Magic for Liars

by Sarah Gailey

  “Were you?”

  “It was just Toff’s class,” he said, rolling his eyes. “I can afford to miss creeper-hour.”

  “Tell me about Toff,” I said. “I’ve heard some weird stuff about him. What’s the deal there?”

  Dylan treated me to the kind of elaborately disinterested shrug that belies a wealth of care. “I don’t know, he’s just like … weird sometimes. With the girls. Whatever, it’s not even a thing.”

  Oh, it was definitely a thing.

  “You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to,” I said carefully. “But if there’s anything you think I should know about Toff, I want you to know that you can share it with me.”

  He looked away as though he hadn’t heard me, as though there was something far more interesting happening in the gray patch of sky that was visible from his seat. I waited, debating whether I should prompt him further. After a long, uncomfortable silence, he spoke, still staring out the window.

  “Okay, look,” he started, then took another long pause. “All I know is, Alexandria and all her friends always talk about how gross he is. And how he makes them feel, I don’t know. Weird, I guess. Capley and Torres were always on his case about it, but he never did anything bad enough to get fired, so I guess they backed off, and it’s not like—”

  “Hold on, Dylan, back up a second. Capley was on his case about it?”

  “N— Um, no,” he started, but I raised my eyebrows and he shifted in his seat. “No, I mean. They just had this big fight on the first day of school, but it was probably nothing. I don’t know.”

  I was losing him, I could tell—the teenager was winning out over the vigilante, and soon I’d just be left with a shrugging lump of nothing to interview.

  “Never mind, Dylan, this is all very helpful. I’m sorry, I get distracted sometimes. So, when you were looking in the stacks under the illumination charm. Did you find anything, or…?”

  He suddenly looked extremely uncomfortable. This kid was no poker player. “Um. I, uh, no.” He became very interested in something on the sleeve of his blazer. I became very interested in whatever it was that he didn’t want to talk about.

  “You’re sure you didn’t find anything? No clues at all?”

  He looked up at me, his face resolute. “Nothing. Nothing at all.” The kid was lying his ass off. He wasn’t doing a good job at it, but he was committed. He was convinced that he had found something big. He was also convinced that he had to hide it from me. I debated calling him out for cowardice, seeing if that was a button I could push to make him talk.

  But I studied the set of his jaw for a few more seconds, and I revised my assessment. He wasn’t a chicken. He was being brave. Being brave means holding your fear in one hand and your responsibility in the other, and this kid was doing what he thought was right, even while he was pants-shittingly scared of whatever he’d found out.

  “Okay, no worries,” I said crisply. “That’s fine. It’s okay if you didn’t find anything.” I grabbed one of my business cards off the desk, held it out to him. “Give me a call if you think of anything, or if you find anything else. That’s my cell number on there. Thanks for your time.” I didn’t bother looking at him, started flipping through a file folder. Dismissed.

  “Wait, that’s it?” He seemed startled. Good.

  “Yep. That’s it.” I grabbed my pen, drew a star next to a random line in the file. “If you didn’t find anything and you don’t know anything, you’re free to go back to your physics lab.” I glanced up at him. I’ve never seen a kid so at war with himself.

  “Wait,” he said. I dropped my pen and looked at him sharply.

  “Look, Dylan,” I said in my best no-more-bullshit voice. “I know you want to help. But it sounds like you don’t have anything for me. That’s fine—maybe this isn’t your thing. I’m sure you looked as hard as you could. But I have a murder to solve, and if you don’t have anything that can help me, the best I can do for you is a certificate of participation. There’s a killer at this school, and I can’t waste any time. So go on back to class.”

  He went still, a rabbit in the instant before it bolts. For the second time that day, I was sure I’d pushed too hard. He was going to break and run. But then:

  “Okay.” He said it so quietly that at first I thought he’d let out a sob. He cleared his throat, stared at his hands. “Okay, I—I did find something.”

