Misgivings (Part 1)
The Vaults & Garden Cafe was just across the street from the Bodleian Library; cozy, old fashioned and elegantly tucked away behind the walls of the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin and the trees and bushes of its garden, it might have gone completely unnoticed was it not for the many boards pointing the way, the delicious smell coming from inside and the never ending lines of people waiting to make their order.
Having found this place on one of the many occasions she had made her way to the library, Sam had once or twice stopped by the cafe to grab a bite, the rather tasty food more than justifying her visit, even if her past investigations and solving of Daedalus Club riddles had never truly allowed her to take in the space.
Today, however, it was different. Sat at one of the tables on the cafe's well kept garden, her backpack leaning against her chair, and with a pot of tea and a generous selection of scones in front of her, Sam was taking her chances with the cloudy weather for a chance to sit outside, the odd droplet of water hitting her skin and the notebook she was reading doing little to shake her resolve to stay right here, away from the crowds — even if the crowds were probably the wise ones for taking cover inside.
November had arrived at Oxford with biting cold and a truly downcast weather, the rain that punished the city more often than not giving way to small periods of calm that seemed to aim at nothing more than catch the more optimistic unprepared and drench them to the bones. Still, even if Sam was testing her luck with the British weather, it was pleasant to sit outside. Here, she could feel the cold wind hit her face, watch ripples go through the trees to her right, hear the rustle of leaves mixing with the voices of the students and tourists going by, and all of this while reaching out for the scones in the plate in front of her, biting into the soft sweet pastry and going back to the notebook and the many annotations she had filled it with.
In all honesty, when she had told David she wouldn't have the information on the cafeteria's events tomorrow it had never crossed her mind that 'tomorrow' actually meant three weeks. It also hadn't crossed her mind just how difficult it would be not to get doors slammed in her face or that convincing people to talk with her would require another of her very underhand plans. Not that Sam was complaining. In fact, her present plan was one Sam was rather proud of, even if the scheming part of it relied for the most part on the tall, blond, young man who was now struggling to get passed the crowd queuing at the Vaults & Garden Cafe entrance, a young man that went by the name Charles Ettington and who — despite having spent the last week fulfilling his role in Sam's plan rather diligently, even if he was even now coming down the garden path, walking by several empty wooden tables with a food tray to get to where Sam was enthusiastically waving at him — still looked rather unsure about his role in any of this.
"You took your time, Homer," Sam teased once he reached the table, her playful tone being meet by one of Charles' usually quiet answers.
"Sorry," he said, pointing her attention to the cafe's entrance and the long queue slowly moving inside. "It is really crowded and I am starving."
Attention falling on the tray Charles had just put over the table, what seemed to be the Vaults & Garden's Venison with Roasted Roots not so much peeking from inside the plate as overflowing from it, Sam raised her eyebrows.
"I can see that."
Charles' university bag slid from his shoulder going to rest on the cement slab next to the table and Sam's own backpack. As gravity would have it, however, the instant the bag hit the floor it fell, the stream of university books and pens and, unsurprisingly, Charles' copy of the Iliad, coming from inside, forcing Charles to leave the food over the table and crouch to grab his bag.
"Are you really sure you need me?" Charles asked now, the hunt for his belongings making the top end of his body disappear under the table so he could pick a pen that had made its way to the grass near Sam's feet. "Because I feel I am just dragging us down."
Wind tossing her ponytail around and forcing her to press her hand to the notebook's pages, Sam looked down, under the table, and grinned.
"Don't worry, Charles, you being here is absolutely essential."
Pen now safe in his hand, books being carefully put back inside his bag, Charles looked up from his crouched position, a soft curiosity to his eyes:
"How?"
"You are my ticket inside half the rooms at St. Edmund!" Sam exclaimed and that same instant Charles' eyebrows jumped.
"Is that why we are only talking with girls?!"
Sam's ever growing grin seemed to be answer enough. Cheeks burning red, Charles went to sit opposite her, eyes firmly set on the food. His embarrassed silence — and then the clicking of cutlery as he started to eat — allowed Sam to lean back into her chair and, the low temperature forcing her to zip her short black jacket all the way up to her neck, go back to her notes.
Despite her unwavering good mood, Sam had her mind in a state of deep unrest, one that seemed to only get worse the longer she went over what those present during the incident at the cafeteria had to say. Just like it had happened back with the incidents at the track and pool, she couldn't shake this sensation there was something here that wasn't as it should, something—
Sam pulled her bangs out of her face, leaning closer to the notebook. A few seconds of going back and forth through several pages and she had stopped, eyes sharpening, the interview she had been searching for, one she had carried out just a pair of days ago, leading her all the way back to St. Edmund Hall's Graduate Wing, to standing on the dormitory's ancient corridors watching a slow procession of people with cardboard boxes go by her and waiting, waiting until she saw Charles' blond head, closely followed by the rest of him, coming down the stone stairway to the her right.
"I did what you said with the fuse box upstairs, I don't think anyone saw me," Charles shared once he stopped at her side, a very nervous expression being given to the university workers disappearing down the corridor with the boxes. "Where are we going?"
The answer to that question had been Room 128, a room belonging to a certain Anna Botting, a Medical Sciences student whose name had appeared in the newspapers in relation to the events at the cafeteria. Unfortunately, however, and contrary to many others whose names appeared attached to small interviews and statements, Anna hadn't gotten to the journals while aiming at a fleeting moment of fame. In fact, she hadn't gotten to the newspapers by choice at all. And knocking on the wooden door to her dorm room, hearing the unmistakable clicking sound of a medical cane breaking the rhythm of the uneven footsteps approaching the door, the reason why Anna was in the newspapers would have become clear to Sam even if she hadn't known it already.
Anna — who had just now unlocked her door and who stood on the other side, eyebrows drawing closer, right leg on a plaster cast — was one of the injured.
"You are the person inquiring about the cafeteria?"
What Anna Botting also happened to be — and that left Sam staring at her, trying very hard not to gape — was the exact same young woman she had watched flee Dread Hill the night she had arrived at Oxford. David's original assistant. Blond haired. Brown eyed. An attractive face.
