The Mortons

Peter was two years younger and in awe of me. As kids, I’d taught him how to wrestle, how to throw a knife. Everyone called him my little shadow.

When he followed me to Helshire, I showed him the college secrets: the dead drops in the library basement, the derelict buildings of the Old Campus, the Dining Commons’ best desserts.

In return, Peter gave me handmade presents — a coffee mug he’d made, an egg from a robin’s nest, drained and painted with the family motto. His gift wrapping was clumsy, the eggshell in pieces when I opened it.

I extended my invitation in the Dining Commons, in the side room reserved for us legacy students. It was empty except for Regina Lindqvist and her latest boyfriend, sitting in the far corner.

“We’re climbing the back of Dewitt tonight,” I told Peter.

His eyes lit up. Dewitt Hall was the tallest building on campus.

“Is this a test?”

“What do you think?”

He smiled. Everything was a test.

“Bring climbing shoes and gloves,” I said.

“Equipment, really?”

“It’s nine stories.”

Peter sucked on his straw, making the dregs of his soda gurgle. “Jessica. Someday we’ll need to get out of a building with whatever we’ve got on. We have to be ready!”

“Being ready isn’t the same as looking for danger.”

“You sound like Grandma.”

“Our grandmother is wise.”

It was Grandmother Elizabeth who’d given me the order. She’s been in charge of our family since I was five years old.

“She thinks I’m reckless,” he said. “They all do, but I’m just brave. Like a Morton should be.”

Mortons are fearless. That’s not the same as brave.

We walked from the dining hall to his dorm, still arguing. The evening sky showed faint smudges of cirrus clouds. Cool settled over the campus, quieting the wind that had stirred the trees all day.

“I don’t need climbing shoes. I’m better barefoot, anyway.”

“It’s freezing.”

“No gloves then. I can blow on my hands.”

“Okay, no gloves,” I relented at the door of Peter’s dorm. “But we’re only going halfway up.”

He smirked, thinking he’d gotten his way.

“Wear black, and don’t tell anyone,” I said. “Let’s call this your first official mission.”Something dark stirred in his eyes.

“I won’t tell a soul.”

 

We met at midnight at the old willow tree that guards the northern edge of campus. Its branches hang all the way to the grass, a hidden space for drinking, smoking, and groping in the speckled dark.

We heard voices inside—ordinaries. I sent Peter to deal with them. He crept to the edge of the leafy curtain and let out a low animal growl. The voices went quiet, then three boys with beer cans and puffy coats ran out the other side, scampering toward the Quad.

Even freshmen know not to linger when odd things happen at Helshire.Under the umbrella of leaves, the ground was littered with empty bottles, vape cartridges. Helshire was the last stop for a certain kind of rich kid. For us legacies, these wayward, rebellious children were networking opportunities. Future customers.

“Did you bring chalk?” I asked Peter.

“That’s cheating.”

I held out my bag and quoted our Aunt Veronica. “Never climb without it. If you have to, use whatever’s around. Dirt, even dust.

”Peter scowled as he chalked up, not noticing that I hadn’t put any on my own hands.

The parking area between us and the looming bulk of Dewitt was clear, the path empty. Our breath made clouds of condensation.

“Come on,” I said.

Dewitt Hall had a gothic heart, with a modern wing added in the seventies, another only twenty years ago. Inside this architectural jumble, some classrooms were full of screens and lab equipment; others had blackboards that rolled up and down. I led Peter to the original building— a round tower topped with crenelations, guarding the edge of campus like a giant rook.

“Too easy,” he said, testing his hands on the rough- cut stones.

“Stay behind me.”

I started up, careful and unhurried. A climb like this wasn’t going to wear Peter out, but if we took our time, the cold would gradually seize his muscles.

Through a third- story window, the freshly waxed floor of the Disruptive Anatomy classroom gleamed with moonlight. A battered plastic skeleton hung by the window, organs rubber- banded in their places.

Disruptive Anatomy, taught by our Uncle William, was not in Helshire’s catalog. No ordinary student had ever watched us legacies murdering that skeleton countless times. Freshman year, the garrote and the knife; broken bottles and billiard cues as sophomores. This year we’d used shoelaces and scarves, ballpoint pens, twelve- inch strips of duct tape, a knee- drop on that breakaway sternum.

“But always first with the mind,” Uncle William would say after each kill. What exactly this meant was the subject of after- class debates at Riley’s Bar.

“I can go faster,” Peter said.

“Mortons don’t boast.”