  I raised my eyebrows, looked up at him. “What do you mean?”

  “I did find something. When I cast the illumine charm. I just didn’t want to say because … it might get someone in trouble. Someone I care about.”

  I tapped my pen against the desk a few times. “Do you think this person you care about is the murderer?”

  He looked up at me, and again I thought of how teenage-Ivy would have been knocked flat by the intensity in those eyes. Adult-Ivy knew he was doing it on purpose, that he was thinking to himself blazing stare, but still. I could catch the edges of it, how intimidating it must have been when he turned it on his peers. How convincing.

  “I don’t know.”

  I nodded. “I appreciate your honesty, Dylan. Why don’t you tell me what you found? I’ll put it together with whatever else I find before I make any decisions, and it’ll stay between us until then. You have my word.”

  He let out a long, shaky breath and flexed his fingers a couple of times.

  “Look, Ms. Capley was … like. She was different, you know? She wasn’t like the other teachers. You could go to her for … stuff.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He shifted in his seat, picked at the edge of a file folder. Wouldn’t look at me. “Okay, look. I don’t think she did anything wrong, okay?”

  “Sure,” I said, shrugging. So casual. Low stakes. Come on, Dylan. “Sure she didn’t.”

  “I mean, she was just trying to help. I don’t want anyone to get in trouble or anything. I want to help,” he added hastily, looking at me as if I were about to push him out the door. “It’s just that if this got out, you know, like … if people knew—”

  The door burst open. Dylan froze in place, midsentence. He stared at the door. I turned to yell at the intruder—something more eloquent than “get the fuck out, we were just finally getting somewhere.”

  But it wasn’t an intruder. It was my next interviewee.

  “Alexandria! I wasn’t expecting you for”—I glanced at the time on my phone—“negative ten minutes.” I gave her an apologetic look. “Dylan and I are just wrapping up, if you can wait outside for a min—” But Dylan was already on his feet, headed for the door. He was red-faced, staring so hard at the floor that he almost ran into Alexandria.

  I allowed myself a small sigh. “Or we can get started now.”

  I couldn’t be angry at Alexandria. It wasn’t her fault she’d interrupted. But damn, there had been something there. Something that kid thought was really important. And now it was gone, and I didn’t know if I could ever get it back.

  But there was no sense in being so upset over that chance that I missed out on this one. I boxed up the lost opportunity and dropped it into the oubliette, and I turned my attention to Alexandria.

  She sat in the same chair Dylan had been in. She folded her hands on the desk. I didn’t rub my temples or close my eyes or pray for some merciful god to beam me a cup of coffee and a bottle of Tylenol. I looked her right in the eyes and swallowed my headache.

  “So, Alexandria—”

  She interrupted me in an urgent whisper. “I thought we were going to meet somewhere else? Coffee, somewhere private?” At the word “coffee,” my brain perked up like a hopeful puppy. I squashed it down, ignoring the whimpers of caffeine deprivation.

  “Yes, well, that was when it seemed like you were interested in being helpful—but you were holding out on me the other day, weren’t you? I need to know what you know, Alexandria. I need you to be honest with me. And you haven’t been, have you?”

  She stared at me with a
deer-in-the-headlights look that I knew best from the other side. It was disorienting to see it from this angle—I had only ever been the teenager in the position of trying to figure out which lie I’d been caught in, and never the adult panning for truth.

  She opted for caution. “What do you mean?”

  “I know you and your friends are hiding something,” I said.

  I knew no such thing. I was fishing, just like I had been with Dylan. I didn’t know what I’d hook—something about Toff, maybe? Something about Osthorne? Whatever it was, something that Tabitha had told me about Alexandria’s little gang was sticking in my craw. Something about the ruthlessness of the graffiti on the lockers and the way Miranda hid her intelligence. Something about the way Alexandria’s lips had curled back from her teeth when I’d called her “Alex.” There was something dark there, a big shadow under the surface of the water, and I needed to know if it was a log or a crocodile.

