Chapter Nine

I kept waiting for someone to say that this was just a second Friday prank, a dark joke from someone without a good sense of humor. Even hours later, when we all saw Mr. Hollister's bluish body carried away through the academy portal, I still couldn't quite believe what was happening. A teacher was dead. My PE teacher.

After Luke told Principal Edgerton, we had rushed quickly to the woods, where Luke had found Mr. Hollister earlier. Apparently, Luke had been 'taking a walk past curfew' with his friends—another word for walking out drunk from the dorm on the second Friday night, the way kids often did. When they stumbled into Mr. Hollister's body, everyone else had gathered there, including mages and students.

They sent Luke to go find the principal, who had been drugged or spelled after getting out of the office over an hour ago and had no recollection about anything that happened in between the time she was in the office and the time we found her.

When we arrived at the woods, the principal dismissed every student there, including me and Luke. But before the mages dragged us away, I had seen Mr. Hollister's body on the damp earth. He lay there with his eyes wide open staring emptily at the night sky. Blood streamed out everywhere from his orifices: mouth, nose, eyes and ears, pooling under him and dyeing the earth a deep red.

I couldn't erase the image from my head even until the next morning. Amy had cried all night, shocked and terrified that someone could easily come into our academy and murder a teacher while we were on tight security. Because it was clearly murder by magic. I had seen that kind of death before.

My parents.

Saturday passed like a blur. No one had had any real sleep—some were devastated by a teacher's death and the others were too hung over to face any news. Mr. Hollister's students grieved for his death, but mostly, what we felt the strongest was shock. Yes, the principal had warned us early in the month that someone was in great danger and the school was on tight security for that—but after days without incident, we hadn't braced for something this huge happening to our academy.

On Sunday, shock faded and the rumors began to grow. Everyone speculated about how Mr. Hollister actually died and who did it. It could be someone from the outside. It could be someone among us. The principal announced tighter security for all of us, hiring more mages from the Council to guard the inactive campus sites like the gardens and the woods as well. Outdoor activities and classes were now limited to daylight only.

Dee told us at Sunday lunch about what her uncle heard at the Council. "They reported it in as a sacrifice spell."

Amy covered her face. "Please, I don't want to hear any of this again. Do you know what people do back in my old school if somebody dies? They put a grief counselor available for everyone. Here, everyone treats Mr. Hollister's death like it's a new episode of CSI."

Dee looked hurt. Hurting Dee was like kicking a kitten. You just couldn't help but feel guilty. "I'm also just as devastated as you and I'm sure everyone else is, too, Amy. I just mean that we should be careful because it can happen again. To any of us."

"But I thought Mr. Hollister is the 'someone' Principal Edgerton meant on her speech, remember? 'Someone in our school is under a great danger, and automatically puts us all at the same risk ' If Mr. Hollister is dead, doesn't that mean everything is over?"

"And you say you don't have photographic memory," Amy grumbled.

"I thought so at first, too. But from what my uncle heard, it doesn't seem that way. I don't understand everything, but I think whoever meant to kill Mr. Hollister was doing it to send a message more than anything else." Dee frowned. "You know, the Council doesn't want to announce anything official yet, but I think I know..."

"Know what?"

"Don't keep us in suspense!"

But Dee only shook her head. "Nothing." She sighed. "I just hope no one will get hurt again."

I opened my mouth to tell them that I recognized the way Mr. Hollister died, but I didn't really want to talk about my parents. They would think less of me if I told them how I really had never care about their death, because I remembered nothing about them. I would sound like a monster. I never felt sad when I thought back to the memory when Lord Ellison picked me up from my parent's death site. Angry, definitely. Confused, yes. Never sad.

In fact, the only reason I'd replayed the memory again now in my head was because one of my favorite teachers died. A teacher who had taught the same class I took since my freshmen year. Someone I actually knew better than the people who were responsible for my creation.

I was still thinking about it at night when someone knocked on our room. Amy shifted in her bed but didn't get up—this would be the first time she got any sleep since Friday. I rose to get the door, brushing my tangled hair with my fingers absently. A few days ago, hair color had been all I thought about.

Surprise filled me when the door opened to reveal Carter. He was dressed all in his mage attire, obviously on duty. I didn't know he had night shift.

"Riley." He cleared his throat. "You are summoned to the principal's office now."

"Now?" What could be so important it couldn't wait until mornig? And then I realized I was still in my pj's, no bra. "Wait a sec."

I went back to my room and slipped on a bra quickly, leaving the pajamas on. I didn't think Principal Edgerton would mind, seeing as she was the one who wanted to see me so late at night. I did wish I could learn the object transportation spell sooner. I would be able to change my attire anytime I wanted that way.

Carter and I didn't speak as we walked across the dorm to the main building. The night shift mages were all standing on guard, looking very tense and awake. I wondered if they had received some kind of admonishment after a teacher getting hurt under their watch, and that was why they were all doubly serious now. Carter, for example, had been acting all formal with me since Friday night. All he'd said was, "Are you alright?" And, "You need to go back to your room now."