If for one moment Sam had thought Anna might recognize her too — that should be easy enough given Sam's personal style and tattoos, or so Sam thought — she was proved rapidly wrong. Studying her face, seeming to recall something, at least judging by how much she was frowning, Anna ended pushing her blond hair out of her forehead, attention jumping between Sam and Charles.
"So?" she prodded.
Slightly taken aback by this encounter, Sam had to force herself to smile and reach forward, right hand outstretched to shake Anna's:
"I'm the one with the questions," she confirmed. "My name is Samantha Everett, this is Charles. You must have seen him before."
Judging by Anna's lack of reaction it appeared she hadn't. More disheartening than having lost the upper hand on this, however, was that Anna hadn't moved an inch. She still stood at her door, completely blocking the way inside her brightly illuminated room. It gave Sam no other choice than to glance up and down the stone corridor running in both directions and turn back to Anna, smiling:
"Can we come in?"
A small moment of indecision, of looking at the hand Sam was still offering in greeting, and Anna stepped back into her room without shaking it. As uninviting as her behavior was, however, rather than slamming the door right in their faces like Sam feared she was about to do, Anna gestured inside, allowing a relieved Sam and a timidly smiling Charles to step passed the door frame and enter the room.
"Bring those if you want to sit," she spoke. The gesture that accompanied those words, pointing towards the white armchair and footstool that stood in the corner of the room, sent both Sam and Charles in that direction, curiosity making both take a discreet look around while Anna locked the door.
The room Anna occupied was not that different from most of the rooms Sam had visited in St. Edmund: a comfortable bed was pulled against the wall to the room's bathroom, a large bookcase occupied the wall beside it and a work desk rested under an ample window overlooking trees, green fields and old buildings. It was a room like all others. And, just like all other rooms at St. Edmund, what truly set it apart from its many twins was its occupant.
In Harvey's case his room's had held his movie supplies, posters and photos of famous directors.
Charles' room, on the other hand, was over-packed with games and mangas.
Angela, whose room already stood out by being shared, had had her fairies.
Helena—
Sam found herself shaking her head at the memory of entering her friend's room through the window over her door, mind projected right back to Helena's books, fashion posters and red underwear lying around. She honestly didn't know where to start with Helena's room.
In Anna's case, however, what wrote this room as hers, were books. Medical volumes mostly if Sam's quick glance at the ones on the bookcase behind the armchair were anything to go by. There were pictures on the bookcase too. The biggest of them, on an old-fashioned frame that had little in common with the modern look of the rest of the room, showed Anna standing alongside an old lady — her grandmother if the family resemblance was anything to go by. The one that captured Sam's attention the most, however, showed a pair of dogs, the white spotted Grand Danois to the left of his much smaller companion holding a ball in its mouth and supporting such a silly expression, Sam found herself with fingers pressed to her lips and fighting to suppress a snort. Suffice it to say, she failed. And she did it in such spectacular fashion, Anna, who was midway to the desk under the window, stopped, leaned into the medical cane for support and looked back.
"You like dogs?" she asked and, trying to lift the armchair, Sam looked back.
"Yeah," she chuckled, Charles easily taking the heavy piece of furniture from her hands and carrying it all the way to the room's desk, leaving her free to turn and talk with Anna. "But I don't think having a dog and a pet rabbit is the best idea."
A small smile later and, the clicking of the medical cane again filling the room, Anna made her way passed the large bookcase next to the bed, passed the armchair, and stopped at her desk. Turning the chair so she was facing Sam and Charles, sitting, she seemed less hostile now.
"Malik told me about your article," Anna commented, leaning her cane against the desk behind her. "I was under the impression the university didn't want more publicity. Won't you get into trouble?"
Looking Anna's way, a glance at the computer screen behind her showing Sam an academic paper Anna had no doubt been working on before she and Charles knocked on the door, Sam dropped the footstool right next to the armchair Charles had carried here, her expression serious.
"Think of it as an underground publication," she offered.
A pair of pale brown eyes ran up and down Sam's face, studying her, pondering. Whatever conclusion Anna reached, however, be it that she believed Sam or not, she kept it to herself, leaned back into her chair and spoke.
"What do you want to know?"
Sat at the Vaults & Garden Cafe, Sam felt a shiver go down her spine, the memory of Anna's watching her from her chair, of how difficult it was to read her quiet thoughts, of the way she kept herself to herself, leaving Sam's attention to wander to the rooftop of the Radcliffe Camera, the bluish dome that peaked over the trees to her right.
As much as 'what ifs' weren't something Sam liked to lose any time with, right now she couldn't help but ponder on the night she had arrived at Dread Hill and on the young woman that had gotten out of a taxi and started making her way to the dark manor. If Anna hadn't gotten scared and ran away, if she had been the one with David through all that had happened, or worse if Anna did run away and David ended up alone—
Sam's nails dug into the notebook, pressing into the pages filled with her own writing.
If I wasn't there…
If Angela was here, sitting in the cafe's garden with Sam, she would no doubt call it fate that Sam had gotten lost and arrived at Dread Hill when she did. Still looking up, however, seeing gray clouds rush behind the Radcliffe Camera's roof, Sam had to disagree once again.
She didn't believe in fate. In luck, perhaps. But not in fate. And so, running a hand through her black hair, the small droplets of water that were over it breaking under her gesture, Sam was back to her notes, back to Anna's room, back to Charles who, not interested in sitting despite the footstool, stood to Sam's left, right between the armchair she sat on and the bookcase, curious eyes running over Anna's many books.
"Can you tell me exactly what happened?" Sam now asked, opening her notebook over her legs. Anna's silence and the tapping of her fingers against the dark fabric of her skirt forced Sam to raise her attention from her notebook and to where Anna sat, her back to the room's window and her computer screen. "On the day of the incident on the cafeteria, when did you arrive there? Any idea of the time?"
Ana's brow lowered.
"I'm not sure about the time," she admitted in a low, firm voice, a grimace going through her face when, distracted, she tried and failed to cross her legs. "I was working on my thesis for most of the day, I would probably have remained here if my alarm clock hadn't rang."
Anna pointed at a digital clock on her bedside table with those words. Leaning over the armchair's left arm to find out Charles had already picked the digital alarm clock and was showing it to her, Sam reached inside her pocket, took her phone out and returned to Anna. She was leaning her head against her hand now, a slight frown still on her face.
