Killing November

by Adriana Mather

  I fidget with my hands. “Oh god…you’re saying that he wasn’t threatening me at all, he was warning me? Keeping track of me?”

  “Protecting you,” she says. “And if that’s the case, which I very much think it is, then there is every likelihood that’s how he died.” It’s as if her words have punched me in the gut.

  “You’re saying someone may have been coming to slit my throat?” I can’t wrap my mind around the idea that it’s extremely possible that guard died for me. I feel sick and sad all at once.

  “Yes,” Layla says, and by her heavy tone I can tell she feels the gravity of it, too.

  Ash rubs his forehead.

  “But why?” I ask. “Why would the guard decide to protect me?”

  “I think she’s suggesting that he was likely connected to one of the faculty members, otherwise he would never have taken the risk to speak to you. That someone told him to look out for you,” Ash says, and I can hear the worry in his voice. “Which means whatever pieces we’re missing in this whole mess, whatever is going on here, probably goes beyond the students.”

  For a moment we just look at one another, the heaviness of that conclusion sinking in.

  “I was hanging out with Stefano the night before he was murdered,” Layla says, and her voice is soft. “He thought the Lions’ network in the school was expanding, that soon there would be no safe place for the Bears or any Family that opposed the Lions. Well…maybe this is a good thing. Maybe it means that someone, some faculty member, has decided to fight back against the Lions through the school.” I can hear the approval in her voice.

  “You were hanging out with Stefano the night before his murder?” Ash says in such a strange way that I look at him. “And he was giving you intel about the Lions?”

  “Yes, and yes,” she answers, and even though it’s dim, I can tell she’s blushing. She avoids looking at her brother directly.

  As I stare at her, the dots suddenly connect. Holy shit. If Layla was hanging out with Stefano at night, it must have been after I went to sleep, because she was in her room at curfew. That means she snuck out. And they would have to have been close if he was telling her secrets, much closer than Ash realized. Was Layla dating Stefano? By the look on Ash’s face, he’s thinking the same thing.

  I suddenly feel terrible. I was freaking out because I got his blood on me while searching under that bed, and I was talking about him as a dead body. And all the while, Layla had lost someone she cared about. Maybe a lot.

  Ash and Layla stare at each other.

  I speak to cut the awkward tension between them. “But why, Layla?” I ask. “Why are the Lions after me, of all people, first trying to pin Stefano’s death on me, then Nyx, then sending someone to slit my throat? And likewise, why is someone protecting me?”

  “Right,” she says. “That’s the question. And if we don’t find out the answer fast, I think we’re going to regret it.”

  Ash stays silent, still staring at his sister.

  WHEN I WALK into history class with Layla, I’m surprised to find I’m now doing all the things I thought were so weird my first day—walking silently, keeping track of the other students through subtle glances, and speaking in a low voice. And since we woke up this morning, Layla has gone silent on me again. Not her normal thinking quiet, either. She seems agitated and upset but refuses to talk about it. I can’t help but wonder if it has something to do with revealing her relationship with Stefano. Even in the short time I’ve spent with her, I know that must not have been easy for her. And I’m almost positive that if I bring it up, I will only make things worse.

  Brendan is already in the classroom and looks like he got as little sleep as I did. Layla is practically scowling, and everyone seems on edge—the kind of vibe that has you wanting to look over your shoulder or jump when something grazes your arm.

  “Shall we begin?” Kartal says, even though it’s not really a question. She’s standing near her globe and drums her fingers on it while the students take their seats.

  Felix and Aarya are the last in the door, and their body language makes me think they might have been fighting.

  “Sit,” Kartal says to Aarya, and I can tell she doesn’t want to.

  Her fists clench but she drops into her chair.

  “Now then…The Knights Hospitallers were trained to fight to the death and to the very last man, no matter the odds against them,” Kartal says, and glances at Aarya. “And they were geared up to do just that in 1271, when Sultan Baybars attacked the Hospitaller castle Krak des Chevaliers in Syria. Over the course of a month, the sultan gradually drove the knights within the castle walls. But the sultan knew that the cornered knights would never surrender. So he cleverly crafted a forged letter that was supposedly from the Grand Master of the Knights Hospitallers and sent it to them.”

  She looks around the room and for a brief second her eyes land on me. “The letter told the knights that they had permission to surrender and even contained instructions on how to do so. And wouldn’t you know it, the brave knights fell for the forgery. In exchange for their surrender, the sultan spared their lives.” Kartal smiles. “It’s history’s stories of near misses that I love so much—the ones where you think a certain outcome is inevitable, only to be proven wrong. From the outside, the sultan faced what looked like an inflexible situation. But the sultan was creative; he thought past the conflict. What was the key here? What did the sultan do that is worth remembering?”

  The class is strangely silent. Where everyone would usually be competing to answer and one-up each other, they now look lost in thought or exhausted. In the wake of everything that’s happened, I wonder more than ever if there is a subtle message in Kartal’s story.

  “November?” Kartal says.

  My attention snaps back to class. “He didn’t take the knights for granted.”

  “Explain.”

