by Ilana Waters
No, but I might, I grumbled. Colleen didn’t get the chance to answer.
“Headmaster Specs!” Victor exclaimed. “And Professors Burgess and Stone! I’m so glad we caught you. We were just on our way to the infirmary to see our beloved janitor.” He frowned with concern. “How is poor Rosemary doing? We were just beside ourselves when we heard.”
“Beside ourselves,” Mason agreed.
I think I’m going to be sick, I thought to my friends. Who do they think they’re fooling with that act?
“She’ll survive, though it will take some time for her bones to mend,” Specs replied. “Now, if you will excuse us, the professors and I—”
“I heard the janitor saw a ghost,” piped up Nadine.
Specs closed his eyes momentarily. “There are no ghosts at Equinox Academy.”
“Maybe we have our very own Nearly Headless Nick.” Roger elbowed Geoffrey in the ribs. They both guffawed, but were silenced by a sharp look from Burgess.
“Yeees,” Victor said. “Rumor has it that someone looking very much like our mage here taunted Rosemary until she fell—very nearly to her death. Are you sure that’s someone you should be snogging, Colleen?” Colleen turned her body so Specs and the professors couldn’t see the V sign she gave Victor.
“So, now you’re a ghost, Alderman.” Roger nodded. “And here we all thought you were half vampire.” Nadine and Geoffrey hooted.
“There’s no such thing as a half vampire, you twit,” I snapped at Roger. “But there is such a thing as a dead witch.” Roger and I started to move toward one another, but were held back by Geoffrey and Miles, respectively. However, seeing Roger standing next to Victor gave me an idea.
Victor’s about my height, with hair almost as black as mine, though not quite as long. But for an instant, in the dark, it was entirely possible to mistake one of us for the other.
“That is enough, gentlemen,” Specs said sharply. “We have enough real incidents at Equinox right now without the addition of idle threats.”
“Trust me,” I growled, “it wasn’t idle.”
“You’ll watch your tongue when addressing the headmaster!” Burgess barked. “And speaking of incidents, can you account for your whereabouts at twelve this morning, Mr. Alderman?”
“Me? Why me?” I stepped back from Roger. “Why aren’t you interrogating everybody?” Colleen pursed her lips, and Miles and the others shot me dirty looks. “I mean, not everybody . . .” I motioned to them.
“Some of us were at our house meetings, which ran late,” Victor said. “You see, it pays to be a team player, Alderman. You never know when it might come in handy.”
Don’t kill him don’t kill him don’t kill him Colleen’s watching—
“I . . . was . . . asleep,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Can anyone else verify that?” Burgess raised his eyebrows. Specs was looking at me curiously as well.
“Oliver, my roommate. He’s the air prefect.”
“Who, presumably, was also asleep at the time,” Victor said.
Damn. He was right. I had no alibi for when Rosemary fell.
“There must be hundreds of other students from other houses who could’ve done it,” I protested.
“Yes, but not all of them are male, of a particular height, pale faced, et cetera,” Burgess said. “That ought to narrow it down somewhat.” Before I could think of anything to say, he spoke again. “Well, I’m sure Headmaster Specs will address all that when he investigates this.”
“Absolutely,” Specs said. “Now, if you ladies and gentlemen don’t mind, we do indeed have some business to attend to.” He started briskly down the hall, Burgess and Stone trailing after him. After they left, the glare I gave Victor and his friends would’ve melted glass. It wasn’t long before the firefight started up again.
“Yes, it should be veeery interesting once this whole business is finished.” Victor stuck his thumbs in his belt loops, circling me while our posses looked on. “Maybe, finally, they’ll rid the school of some of the lesser elements. Then they can crawl back to their dark caves where they belong. Just them and their bloodsucking daddies.”
“Leave my father out of this,” I growled. That’s odd. Why am I defending him? Strange that it should be the first thing to pop into my mind. Not the magic boiling and gathering in and around me, heavy in my fists, tight in my chest.
“Awww . . . wook who wuvs his wittle papa,” Mason said, and the rest of their group erupted in laughter. Victor’s was especially loud.