"It's ten minutes ahead of the time," she confirmed and at that Sam returned to a more comfortable position on her chair, a sympathetic look being given to Anna.
"Is it always ahead of time or is it because—?"
Sam pointed her pen at Anna's leg, the implied question being met by a small head shake.
"I like to arrive early," Anna simply stated and put both her hands over her legs. "The day of the cafeteria incident I had a class at four and wanted to get some things done on the way there. It was probably not even 3.30 when I left."
Sam leaned forward, genuinely interested.
"How did you end up at the cafeteria?" she queried.
"I got sidetracked by a friend," Anna explained. "She wanted to talk, we went inside for somewhere to sit."
A nod and Sam pressed the top of her pen, readying herself to write.
"Did you notice anything odd when you entered?"
"No," Anna stated, the many hoops of her hearings clicking against each other when she shook her head. "Just the usual. People were studying. Talking. Everything was absolutely normal until—"
"Until?"
The clouds opened on the patch of sky behind Anna, the light coming from the window surrounding her in such a way her face was swallowed by darkness.
"You know what happened next," Anna remarked.
Sam blinked, attention jumping between Anna and the blank piece of paper on the notebook — a page where she had had no opportunity to write anything other than Anna's name. As much as having doors closed on her face didn't faze her in the slightest, this—
Sam traded a quick glance with an obviously out of his depth Charles, and sighed, the pen she held on her fingers being put over the notebook.
"Look," Sam put forth, going back to face Anna. "I'm sure you don't want to get into trouble with the university, and I get it. People must have told you not to speak about what happened a million times. But I must be honest with you. I'm not with Ox Stu. I'm not a reporter."
Sam would like to say Anna looked surprised by her admission, curious even. But, sat on her desk chair, the light around her fading when the sun was once again covered by clouds, she didn't. Not in any way.
"You aren't a reporter?" Anna nevertheless queried and her words hanged in the air, their implied question obvious to Sam.
"I was asked to conduct these inquiries to try to reconstruct what happened," she explained, careful as to hold Anna's gaze. "There have been some weird things going on at campus. You and the people at the cafeteria were not the first ones to witness something out of the ordinary—"
Sam stopped abruptly, the clear memory of David and Laura standing together next to a wall of blue tiles, of Angela's father looking back at her from the photograph on his daughter's room, bursting into her mind so suddenly Sam dropped her eyes to the white carpet under her feet, spirit heavy.
"You were not even the first ones to get hurt," she heard herself share and looked up, expression serious, honest, even if what she was about to say was, at it's best, an half-truth. "We just want to get to the bottom of what happened, to make sure this was just some freak accident, not some sick person's idea of a prank."
One of Anna's eyebrows rose over her square glasses, what could be interest making it's rounds through her eyes. Of all Sam had said, however, she seemed to have focused in one thing alone. On the smallest of details.
"We?" Anna repeated and what she said next might just be the opening Sam needed. "Who are you working for? Are you with the University?"
It definitely was the opening she needed.
"My employer is."
Kind off, Sam finished in her head. That David was not conducting any inquiry for the university — that he was on leave — was really not important right now. What was important was that mentioning the university operated a change in Anna that was all together very different from the one her dogs had brought about. Whereas before she had ceased to be hostile, now her expression showed an hopeful eagerness that hadn't been there before.
"I'm going to kill Malik," Anna whispered, pressing both sides of her head. Was it not for her broken leg and the plaster around it forcing her to remain still, Sam was sure she would have gotten up and started to pace the room. "He could have told me the truth!"
And with that Anna straightened, eyes meeting Sam's.
"Ask whatever you want."
Sam could have sighed with relief, instead, however, she picked up her pen and put it over her notebook once again.
"Can we start from the beginning?"
They did. They went all the way back to Anna working on her thesis, to her alarm clock ringing and she going down the stairs to the dorm's atrium, meeting her friend and heading inside the cafeteria. And this time, rather than rushing ahead like she had been doing just now, Anna actually talked. And even if she hadn't been paying enough attention to her surroundings to be of much assistance, at the very least, what she did remember fell in line with what Sam had heard from all other people she had interviewed. On October 18th, the cafeteria at St. Edmund had been packed full despite it being the middle of the afternoon, most of those inside gathering there to talk with friends or discuss group projects, rather than eat. It seemed, by all accounts, to have been a rather unremarkable afternoon, until—
"They came out of nowhere," Anna spoke, the words seeming to have became stuck on her throat leaving her silent for a long moment, the very same fear that had been in Eddie's eyes after the lines had appeared on the track, that had made Kelly wish to leave campus upon seeing the pool turn red, now filling her eyes, leaving her with her attention stuck to the cast around her leg.
"One moment everything was normal," Anna forced herself to say, hands wrapping around the dark fabric of her skirt. "We were just sitting at the cafeteria, talking, Jess had put her bag on the table, she was searching for her phone, and then there was this—Explosion."
Sam's eyebrows jumped. Her attention snapping up, away from words scribbled on the white paper, she leaned forward, over her legs, over her notes, eyes narrow with suspicion.
"Explosion?"
Anna took a deep breath, the hand that had been wrapped around her skirt going to press her forehead.
"I think it was the table behind us breaking," she said, pushing her hair back while trying to remember. "It is difficult to be sure. I—I turned. I remember seeing half the table crashing against the wall, the other half was simply not there and the very next moment something hit this cabinet that was on the other side of the room and broke it apart. Everyone was fighting to get out of the cafeteria after that, screaming, trying to reach the door, and everywhere things kept breaking. I remember this huge painting falling from the wall and seeing this head on the floor—"
Anna's hands closed around each other, her face going as white as the cast around her leg.
"It took me a moment to notice it wasn't real," she whispered. "I thought it was."
It was like a heavy blanket had been wrapped itself around the room. Pushing her notebook aside, Sam looked up. Anna's eyes were haunted. She didn't seem to be standing in the room anymore, but back in the cafeteria, fleeing, destruction raining around her. Before Sam could call her back, though, before she could ask Anna if she was fine — something she obviously wasn't — Charles had step from behind the armchair and somehow found the courage to speak.