  She sat back in her chair, not taking the bait. Her face was the surface of a skating pond, two feet deep with ice. The shadow stayed hidden beneath the frost. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Okay,” I said, flipping to a page in my notebook and angling it away from her so that all she could see was a few vague scribbles including her name. Her eyes flicked back and forth between the page and my face. “Then I guess that would make your friend Courtney a liar?”

  “Courtney didn’t talk to you,” she said. It came out fast, sure. She wouldn’t dare. I just nodded, eyebrows raised. I wanted Alexandria to ask what Courtney had said, to demand answers, but she wasn’t having it. She was determined to call my bluff. Damn again.

  I got casual, and fast. “Okay, sure. If you say so.” I flipped the notebook closed again, so all she’d have in her memory would be the tantalizing glimpse of her own name in my notes, herself as a person of interest. She stared at the notebook hungrily, and I knew I’d laid good groundwork at least. The seed was planted. She was afraid that I knew about the lie, whatever it was.

  But then, abruptly, her face smoothed over. As her features shifted, I realized with unease that she was mirroring me. I’d shifted into nonchalance, and she was doing the exact same thing. Casual, and fast. Her mouth tucked up at the corners in an achingly polite smile. “Did you go here?”

  “What?” I was caught totally off-guard by her sudden transformation, and it took me a moment to parse the words into a meaningful sentence.

  “For school,” she said slowly, as though I might be a bit stupid. “Did you go here? I looked through all the old yearbooks over the weekend, but I couldn’t find you. Or did you go to Headley? I remember Ms. Gamble told us once that she went there.” She looked at me closely, her eyes flicking back and forth between mine. “You’re sisters, aren’t you?”

  This had the flavor of a trap. She was being too polite, too casual. Too studied. But I couldn’t figure out what I needed to be watching out for. Was this an invitation to lie? Or a bluff? What did it mean to her if I hadn’t gone to Osthorne? Why was she bringing up Tabitha? Why was she looking for me in the yearbooks? It felt like the ground was shifting under me, rippling with the waves of a wake I couldn’t identify.

  I blinked. This wasn’t a game I needed to play. I wasn’t part of whatever competitive academic mage shit she was stuck in, and I didn’t need to impress her with my credentials. Jesus, Ivy, where do you think you are?

  “We aren’t here to talk about me, Alexandria,” I said with a thank-you-for-condescending-to-ask-after-me smile. “And I don’t want to waste your time on unimportant things. Let’s talk about what you wanted to tell me the other day.” I put the notebook aside, leaned across the table toward her. “About who Ms. Capley was dating.”

  The shift was instantaneous. Casual vanished faster than it had arrived. She went taut, looked back toward the door. “I told you, I can’t talk about that here.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Try me.”

  The exchange was just cliché enough to hook her. She leaned in, mirroring me again, speaking low.

  “Okay, here’s the deal. She was seeing someone. They were serious. But it was a secret, okay? Not just a ‘secret,’ but like … a total secret.” She watched me to make sure I understood what she meant. And I did—I remembered. A “secret” is something that everyone knows but no one talks about, like the fact that your mom’s cancer is why you’re failing half your classes. A real secret is something that no one knows, like the fact that your mom has started refusing treatment for the cancer and is going to die within a couple of weeks.

  “Got it,” I said. “A total secret. So, do Brea and Courtney and Miranda know?”

  She shook her head. “Only Courtney. And she hasn’t told anyone.” That certainty again, she wouldn’t dare. I mentally highlighted only Courtney. “Ms. Capley and her girlfriend, they really didn’t want anyone to know. I bet they could get fired. Like, when I found out? They both totally freaked out.”

  I knew bait when I saw it. I also knew when it was time to bite. “And how exactly did you find out?”

  Her eyes glittered with the story. Alexandria had been dying to tell someone other than Courtney, but her respect for the total secret—or her fear of the wrath of this clandestine couple—had been enough to keep her mouth shut.

