Killing November

by Adriana Mather

  “No,” I say, scratching my arm even though it’s not itchy. “I just wanted to get him to stop attacking me.”

  “By attacking him?”

  “By confronting him,” I say with sincerity.

  “Well, I would stay away from him if I were you,” says Conner. “I don’t think causing more conflict is wise at this juncture. Do you?”

  I just look at him, knowing that anything I say right now will only make it worse for me.

  Conner crosses his legs and leans back. “You also told Headmaster Blackwood that you wanted to go home.”

  My heart thuds.

  He takes his time. “It’s odd that you would ask to go home after everything your family did to get you into this school so late. Unless…possibly you’re running away from something?”

  “I’m…” I desperately want to ask him what my dad did to get me in here, but something tells me that letting Conner know I’m ignorant of that would be a very bad idea. I rub the back of my neck. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?” he repeats, leaning into the words.

  “I’m actually not sure why I said I wanted to go home. I think I was just frustrated at being questioned so intensely about a murder I didn’t commit.”

  “If you didn’t commit the murder, the questioning shouldn’t frustrate you,” he says.

  “Well, I’m not perfect,” I say.

  Conner seems like he doesn’t buy it. “I look forward to our next talk, November. I believe you have a lot to think about. Although I don’t suggest lying to Headmaster Blackwood again. It will end badly for you if you do.”

  I’m not sure which lie he’s alluding to, and I get the sense that might be the point—to make me nervous about all of them. I get up. “Can I go?”

  He nods and I don’t hesitate. The moment his door closes behind me, I shudder. They actually think I did it. And the truth is, even I think I look like a suspect. I had a reason to get back at Matteo, I was out that night, and a guard saw me coming from the hallway where Stefano’s body was discovered. Ash warned me I might take the fall. But somehow I never expected that I would get punished for something I didn’t do.

  I head full-speed away from Conner’s office, and almost walk smack into Aarya.

  “November!” she says in a bright tone. “Just the girl I wanted to see. I hear you’re missing something.”

  I take a good look at her. If she’s in a happy mood, it can’t mean anything good. “Besides losing my patience if you don’t move, I’m not missing a thing,” I say, stepping to the side to go around her. But she steps with me, blocking my path.

  “Oh, I think you might be. It’s a little something, but it says a lot.” She’s using her American accent again.

  “Either spit it out, Aarya, or get out of my way,” I say, not in the mood for her games.

  “Mrrrow.” She curls her fingers at me like a cat. “Someone’s testy today. I take it your meeting with Dr. Conner didn’t go well? Tough luck. I bet mine will, though. I think he’ll be very interested to know I found one of your hairs in my room this morning.”

  I laugh to cover the stomach-sinking horror I’m feeling. “You’re really obsessed with me, aren’t you, Aarya? Don’t get me wrong, I’m flattered. But analyzing some hair you found is going a little too far, don’t you think?” I scan my memory of the moments I was in her room. Did I touch my hair? I guess I could have knocked one loose. Or maybe it was on my cloak and dropped off.

  “There’s good news and bad news, Ember. Can I call you that?”

  “No.”

  “The good news is that I wasn’t actually sure the hair was yours. The bad news is that you just convinced me that it is. I’m shocked”—she makes a dramatic display of widening her eyes and touching her heart—“that Ash and Layla didn’t teach you how to sneak around properly. I was sure we had higher standards at this school. But I guess we’re slipping, letting any old body in this place.” She sighs.

  I step around her, and this time she lets me pass.

  She laughs. “You really shouldn’t break into other people’s rooms, Ember, unless you’re prepared for the consequences.” There’s something joyfully threatening about her tone, like a psychotic clown in a horror movie.

  I keep walking.

  “Kiss kiss!” she yells after me.

  I WALK DOWN the hall to my room, my brisk pace fueled by my uneasiness. “Layla?” I say as I unlatch the door and walk in, but there’s no response.

  I close the door and head for my bedroom.

  “She’s in the library,” says a voice, and Ash steps out from behind my door, sending me flying two fast steps backward.

  “Geez, Ash. You almost gave me a heart attack!” I say.

  “Then stop being so easily surprised,” he says, and I cringe inwardly. An image of him telling me to leave Aarya’s room last night flashes in my thoughts.

  “You’re right. You’re totally right. I need to stop being so jumpy. I need to stop being a lot of things,” I say, and head for the window, patting the curtain with my hand.

  “I already checked there,” Ash says, and I walk toward Layla’s room. “And I checked your bedrooms.”

  “Oh,” I say, and stop.

  He takes a good look at me. “You’re practically shaking. This isn’t just about finding me here. Something happened.”

  “Aarya knows I was in her room,” I say. “She claims she found a piece of my hair.” I look at him for some sign as to whether Aarya might be bluffing, but he gives nothing away.

  “I warned you about covering your tracks,” he says.

  “Believe me, I definitely learned that lesson. Not that I think I can stop hairs from ever falling from my head. But I agree on the grass. I won’t be making that mistake again. Or hesitating the way I did, either,” I add, frowning. “I could have gotten us caught by Aarya. I did get myself caught.”

