Page 93 of Switching Graves

“Poppy?” Ava pushes, her voice raising with suspicion.

I run a hand down my face, irritation grating at my very core. I can’t do this. Not without talking to Poppy first.

Where the hell is she?

“I’ll explain everything when I can,” I promise them before I turn back to Matilda. “You knew we were coming. You claim I have the answers, but I don’t. I need help. What are we supposed to do?”

Matilda gives us her back as she rifles through the drawers of a desk that’s sitting against the back wall. It’s so buried beneath a mountain of boxes, I completely missed it when we first walked in. Chancing a look toward my friends, I quickly avert my eyes when I’m met with three separate suspicious glares.

“Here it is.” Spinning on her bare heel, she holds up an amber, glass vial with a corked lid. “You need to go into the woods alone, drink this, and let them show you what you need to see.”

“The woods are forbidden,” Ava dismisses.

“Yeah, there’s a reason they’re called ‘The Dead Woods.’ Nothing survives them,” Jonah adds with dramatic annunciation.

Without looking back at my friend, Matilda frowns at me. “Take this, and you’ll understand why.”

“How am I supposed to get into the woods without being caught?”

And alone? Who knows what lives out there? There’s obviously a good reason they’ve banned students from going in them, like Jonah said.

She shoves the vial into my palm, closing her fingers tightly around mine. “Trust me, no one is actually watching.”

I stare down at our interlocked hands, silently debating if any of this is real. If it is, do I really think it’s worth undoing all the work Poppy and I have put into making this happen?

“Why are you the only person in Nocturne Valley with gifts?”

It’s bothered me since we first visited her before the Falconry. Why, in a town full of people considered Null, is she so privileged?

“I’m not the only one. It just appears that way.”

A vague, non-answer.

“What happened to everyone else?”

“Youdid.” She opens her arms toward the four of us. “Ravenshurst happened. The powers that be decided the collective energy should be directed toward the legacies of the elite. They took too much and left us with nothing.”

“You blame us for their lack of gifts?” Ava asks, dumbfounded.

“No one knows who to blame. All they know is that this town was once a beautiful, thriving place that was beaming with energy. Now, it feels like a graveyard, and we’ve been forced into oppression so you and your future generations could thrive. You can imagine how that might conjure up some resentment.”

“We had no control over that,” Ava insists, her brows furrowed and fingers wrapped in such tight fists, her knuckles whiten.

“And yet, you all continue to accept your invitations to Ravenshurst. You continue to support the machine that has stripped us of so much. You serve as a cog, then go off on your merry way, back to your lives in the outside world—where we are not welcome—and you thrive. You live freely and openly, while we remain oppressed.”

None of us has a response to that, though I can guess what they’re all thinking.

They didn’t know. No one at Ravenshurst knows what they’re contributing to when they receive those letters. They have no reason to believe there is anything they should do, but celebrate.

When she’s sure we won’t come back with a rebuttal, she continues.

“The Founder’s Day Festival is this week, so everyone will be distracted with that. They purposely hold a majority of it over the workweek. That way students will be caught up in finals and won’t be able to attend the main events,” Matilda rambles, pulling her hands away from me to put some distance between us. “We spoke already about how you’ve been treated by my fellow Nocturnians. I feel compelled to tell you that it has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with the people in power. They fear you and the threat you pose to their agenda. They’ve manipulated our small town into fearing you as well. Why else do you think they’ve restricted your time here?”

Miss Mercer did say it was for our safety. Was she actually trying to tell me that the people of Nocturne Valley were dangerous?

“Why wouldn’t they just shut Ravenshurst down if they’re so hellbent on keeping us out?” Jonah rubs his jawline in thought. I’m surprised he’s buying this.

Matilda offers him a tight smile. “Your tuition goes much further than our measly taxes.”

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