“How can that be?” he asked. “Your father’s a murdering vampire, and you still love him?”
“Well, Holy Moral Ambiguity, Batman!” I snapped. Wait—do I still love him? I didn’t even want to try to wrap my head around that question. I had enough going on right now. I was still debating how to hide Victor’s dead body.
“What were you doing at the infirmary, anyway?” he pressed, standing eye to eye with me. “Come back to finish the job? Do away with old Rosemary, even though she’s never done anything to you?”
“I came here to check on her, you conniving sod!” I practically screamed. I motioned to my friends. “We all did.”
“Calm down, Joshua.” Pen tried to pull me back by the arm, but yanked her hand away from the angry magic built up there.
“Yeah, mate,” Miles said. “There’s no need to go all nuclear.”
I turned to him. “Don’t tell me to calm down! I defended you when you needed it.” Miles grimaced. “You should be defending me. Unless you really think I did it.” When Miles didn’t say anything, I looked to the rest of them. None but Colleen would meet my eye, and even she did so only for an instant.
Oh, this is bad. Very bad. Even my friends doubt me. And Colleen . . . I was losing her now, I was sure of it.
“Oh, come off it, Alderman!” said Victor. He had that superior tone I hated, the kind that said he’d already won. “You’re trying to pull a hero act to fool us. To convince us you’re not like Aurelius. But you’re his son. No matter how saintly you try to be, you’ve still got the blood of a murderer in you. You’re going to turn into him one way or the other.”
A cold, hard feeling circulated in my stomach. At first, I thought it was just reflexive anger. Defensiveness. But when I couldn’t think of a retort, I realized it was more than that. No matter what I did, it seemed trouble was destined to follow me, drawing me into heinous acts I wanted no part of.
Deep down inside, part of me was afraid that Victor was right.
***
I managed to make it out of the hallway without killing Victor, but just barely. Colleen and my so-called friends halfheartedly protested my departure, but I roughly brushed them off.
They should’ve stood up for me, I thought as my heavy boots hit the stone floors. And if they really cared, they’d have begged me to stay. Begged me.
But could I really blame them? Any of them? Bad things kept happening just when everyone but me had somewhere to be. And now they had a physical description of this . . . ghost or whoever was involved. A ghost who looked like Joshua Alderman.
And somehow—even though I hadn’t done anything wrong—I knew I’d be in Specs’s office by the end of the day. And I was.
***
“But Burgess—Professor Burgess—said you were launching an investigation,” I protested. Specs didn’t respond. “Well?” I dug my nails into the sides of the chair in front of his desk. “Did you find out anything?”
“Unfortunately, a closer examination of the scene and a reinterview of Rosemary revealed nothing more than what we already knew.” Specs stood and stared at the night sky through the window behind his desk. In the moonlight, just over the windowpane, I could see the rosebush covered in many-hued blooms. A half plateful of petals sat on Specs’s desk. “Nothing useful, at any rate.”
“Then why did you call me in here again?” I cried in exasperation. I turned my head toward the door in case anyone h
eard me. But of course, no one had. The halls were almost as dark as the sky outside. It was so late in the day, most of the students had gone home for Ostara break. “What do you expect me to do?” Again, I felt like I’d let him down. If I’d figured out the mystery sooner, identified the culprit earlier, this might never have happened. Rosemary would never have broken half her body.
The culprit. Singular. But what if it’s not? What if it’s more than one person? I put my fingers to my temples. My head was spinning.
“I thought you might have some special insight into the situation.” Specs turned to face me, his expression grave. “You always seem to have a close tie to these incidents, in one way or another.”
Does he mean he thinks I can still figure out what’s going on? Or is it that he thinks I’m responsible? As usual, Specs’s features revealed nothing except the seriousness of the situation.
“You do realize that if you had anything to do with what happened to Rosemary, I’d have no choice but to expel you.” Without taking his eyes off me, he drained the remaining liquid in his teacup. Boiling brown tea was already swirling at the bottom before he set it down. “Even if . . . no matter my personal . . . my hands would be tied.”