The principal wasn't alone in the office when Carter led me in. There were a woman in red suit, a man in purple tie, and, to my surprise, Luke. I recognized them from a few days ago when the principal gave them 'tour' in our lunch hall. If I remembered correctly, the woman was a werewolf.

I didn't think I had ever met a werewolf face-to-face. And now I was doing it in my pajamas.

"Thank you, Mr. Weston," the principal told Carter. He nodded and let himself out. "Miss Williams, this is Claudia Dumont and Linux Warren. Councilmen, this is Miss Williams, recently renamed Riley Ellison."

Like my uncle had, the two of them scanned me up and down as if I was a strange breed of a horse.

"Mrs. Dumont and Mr. Warren are delegates of the Council. They just need to ask you a few questions. I will leave you to them now." The principal rose. "Come, Mr. Island."

In no time, I was suddenly alone with the two delegates. I had been brave enough to mouth off the Head Council because he was my uncle and I had been fueled by serious angst, but these two people were powerful strangers who could throw me into a dungeon if I said one wrong word. Warily, I sat, folding my hands on my lap.

"Riley," the woman said. Her voice was coarse and deep. "Where were you on Friday night?"

Her eyes, dark and slanted, were too intense to behold. I trained my gaze on the desk instead. "I was on detention with Principal Edgerton. Here."

"This detention is for your misdoing in Hollister's class?"

"That one was last week." I should probably be embarrassed to lay out my detention record. "This one is for mouthing off Mr. Abercrombie."

"After Edgerton left the office, where did you go?"

"Here," I insisted. It probably sounded petulant, so I cleared my throat. "Principal Edgerton said she would come back, and I still had more than two thousand words to finish in my essay. I stayed here until around ten, which is when Luke—Lucas Island barged in and searched for the principal. I was curious, so I ran after him and we went to look for the principal together."

"We found a couple volumes of textbooks on astral projection in your room," the man said. His name had sounded awfully familiar, but I couldn't place him. "You haven't taken any Astral lesson yet."

"No, but how did you—" I shook my head. "What are you trying to say?"

"What did you use those books for?"

The second Friday party had obviously been discovered by now. "I was trying to cheat out of detention so that I can attend a party, but I changed my mind."

"Did you use the spell to be somewhere else that night?"

"No. I told you, I was in the office until Luke came in."

The woman looked at the man. The man nodded. "One last question," he said. "Can you perform a sleeping spell?"

"I suck at illusion." Not the best word choice, but apparently they were satisfied enough with that.

Outside the office, the principal was talking to Luke in a hushed voice. Carter stood far off from them. When they saw me coming out, they stopped talking. "How did it go?" she asked me.

"You didn't say that they're questioning me as a suspect."

"Don't be dramatic, Miss Williams. You're only a witness. You may return back to your room." She gave me her usual patronizing look and went inside again.

Suddenly, I felt a heavy gaze on me. Luke. He was staring at me with a very strange expression. After everything this week, I felt like I had to say something to break the awkwardness. "Isla," I said, hoping he would say back, "Williams." That wasn't my name anymore, but since the principal still used it, why not him?

But he didn't say it. Instead, he dropped his gaze and beckoned to the hallway. "Come on," he said. "I'll drop you off at your dorm."

I sneered. "Like I need your protection."

Carter stepped in between us. I had forgotten he was there. "I'll drop off you two," he said as the dutiful mage he was.

If being alone with Luke was awkward enough, let me tell you what it felt like with Carter walking ahead of us. There were so many things I wanted to ask Luke in private, but I didn't dare in front of Carter. When we passed by the backyard pond, I was reminded by what happened there. Not the one when I drowned, but the last time when Luke and I were underwater together.

I felt his eyes on me, so I looked at him. Even in the dark, that shade of green were visibly luminous. I wondered if he was also thinking about the kiss. Maybe not, because he said, "You're not the only one taken in for questioning, you know."

"Great, the world is not about me." I felt a sense of déjà vu of having a similar conversation with him before.

"You are lucky you told the truth. Werewolves don't respond well to being lied to."

"How'd they know if I had lied?"

Carter turned his head to look at us and said, "Linux Warren is half-werewolf. The werewolf blood in him gives him an affinity to distinguish lies from truths."

Oh. Now I knew why his name had sounded awfully familiar. He was the famous lie-detector witch. A powerful weapon for the Council when they needed to handle prosecution and interrogations.

To my surprise, our first destination was to the boys' dorm. Luke didn't even glance back after we dropped him off. I expected that our walk would be just as silent as just now, when Carter led me to the office, so it caught me off guard when Carter walked closer to me side-by-side. He startled me further when we had arrived in front of my dorm room and he said, "Luke is not who you think he is, Riley. You will only hurt yourself."

I felt myself stiffen. "What do you mean?"

"I've seen the way you look at him."

"You're wrong. I don't even like him. How can you know me better than I know myself?'

Carter held my gaze and said, "Because it's the same way I look at you."

With that, he walked away.