The way up the mountain was long and winding. Thick tree trunks and dark green foliage surrounded the narrow road. When James was a boy, it had been a dirt road and was quite treacherous. There was a cattle farmer who lived further up, well beyond the convent, who would collect James and Uma on weekends and take them up the mountain. He was a short man with a receding gum line who chewed tobacco. Later he would chew sunflower seeds. When he died of lung cancer, his children sold the farm to a resort company and the road was paved for tourists looking to hit the slopes.

"You never answer your phone," Jan was saying, "I haven't heard from you in months. You got your masters last semester, didn't you?"

James nodded. In one of the duffle bags, he couldn't remember which, his diploma proudly declared him an expert of anthropology and religion. He wondered if he would be able to continue working on his thesis while working for Jan. He doubted it. Magic was a full time career, according to Uma, especially now that monsters were sprouting out of the ground like weeds.

"How wonderful." Jan said before hacking up a glob of mucus and spitting it into his handkerchief. His blue eyes fluttered and his lips trembled and James was reminded of what a pretty corpse he was.

"Why don't you tell him about your boyfriend?" Uma asked.

James kicked them and Uma made a rude noise. Jan smiled, reaching into the front seat counsel and pulling out a box of tissues to wipe his eyes and blow his nose.

"Last time we spoke, James, you said you weren't looking for anything serious."

"I wasn't." James said defensively, "I hadn't been. We were just hooking up."

"Liar." Uma said, "How many Hail Mary's is it for lying about an affair?"

"That's enough you two." Jan said deftly, "You're exhausting me."

And just like that the conversation perished. The rest of their trip up the mountain passed in uncomfortable silence. When they arrived at the convents iron gates, James was the first to scramble out. He breathed crisp air for the first time it what felt like an eternity. London's smog could probably be attributed to his poor lung health as much as the cigarettes he smoked. He was already pulling them out of his breast pocket, lighting up with another cheap plastic lighter he had gotten. He lost the first one. They were greeted by Sister Hattie, the assistant director of the convent. She looked at James and his cigarette like they personally offended her but James wasn't in the business of feeling sorry for it.

"Hattie, is James' room ready?" Jan asked, he was being helped out of the van by Uma and the driver, who James learned was called Seneca Morgan, Jr., of all things.

"It is," Hattie said coolly, "should I tell him now that the building is smoke free or wait to catch him in the act like we did when he was in school?"

Her tone was venomous and James had just about enough of it, "What crawled up your ass and died?"

"James!"

"Mr. Haas!"

The conversation once again perished and James was shuffled through the courtyard to the newly build men's dorms which were meant to house the priests who came to study at St. Mary's. The expansion had been suggested by Jan, much to Sister Hattie's displeasure. It wasn't that Sister Hattie was abhorrent, she was only a few years older than James and Uma, but still younger than Director Jan. Her hair was the color of dirt and her face was blotched with an uneven smattering of freckles. Her calling out James' bad habits really was the pot calling the kettle black, though.

Anyone who attended St. Mary's knew that Sister Hattie was the resident bad girl during her young adult years. She was pushing thirty now, though, and eight years after the death of Lady Goodfellow, she had been hardened by responsibility. It showed in the way she jerked the doors opened and snapped at the rowdy boys who screwed around in the back pews. James would feel sorry for her, but then he would also have to feel sorry for himself. Lady Goodfellow's death had changed everyone at St. Mary's and they all chose to cope with it in different ways. Sister Hattie became a saint and James took her place as resident church delinquent, a position he held with as much dignity as a delinquent could muster.

The new dorms were horrifically modern and tasteless. Greige walls and crucifixes at the end of every hall. There was a plaque on the wall beside each doors, each with the name of a saint that the convent hoped its priests and nuns would embody during their studies. James had been assigned Saint Jude the Apostle. Patron Saint of hospitals and lost causes.

He gritted his teeth, "Can I get this taken down?"

Uma was unlocking the door with the key that Hattie had given them, glancing over their shoulder to give James a withering look, "What crawled up your ass and died?"

James' face went sour, "Don't throw my own words back at me."

"You deserve it."

James threw his hands into the air, dropping his duffle bags in the process, "You know what, I'll just book the next train out in the morning."

