No, she was far more concerned about the things she could only see out of the corner of her eye, the voices she heard when no one else was listening.
Ianto’s threats had been vague, but she knew he didn’t want to see her and Preston together again. So they began working only under the cover of night.
It would have taken days, if not weeks, to read through the whole diary with the careful attention it required. But the entries they had read pointed over and over again to Colin Blackmar. If Preston was to be believed, they didn’t have much time to solve the mystery before the rest of the literature college came pounding at the door—or before Ianto banished him from the house.
“We could only have days,” Preston said. “We have to focus on Blackmar now.”
Effy knew nothing about Blackmar other than her memories of that one terrible poem, which she had a clear vision of reciting while wearing an itchy school sweater.
“He’s about as patriotic a writer as you can imagine,” Preston said. “Openly nationalist. There’s a reason every Llyrian child has to learn ‘The Dreams of a Sleeping King.’ And the king is venerated because he slaughtered hundreds of Argantians.”
Preston’s voice tipped up at the end; he always sounded uncharacteristically nervous when he spoke of Argant, and his normally subtle accent became more pronounced.
“I bet the Llyrian government wishes they could put him in the Sleeper Museum too,” Effy said. That was one thing all the Sleepers had in common: they had to be from the South.
“Oh, Blackmar is probably pitying himself that he had the misfortune to have been born north of Laleston. I suppose he could make up some story about how he was an orphan child, taken in by nobility, but with Southern blood running true in his veins. There you go—Sleeper Museum, eternal veneration, magic.”
Preston’s tone dripped with irony, and Effy rolled her eyes. “It must be immensely frustrating for you, to put up with all our Llyrian superstitions. Just because it’s an archaic belief doesn’t mean it’s not true.”
“Argant has plenty of its own superstitions, let me assure you. But I think magic is just the truth that people believe. For most people, that truth is whatever helps them sleep at night, whatever makes their lives easier. It’s different from objective truth.”
Effy laughed shortly. “No wonder you’re such a terrible liar.”
It did charm her to know that despite all his monologuing about good lies requiring a willing audience, he still flushed and stammered over his falsehoods.
“I don’t like lying.” Preston folded his arms over his chest. “I know it’s not realistic, but the world would be a better place if everyone just told the truth.”
It was a strangely naive thing to say. Effy had never thought much about the lies she told—she didn’t feel good about them, but they didn’t rend her apart with guilt, either. Lying was a form of survival, a way out of whatever trap had been set. Some animals chewed off their own limbs to escape. Effy just tucked away truth after truth, until even she wasn’t sure if there was a real person left at all, under all those desperate, urgent lies.
But it had been a long time since she’d even tried telling anyone the truth. She just assumed no one would believe her. Preston especially, with his pretentiousness and disdain for anything that couldn’t be proven. Yet even though he held to his principles, he wasn’t as close-minded as she’d initially imagined him to be. He truly considered all the things she said, all the new information presented to him—and he’d even told her he was perfectly willing to be proven wrong.
Somehow, Effy found herself blurting out, “Do you believe in ghosts?”
Preston blinked at her. “Where did that come from?”
“I . . . I don’t know.” Effy had surprised herself with the words. “I’m just curious. I know you don’t believe in Sleeper magic, but ghosts are different, aren’t they?”
Preston’s expression suddenly became very hard. “There’s no proof that ghosts are real. No scientific evidence to support it.”
“But there’s nothing to prove they aren’t real, is there?”
“I suppose not.”
She expected Preston to say more, but his mouth had snapped shut and he wasn’t meeting her eyes. It was uncharacteristic of him to be so withdrawn. Usually it took very little coaxing to get him to wax poetic on practically any subject.
“And there are so many ghost stories,” Effy pressed. “So many sightings—I bet in a room full of people, half of them would claim they’ve seen a ghost. Every culture has ghost stories. That seems significant.”