The Mortal Heart (2 page)

Thirty Years Earlier: Duke University, Durham, North Carolina

“
In the Light there is Dark, and in the Dark there is Light,
” Lila Jane Evers translated, holding the translucent scrap of parchment, no thicker than onionskin, between her fingertips. “
Licentia in Lux Lucis.
Freedom in Light.”

But freedom from what?

Lila Jane sat back in her hard wooden chair—at her customary table for one—in the rare documents reading room in the Perkins Library. She didn’t have time for this. It was close to the end of the term, and she was halfway through the final paper for her American Belief Systems seminar. She’d already pieced together three Latin passages from a prayer book said to have arrived in the New World with the original Winthrop fleet of the 1600s.

The page in front of her now was more difficult to place. Lila Jane chewed on her pencil, absentmindedly twisting her long brown hair into a half-knot on top of her head. She was no closer to uncovering the meaning of the mysterious lines than she had been yesterday, or the day before or the day before that. She traced the nineteenth-century script with a single white-gloved finger. The gloves were a requirement when working in the rare books library, but she loved them. They were respectful and glamorous, a sign of deference and humility. The past was to be honored. History was to be teased out and puzzled over. Understanding was a triumph—something no one outside this room seemed to understand.

Which was why Lila Jane Evers, possibly the most beautiful girl in North Carolina, certainly the most beautiful girl on the campus of Duke University (once nominated the Sweetheart of Sigma Chi, to her own embarrassment), only dated men who had first set foot inside the rare books library—which dramatically reduced her options.

That was fine with her.

She sighed, slid the paper back into the folder, and returned it to the librarian at the desk, who also happened to be her roommate and best friend in the world. Lila Jane had used Marian’s keys at the library more often than her friend knew. Lila Jane was nothing if not singular in pursuit of her passions, and this nineteenth-century American verse—discovered in one of South Carolina’s oldest plantation houses—was a mystery she intended to solve.

“No luck, Janie?” Marian asked, already pulling on her jacket. She never called her best friend
Lila
, not when
Lila Jane
allowed for so many variations. Lila Jane was the best friend Marian had always dreamed of having but had never found. Lila Jane was every bit as serious as Marian, if a bit harder to predict. If Marian wanted to do well in school, Lila Jane wanted to understand the heart of the entire universe. If Marian wanted to debate Kafka over coffee, Lila Jane wanted to actually
metamorphose
.

“No luck, Mare. Not today,” Lila Jane said.

“Tomorrow’s going to be your lucky day,” Marian said. “I can feel it.”

“You can? Then I guess I’ll see you here tomorrow. I’m going to go brush up on a little Latin before I leave tonight.”

“Please, Janie. Just come to the Sunday Salon with me. You’ll have fun.”

“Okay, first, I would never go to anything called a
salon
. And second, you know I never have fun when I’m supposed to. It’s one of my defining characteristics.”

Marian nudged her best friend. “It’s at our apartment. You can’t hide.”

“Yes, I can. That’s why they invented Latin.”

Lila Jane grabbed her battered leather satchel and navy peacoat, taking off before Marian could say another word. The coat was comforting, and as soon as she slipped it on she felt better. It was a man’s coat, but Lila Jane had bought it anyway because she loved the enormous pockets. She was always finding some strange object and hiding it inside one of them. Marian joked that she was curating a rare old collection of her own inside that jacket. Lila Jane didn’t care what anyone said—another of her defining characteristics.

As Lila Jane left the rare books library, she felt the eyes on her back.

One pair in particular.

She cut sharply to her right and ducked through the door that led to the stacks, before anyone could follow.

Three hours later, Lila Jane regretted her decision to stay at the library. She was definitely being followed. She glanced out the window from her spot in the stacks again, but the moon was hardly a sliver in the wash of an inky sky.

She tossed her papers into her bag and hit the stairs. She hadn’t taken ten steps into the dim shadows of the stairwell when she heard the quiet footsteps behind her. And felt the eyes settle on her back.

Lila Jane shot out of the stairwell and into the main library lobby. Empty. Of course. She stopped just inside the entrance and tried to think.

She imagined the whole walk home. Across the quad, through the leafless trees, around the corner, and up the street, almost all the way to her apartment. Marian would be waiting. Their kitchen (which always smelled like burnt coffee) and their tiny living room would be full of pompous, beret-wearing lit majors drinking absinthe, smoking French cigarettes, and talking about
the gaze
—things Lila Jane normally hated.

Now she desperately wished she was there.

Behind her, the footsteps grew louder and then stopped.

She moved her fingers to the handle of the library’s front door. Outside, the quad and the streets were dark and deserted—the perfect place to grab a girl walking alone.

Please let me make it to the apartment. I haven’t been to Paris, London, Rome, or New York City. I haven’t seen the White House or the Capitol. I haven’t even fallen in love.

She listened. The silence unnerved her. Then it irritated her, and she took her hand off the door.

“I know you’re following me.” Her words echoed against the glass in front of her, though they were meant for the owner of the footsteps behind her. “I have Mace.”

“Well, that’s a relief.” The low voice belonged to a man, but there was nothing menacing about his tone. It almost sounded as if he was amused.

Unfortunately, Lila Jane wasn’t. “Did you think I was too stupid to notice you were following me?”

“I don’t think you’re stupid.” Now he really did sound as if he was trying not to laugh. “I think you might be the smartest person I’ve ever had the pleasure of
not
meeting.” His words had become warm and low, almost conspiratorial. “Yet.”

Lila Jane slowly turned around.