“That itself is a boast.”

I almost smiled.

It’s not that Peter was unintelligent or lacked discipline. But he exercised his talents in unseemly ways. Back at the estate, he bullied younger Mortons. Here at Helshire, he stole from ordinaries. Nobody ever caught him in the act, but he’d wear a pilfered watch a few times before storing it away. He kept his secrets, but let you know he had them.

As Grandmother warned us, being mysterious is not the same as being unseen.

Halfway up, he tried to pass me.

I forced him to the left, away from the easy handholds of the tower. The new wings’ walls were flatter, smoother, the mortar almost flush with the bricks.

Peter was up to the challenge. He dug his fingertips into crannies, used shallow toeholds to lunge for window ledges.

“Too easy,” he muttered as he passed me.

“We’re not going all the way,” I called softly.

He looked at me over his shoulder, as gleeful as when he was adding sticks to a fire. I climbed faster, pulled even. The cold was starting to grip my tendons.

The top of the tower bulged, the overhang slowing me. Peter grasped the highest window ledge a few seconds before me.

“I won!”

“Shush. Voices carry in the cold.”

“But you’re the best climber in the family!”

I pulled myself onto the ledge beside him. “I’ll tell everyone you beat me.”

“Grandma Elizabeth?”

“I’ll tell her first.”

“This climb was her idea, right?”

“Yes,” I said. No point in lying. “Check this out.”

I reached behind me and pulled open the window a few inches. The steam- heated air of the Physics Lounge spilled onto my frozen hands.

“Unlocked it this morning,” I said.

“Hah, you knew I wouldn’t stop halfway.”

I nodded.

“We should climb back down,” he said.

“Peter.” I made sure he heard my disappointment.

“I can do it!”

“Some tests are about restraint, not skill.”

“You sound like Grandma again,” he said, but as he leaned forward to peer at the ground, eighty feet below, I saw it— a flicker of doubt in his eyes. He rubbed his hands together, breathed on them.

My own muscles felt brittle in the freezing air.It was time for his test.

“If you want,” I said. “But go around that overhang.”

“Don’t need to.” A moment later he was swinging from his hands.

I counted to five, picked up one of the stones I’d left on the window ledge that morning, and threw it into the trees.

It landed with a crack, like a branch snapping.

“Peter,” I whispered over the edge. “Someone’s on the path!”

I heard his feet scrabbling for purchase. Then his toes must’ve found a crevice. I heard nothing but his breathing, sharp and fast.

I waited for him to speak again. All his weight on four points, motionless, his muscles searing in the cold.

“Are they gone?” he finally whispered.

“No.”

“But Jess . . .”

I threw another stone.

The snap of its landing quieted him again.

Peter’s mind would be racing as he hung below me, fingers going numb. If he moved before I told him to, I’d report his failure to the older Mortons. Worse, he might be spotted, and met by campus security at the bottom.

Humiliation, weighed against the risk of falling.

Every second hanging there, Peter was making the choice I’d expected. He couldn’t see his own faults— his boastfulness, his need for praise, for spectacle. Always an explosion when a blade would suffice.

He couldn’t see the test he was failing.

A full minute later he spoke again.

“Jess, I have to come back up,” Peter whispered. “Can you give me—”I heard a fearful catch in his breath, and then the scrape of flesh on stone.

He didn’t cry out on the way down, didn’t make a sound. A proper Morton at the end.

After the crunch came, I peered over the edge.

Peter’s torso was twisted halfway around, his neck at a lethal angle. His legs and arms were splayed.

“What the hell was that?” a voice carried from the path.

Someone really was down there in the dark.

I leaned back on the ledge, out of sight, listening to them crash through the underbrush. When they reached Peter’s body, I shoved the window open and rolled inside.

The lounge was still and dusty— cushioned couches, antique reading lamps, ball- and- stick models of molecules. The ticking radiators made the air warm and sticky, like blood.

I took a few deep breaths to slow my heart, then headed for the stairs.On my way down, I pulled out a burner phone.

“Grandmother,” I said. “It’s done.”

“And how are you, Jessica, now that you’ve done it?”

“In a hurry. Someone heard him land.”

“Peter loved you.”

That almost made me stumble on the worn stone steps. Love was not a word Grandmother Elizabeth had said to me before. Was this also some kind of test? Then I saw what she meant.

“That’s why he fell.”

I could hear the cool, ancient smile in her voice.“Very good, Jessica. Fides sine cura.” The family motto.

Loyalty without care.