  “Well, like you said, the knights were known to fight to the last man,” I say, trying to think my way through the strategy psychologically—the way Layla does when she talks about history. “So a typical approach would be to consider that an immovable truth and prepare to meet them in battle. The sultan was special because he gave the knights an opportunity to act differently, to change what everyone else assumed could never be changed.”

  Kartal spins her globe. “Yes. Very much so. It’s not always the situation that’s immovable, as you said, but the way people think about the situation. A fresh perspective is often needed.”

  The door opens then and everyone’s head turns as if on cue. Blackwood walks in, and there are two guards behind her. The anxiety in the room noticeably rises.

  “Layla and November,” Blackwood says. “Come with me.”

  Sweat immediately breaks out on my forehead, and Aarya gives us a look. We slide our chairs back and follow Blackwood into the hallway. As I pass the guards, I expect to get a needle in my arm and be dragged to the dungeon, but it doesn’t come. Instead they walk silently behind us.

  I steal a questioning glance at Layla, but she’s staring forward, looking as frustrated as she has all morning. The extensive list of rules we’ve broken and the dead guard in front of our room scroll through my head as likely reasons for being escorted out of class. Blackwood clearly wanted everyone to see, like she’s making an example of us.

  I take several long breaths the way the deception books recommend, to slow my heart and loosen my muscles. The last thing I need is for Layla to attempt to get us out of something and for me to give it away by fidgeting and looking panicked.

  One of the guards opens the door to Blackwood’s office and we take our positions, Blackwood behind her desk and Layla and I in the armchairs in front.

  “Well,” Blackwood says after a long beat of looking from me to Layla. “I’m surprised, Layla. And I’m not surprised often.”

  I glance at Layla,
but her face is neutral.

  “I spoke with Dr. Conner a couple of days ago. Do you know what he told me?” she says.

  Oh, this is not going to go well. I can already feel it.

  “He told you that he saw us coming from the boys’ dormitory hallway,” Layla says without pause, like Blackwood asked her how her breakfast was. “He insinuated that he found our answer suspicious when he asked us about it.”

  “Yes. He did,” Blackwood says. “As he should.”

  Layla doesn’t respond, and I don’t blame her. If she says it’s the hallway her brother’s room is in, Blackwood will say that she also knew Ash wasn’t there. And if she says we were just walking, it will look like she’s trying to justify herself, suggesting guilt.

  “Are you aware that Matteo had class when you did not?” Blackwood asks.

  “I am,” Layla says, still with the same poker face.

  “After you were spotted coming out of that hallway, Dr. Conner inspected Stefano’s room,” Blackwood says. “He noticed something askew on Stefano’s nightstand. Do you know what I’m going to say now?”

  Layla shakes her head. And I can’t help but think of Gupta, who would point out that she had answered every other question with a verbal response and no head movement, and that suddenly that had changed.

  “He said there was a missing match that Matteo and his butler confirmed had not been used by them.” Blackwood keeps her gaze on Layla. It’s strange the way she’s only looking at and addressing Layla and not me.

  “The case of the missing match, dun dun dun,” I say. Blackwood’s intensity toward Layla is almost overwhelming, and if it’s making me uncomfortable, it must be getting to her. I figure I can at least buy Layla a second to gather her thoughts.

  And it works. Blackwood turns to me. “You think this is funny?”

  “No. Not at all. I just thought someone needed to lighten the—”

  Blackwood holds up her hand; she’s clearly annoyed. “I’ll get to you. Until then, remain silent.” There’s ice in her tone.

  “Copy that,” I say, and I swear if her eyes were weapons I would be dead.

  Blackwood focuses back on Layla and her expression is unreadable. “When the first homicide occurred last week, I thought that we were looking for one individual. But I now know that assumption was incorrect—that a network of persons is responsible for the recent events, and that if I miss one, the chaos and deaths are bound to continue. Sometimes strange things happen on purpose; coincidences aren’t coincidences.”

  My chest tightens. Kartal said almost those exact words in my first class with her—strange things happen on purpose. And she was talking about coincidences that weren’t coincidences. I feel oddly relieved that I was right in suspecting that there was some sort of message or code implicit in those stories and that it wasn’t just my paranoia running the show. But now I’m wondering what I might have missed or overlooked by not taking the doublespeak seriously enough. In Dad’s games he used to say Look for the subtle things that are different, a pattern. They’ll point you in the right direction.

  “It hasn’t escaped my notice that you have been angling to get closer to Matteo and Stefano these past few months, Layla,” Blackwood says, and snaps me out of my thoughts.

  Layla tenses.

  “Interesting that you would embrace a roommate whom Matteo so vehemently dislikes,” Blackwood says. “And then you’re conveniently in the dining hall when they get into a fight in the hallway.” She rolls a pencil on her desk, and besides the crackling wood in the fireplace, it’s the only sound in the room. “Then you sided with the roommate whom you barely knew. Seems cold for someone who’s supposed to be Matteo’s friend.”

  Blackwood looks up at us, and I can tell by her expression that she’s closing in, like a hawk about to swoop. “While your brother and November were in the vine courtyard, where were you?”

