Quite a few students are making use of the desks set up for study sessions, talking quietly or working on laptops. No one is paying me any mind.

Except for Beast, who is standing at the information desk.

“What are you doing? Do you work here?” I ask, not really expecting a response.

And I don’t get one. At least, not a verbal one.

Beast hands me a book.

It’s my book. The one I lent Fitz. Northanger Abbey.

A piece of paper flutters to the ground when I open the front cover.

I pick it up.

You will find your next clue where it all began, where cups of pens fly and bulletin boards stand vacant, but no longer.

The housing office. The next clue must be on the board. Are they even open now?

I glance up to see if I can get anything out of Beast—even a nonverbal cue might be helpful—but he’s gone.

And before I can question why I’m continuing this game, which has clearly been arranged by Fitz, not Jude, my feet carry me out of the library and toward the housing office. I want to see where this whole thing leads.

The housing office is empty—they close at four and it’s nearly six—but the door is unlocked when I push it open. There’s a flyer attached to the board with a pin.

I can be found in a pen, but I am not ink. I am named after a perennial plant and was forced to wear a dress.

Begonia. I pull out the pin and examine it. It’s an old Victorian style hatpin, all gleaming silver with a small pink rose at the top. I leave the office with a smile, remembering to pull the door on my way out instead of push.

The pen outside the barn is empty; Begonia must be off somewhere else for the evening. But wrapped around the fence is something colorful. I unwrap the item. It’s a canvas bag tie-dyed in bright colors. Words on the side read, I like big books and I cannot lie.

I pull it off the fence and open it up. Inside is the next clue.

I am flora not fauna, I am shrubbery not grass. You’ll thank me not to mention you and this word in the same sentence. Find your next clue under my foliage to the northeast.

I laugh. The bushes. Back at Jude’s? Must be in the northeast corner of the yard. And now I have a bag to put all the clues and items I’ve gathered. How very useful.

He remembered.

Ten minutes later, I’m walking back into Jude’s. It’s empty.

In the backyard, in the northeast corner, there’s a present. It’s wrapped in Christmas paper.

Excitement flickers through me and I rip it open.

Inside is a can of Spam, which makes me chuckle, along with the next clue.

Some take me in the morning, some take me in the evening, but I never actually leave.