"You were hurt," he put forth and just like when he talked about Homer, like when Sam had confronted him with David's article, Charles' voice lost its timid edge. "How did you get out?"
A pained expression in her face, Anna forced herself to come back to them.
"I didn't."
The silence was worse now than it had been just a minute ago. Leaving his attention to wander, Charles retreated behind the armchair again. The soft—
"I'm sorry"
—escaping his lips was, however, met with a gentle smile.
"I got lucky," Anna told him and let herself sink into her chair. For a moment she looked at the ceiling, at the lit ceiling lamp, then she closed her eyes.
"I don't remember being hit," she admitted in a tired voice. "Just that one moment we were all trying to get out, that people were pushing and shoving each other while everything broke, and then I opened my eyes and was lying on the floor. I didn't even notice I was hurt at first, only that it was just us there. The ones who couldn't get out. Everything had stopped, the cafeteria was completely destroyed, I could hear someone crying, and there was screaming coming from outside the room. Mr. Charles—" Anna opened her eyes, going back to face Sam and Charles. "He is the gentleman at the entrance — come running inside not a moment later. As did a lot residents, this huge crowd started to fill the cafeteria, everyone wanted to help, most had no idea how to. It took Mr. Charles forever to get campus security to get there and force people to leave."
Sam's eyes narrowed, the pen with which she had furiously been taking notes coming to a stop right at the middle of a page. Maybe it was the illusionist in her that was veering its head right now, but—
"Forever?" Sam inquired, brow furrowed. "Do you have any idea how long it was? Do you think it long enough for... say someone to take something out?"
Anna tilted her head, brow furrowed.
"I have precious little notion of how much time passed, but with that many people there, it wouldn't be hard. No."
A new note was written on her notebook. Rereading it, however, seeing the words "possible misdirection. enough time to have projectiles removed" followed with a bunch of interrogation points, Sam felt an almost immediate need to cross it out.
What was she doing? She knew who was responsible for this! So did David! And it was not an illusionist! What on earth was she—?!
"Who was there?" Sam blurted out while biting down her frustration at herself and at that note — a note she couldn't cross out right now least Anna grew suspicious. "I mean, who remained there after Mr. Charles got people to leave?"
Anna's answer came easily.
"Medical students mostly," she informed while trying to find a more comfortable position to put her broken leg in. "Also, this girl who is studying art. She was the one with me. Some time after that the paramedics arrived and so did the police."
Anna stopped for a moment, Charles having just picked up the footstool he had refused to sit in and put it in front of her, making her blink at him with surprise and then put her foot there, visibly relieved.
"Thanks," she told Charles and again looked at the ceiling light. Just like before she seemed to be trying to remember. A long moment went by until, finally, she shook her head.
"I don't think I'm much help after that point," she admitted, sounding genuinely regretful. "I was loaded into an ambulance and taken to the hospital. Most of what I know from there on out, you can easily read on the newspapers."
Sam nodded and took a grounding breath. The now-back-to-standing-at-her-side Charles had heard what followed far too many times to still be caught by surprise by it. As for Anna what came next would no doubt sound weird. The thing was this, this was what this entire interview was about.
"Some people think—" Sam started to say and she leaned forward, the memory of Anna fleeing Dread Hill, screaming at what turned out to be nothing at all, making her drop her voice until Anna too was, even if carefully, leaning in Sam's direction. "They think it was something paranormal."
Anna's eyebrows jumped. She sat straight now, giving Sam a shocked look.
"Paranormal?" she repeated, the trepidation that was in her expression, however, faded right away. Anna shook her head, fingers going to drum on the arm of her chair. "I didn't dream any of that."
Had this loud crash not come from outside the room right that moment — what could only be one more of the many cardboard boxes Sam had watched being carried down the corridor having just fallen to the floor — so startling her she actually let her pen slip from her fingers, Sam would have felt Charles hand close over her shoulder, warning her of the way Anna's eyes had sharpened. Sam herself would no doubt have noticed how defensive her posture had just become. Seeing as Charles only grazed her shoulder, and Sam was kneeling on the floor and not looking up—
"Did you see them?" Sam asked, peeking under the armchair and stretching her fingers when she saw the pen nestled over the carpet. Coming back up, she found Anna still sitting, back to the window, and as guarded as she had been in the beginning of their conversation.
"I was hit by one of those things," she retorted in a cutting tone. "I would say that makes them real enough."
Charles had visibly flinched just now. Stepping back, almost like he meant to drop and hide behind the armchair, he ended forcing himself to stop, refusing to leave Sam to fend for herself — something she was already doing, both her hands raised apologetically between herself and Anna.
"I didn't mean it like that," Sam said, trying to control the damage and going back to sit on the armchair. "I just wanted to know if you saw what they were."
It might be a bit late, however, to assuage Anna.
"They were large, round objects," she spoke, a note of coldness in her voice. "I have no idea what they were, only that they moved fast. I don't have to describe the state the cafeteria was in after they finished."
She didn't. Even if Sam hadn't seen it personally the newspapers David had given her had offered her a good idea of the chaos. In fact, taking her attention away from her notes, Sam only had to flick back through the pages to find one of the newspaper articles and look at the black and white photograph on top of it. If Sam didn't know better she might have thought a bomb had gone off in the cafeteria, the picture showed broken tables and destroyed artwork everywhere, huge gashes on the walls. What interested Sam, however, what interested David, the thing she had to get an answer to before she lost Anna completely, was—
"There is something I need to know," she put forth and at that Anna crossed her arms, defensive.
"And that is?"
The pen Sam had between her fingers tapped on the notebook.
"Some of the people I talked to mentioned seeing a shadow in the cafeteria," Sam said, eyes studying Anna's expression. "They also felt this weird heavy atmosphere, like a storm was approaching. Did you notice anything like that?"
Anna looked utterly bewildered.
"N-No," she stammered, eyes wide with confusion. "Who told you that?"
Which brought Sam back to the present. That thing she had shared with Anna, about people seeing a shadow, about the electrically-charged atmosphere, was a lie. No one had mentioned something like that. Absolutely no one. Not even when she had asked. And thinking about Eddie, about Jennie, about herself when she had locked herself in the weight room, and about David and Laura smiling, unconcerned, while a shadow watched hatefully over them, Sam couldn't help but go right back to her misgivings and to the reason why she was presently sitting at the Vaults & Garden Cafe, waiting, her good humor hiding an extremely heavy heart.