  “Sleeping,” Layla says. Her calm tone remains, but I can hear the slightest difference in it, like she’s physically tenser and, even with her great control, it’s coming through in her voice.

  “Right. Of course. You said that the last time.”

  I want to jump in and defend Layla, but a distracting comment at this point would likely do more harm than good.

  Blackwood shifts her gaze to me. “November, did you break your bedside water glass the day before the guard was murdered?”

  Oh no. “Yes.”

  She sits back, like she knows she’s won. “Did Layla help you clean it up?”

  Pippa saw Layla help me. There’s no way around this. “Yes.”

  “Did you see Layla take any of the glass?” Blackwood asks, and folds her hands.

  “Take any of it? No, definitely not,” I say.

  Blackwood straightens the ruffles on her shirtsleeve. “The guard who was killed in front of your door had his throat slit with a piece of glass,” she says, and I’m fairly certain that if I were the fainting type, this would be my moment. “And your glass is the only one in the entire school that has broken all year.”

  I can tell Layla’s scared.

  “Now, did you take any glass, November?” Blackwood asks.

  “No,” I say too fast.

  “Then the only conclusion I am left to make is that it was Layla.”

  “It wasn’t,” I say to Blackwood. “Layla didn’t take the glass. I didn’t, either. But I’m sure it wasn’t Layla.” I know I’m not helping, that I have no proof to back me up, but I can’t just sit here and let Blackwood corner her.

  “As much as I’d love to listen to your endless sputtering, November, I’m afraid I must get on with it. You’re going to the dungeon, Layla, for the murder of an Academy guard,” Blackwood says, and I almost fall out of my chair.

  “What?” I say, practically spitting the word. “You don’t have proof that Layla did anything!”

  Blackwood’s look is dangerous. “You are sorely mistaken if you believe I need to justify my decisions to you. And if you continue arguing with me, I can promise you that will only make things worse for Layla.” She looks past us, like she’s done with our conversation, and raises her voice. “Guards!”

  They open the door, and Layla looks at me with genuine fear. I jump in front of her, blocking their path. The guards look at Blackwood. She nods at them and a split second later they have us both pinned and are sticking needles in our arms.

  My vision blurs and the world goes black.

  I TOUCH MY head, which pounds like I got dropped on it. I’m on the couch in my dorm room; the curtains are drawn, and the fire is big and bright the way it usually is after Pippa lights it in the early evening. But how did I get…All at once, the events from the afternoon flood my memory.

  I jump up and scrub my hands over my face to wake myself up. Layla. I need to help Layla. This is my fault. I snuck out that night. I got Layla involved. I stare at the fire, all the awfulness of these couple of weeks coming into focus. Layla’s in the dungeon. Aunt Jo is dead. Someone’s trying to murder me. And Dad is god knows where, potentially being hunted and running for his life.

  “November?” Ash says softly, and appears in Layla’s bedroom door.

  I don’t jump this time. I want to apologize for what happened to Layla, tell him I tried to stop the guards, but an apology doesn’t fix anything. “Blackwood threw Layla in the dungeon” is all I manage to say.

  “I know.” His gaze is intense again, and I don’t blame him. “When I heard at lunch that Blackwood had removed you two from class and that you never returned, I came here looking for you both. But I only found you, sedated on the couch. Which told me Layla was most likely in the dungeon and that you’d likely been sedated because you were trying to prevent the guards from taking her.”

  I nod and exhale, relieved that at least he knows I attempted to stand up for her.

  “
Tell me everything about your conversation with Blackwood,” he says. “Don’t leave anything out.”

  I recount the meeting for him almost word for word, start to finish. He lets me speak, not commenting until I’m done with the story.

  “Something’s weird about it,” I say. “There’s no reason for Blackwood to punish Layla in front of me. It would have been easier just to leave me in class.”

  As Ash considers what I’m saying, I can almost see the wheels turning in his head. “Maybe Blackwood wanted you to hear it, to know about Dr. Conner discovering the missing match and about the piece of glass,” he says.

  “But why?” I ask. “Unless she wants me to know because she’s also the one who told that guard to look after me? Could she be the faculty member Layla was speculating about who’s fighting back against the Lions? But how does that make any sense if in the same conversation she dragged Layla to the dungeon?”

  He shakes his head and I fidget. We’re both quiet as we analyze the situation.

  I look up at him. “Did you find out anything about that cut on Felix’s hand?”

  “Yes and no. He didn’t have any classes where he might easily have come by the cut, which makes it suspect. But I couldn’t really get many details on him, either. He may not be a powerful Lion, but he’s still a Lion, and no one feels safe speaking against them right now.”

  “I get that,” I say. “The question is, what happened to the glass after it left this room? And is there any way to get Layla out of that dungeon?”

  He shakes his head. “We’d have to find it first. The dungeon is either under the castle or possibly under one of the outer perimeter walls. That’s why they use the sedative anytime someone gets locked up. They don’t want us to know where it is.”

  “Okay, then let’s tackle this one piece of missing information at a time,” I say. “And fast, before someone else gets killed. Pippa should be coming soon to turn down the beds and refill the water. You stay here and get her to tell you everything about that glass. If we both leave, we’ll miss our chance to talk to her.”