  “Mmmm. I see. And you’re scared of her?”

  “She’s completely unpredictable.”

  Ash shrugs. “True. But Ines is a better fighter. If I were you, I’d be more worried about Ines.”

  “This really isn’t a joke.”

  He plops on the couch. “Welcome to Academy Absconditi, November, where the scheming never stops, and where someone is always trying to push you off a ledge. You’re in a dangerous situation. You’re taking calculated risks to get out of it. But risks are still risks.”

  I rub my hands over my face.

  “You need to get yourself together,” he says, his voice serious once more. “I’d like to think that this is just you getting out your emotions in private. But I’m here, so clearly it’s not. Unless this display means you’ve decided to start trusting me, which as of yesterday I would say wasn’t the case.”

  I study his face for a few seconds, but his expression is as calm and hard to read as usual. “Can I?”

  “Trust me?” He laughs. “You’re actually asking me if you can trust me. You’re a fascinating girl, I’ll give you that.”

  I sit down next to him on the couch. “I’m serious. Layla’s a good person. You, on the other hand, are less of a good person. Everything is a game to you,” I say, and Ash starts to respond, but I stop him. “The other night in the trees, up on that sky bench, you told me that you’re a Wolf and that Wolves are loyal. And I asked you who you’re loyal to, remember? I know that at the very least you’re loyal to your twin. Two minutes with you guys and that’s obvious. Now, Layla has decided to help me. Who knows why, as I’ve proven to be troublesome ever since I got here. But she has anyway. And I don’t know if you’re on board just because Layla is making you, or if it’s because you were out past curfew and helping me helps you, or if maybe you do hope that I’ll get blamed and get the hell away from your sister.”

  Ash watches me curiously.

 
“But what I do know is that every single thing I tell Layla, she tells you. Even if I wanted to filter information to you, I can’t without filtering it to Layla first. I won’t make it on my own without her. As much as I hate to admit it, I’m too vulnerable. So yes, I’m asking you if I can trust you.”

  For the first time since I met Ash, he actually looks unsure. “That depends.”

  “Okay, I can work with that,” I say quickly, relieved that he’s at least taking my question seriously now. “What does it depend on?”

  He looks at me for a long moment, searching for something. “Well…you’re the one student at this school I know nothing about. I don’t know where you stand on important issues or where your immediate family stands or even what kind of people you’re aligned with. Rule number one isn’t a joke. Handing out information about yourself and your family at this school is dangerous. But that doesn’t stop us from trying to learn the basics about one another. Not knowing anything about you makes you more interesting for sure, but it also poses a potential problem.”

  I’m reminded of the way Ash looked at me after Layla repeated Nyx’s accusation about Layla being less neutral. “Then why was Layla so adamant about me not talking about myself?” I ask. “If you guys don’t know who I am, wouldn’t Layla be trying to figure it out?”

  “Layla cares too much and is far too moral, if you ask me. Plus, she already told you. She thinks you’re reckless,” Ash says, and smiles. “Not that that’s always a bad quality. And even though she doesn’t know why, Layla knows you were paired with her for a reason. Nothing at the Academy is random, especially not roommate assignments. It’s likely that our immediate families are aligned in some manner, so by revealing unknown information about yourself in the middle of a hallway you could be compromising not just yourself but her, too.”

  I nod. “I actually really appreciate her shutting me up. I’m not sure what would have happened if she hadn’t.”

  He leans back but doesn’t take his eyes off me. “See, that kind of naïveté is exactly what confuses me about you. I find it nearly impossible to believe you really didn’t know what would happen to you. Strategia are never clueless. Yet the entire time you’ve been here, you’ve been asking questions everyone else knows the answers to, performing brilliantly in some classes and blundering your way through others. Layla told me what you did in mind games and that you fretted about it for an hour afterward. She said she couldn’t tell if you’d actually planned to win the challenge or won by default because you were simply running away from Brendan. Sometimes I think you’re the worst liar I’ve ever met and other times I think you might be a genius.”

  I exhale. I got lucky when Layla and Ash thought my naïveté was intentional.

  “I’m going to need you to tell me the truth,” Ash says. “Not the abridged version, or there can’t be any trust between us. Why don’t things add up about you?”

  I steel myself and I look him squarely in the eyes, so that he can read me, so that he knows I’m not lying. “I am really good at some things,” I start, “and completely untrained in others. Layla guessed correctly. I did run from Brendan because I don’t know hand-to-hand fighting the way you guys do. All those questions I asked you, I asked for real. My cluelessness isn’t an act.”

  He listens intently, frowning. “That’s exactly the problem. How could you not know how to fight or not know the answers to basic questions every Strategia learns as a child?”

  “Because I wasn’t raised the way you were raised,” I say carefully.

  “And how were you raised?” he asks.

  I take a deep breath. Time for the truth. “I had no idea I was a Strategia before I came here. I still don’t really believe it.”

  He stares at me for a long time, his invasive look on hyperdrive. He opens his mouth to say something but closes it again and frowns more deeply.