She wished for nothing more than to be wrong right now but—
A drop of rain crashed right into the page holding Anna's interview, turning some of the words into an unfocused blotch, blurring their meaning. Reaching out for the napkin she had stuck between her scone plate and the wooden table, Sam pressed it to the notebook, trying to dry it, trying to—
"Sam!"
The calling made Sam jump. Snapping her notebook shut, napkin inside, before she even looked to see who had spoken, Sam ended up turning on her chair and stretching her neck to see Helena enter the garden through a small metal door hidden behind the shrubbery and naked trees to the side of the cafe. Smiling, the long beige jacket she was wearing hugging her figure, Helena strode into the garden, going by empty table after empty table, her feet hitting the stones of the garden's path with ease, the sound of the rustling leaves mixing with her words.
"I wasn't expecting you to already be here, Sam! How long—?" Helena stopped, the warm smile she was giving Sam, freezing the very moment she looked to the other side of the table and found—
"Charles," Helena purred, seductively, and put her hands on the table, her expression changing drastically. "I wondered where you ran off to."
Having been left struggling with the small metal door he had opened to let Helena inside the cafe's garden, Harvey huffed in annoyance from the distance. The water that had been pooling over the garden's door now dripping from his hands, forced to reach inside his checkered-patterned coat for somewhere he could dry them, Harvey stopped right beside Helena, his timely arrival saving Charles from what didn't look so much like intelligent, vain but overall friendly Helena but a starved tigress in search of prey.
"You were really helpful back there," Harvey tossed at Helena, right hand pointing over his shoulder, at the garden's metal door beyond which a steady stream of people were walking by, his tone deeply sarcastic. "Thank you for helping me out."
Her attention diverted from Charles, Helena tossed her long hair over her shoulder.
"I thought you were the one helping me," she stated, putting a ridiculously small handbag she couldn't possibly have anything in over the table. "Where have all white knights gone to?"
Harvey scoffed.
"I very much doubt you needed one to start with," he grumbled and looked at the table, rather than greeting Sam and Charles, however, his attention fell right on the plate of scones in front of Sam.
"Boy, do those look good!" he exclaimed, immediately making a grab for one of the muffins and getting his hand slapped away by Helena. "AU! What was that for?!"
"Get your own food," Helena remarked, hands on her hips.
"Oh, come on!" Harvey protested. "There is no way Sam is going to eat all of—!" Helena rose her eyebrows, the look she gave Harvey such he immediately backed down. "Right, right, I will jump inside."
Attention jumping back and forth between Harvey, now walking down the garden path to the cafe's entrance, and Helena, who was once again putting her hands on the table and leaning his way, Charles pushed his chair back and got to his feet.
"I'm going with him," he announced, scampering after Harvey.
Eyes following the retreating duo — or judging by the way he was sprinting to catch up to Harvey, the fleeing Charles — Helena let herself fall dramatically into the chair at Sam's side.
"I must be doing something very wrong with that boy," she sighed.
Reaching to get her backpack from the floor, putting it over her legs and opening it, Sam rose her eyebrows.
"Looking like you are about to pounce on him, perhaps?"
Sam's comment made Helena look away from Harvey and Charles, who, having walked the entire length of the garden, were now at the very end of the long queue making its way inside the cafe.
"You think I should change tactics?" Helena pondered, eyebrows raised, interest making her head go to rest over her intertwined fingers while she watched Sam put her notebook inside her backpack. "To play hard to get? To give him the — How do you people say it? — the cold shoulder and strike when he gets so desperate he no longer knows what to do?"
Helena's expression turned cat-like at her own thought process, a friendly pat being given to Sam's back:
"Your plan is genius, goth girl!"
Sam blinked, notebook slipping from her fingers. Her—Wait just a second!
"I didn't get a single word out!" Sam protested—and was elbowed by a grinning Helena before she could continue.
Charles and Harvey were making their way back already, the second having clearly given up on "grabbing a bite" upon facing the slow moving queue. Now stopping at the head of the table, the look he gave the scones making Sam reach out to push the plate his way only to be, for the second time, elbowed by Helena — and, really, what was she grinning for? — Sam watched Harvey cross his arms.
"Is anyone missing?" he asked, looking around and trying to ignore the chair to Charles side, the one Harvey himself had left empty, a chair where an Angela-shaped absence seemed to have just appeared. "Are we all here?"
Hugging her beige coat closer around her, actually buttoning up so that, Sam could only conclude, the cleavage she had been proudly displaying disappeared from view, Helena took her attention up to Harvey.
"Malik isn't," she pointed out, she too keeping her attention as far away from the empty seat as she possibly could. "He is late."
Harvey looked back at the garden's two entrances, trying to see passed the shrubbery and to the dozens upon dozens of people walking by.
"The two of us were late," he retorted.
"That doesn't change anything, does it?" Helena stated, her hair getting caught in the wind, forcing her to grab it to stop it from flying in front of her face. "Late is late. Also—" She looked up, passed the mix of leaves and naked tree branches and towards the gray clouds overhead, the drop of rain that had just hit her hand leaving her clearly aggravated. "What is with this country and rain?"
Sam too looked up.
"I have been wondering about that too," she admitted and brought her attention down, the menacing dark clouds making her take a bag from inside the open backpack she still had over her legs and start to fill it with what was left of the scones.
"Can we get a move on?" Harvey queried from over them, the gray clouds clearly alarming him too. "I will phone Malik, find what hole he fell into, also—Give me a break, Sam! Are you really going to eat all of those?!"
The four of them left the Vaults and Garden shortly after. Harvey happily gobbling down on a scone while he talked to Malik on the phone, the soft rain that forced both the Lamb's Club and everyone walking down the streets of Oxford to open their umbrellas really not fazing him anymore — nor, Sam might add, Malik's absence, seeming as the last member of the now more or less assembled Lamb's Club was stuck at the Neurobiology Department, more exactly at his new job.
"Good for him!" Helena spoke, genuinely happy, once Harvey informed them of Malik's not so serious predicament, the red umbrella she had taken out of one of her jacket's pockets being opened over her and Sam's heads. "He has been running back and forth trying to find something since that Linkweller-person tossed him out."