“You appear to be under the erroneous impression I wish to stay at your school,” I grumbled, folding my arms across my chest.
“And where will you go after you’re expelled?” Specs asked.
“Do you truly care?” I snapped. “Does anyone? The lot of you already have me marked as a demon’s son, a half-breed. I’m sure you all think I belong in hell. Maybe I’ll go there.” I glanced out the window at the half-frozen moors. “At least it’ll be a warmer climate.”
Specs opened his mouth to say something. For a moment, it seemed like his glasses disappeared, or were transparent. I saw a glimpse of a tall, pointed ear, and long brown hair falling straight down on either side of it. But it was just a flash, a vision. Then, it was gone. I swallowed hard. Did I go too far? One could only be so flippant with the fae.
“It doesn’t matter where others think you belong,” he finally said, sitting down behind the desk. “What matters is what you do with the circumstances given you. Life is full of surprises, Mr. Alderman,” he sighed. “And not all of them are bad.”
I frowned. What the hell is Specs talking about? Realizing I wasn’t going to provide further insights, no matter how much he needed them, Specs cleared his throat and spoke again.
“Naturally, I’ve had to inform your father of this. I just thought you should know so you can—”
“Change my name and move to another country?” I finished. Specs pursed his lips, and again, I saw what he would look like without glasses, with longer hair. Then he returned to normal. “Maybe then, no one would assume I’m just like him. That I’m going to inevitably follow in his footsteps.” Even though, inadvertently, that’s exactly what seems to be happening.
“They can’t all be missteps. No man’s trail ever is.”
My jaw nearly hit the floor. “Are you serious?” Now, it was my turn to clear my throat. “I mean, ah, seriously, sir? This is the same Titus Aurelius who . . .” I trailed off. I didn’t know how much gory detail Specs knew about my father. If it wasn’t a lot, I certainly wasn’t going to clue him in. Best to keep it vague. “What if I don’t want to be a warrior, a killing machine?” I finally said. “What if I don’t want to be anything like him?”
Specs folded his hands on his desk and stared at me. “It all goes back to what I said about picking the parts of learning you like, and leaving the rest. You don’t have to use the training your father gave you for his purposes. You can mold it to suit yours.” Again, I got the feeling he was trying to tell me something. Giving me another puzzle piece I was supposed to fit in somewhere. His eyes followed his finger as he traced the rim of the teacup. “If you live long enough, Joshua, there will be a time when you will have to fight for something you love.” He looked directly into my eyes. “Tell me, when that day comes, do you really want to lose?”
Maybe he’s telling me to stick it out. To not give up? To try not to get expelled? On one hand, it would be a relief to be done with all this. All the blame, the irrational hatred directed at me. Constantly wracking my brain to uncover the truth. But if I did get expelled, I’d never find out who was really behind all the calamities at this school. I’d never see Colleen again.
And I didn’t even want to think about what Titus would do to me if I got kicked out.
***
“And if I ever hear your name and the word ‘expelled’ in the same sentence, you’d better pray to all the gods you’re not at that school when I come to collect you—”
I opened the door to the telephone booth and floated the phone out as far as the cord would reach. Thank God Oliver had gone home already. I really didn’t want to have him hear this, then try to face him later in our room. It was just too humiliating. Bad enough I had to field the odd glances other students were giving me, passing out of the common room, suitcases in hand.
Bloody hell, Titus is loud. Then again, if I thought he was going to take this latest news lying down, I was surely dreaming. My father let off a few colorful words just as one boy went by the phone. He made a face at it, then at me.
“What are you looking at?” I snapped. The boy gave me a V, slung a duffel over his shoulder, and left. “Well, good riddance!” I called after him.
“What did you say to me?” Titus roared.
“Not you.” I hastily called the phone back to my hand and put it to my ear.
“I don’t know why I even bother talking at all,” Titus growled. “You don’t pay attention to half the things I say.”
