he was headed—he couldn’t even see the door, just a snarl of inky shadows all around. Hovering but not touching him. He should have been terrified, but he wasn’t. Somehow he felt protected from the shadows, like something was shielding him—something fluid but impenetrable. Something uncannily familiar. Something strong, but also gentle. Something—
Almost too quickly, he and Junghwan were at the door. His feet hit the floor again, and he shoved himself against the door’s emergency exit bar.
Then he heaved. Choked. Gasped. Gagged.
Another alarm was clanging. But it sounded far away.
The wind whipped at his neck. They were outside! Standing on a small ledge. A flight of stairs led down to the commons, and even though everything in his head felt cloudy and filled with smoke, Jin thought he could hear voices somewhere nearby.
He turned back to try to figure out what had just happened. How had he and Junghwan made it through that thickest, blackest, impenetrable shadow? And what was the thing that had saved them? Jin felt its absence.
He almost wanted to go back and search for it.
But the hallway was dark, and his eyes were still watering, and he couldn’t make out the twisting shadow shapes anymore. Maybe they were gone.
Then there was a jagged of light, something that looked like a tree trunk with branches—no, like a torso with long, broad limbs. A pulsing, almost violet column of light hovering over them. It made Jin think, absurdly, of Taehyung. He was seeing things. He took a deep breath and tried to blink the smoky tears from his eyes. But the light was still there. He sensed more than heard it call to him, calming him, a lullaby in the middle of a war zone.
So he didn’t see the shadow coming.
It body-slammed into him and Junghwan, breaking their grip on each other and tossing Jin into the air.
He landed in a heap at the foot of the stairs. An agonized grunt escaped his lips.
For one long moment, his head throbbed. He’d never known pain as deep and searing as this. He cried out into the night, into the clash of light and shadow overhead.
But then it all became too much and Jin surrendered, closing his eyes.