Guilt tugging at her heart, Sam gave the group — a group who had no idea that had been her fault — a strained smile.
"Yeah, it is great he found something," she agreed.
Her attention getting momentarily caught up on the fashion store they were now walking by, for a moment actually seeming to wish to follow the people entering it, Helena turned back to Sam, a curious expression in her eyes.
"So, why did you call us here?" she queried, the clicking of both her and Sam's high heeled boots joining the squealing of Charles and Harvey's tennis on the wet pavement. "It sounded urgent."
Dropping his phone inside his jacket's pocket, going to look over his left shoulder to where Sam and Helena were, Harvey nodded.
"Yeah, what was that about?" he jumped in, finally able to open his own umbrella rather than walk under Charles' one. "And why couldn't we do this down at St. Edmund's quad? You know, where there is a nice warm building we could all take cover inside?"
Sam looked around. There were old buildings on both sides of the pedestrian street they were walking down of, laughter and voices came out of the pub on the other side of the road, people tried to enter the many stores, no doubt trying to flee the rain. Even so, the street was still packed full. There were tourists taking photos of the buildings, students running to their classes, schoolchildren walking along with their parents — and all of that was good. It gave the four of them privacy.
"I need to get inside St. Edmund Hall," Sam informed, still looking around, watching the people around them. "After lock up."
Sam had talked in a mere whisper, Charles, Harvey and Helena on the other hand—
"You what?!" they exclaimed, all looking her way.
"What you heard," Sam groaned, gesturing at them to lower their voices. "And I need a hand."
The group stalled right there in the middle of the street, their brusque halt forcing the people walking behind them to an equally abrupt stop. Having rammed straight into Charles' back, Sam tossed her arms up, incredulous.
"What is wrong with the three of you?" Sam groaned, hands hitting the canvas of Helena's umbrella right as the entire group closed in a circle, a mix of raised eyebrows and thoughtful frowns being directed at her.
"Forgive us if we are a little shocked, dear," Helena said, looking at both Charles and Harvey who were nodding in agreement. "You are not one to ask for help."
Right to Sam's left, his back turned towards a window display filled with mannequins wearing winter clothes, people walking behind him, Harvey nodded.
"What she said," he put in while gesturing at Helena, who was right in front of him "Really, I thought if you were going to ask for help you would either go to Styles or to that nice old lady who works for him, not us."
Even if Harvey wasn't wrong, Sam had to roll her eyes.
"I can't ask David—" she started to say, only for Helena's all-knowing smile to make her clear her throat. "Dr. Styles."
His attention jumping between Sam and Helena, visibly having noticed the look that had just been traded between them but missing its meaning completely, Charles tilted his head.
"What is the problem with asking Professor Styles—?" he started and fell silent the same instant, the small 'Oh' crossing his lips, becoming lost amid the sound of splashing footsteps from the people around them and the rain falling on and from the umbrellas over their heads. Feeling water hit her left arm — something Sam should seriously become accustomed to when sharing a umbrella with Helena — Sam put the group on the move again, her boots sinking into the small puddles forming all over the dark sidewalk while they kept going down the street.
"It is not just that he is a professor," Sam now said, Oxford's old buildings going by the group. "I mean, sure I don't want to get David into trouble with the university, but main thing is I don't think he would like me getting inside St. Edmund Hall after hours."
Walking at Sam's side, Helena clamped her lips together, trying to suppress a chuckle.
"I don't think he will like to know you got there afterwards either, Sam," she ended up saying, her eyes twinkling with amusement at Sam's defensive expression.
"If I tell him afterwards he can do anything about it, can he?" she rebutted and again glancing at them Charles was left frowning.
"He can get mad," he put forward, clearly trying to be helpful and failing completely at it. It really wasn't as if Sam needed to be reminded of that particular — and very real — possibility.
"Dr. Styles seems to like obeying rules," Charles nevertheless continued. Walking to his side, Harvey chuckled.
"If you don't count his research, you mean!" he tossed right at them and looked over his shoulder, excited. "I found one of Styles' published books some days ago and boy oh boy was that a wild ride!" he told them, water running down his umbrella. "It was all about the brain's locked abilities! People must have thought he was nuts or something saying things like that! I mean, come on, it sounds insane! But now it turns out he might actually be right! That's some movie-worthy twist!"
Sam rose her eyes to the stormy sky above her, or, as things were, to the bright red canvas of Helena's umbrella and the water running down it. There would be a script on Harvey's desk in some days time. If there wasn't one there already.
"Can we get back on topic for a moment?" she sighed, trying to return some degree of somberness to the happily chattering group around her. "I really need your help. I won't be able to get locked inside since the doorman knows I am not a student. Same goes for hiding in one of your rooms. I simply can't go through the front door."
All laughter ceased. Harvey's eyebrows arched, a deeply suspicious expression going through his face.
"Where on earth are you going through then?"
"Well—" Sam started to say and immediately Helena shook her head. "What?"
"You are insane," Helena sentenced.
"Probably?"
Still, reaching their destination some half an hour later, seeing the exterior walls of St. Edmund Hall appear at the end of the street, Sam being insane or not mattered little. The sun was setting fast, the dark clouds that had hung over the city all through the day making night fall prematurely over the buildings. Unfortunately, and even if darkness seemed to offer her the perfect cover to get inside St. Edmund without anyone noticing, Sam had no choice but to wait. And wait she did. First by joining the rest of the Lamb's Club in St. Edmund's quad, then by walking aimlessly around Oxford, looking at stores and getting lost inside a bookstore that, weirdly enough, shared her name. It must be close to 11 P.M. when, watching the droplets of water that crashed faster and faster around her, Sam finally phoned Helena.
Once again it was truly unfortunate there wasn't a simpler way of doing this, like Helena unlocking the dorm's front door and letting her in. Things being as they were, however, Sam's plan consisted of, not so much striding triumphantly into the atrium, as dangling dangerously on rope made out of bed sheets outside Helena's bedroom window, Harvey and Charles' heads appearing and disappearing above her as the two of them tried to help her up the wall.
"Was there not—" Harvey panted once Sam's head appeared over the first floor parapet to Helena's room. "—some trick to get you up here?"