“I could say the same about you,” I shot back. “You’re paying more attention to building yourself a shrine than searching for one of the most important people in your life. Or maybe you’re relieved that the only person you have to have these knock-down, drag-out fights with is me.”
There was silence on the other end of the line as I tried to catch my breath. I can’t believe I actually said that. Several eternity-long seconds went by.
“I’m sure you’re exaggerating,” Titus finally said in a huff. “The fights your mother and I had weren’t that bad.”
“Didn’t you ever wonder why your four-year-old son was googling the word ‘migraine’?”
“His friends will shortly be googling the term ‘headless’ if he’s not careful.”
“On the bright side, that would be an effective remedy for a migraine,” I muttered. Titus hadn’t even tried to refute my claim of his lack of interest in finding Abigail. I wasn’t surprised. Maybe it was the final nail in the coffin of the idea that he was looking for her at all. With a heavy heart, I listened to Titus yell at me a bit more about staying out of trouble. Then, we hung up.
Over the break, I managed to examine the exact spot where Rosemary fell. I scrutinized every inch of it, from the top of the stairs to the bottom. And I found the strangest thing. There was no magic. I mean, there was—with students traversing the halls every day, and even Rosemary herself, the entire area was covered in it. But there was nothing like what I’d sensed with Cerridwen, or the storeroom. No specific spell designed to accomplish something. No fire magic, nor water, earth, or air. No anger, no cunning. No emotions. Nothing.
Impossible. I went back up and down the stairs, two, three times, sifting through layers of magic until my whole body ached. Something magical must have happened here. Victor must’ve tricked Rosemary into falling, or pushed her. But if he had, he hadn’t used a spell to do it. And he couldn’t have just vanished like Rosemary said, unless he really was a ghost. I didn’t believe what anyone said about Rosemary being off her gourd. As far as I was concerned, that lady was as sharp as a tack. If she said she saw someone who looked like Victor—or me—then she saw him.
What kind of magic doesn’t leave a trace? Exhausted, I felt beads of perspiration drip from the sides of my face. I
leaned back on the wall at the bottom of the stairs, slid down, and sat.
I don’t get it. Spring equinox was supposed to be a time when things were perfectly balanced. Day and night, good and evil, right and wrong.
Instead, things were rapidly spiraling out of control.
Chapter 18
“Where’s my lucky quartz? I can’t find it anywhere! Where is it?” Jae Kim patted the pockets of his uniform frantically. Then, he began telekinetically lifting rucksacks and spare uniforms in the dugout, searching beneath them.
“It’s around your neck, gormless.” Grace Saxon rolled her eyes. “Honestly. You’re so absentminded, you’d lose your pecker if it wasn’t attached.”
“Oh! So it is.” Jae put his hand to the quartz shard on a piece of string dangling over his collarbone. The rucksacks and uniforms he’d been lifting fell back into place. “The quartz, I mean. And my pecker. Thank gods.”
“I’m surprised to see Specs here,” said Liza. “Yesterday, he actually forgot to show up for a lecture he was supposed to help Professor Yen give. Can you believe it?”
“Really?” Rami pulled on his gloves. “I’ve never known Specs to forget anything before.”
“I know, right? And did you see how strained he looks?” Liza jutted her chin at Specs’s box, where he sat, head in one hand. “After what happened with Rosemary . . .” Liza’s head turned in my direction, just for an instant, before she lowered her voice. “After what happened with Rosemary,” she repeated, “I think all these suspicious goings-on are really taking their toll.”
Rami humphed in agreement. “Specs is going to have to plant a new rosebush at this rate.”
“People, can we please focus here?” Oliver groaned. “The second play-off is about to start any moment, and we haven’t even centered our magic yet.”
I vaguely listened to Oliver give last-minute instructions as I stood a few feet outside the dugout. It was early April, and House of Air was facing House of Water in the last stage before this year’s Tournament. Since water won Tournament last year, they were this year’s defending champions. Air was the interloper trying to unseat them. The ground was a little soggy from recent spring rains. But a quick drying spell by Burgess, Yen, and Stone had the field ready in plenty of time for the game.
