Overwhelmed with the urge to go outside and look in the garden, Vicar resisted and reminded himself that the mysterious Dr. Radcliffe had likely not buried anything suspicious on his own grounds. Wherever Winn had been stationed was convenient enough to maintain a gravesite, but had he dug up the earth on his property, anyone of them over the years could have dug it up. Curious if the trio of suspicious youths ever made their way back to Winn's old home, Vicar rose from the bed and scratched at his hair. He was beginning to feel the effects of hiding in dusty, cramped rooms all day.

He ought to make some use of himself while he rested his eyes. Having already found Gaston's letters and notes, Vicar supposed now he could find evidence of Winn's fiction. The desk was important enough to her, and her writing no doubt held more clues, less noticeable details about the strange world she'd been caught up in. Though, Vicar only needed to remember that her journal had not been in her room, but hidden away in a trunk, covered by layers of years and dust and spiders in the attic, far away from her room. Something so treasured as her storytelling would no doubt have been stored in a more private location, and he gave up the idea for the time. Instead, falling back on his old habits of musing and reminiscing, Vicar thought of Amelia once more, of her strange friends and the effect they'd had on his brief time in America.

Amelia, he learned one evening, some weeks after she'd stayed behind to talk with him, had been romantically involved with at least two of the group before the Latin Club, as they were fond of calling it (the irony, one of them always seemed to make mention of, was that they hardly studied Latin, and indeed, the name was a joke of sorts to appease their other professors). It was in a medical class (he'd forgotten the name of it, so outside of his realm of interests it was that he really had no hope of maintaining the name) the initial romantic pairing had occurred. Amelia and Bobby, he learned with a mild fascination, were close enough in age that nobody had cared when they'd begun openly kissing or holding hands, but Bobby being slightly her junior, had reason enough to be shocked when their relationship ended and Amelia chose Clark as her next pursuit.

Clark, being the oldest of the group and the only one sprouting gray hair, albeit prematurely if one was inclined to believe him, had been somewhat of an outcast, or more accurately, a loner amongst the group. Had he not met Amelia, it was doubtful he would have joined any club at all. Despite the shock this relationship caused, and the sulking Bobby did for weeks afterwards, Amelia eventually met with one of Clark's friends from a different school within the university, and thus, the first four were formed. This friend was Henson, who was fond of yelling and general bouts of argumentative behaviour, often seen as aggressive by other students. Why he and Clark were acquainted by something Vicar never discovered, as they were as opposite as a pair of friends could possibly be.

The final two members of the Latin Club were brothers, an anxious James and a snobbish Harrison. Vicar had supposed Harrison to be the elder of the two, but learned from Amelia (who possessed an endless sea of knowledge on nearly every facet of their lives) that it was the meek James who'd been born in the wrong body of a firstborn son. His temperament, though easily scoffed at and perfect for being abused by students like Henson, suited the group well - who better to scout for books and resources than the shy young man who'd sooner be discovered snogging a book than another person as Amelia had? Whatever information James learned was immediately passed on to the younger Harrison, who was fond of sharing the news with as much condescension as possible and as many lofty words as he could cram into a sentence. Vicar had been rather annoyed with him the first time he'd sat with the group, as his headache was mildly furious at having to decipher the myriad of useless words Harrison used. Still, snobs had their use, and it was Harrison who had, with the help of the equally loud Henson, convinced the dean to allow the club into the official registry with the school board. The club limit was conveniently maxed out at six members, a limit bound by scant funding, as they often claimed.

With this group of educated and eager-to-prove-themselves men, Amelia led the group down their various paths of study, almost all of which were related to their ulteriour search into the supernatural world. Dominating whatever scene they stumbled upon, the Latin Club became notorious for being uppity, secretive, and on the whole, uninterested in the mundane work of their school life. It had been Amelia's suggestion to take up headquarters in the library, and it was this choice that doomed Vicar to eventually becoming their unwitting accomplish in research.

"Where did you learn German?" Bobby, always full of questions, had been peering over a stack of books barricading the librarian from the noisy group. It was a frightfully rainy day out, and the group was anxious to do something, but restless from the lag in their studies. In fact, they'd spent the better part of the hour bickering about who-knew-what, hence the barricade.

"Where? Where else but England."

"Yes, well... why?" Bobby's eyelashes fluttered. He was an exceptionally beautiful boy, with large round eyes of a majestic brown. His lips were almost feminine, his cheeks high and slender. It was no great question why Amelia had taken an interest in him. "Was there a German neighbourhood near your home?" Vicar laughed aloud and nudged a book out of the way.

"I suppose I wanted to learn something different, something historical. My family is sadly lacking in polyglots, as experienced as they might be elsewhere."

Bobby hummed as crossed his arms, resting his chin on the thin bones. "How do you greet someone?"

"What time of day? An elder or a comrade? Your mother or father?"

"Oh..!" Bobby made an amused sound and shook his fingers under his chin. "How would I greet you, in the afternoon?"

"Guten Tag, Herr Andrews."

"I rather like that! And in French?"

"Unless you'd like to be responsible for the failing grade of all of your classmates for a lack of study material, I suggest you ask someone else, Bobby." The chiding was gentle and the boy didn't move from his place, only smiled.

"Very well... Which do you prefer, of the two?" Vicar set down his pen and rubbed at his eyes.