"You won't." Uma said, pushing open the door to James' room, "Go smoke a cigarette. I'm going to get you some soap and a towel. The showers are all on the first floor."

James glowered at them as they dropped the keys in his hand and went back down the staircase. James frowned at the key in his hand and then into the dark room that would be his domicile for the next however many months that he was needed. He still had a thesis to finish, after all, he was just taking a break for the semester.

He begrudgingly picked up his duffle bags, plus the one Uma had abandoned when they went to fetch bathroom supplies, and shuffled into the room. It was a shoebox, really, James hadn't lived in a single room like this for a long time. The bed was a twin, a twin xl, maybe, and there was a small writing desk in the corner. There was an old landline phone stuck to the wall, one that had a rotary dial. It seemed out of place in this minimalist hellscape.

Despite James' urge to be contrarian, he found himself cracking open the window and lighting up his second cigarette since arriving on the convent grounds. From  here he could see the old chapel, and the now ruined horse stable, long ago abandoned. Even the old chapel seemed to be sagging in on itself. He wondered if it was being maintained at all or if Director Jan and Sister Hattie decided to let it crumble along with the memory of Lady Goodfellow.

"Do you want me to show you the bathrooms?"

James looked back towards the door. Uma was stood there, holding a white towel and small package of assorted soaps. In the dim light that crept in from the halls, they looked softer. An old photograph. A memory. James dug his ash tray from the pocket in his backpack and set it on the windowsill.

"I'm sure I'll be able to find it." He said casually, "I'm not completely invalid."

Uma's lip quirked up, "Alright."

Whatever fight had been in either of them this earlier, it had passed. James still had his unread message from Noah on the phone, Uma still looked adorably rumpled. Maybe, just to spite them for their comment on the ride up the mountain, he'd respond to it before going to bed. If he returned to school next semester, he would need a place to stay, after all. James wouldn't tell Uma that, though. Relationships and Uma were a complicate thing. It was hard to tell how much they liked a person at any given time. James wondered if yearning plagued them in the same way that it plagued him, if Uma sought brown haired boys with blue eyes and dimples or if they didn't care or if they hadn't really thought about relationships since James had brought it up to them in secondary school.

"Director Jan wants everyone to meet up in the main study tomorrow morning. Early. Seven am. Don't be late." Uma tossed the bathroom supplies onto James' bed and promptly left. James blinked at the place that they had inhabited a moment before.

He turned back to look out the window, overcome by melancholy. It was quite possible that only James was still hung up about the past. But no, then Uma wouldn't keep digging at James' relationship with Noah. James sighed, grabbing the chair from his desk and sitting by the window. He took out his phone and tapped on the message from Noah.

>>Sorry I'm just getting this now.
>>I'm in Austria.
>>We can talk about it, but it might not end the way you want it to.

To James' horror, Noah called him. He cursed, awkwardly fumbling with his phone only to accidentally hit the answer button.

"James?"

James gritted his teeth and hissed when his cigarette burned passed the filter and singed his fingertips.

"Noah, hi."

There was a beat of silence.

"I really am sorry, James, I shouldn't have said what I said, I was just. It was a lot to take in and your friend was there, and they. I was being insecure."

James got up from his chair and softly closed the door to his room. He mulled over how to respond to Noah's confession on the way back to the window, fidgeting with the plastic lighter in his pocket.

"I know, it's," not fine, James thought, but that wasn't fair, "it's fine. You didn't tell anyone about what happened, did you? About the dead lady?"

Noah laughed and James heard in the ragged way it caught in the other mans throat that he'd been crying.

"How could I?" Noah breathed, "Who would believe that? Me and my boyfr... Me and my roommate are walking down the street and are attacked by a dead lady."

James cringed a bit. He really was the worst person on the planet.

"I'm sorry." James said, "I'm the one who should be apologizing, not you. Actually, I'm surprised you still want to talk to me."

"I just want to understand." Noah said quietly.

And wasn't it any academics desire to understand? Why they poured over textbooks and scoured journal articles from decades before? James sighed, looking up at the ceiling. There was a single overhead light casting odd shadows across the walls.

"It's too much to understand in a single night." He said.

"Can I try to anyways?"

James closed his eyes.

"It would be easier for you to hear it in person."