Killing November

by Adriana Mather

  He doesn’t answer right away and looks down at his hands. “You remind me of someone.”

  “Oh.”

  “Someone I grew up with.” He looks over at me. “She was fast and strong and funny as all hell. And there was something so free about her, like the whole world was hers if she wanted it. I used to be envious of her, how she always saw the best in everyone, even when they disappointed her.”

  “You guys aren’t friends anymore?”

  “She wasn’t Strategia,” he says, and his voice tightens.

  “What does that mean? You stopped being friends with her for that?”

  “I was told to, warned,” he says, and pauses. “But I was just a kid. I was stubborn, and I thought if I could just keep her away from my Family until I was supposed to go away to school, it wouldn’t matter.” He sighs. “And then one day she snuck into my house while there was a Family meeting going on, and my father caught her. He was furious. I swore to him that she didn’t hear anything. I promised I would talk to her, end our friendship….”

  I have a sinking feeling in my gut. “Oh no.”

  He doesn’t meet my eyes. “There was a fire in her house the next day.” He rubs his forehead—the kind of tell he never shows. “And a month later Layla and I came here.”

  I don’t need to ask if she died, because I can see the guilt written all over him. I’m fairly certain he was in love with her.

  I smile.

  He frowns. “Don’t you think smiling at a story like that is bad form?”

  “I’m smiling because it proves that under all those carefully controlled looks and that distracting flirting you’re capable of real emotion.”

  “Wait just a minute, my flirting is not distracting. My flirting is captivating, weak-knees quality.”

  “And I’m smiling because that story shows you also think of me as a friend,” I say.

  “I do think about you,” he says, even though that’s not what I said, and for a second we just stare at each other. Then all of a sudden he looks away.

  I clear my throat. “Where’s Layla?”

  “Library,” he says.

  I suddenly feel guilty. I’m sure she’s doing research, trying to figure out how to get me out of this mess, and I’m hiding in my bed.

  “In the dining hall earlier—” he says, as if reading my mind.

  “Yes. I remembered something. A conversation with”—my voice catches—“my aunt. My mom’s sister.”

  He nods and it’s clear that he understands she was the one who died.

  “She said that my parents’ Families were fighting before I was ever born. And after what you told me about the Lions and the Bears—”

  “Your father could definitely be a Lion. That would certainly have complicated their entire relationship and would explain why your parents chose to raise you off the grid. In fact…your mother may have been a Bear with decent status, and your father may have agreed to join her Family when they married, which in turn gives us a better idea of why you were able to get into the Academy so late.” He’s speaking fast and his eyes are bright.

  “Maybe my mom’s status got me considered for admission here, but why would they make an exception for me when I lack all the training everyone else has been getting since birth?”

  He looks at me like he’s considering the question. “Maybe you weren’t brought up steeped in Strategia culture, but you’ve clearly had training. You bested Nyx in the dark, you’re a phenomenal climber, you picked out my lie on instinct, and you managed to save both Aarya and my sister in your last challenge. Not to mention your skills with knives and swords. You’re a perfect candidate to come here, even if you’re behind in our strategies and history. But why you were sent in as an upperclassman midsemester…” He leans back on his elbow. “And then there’s the fact that Matteo seems to recognize you, and has some sort of mysterious grudge against you.”

  “Do you think the Bears killed my aunt?” I say, and my tone shifts.

  He frowns momentarily. “I couldn’t say. But clearly you think that’s a possibility or you wouldn’t have done those acrobatics in the dining hall to tackle the most prominent Bear here. But there are a lot of unknowns in this scenario, such as what reason Bears would have for killing one another and holding grudges.”

  I shake my head and avoid his eyes, not ready to admit how dark my fears are. That my dad and Aunt Jo must have known they were being hunted and so Dad sent me here. And now Aunt Jo is dead, which means the only person left to find is Dad. I get up and start pacing. They could be closing in on him right now. The gravity of the situation hits me hard.

  “Yes?” Ash says.

  “I’m acting like a selfish wallowing baby. We need to figure out who I am and stop whoever keeps killing people in this school. And fast.”

  “You’re just coming to this conclusion?” he says.

  “No. I mean, yes. I mean…whether Bears or Lions are responsible for killing my aunt, it’s all connected to what’s happening here. I’m sure of it. And there is no way I’m waiting around for someone to take out my family one by one.”

  He gives me a knowing smile. “Took you long enough.”

  “I’m serious, Ash. Tell me what we need to do and I’ll do it,” I say.

  “Well, first, we need you to go to the dining hall and eat some dinner without attacking anyone. We’ve got a long night ahead of us.”

  AS I BRAID my hair in front of my vanity mirror, I’m shocked at how spent I look—dried out, as Emily’s mom calls it when you’ve cried so much that you don’t have anything left in you. At home, if I felt destroyed over a guy or a bad test, I’d go to Em’s house and she’d let me do my crying, and then we’d eat junk food and watch movies until we passed out on the couch. Here, with my crying done, I’m preparing to hunt down information about killers who might be trying to blot out my entire family. I’m not even sure how to process that.