"Why," he asked with a groan, "does that matter?"

Bobby had the sense to blush and laugh. "We're all passionate about the dead and what's really stopping it. Are you so passionate about the work you do, or is it all for the stability of a roof over your head?"

"I suppose the roof," Vicar answered with a shrug. "I do live here most of the time, after all. It's not that I don't enjoy what I do." He struggled to find the right words. "Languages are a community in their own right. They carry a history in what they retain, and in what they have got rid of, haven't they? It's far more interesting than your silly pursuit of something you couldn't possibly know the answer to." Upon him saying this, a gasp went out - the rest of the group had given up their caged-in irritability with one another to eavesdrop. Amelia, Vicar noticed, was the only one not looking at the librarian as though he had three heads. Meeting her gaze and shrugging, he went back to his papers. "Don't act as though I'm wrong. It's a foolish pursuit and you're wasting your time, which I will remind you, you do not have an endless supply of."

"Like you're not wasting it yourself," cried Henson, cheeks flaming with indignation. "We tarry away in here while you, what, translate that which has already been translated? Grade papers for the actual professor?"

"Henson!" Clark exclaimed (quite a rare feat for the soft-spoken man). "Mind your manners!" He appeared to take on the full embarrassment of what his friend had proclaimed, but the group's energy matched the words, and Vicar knew they were right. As much as they wasted away their days looking into some meaningless future where death did not rule all, Vicar was wasting his days in the writings of others. At least they had the sense to be excited about it, as Bobby had pointed out. Stepping onto a chair to make up for her lack of height, Amelia perched herself behind her lover and hung her arms over the older man's shoulders. "You're all quite silly," she said simply, with a smile on her face. "None of us know where we're going after this all, and none of us know how to stop the end from coming along. It's all a waste of time, isn't it? Why not look forward to discovering something while we're at it, or keeping sane in what's already been done?" In a few sentences, she'd reduced the group to honest chuckles.

And so the day went. More came and passed, some more productive than others, but always with Amelia keeping sense alive. On occasion, James or Clark would ask Vicar for his help in translating a phrase or locating a book on physicists in medieval France, and Henson and Harrison would bombard any student unfortunate enough to need a book with lectures on the reserved hours of the club. Only Amelia seemed immune to the powers of being in an exclusive group, and indeed, she was increasingly absent from the Latin students as the school year drew on.

Clark had admitted to Bobby one such languid evening, that he suspected Amelia had moved on from him, and professed a great admiration for the boy having coped so well when he was in the situation of being abandoned. Not knowing how to take this news, Bobby had shrugged and hidden the extent of the pain he felt, but the friendship between the two was strengthened for it.

Before long, midterm exams arrived and left Vicar with more than enough time to work on his translations and papers. The abundance of silence was overwhelming, and he found himself leaving the confines of the library at last to wander the school grounds.

The Pendragon-Hall University (the clunkily-named school christened after two academics who'd died in a transporting accident, being crushed to death by the desks they'd been charitably helping install at the future location of the school) was characterised by many who came to visit as being haphazard. Clumsy and messy, the layout of the seven buildings that made up its walls were each of a different style and constructed by a separate group of builders for nearly every month of the year. Nobody could say why this was so, but the general suspicion was a grand case of being haunted. The workers who'd put together the school refused to talk about their construction on the project, however, and the walls went up without much more of a fuss. The result was a sprawling maze of schools that would lose a new student for days without finding the correct class. Statues had been carved by a collection of exchange students in return for room and board (housing was often more expensive for such students, and the free labour was welcomed by the staff). The inspiration for the sculptures was taken, supposedly, from the various people that worked, studied, and cleaned the university. Aside from the eerie renditions of student life, plants of a most unnatural kind had been encouraged to grow in the fields around each building, resulting in a rather ugly display of alders, backwoods, and even a rare wych tree, which had been acquired by a great deal of bribery on behalf of the proud president of Pendragon-Hall. A strawberry and chestnut grove had been established behind the science program's location, while a Norway spruce and a silver birch grew in tandem closer to the front entrance of the school.

All this Vicar observed in the twilight hours of an early October evening, a pleasant chill sweeping leaves of every sort of colour around him. As unplanned and unorganised at the university was, nature left unattended produced truly beautiful results.

Unfortunately for Vicar, he had almost no sense of direction, and found himself as predictably lost as anyone would have guessed he'd be. He would have been lost indeed without the sudden arrival of help in the form of a darkly-dressed student who called out in the rapidly-fading light to the distressed librarian. "Come now, don't follow the willows! They have a nasty desire to wrap up anyone who walks in their shadows." Whirling around and sighing in relief, Vicar found himself looking at one of those alternative types, an ageless man with cheap headphones strung around his neck and a cassette player attached to his black pants. Hair was handsomely tossed about a pale face in such a manner as to suggest carelessness, and his eyes! Vicar blinked to look at them, so strong was their reddish-brown hue.

"Are you here as my Miss Dubois?" he asked, half in jest and half certain the lad would have no idea what he referenced. When put up with strange situations, Vicar found himself helpless to this sort of joke, as he called it weakly, but it was a rare thing indeed to see his attempts at nervous humour answered with laughs.

"You hardly look a Justine to me," came the smiling answer, and, too stunned to resist, Vicar found himself rescued from the forest of foreign trees and drawn inside with the stranger.

Vicar

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