A glance inside showing Harvey was presently standing with one foot against the wall, both hands firmly closed over the sheets while Helena sat, relaxed, at her bed, Sam reached to grab the hand Charles was offering her. The climb had knocked all air from her lungs, still, taking a deep breath of air, she all both panted her answer out:
"Abacadabra?"
Charles snorted so hard he lost all manner of strength, his effort to hoist Sam inside the room coming to such an abrupt stop she dived head first to the floor, ending up sprawled belly down under the window, her legs high in the air.
"Sorry," Charles apologized, laughter coming to an abrupt end, his expression one of visibly worry. Staring at Sam, seemingly too dumbstruck by her almost upside down position to do something, Harvey and Helena seemed to regain control over their cognitive functions at the same time.
"Are you hurt?" they echoed.
Getting her legs down to the floor, Sam shook her head.
"Still alive," she said, getting herself to a sitting position, legs crossed in front of her, back against the cold stone wall. Around of her Helena's room was just like she remembered from the last time she had been here. Unapologetic feminine, brimming with all those things one would expect of Helena — like her fashion posters, make-up and jewelry — but also with the things one didn't expect of her. Like the two large rows of books over her desk — something that both Charles and Harvey seemed to have noticed too.
"Thanks for the help by the way," Sam told them once she caught her breath again. "That was a bigger climb than I expected."
Harvey scoffed, crossing his arms.
"Thanks for helping you risk your neck, you mean," he retorted, and turned to Helena. "You were right back there, she is insane."
Sitting on her bed, the way she was using her feet to push the wooden box she kept under it deeper into hiding not going unnoticed to Sam, Helena reached for her bedside table drawer. A small flask of nail polish being taken from there, she rose her fingers to the bedside lamp's light.
"So what is this about, Sam?" she asked while opening the flask, confident brushes turning the first of her long nails from pink to bright red. "How can we help?"
Getting up to shut the window, Sam felt a sudden tightness on her chest. And maybe it was that she had already revealed a little too much about herself with how she had treated the Lamb's Club during the situation with Angela, but that instant when she turned away from the window, eyes jumping from Charles, to Harvey, to Helena, seemed to be more than enough for all three of them to understand what was going on in her mind.
"She is at it again," Harvey announced, letting himself fall on the bright red chair to the center of Helena's room. "That's the 'you are all in my suspects list' look right here!"
Sam crossed her arms.
"That's not—!"
"Out with it," Harvey said, talking over her. "What did we do?"
"Nothing!"
"We must have done something," Harvey retorted.
On his feet, midway between Sam and Harvey, Charles tilted his head.
"Is this about Angela?" he asked, wisely, and stepped back going to sit on the room's round rug. "You don't think we knew about her, do you?"
Sam raised her eyebrows.
"No, I—"
"Do you?" Harvey insisted, arms crossed, only to turn to Helena, who still sat at her bed, on the other end of the room, blowing softly to dry her red nail polish. "You talk to her."
One elegant eyebrow raising softly, Helena sighed, closed her nail polish bottle and turned to Sam.
"Sam, we are your friends," she reminded her. "We want to help. You can trust us."
Sam's notebook seemed to weight a ton inside the bag she had on her back. Still, she shook her head.
"It's not that," she reassured, and sucked her cheeks in, nose twisting.
Or maybe it is exactly that, Sam's own mind told her. She was no good at trusting. She would rather keep her suspicions to herself. But saying nothing, walking out of Helena's room and do what she was here to do, alone, when she had been the one to involve the Lamb's Club in the first place, was—Sam groaned, nostrils flaring.
Well, she had backed herself into a corner, hadn't she?
"Okay, okay!" Sam gave in and threw the trio a fearsome glare. "But you must not whisper a word of this to David! Ever."
Harvey had just rolled his eyes and crossed his arms, sinking deeper into the chair.
"You already told us—"
"I need to get inside the cafeteria."
All three of them were looking at Sam now. Harvey leaning forward on the armchair, his eyebrows raised. Helena again softly blowing into her nails. Charles with his head tilted and a soft—
"Why?"
Sam sighed, an automatic gesture making her take her ponytail apart and tie it up again.
"I need to investigate," she said, crossing her arms.
"Investigate?" Harvey repeated, sounding bewildered. "What are you going to investigate? The police has left, the university cleaned the cafeteria—there is nothing to see."
Perhaps, but—Sam didn't have time to put her thoughts together. Sitting on the floor, Charles had just pulled his legs to his chest, he was talking and—
"I thought Angela was the one behind it," he whispered.
And it was the opening Sam needed. Just like that she turned the tables.
"It was Angela," she stated, hands on her hips. "But David wants to know how her brain worked so maybe if I can work out how things went down on the cafeteria it will help him."
Helena had visibly frowned just know, even so the question that followed didn't came from her but Charles.
"Shouldn't he go to the police for that?" he asked, sensibly. Too sensibly.
"The police wasn't helpful," Sam was forced to shrug and in that, at the very least, she didn't have to lie. "Anyway, since no one is downstairs anymore—You three are coming with me, aren't you?"
They were. And so Sam found herself going down the stairs to the dorm's entrance with Helena, Charles and Harvey right behind her. Despite the late hour and most people already being in their rooms, the dorm's common areas weren't as empty as she had hoped. In fact, voices could be heard coming from the corridor leading to the pool, which meant that dropping to one knee in front of the door to the cafeteria, Sam didn't exactly have any time to waste.
"What are you doing?" Helena asked peeking over Sam's head to find her searching through her jeans' pockets.
"Picking the lock," Sam informed.
Turning away from the large entrance hall and the twin flights of stairs leading to the Undergraduate Wing to the left and the Graduate Wing to the right, Harvey pinched his lips.
"You know how to pick locks?" he echoed, an uncomfortable note filling his voice when Sam fished an hairpin from her pocket and started to bend it. "Nice."
"We are all getting expelled," Charles sentenced.
Sam looked up, at the three heads looming over her, a bit impatient.
"You are the ones who followed me down."
And she really wished they hadn't. Still, much like they had done when coming out of Helena's room and down the stairs to the dorm's entrance, Sam only had to hear the lock click and pull the handle down to see Harvey, Charles and Helena following her inside the cafeteria.