  I tuck one of my legs under me on the couch. “I only ever heard the word Strategia once before, as a kid, and even then I was eavesdropping. I swear I didn’t know what it meant, or who they were, until you told me. And I still have absolutely no idea why I’m here.”

  His frown is practically a scowl. “But you recited the Bear Family attributes the night we snuck out.”

  “Because of a game I played with my mother when I was little. I had all these stuffed animals, and we used to group them into families. The three words that described each family were something I thought my mom just made up. No one was more shocked than me to discover that those words actually mean something in real life.” I level my gaze at him. “Admit it: you must have suspected something was off with me then or you wouldn’t have had me recite them.”

  This time Ash’s eyebrows go up. “No. Asking a Strategia to recite their Family attributes would typically have resulted in a snarky response. I was just feeling you out. I suspected something was off when you actually took me seriously.”

  “Yeah, well, see what I mean?”

  He stands up and walks around the rug in front of the fireplace. I can almost hear him replaying our conversations in his thoughts, looking for discrepancies. After a good minute, he turns to me with a serious expression. “Your behavior matches what you’re saying, but how in the hell did you get in here? We’re prepped from before we can speak, and lots of kids don’t make the cut. Only the very best get in, with some exceptions made for ruling families and their firstborn children. And if you belonged to one of those, even if you were a distant cousin, everyone would know who you are.”

  “Well, that’s not me,” I say.

  “I know.”

  “And there are things I’m not trained in.”

  “Yes. Obviously. It’s just so strange.” His seriousness doesn’t disappear, and his intense look returns.

  “Knock it off with that look, Ash. At this point I’ll tell you anything you want to know, just ask me,” I say.

  He doesn’t respond with a sarcastic remark or a laugh like I was expecting. “You’re certain you’re part of the Bear Family?”

  “Well, my mother was Italian and, yes, I’d say she was definitely a Bear. At least based on the games we used to play. But my dad is American,” I say.

  “American?” Ash says like he has a bad taste in his mouth. “But still Strategia?”

  “Honestly, I didn’t think so when I first came here,” I say. “He’s just a regular guy. But he used to be part of an intelligence agency, so—”

  Ash groans and shakes his head.

  “What?”

  “Intelligence agency? November, your dad’s Strategia. Please tell me that you can see that.” He gives me a concerned look. “Being an intelligence officer is one of the most basic covers for our particular…skill sets if we’re ever caught doing something.”

  I frown. When he says it like that, it all makes sense. In fact, it all seems terribly obvious. But the idea that Dad lied to me all these years isn’t funny in the least.

  Ash sits back down next to me. “There are some Strategia in America, but we don’t tend to settle there. As I told you, most Families originated in what’s now Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East. It’s not that it’s never happened; it’s just rare. We do our job, whatever it is, and then we go back to our Families. I would have heard if there was a highborn girl from the Bear Family who ran off to America. It would have been a huge scandal.” He pauses. “It was your mother who Matteo recognized, right?”

  I nod. I’ve thoroughly broken Blackwood’s sacred rule number one, and I still don’t know any more about my family, except that apparently I don’t know them at all. “Okay, wait, back up. Start from the beginning.”

  “The beginning?”

  “Am I right that you’re a secret society?”

  “We, November,” Ash says gently. “You’re part of this, too.” There is amazement in his look. “And yes, I suppose that’s what mo
st people would think about us.”

  “And…are we assassins?” I say, and almost choke on the word.

  “When we need to be, but we’re also so much more than that. We can be selfish and competitive in advancing our own agendas, for sure. But we also help the world avoid catastrophe. Most people look forward, without ever bothering to consider the cyclical nature of history, and inevitably re-create the same disasters over and over again. Strategia stop the mechanisms that create those disasters.”

  I nod and jump into my next question before he decides to stop answering them, because for the first time since I got here, some of what I’ve observed at this school is starting to make sense. “So there’s a system in each Family, right? Different jobs within Strategia—governing, leadership, servants, guards?”

  “Yes,” he says slowly, and he sounds different, like for once he’s present and not five steps ahead. “Strategia Families grew in numbers after they stopped working for the rulers of their given empires and became independent. Everyone needed to pitch in to keep the Families functional and hidden.”

  “And what about us specifically, what about people who go to this school?” I ask.

  “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation,” he says, more to himself than to me. “We’re the heartbeat of Strategia—the best strategists in our Families.”

  I hear him, but it still feels like he’s talking about other people, not my family, not me. “Layla was saying something about the firstborn kids of the leaders of each Family taking over for their parents. So that means you have to be born into Strategia, right?”

  “Well, most of us are born in, yes. But outsiders can be approved by the leaders of any given Family,” Ash says.

  I think about that. “And you said that Layla and I were likely paired as roommates for a reason?”

  “Well,” he says, and pauses. “When I said that, I meant that generally the Bears and Wolves don’t have any animosity between them, and there’s every likelihood that our immediate relatives have some kind of an agreement. But I’m not so sure anymore.”