  Layla knocks lightly on my bedroom door and I open it.

  “I’m ready,” I say, and she hands me my cloak.

  I put it on and follow her into the common room, where Ash is on the floor peering through the crack under our door.

  “Is he waiting for the guard to pass?” I whisper.

  “We’ll barely have a second to spare. So keep up and stay silent,” she whispers back.

  I nod at Layla, letting her know that I get the gravity of the situation and won’t screw it up.

  Ash stands, counts seven seconds off on his fingers, and silently opens the door. We all jet out and he closes it behind us without so much as a creak. And we’re off—down the hall and into the stairwell. Ash doesn’t bother to listen at each floor like I did when I was alone. He must know where the guards will be.

  We reach the bottom of the stairs and stop. The guard in the foyer is walking into the vine courtyard, and the instant the door closes behind him we run across the stone floor into the hallway near the teachers’ lounge. We follow it all the way down to where it dead-ends at a door. The shadow cover is good here, and the only sound is our breathing. However, if someone were to turn the corner there would be no place to hide.

  Layla pulls out some kind of multitool that looks like a more complex version of the molded paper clips Ines used in our last challenge. She gets on her knees to access the lock better and slips the tool into the keyhole as I stare down the hallway. Metal clinks and my heart thuds before my brain verifies that the sound is coming from us and not from a guard.

  Not four seconds later, Layla pulls the door open. We slip through into total darkness. I put my hand up and my fingers graze the heavy curtain that covers the doorways here. This door leads outside? I hear the lock click back into place and I hold my breath.

  Ash pulls the curtain back by an inch, and in the dim moonlight I catch a sliver of the outer wall that surrounds our school.
Layla taps my wrist and we’re moving again, through the curtain and along the tree-lined building. We pass two doors and stop at the third. Layla pulls out her lock-picking tool. I definitely don’t remember any of these doors from the inside floor plan. I’m not surprised that there are parts of this castle you can only access from the outside, but I do wonder how bad the punishment will be if we get caught sneaking into them.

  Through the trees, I get a better look at the outer wall. It towers over our four-story castle, with round turrets that rise up at each corner. Trees line the outer perimeter and create a tall canopy, just like in our inner courtyards. I wonder how many people have tried to climb their way out of here over the years. I’m sure there is some sort of trap at the top of that wall, and from that height, there’s no way you wouldn’t get seriously injured if you fell from it.

  Layla stands up and opens the door an inch. She nods and we follow her through. And to my surprise, I find myself in a huge kitchen with an arched ceiling crossed with wooden beams. Shelves along the walls are filled with hundreds of jars of spices and stacked plates. Pots of every size hang from iron hooks, while rolling pins and serving platters are left out on a long table to be used for tomorrow’s cooking. The kitchen has always been my favorite room in every house, and this one looks like it was plucked from a fairy tale.

  The sound of a key sliding into a lock across the room snaps me out of my awestruck moment. I run after Ash and Layla to a door against the right wall. Layla lifts the latch and we practically dive into the dark room.

  Layla eases our door closed just as we hear the outside one swing open. Ash pushes us all flat against the wall. My shoulders are pressed between his and Layla’s. It’s significantly colder in here than outdoors, and I’m sure that if there were any light my breath would be visible. I inhale deeply to slow my heart and anchor my feet in a position where my weight won’t shift.

  The latch on the door lifts and I hold my breath, not daring to move a millimeter. Dim light spills into the room, and so does an ominously long shadow of a very muscular guard. If he pushes the door open too far, he’ll hit Layla, and if he comes in past the door, he’ll see Ash for sure.

  He moves forward, his candle illuminating the room, and I find it nearly impossible to believe that he doesn’t hear my heart. Light flickers off the shelves of cloth-covered ceramic pots. But just as quickly as it appeared, the light diminishes, and the door closes, casting us back into darkness.

  Layla was not kidding when she said we’d barely have a second to spare. If she hadn’t opened a single lock fast enough or if there had been even a moment’s delay somewhere, we would have been screwed.

  Ash’s shoulder pulls away from mine as the outside door closes and locks. I exhale like I’m a deflating balloon. To my left, Layla strikes a match and lights a candle.

  Ash heads for what looks like an oversized wooden armoire, with four square doors and one tall, narrow one. My heart thuds. The cold temperature…Oh, please no. I shake my head, like maybe I can convince Ash by telepathy not to open the tall compartment. Next to the armoire is a long table, and I feel my eyes bulging as I take in two sets of what look like bloody clothes and shoes and a stack of antique hospital tools.

  Ash undoes the hooked latch on the tall compartment. My brain screams at me to close my eyes, but I can’t manage to look away. And just as I feared, the X guard is standing upright inside, frozen white with his eyes half open. I take two bumbling steps backward and cover my mouth with my hand.

  Layla brings the candle close to his face, accentuating his frozen features.

  “No bruises or cuts,” Ash says in a hushed voice, and inspects the guard’s hands. “His knuckles don’t have any marks, so there wasn’t much of a struggle. Maybe he was outnumbered?”

  “Nothing to suggest he took a hit to the face, either,” Layla whispers, and leans in to get a closer look at the gash across his neck.