St. Edmund's cafeteria was, like Sam was just now finding out, this large rectangular-shaped room with ancient stone walls, Gothic-style windows and a high wooden ceiling to which a large row of lamps had been attached to. There was a rather elegant, if small, fireplace further down the room and, here and there, surviving furniture could be spotted, hidden away under white sheets. Regardless of the place having been, just like Harvey had said, cleaned up since the incident that had left the cafeteria in shambles, there were still many signs of what had gone down. Everywhere, be it near the ground or up near the windows, there were deep gauges on the walls. A decapitated statue stood to the back of the room, the cords around it clearly stating it was undergoing restoration. One or two of the windows were actually boarded up, the merciless cold inside the cafeteria no doubt coming from there.
Even without the debris to make it look like a war zone, however, the cafeteria still looked desolated. No table had been yet brought in to replace the ones that had been destroyed, there were no chairs, no paintings, and the trophies Sam had glimpse in this "Before and After" image the University's newspaper had put up were absent too. In fact, the only thing that was here that hadn't been here before was this very small pile of boxes put right next to the door. Recognizing them from when she had been waiting for Charles prior to interviewing Anna, and also from almost jumping out of her skin when someone had let one fall right outside Anna's door, Sam gave them a curious look before closing the door.
Now standing in front of the boxes, Harvey, Charles and Helena in front of her, Sam looked down at the cafeteria. This place was simply huge. This would take longer than she expected.
"So, what should we take a look at?" Harvey volunteered, his voice echoing up the walls, the notebook Sam had just taken out of her bag and the rough sketch of the cafeteria she was drawing gaining a curious look. "What should we focus on? Should we mark the holes on the walls or something?"
Sam stopped for a moment, her lie from just a few minutes ago — when she actually thought they wouldn't follow her down — forcing her to nod.
"We should write down those, yes," Sam said, a quick search through the notebook seeing her put one of the black and white pictures of the cafeteria next to her rough blueprint. "Also, any small strange looking holes that might be on the floor."
Already busy running their attentions over the gauges on the walls, the entirety of the Lamb's Club came right back to her.
"Small holes?" Harvey repeated, suspicious. "Why are we looking for small holes?"
Sam shrugged, turning her back on them to look at the cardboard boxes behind her.
"Nothing special," she spoke, arms crossed and frowning at the small pile. "I just want to be sure there wasn't anything weird going on."
Harvey gestured around.
"Weirder than this?" he asked, only to be pinched by Helena. "Oh come on, what is she expecting to find the police didn't? Localized charges?"
Helena rolled her eyes. Still, not even Sam could deny that was a good question and unfortunately it might just have put the Lamb's Club on her trail. They were all looking straight at her now and turning her back on the small pile of cardboard boxes once again, Sam had little choice but to answer.
"I just want to make sure there are no signs someone other than Angela was responsible for this, okay?" Sam sighed and with that she looked at Helena, Harvey and Charles one at the time. "The police wouldn't think anything of some small holes they might find in the floor in the midst of all of the chaos, but they could have been used to secure a machine or something. There is no harm in us being thorough."
Everyone was frowning at her. Sam could imagine why. She probably sounded delusional.
"Look, probably there is nothing here," Sam tried to tell them and more importantly herself. "Angela made really weird things happen before. I just want a little piece of mind, that's all."
Harvey sighed, scrubbing his face, then pulling his hair back.
"You really are insane," he whispered and he looked around, up at the boarded-up windows and the scarred walls, then down to this large stain on the floor that looked a little too much like blood. In the end, he turned back at Sam.
"I'm in."
"Me too," Charles immediately joined in.
Both were looking at Helena now. Having still not given up on trying to dry her nails, Helena raised her eyebrows, looking from them to Sam.
"Do I really need to say it?" she said, sounding offended. "Of course, I'm with you!"
Considering how unsure Sam was with this arrangement, she wasn't expecting how grateful she actually felt right now. She wasn't expecting herself to be smiling.
"So," Sam went on to say and turned back to the place, right behind her, where the cardboard boxes were pilled. "Let's start to move these out of the way and start from there."
A determined step being taken towards the boxes, Sam leaned over the one at the top. Hands closing around it, prepared for an heavy load, she almost tossed the box up in the air once she raised it. Despite Sam almost immediately grabbing the box, stopping it from turning on her arms and falling to the floor, her saving didn't extend to it's contents. They came cascading from inside, tumbling to the floor. And trying to grab them, Sam was left wide-eyed. She had expected the box, all of the cardboard boxes really, to be filled with the medals and the trophies and other things that were missing from the cafeteria, but they weren't. What was inside, what had just fallen to the floor, this one thing she had managed to grab, was—
Fabric.
Clothes.
Sam was left with her eyebrows raised.
"Is someone moving out?"
A strange silence met Sam's worried question. A strange, long silence. Putting the box on the floor, picking what seemed to be mostly woolen blouses to put them back inside the box, Sam went back to face the Lamb's Club. They stood in line, looking uncomfortable. None of them having even moved to help her. Even Helena, who wasn't ever fazed by anything, looked unsure about what to do. And that made a weight settle in Sam's stomach.
"Who is leaving?" she insisted.
Standing in the middle of the group, arms crossed, Harvey shook his head.
"No one," he assured. "I mean—Sure someone left."
Helena rolled her eyes.
"That is helpful," she voiced, displeased, and turned to Sam. "Those are Angela's belongings."
Sam felt a sudden sadness sweep over her, attention going from the group in front of her to the cardboard box opened in the floor, to the green woolen blouse she had just folded and put on top and from there to the six or seven boxes still near the wall.
Oh—
"Is the university sending this to her family?" Sam asked in a quiet voice. "Back to Scotland?"
Again the silence. Sam looked up to find everyone staring at her.
"She doesn't know," Charles whispered and at that Harvey slipped his hands into his pockets, visibly uncomfortable.
"How out of the loop are you?" he asked.
Sam was staring at him, confusion leaving her with eyebrows raised and voice quiet.
"What do you mean?"
Helena took a step forward, away from the group, one elegant gesture pointing Sam's attention back to the box on the floor.
"Dear," she whispered. "Those aren't going to Scotland."