  But now Alexandria’s teacher was dead, and she could crack the seal on what she wasn’t supposed to know. I was almost surprised that she hadn’t told anyone before now, but then I remembered Tabitha’s cautious assessment: powerful. I’d assumed she meant magically powerful, but maybe she’d also meant another, headier kind of power. Deeper power. The kind of power that comes from absolute discipline. I’d seen it in the way Alexandria curated which emotions she showed and which ones she hid, and now I was seeing it again in her willingness to wait until her information had ripened to perfection before inviting anyone to take a bite.

  As she spun me the story, I could hear how she’d told it inside her head a thousand times, until it was as smooth as a stone polished by years of worry. Alexandria had every angle just right. She’d gone to Sylvia’s office the previous May, she told me. It was one day after school: she’d gone to get a cramp-relief tincture because she was having an extra-bad period—this said with forthright woman-to-woman assuredness, none of the embarrassed lash-fluttering of a younger girl, no faux-gross-out hesitation. She’d knocked on the office door, but no one had answered. She thought she might just go in and get some of the tincture herself. Of course, she normally wouldn’t dream of doing something like that, but she was in a lot of pain, I knew how that went, right? It wasn’t like she was stealing or anything.

  I nodded—of course breaking into a faculty member’s office to take medication from their private cabinet wasn’t stealing. Naturally.

  Alexandria smiled, then continued her story. “The door was unlocked, and when I opened it…” She paused as though she were looking for a delicate way to describe what she’d seen. She had a fine-tuned sense of theater—she knew exactly what she wanted to say, but she preferred that I fill in the blanks with my imagination. “Well. There they were. It was pretty obvious what they’d been doing.”

  I reminded myself that going along with her was necessary, that I couldn’t derail this whole thing by shouting “What, were they fucking or something?” Instead, I cleared my throat fussily, acting out my part. “And what was it that you saw, Alexandria?”

  Her brows twitched up and she gave me a prissy little smirk. “Well. They were in a compromising position. Let’s just say that Ms. Capley’s skirt needed smoothing once they realized I was there.”

  I raised my eyebrows, unsmiling. Let’s just say. Compromising position. She was getting too into her own story, slipping into a hallway-gossip rhythm, dropping in phrases that made her feel clever. She was forgetting that she was talking about a murder victim. To her credit, she seemed to realize her misstep immediately and backtracked gracefully, dropping her voice back
into the helpful almost-adult register she’d been using a few minutes before.

  “I mean, I didn’t see that much, it’s not like I was watching or anything, I just—you know. When you see something like that, even just for a second, you know what it is you’re looking at. It was their private business, but—”

  I nodded. “Of course. And then they freaked out, right?”

  “They totally freaked out.” She paused and looked at me like she’d forgotten her next line. I realized that she’d only rehearsed her story until the skirt-needed-smoothing part. A flicker of fear smoked across her face, almost fast enough to miss. This was big, important. As important as Dylan’s it might hurt someone I care about. Alexandria had come up to the edge of telling me whatever this enormous secret was, and now she needed a little push.

  No problem.

  “Alexandria,” I said, shooting her back a signal she’d recognize by looking over both my shoulders. I leaned forward, matched her low pitch. “I need you to tell me. It’s important. The person Sylvia was with that day, when you walked in. Was it a student?”

  She shook her head. Her eyes got wide, excited—she was ready, she was going to tell me who it was. She was going to give me my first real lead in this goddamned case. I thought I’d done it. I’d tugged the information right out of her gullet and she was going to unclench her teeth and give it up.

  But I was wrong.

  Too late, I realized that the look on her face wasn’t just the excitement of getting to tell someone—it was the excitement of getting to tell me. Of getting to watch me find out what she knew. It was, I suddenly saw, the excitement of a cat with a spider caught under one paw. But it was too late to take back my line of questioning, before I could tell her that we were out of time for the day, sorry, back to class, Alexandria.