The boy—or man, depending on your definition—in front of her was tall and lanky, with dark hair and even darker eyes. His oxford shirt was finely stitched, and his pants looked unusually well cut beneath the dark overcoat flapping open at his sides. She tried to piece the resulting picture together, but it wasn’t a familiar one. Lila Jane had never seen a boy like him at Duke, or anywhere else.

He doesn’t look like a murderer. But you never know.

Either way, he was still rude to follow her through the entire library without saying a word until now.

Rude, or very strange.

Lila Jane frowned. “I’m Lila. So now you’ve met me. Can you leave me alone?”

He tilted his head, watching her. His eyes were even darker than his hair, but his skin was pale, almost translucent. “If your name is Lila, why does your friend from the library call you Janie?”

The longer Lila Jane stared at him, the more she realized he looked like someone who never left the library. Had she seen him there?

“You mean Marian? She calls me all sorts of things,” she explained as if they were friends. “My middle name is Jane. Lila Jane.”

Why do I feel like I have to explain myself to him?
she thought, her cheeks flushing.

“Like Jane Eyre. It suits you.”

For some reason she wanted to tell him that
Jane Eyre
was her mother’s favorite novel, and Jane her favorite literary heroine. Instead she asked him a question. “And you are?”

His mouth turned up at the corners. “Charmed.”

Lila Jane crossed her arms. “And rude. And you could be a murderer, for all I know.”

“A murderer? Is that what you thought?” The hint of a smile faded, and he shoved his hands into the pockets of his coat. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. Actually, I want to help you.” She must have looked as confused as she felt, because he added, “With the
Licentia in Lux Lucis
.”

Lila Jane froze. He was referring to her parchment—the mystery that had consumed her for the past week. “What about it?”

“It’s not a poem. It’s a—it’s a kind of spell.”

“A spell? You’re serious?” She stared at him. He looked serious, but she couldn’t be sure.

He shrugged. “You took Fliegelman’s Text and Context seminar, didn’t you? I was in it, too. Back row.”

“I never saw you there.” She smiled. “But, you know. Front row.”

He looked at the ground. “I know. And I’m sort of an expert at not being seen, with tonight’s rare exception.”

“Go on.”

“Remember the week Fliegelman lectured on performative language? Incantations, spells, speaking in tongues?”

“Yes. Your basic “Madwomen in the Attic” syllabus week. I remember.”

“That’s when I figured it out. I’m not saying the
Lux Lucis
works as a magic spell—”

She laughed. “Of course not. That would be ridiculous.”

His eyes stayed locked on hers, steady through the dim light. “Yes. Of course. Ridiculous.” Then he smiled. “What I
am
saying is that’s the reason it was conceived.”

She frowned. “The
Lux
? A spell? How do you know that?”

“Because I think I’ve found the rest of the… well, I guess you’d call it a
spell book
.” He said the words as if they felt as strange to say as they were to hear.

A spell book?

As in magic spells?

Like the Salem witch trials magic? Like hypnosis and psychics and superstition?

It would make sense—and align with the rest of her research on the origin of American belief systems. In fact, it might be the perfect conclusion to her term paper.

Part of her wanted to run to the apartment and forget this entire conversation. But she couldn’t. The thing that burned inside her—the power that had demanded she leave behind the stifling smallness of her life and move to the big city of Durham—the same force that compelled her to return to the rare books library day after day—it had taken hold again.

Lila Jane knew better than anyone that once the questions took root in her mind, there was no power on Earth that could stop her from finding the answers.

She exhaled, a ripple of excitement expanding through her chest. “And this book? You still have it?” She found herself closing the distance between them. It was more than just the pull of a strangely exotic-looking college boy with a slow Southern drawl; she was on the hunt now, and it wasn’t for a date. It was for meaning—and not just the kind that could be found by translating a few Latin words.

Freedom in Light? It’s not just a prayer. It means something bigger than that. It has to—I can feel it.

“You mean the spell book, if that’s what you want to call it? Of course. Right here in my bag.” He nodded—perhaps a bit smugly, she thought.

It felt like a dare, and she took it. Though, deep down, Lila Jane Evers knew she was the one daring herself.

“Well then.” She tossed her head defiantly.

“Well what?” He looked amused.

“Well then, what are you waiting for, Mr. I-Carry-Around-Nineteenth-Century-Texts-in-My-Bag? Let’s go take a look.”

He paused for a long moment, as if he hadn’t been expecting her response. “Are you sure, Jane? I’m sorry… I mean, Lila Jane?”

“You can call me Jane. My grandfather does.” She shrugged. “So does my best friend.” She didn’t feel like Lila Jane; she felt like Jane, the heroine in a story yet to be written. Lila Jane lived in small towns and did small things. Jane went off with strange classmates in the night to study mysterious parchments—even spells, if that was what they were.

“And I’ve never been more sure about anything in my entire life,” she added.

It was the truth.

As sure as Lila Jane had been that someone was following her, now she was equally sure about the
rightness
of the boy in front of her.

Of him, and what he could show her.

Suddenly, she wanted to know everything he knew—about the
Lux
and about anything else he might have seen from his seat in the back of the class.

He drew a pale bare hand out of his jacket pocket. “I’m Macon. Macon Ravenwood.”

She took his hand. It was freezing cold, colder than the night around them, which made no sense, considering it had been in his pocket. “What a grand old Southern name you have,
Macon
.”

He didn’t smile. “You have no idea. But there’s an all-night coffee shop a few blocks from here, if you have a craving for… research. We could call a cab.”

“Let’s walk. It’s not that cold, and I’ve never been afraid of the dark.”

He raised an eyebrow.

When she finally pulled her tingling hand away from his, she slid it back into her giant pocket with all the other things that couldn’t be explained, and followed Macon into the darkness of Chapel Drive.