  “That’s odd,” she says. “The cut isn’t a clean line. I couldn’t tell in the hallway when he was covered in blood.”

  “What does that mean?” I ask. “Did someone use a serrated blade?”

  “No,” she says, and frowns. “The wound isn’t uniform enough for that, either.”

  Ash leans closer and his eyes widen. For the first time ever, he looks rattled. “Glass, Lay. I would bet anything that it was glass—sharp enough to cut deeply and easily, jagged enough to make a much sloppier cut.”

  My chest tightens, and his reaction suddenly makes perfect sense. “The broken glass from my room. Do you think…,” I say, and my voice trails off.

  “Yes. Someone must have gotten a piece of it before Pippa could dispose of it,” Layla says, nodding.

  “Wait…I don’t know if this is a big deal,” I say, “but Felix had a cut on his palm in poisons class. I remember thinking that it wasn’t there in fencing the day before, which was the day I was actually looking for cuts because of the blood message on my floor.”

  “Ash, look into Felix’s schedule and see if you can find a reason for that cut, would you?” Layla says. “See if he had any classes between fencing and poisons that involved fighting. Or if there was another occasion where he might have gotten a cut. ”

  Ash nods, but he’s still studying the guard with a look of concern.

  “We should check his back,” Layla says. “If you two can tip him forward, I’ll take a look.”

  They both turn to me, and it takes every last iota of my self-control not to tell them that it’s never going to happen. But there’s no time for me to be squeamish, so I force myself forward. Ash already has one hand on the guard’s right shoulder and one hand on his chest to support his weight.

  I reach my hand into the metal-lined icebox and tentatively touch the guard’s left arm, which is hard and covered in frost crystals the way old ice cream containers are.

  “You ready?” Ash says.

  I gulp. “Yeah.”

  I press my other hand to the guard’s chest and Ash tips him forward. I stumble under his weight and regain my balance, helping Ash bring him to a horizontal position. We crouch on the floor, supporting his stiff body.

  Layla takes a good look at the back of the guard’s head and runs her hand over it, presumably feeling for bumps that might have knocked him unconscious. “Nothing,” she says, and runs the candle over his back. She stops near his left shoulder blade.

  “Huh,” she says, and we both look at her. “He’s got a tattoo, but there’s some bad scarring on top of it….”

  I lean forward, getting a better look at the scar, and shudder. It appears to be from a burn.

  “Can you tell what it was?” Ash asks.

  Layla brings the candle near his skin and bends closer. For a few seconds she goes silent and concentrates, moving the candle around to get different angles.

  Then she stands up and chews on her lower lip. “Go ahead and put him back,” she says, and I start lifting him before she finishes her sentence. We stand him upright and tuck him back into the metal box. Ash grabs the icebox door and latches it.

  I wipe my now-wet fingers on my pants and wish I could run full-speed toward a shower. Not that there are any here. I’ll have to wait until tomorrow morning and ask Pippa to bring up hot water for a bath. I shake out my hands in front of me like somehow that makes a difference.

  Layla’s eyes seem far away, locked in concentration.

  “Lay?” Ash says. “You know I hate it when you leave me in suspense like this.”

  But she doesn’t respond. She just starts to pace around the small room like she’s having a conversation with herself.

  I can tell by Ash’s face that patience is not his strong suit. It actually makes me feel a little better, though, about all those times Layla has gone silent on me.

  After what feels like forever, Layla stops and faces us. “What if we got it wrong?” she
asks.

  “Got what wrong?” Ash replies, exasperated.

  “The guard,” she says, and waves her hand at the compartment where his body is. “What if when he told November ‘You’re next,’ it wasn’t a threat?”

  I look at her sideways. “What are you saying?”

  “What I’m saying is that he took a huge risk by speaking to you,” she says. “I told you at the time that guards never break that rule. So why would he threaten you verbally when there are so many nonverbal alternatives?”

  “Layla, what kind of tattoo did he have?” Ash says.

  But Layla only lifts her hand and silences her brother.

  “Don’t forget that he reported me to Blackwood and Conner the night I found Stefano’s body,” I say.

  “Right. And Conner told you that the guard went about his schedule differently that night, which we all agree is strange,” she says.

  I stare at her, trying to follow her logic.

  “Layla,” Ash says more insistently.

  She doesn’t look at him but stays focused on me. “We already suspect that whoever killed Stefano was actually trying to kill Matteo and frame you, another Bear, for the crime—a perfect crime, since it would have eliminated two Bears at once.” She nods toward the freezer. “This guard had a Bear Family tattoo on him. He took a different route that night, sure, but somehow wound up at your room the same time you did. Then he gives you a message and winds up dead the same night, in front of your room.”

  I take a step backward and my heart starts to pound. “Pippa thought highly of him,” I say in a hushed voice.

  “Only another piece of evidence to prove my point,” Layla says. “Think about it—this guard had no choice but to report you the night of the murder because you saw him. But what if you were supposed to see him?” Layla says. “What if he was trying to get a message to you that night, only you closed the door too quickly?”