According to the navigation it was another six minutes before they'd reach the school. They had already passed Ellsworth and were now driving north to a lake. The school was built at the shore of said lake, which offered the students the options to take sailing and rowing classes.
The landscape was changing to trees instead of the meadows they had seen before. Every now and then the blue of the lake could be seen through the dark green of the forest.
Morgan was driving and talking to JJ, who was sitting passenger. The two had started discussing a possible Motive before getting of course and talking about the hikes in the area.
Reid was sitting behind Morgan and reading the Russian copy of Anna Karenina. At first he had discussed motives with them, but when the topic changed he decided to switch to his book.
And Emily? She was looking out the window trying to see if she could already see the school. Or at least students, who were doing their P.E. Class on and at the lake. Of course she had heard her friends discussion about possible motives and now hikes. But she decided to just stick to looking outside. She could feel that something was going to happen.
They broke through the forest and the dark green light, that surrounded them for a while abruptly stopped. Instead bright sunlight hit her eyes.
And she could see the castle. Only one left turn she thought, then they'd be there.
Marie Curie School for Girls was an old school. Originally it had been there to teach young women from high society skills a married woman needed. Like how to be elegant, handle the household etc. Nowadays it was school to prep their students for college. Holding an incredibly high standard of learning and extracurriculars, they were still only affordable for the high society. And it was still girls only. According to the school handbook, the founders believed that a separation between the genders starting at age 9 was helpful for the learning environment for both girls and boys. They continued to say that, this way neither group had to spend their days learning useless skills for their gender.
Of course this statement had been written over a century ago, but the fact they were still quoting it through this day gave her weird chills. Either they were stuck in the past snobs or they were straight out anti feminist, believing that women shouldn't be able to do the same things as man. Maybe a mix of both.
The grey walls of the school came closer, she had read on the website that it was supposed to imitate some of the great Scottish castles. Staring up at the big grey wall she knew what they meant. They drove onto a courtyard just as grey as the rest before Derek stopped the car.
"This is it." He said while looking around. "This place gives me the chills. It's like nobody is here." Emily nodded in agreement while opening her door and stepping outside.
The four agents followed a directions arrow pointing them to a smaller door on their left. First find the office, talk to the principal, then everything else. As JJ pushed open the office door they were greeted by the sight of an older woman. Her blonde hair was already streaky with silver grey strands. She looked up. "Yes?" Derek stepped towards. "SSA Derek Morgan. These are my colleagues. SSA Jennifer Jareau, SSA Spencer Reid and SSA Emily Prentiss." The older blonde looked at Emily for a second, before nodding. "You're the FBI Agents. Follow me I'll take you to the office of Headmistress Brown."
They followed her out of the room and a long dark corridor, while the woman talks about the school and the students. Than she turns to Emily. "You don't happen to have a cousin or niece named Florence right? Because we do have a Florence Prentiss in our registry."
She felt Derek grab her arm, before she felt herself stumble. Her sister was here. In this school and she hadn't known. This meant her sister was in the same danger all the other girls were in.
"Uhm no that's my sister." She answered making the secretary look at her again. "That's one big age difference." With that she let it be and knocked on a door, before opening it.
"Ma'am the FBI Agents are here." "Bring  them in." The secretary opened the door and the four of them went inside while the door was closed behind them.
"The police told me you'd be coming. So what do you need?" She looked tired, she clearly was younger than the secretary, but it looked like she hadn't sleeped in ages.
Emily stepped forward. "A list of all girls that live here and all teachers, staff etc. Everyone who is on the campus." The other woman nodded. "I'll get to it right away." Morgan pointed to himself and Reid. "We are going to check the scenes where the bodies were found. Do you have a teacher who could show us where to go?" She seemed thoughtful. "I'll go with you and my secretary will get you that list." "We need permission to talk to everyone who was last seen with the girls or is best friends with them or has found a body." JJ said and the woman nodded again. "I already prepared that list for the Police. Here you go." She handed JJ a list of around twenty names. Emily looked at it over her friends shoulder and there it was Florence Prentiss. Next to her name was noted that she was friends with Lola and Anna Mae.
For the next two hours they interviewed both staff and students, so far they'd only found what they already knew.
Perfect students and athletes. Always happy to lend a hand and help those in need. All of the girls were in different charities. They seemed like the perfect girls. Even asking students who weren't on the list, didn't give them more information they all agreed that the girls were amazing and it was a tragedy that they had died.
They were just finishing up with a girl named Matilda Heyes, a friend of Mary's who was the first person who could tell them a little more about Mary's personality. According to Matilda she was always striving for perfection and held herself to really high standards. But she didn't know about any male contacts either so they let her go.
"Next is your sister." JJ said to Emily who nodded. "I know. I wonder if she'll recognize me and be mad." The door swung open and a pale girl walked in. She wasn't very tall maybe 5'4'' and incredibly thin. That was something the two had noticed all morning. All of the girls here were very thin.
The young girl had dark brown her which she had tied back to strict bun, her brown eyes were trained on her squeaky clean black shoes. She was wearing the same dark blue uniform as everyone else. "Florence Prentiss?" JJ asked and the girl looked up, before gasping. "Emmy?" She asked and stared at the dark-haired agent. Said agent got up and started to walk towards the younger girl. "Hey Flo." She whispered while opening her arms and gently pulling the younger girl in.
Florence went stiff when she felt her sisters hand touch her. She hadn't been hugged or in general touched in a while, since the school code of conduct didn't allow students to touch each other.
"I missed you so much." Emily whispered as she let Florence go and deep down Florence felt herself agreeing. She had missed her to, but in the end it didn't matter. Her life was planned out and Emily constantly missing things and moving around the world was something she had gotten used to. Of course a card for Christmas or her birthday would've been nice, but she couldn't really hold her sister to higher standards then her parents could she?
"We have some questions about your friends." JJ said when she noticed that the two sisters were both calm enough.
"I know you want to know about Lola and Anna Mae." Emily nodded while carefully leading her sister to a chair. Her hand still on the younger girls back and her eyes trained on the girls entire being. So small and frail.
"Right what can you tell us about them?" JJ continued as Emily took a seat close by.
"Well Lola and I both joined seven years ago. I think we're two out like four girls that joined that year. So we shared a dorm for a while. She joined the volleyball club and worked really hard. She had this dream of winning every championship while she's captain." "So you would say she's an high achiever?" The youngest Prentiss nodded. "Yeah she always wanted to be best on everything she did. I mean in a place like this it's not surprising but still." "What do you mean?" Emily asked.
"There's a scoreboard about achievements. They higher up you are the more freedoms you'll gain. Since it's a year round school and none of us go home, a lot of girls don't have the drive to work hard. So with this system the Headmistress created competition between us and the prices can be an afternoon in town or maybe another hour after lights out. It really depends." "Can we see it?" JJ asked and the younger girl pulled out a tablet. A few clicks later a scoreboard popped up. All girls that had gone missing were in the top ten and to Emily's horror so was her sister. They could also see different colors in different sections both wondering what that meant.
"What's the different colors for?" Emily asked. "It's what group your in. They all have names like the worst category, the black one is called coal and so on. The green one at the top is called emerald. It's also represented in our school uniforms see?" She showed them her scarf in the same emerald color as her name on the tablet screen.
Looking back down at the ten names Emily knew this was bad. Someone was killing the emeralds.