Note came out after the body, in one of those little plastic evidence baggies. Not hastily scrawled, but written in a steady hand on yellow paper, for the Lady’s eyes alone as she mumbled through the Blackjack’s last words.
“Oh, Scotty,” Teresa whined, stepping away from the group.
I stepped with.
Scott Hardy. Mentimancer. Dead. No reason you should know the name since I barely did. Blackjacks are almost invisible most the time. Only know their faces, same faces you’re used to seeing linger about behind Catherine or Teresa or Mary. Scott wasn’t among the group that beat up Vicky, but I seemed to remember him from our Winter War days. Could just imagine his tiny ass lost among the Blackjack crowd, hardly the most dangerous, almost always hanging back behind the bigger bruisers when the call came. Like my conversation with Athir earlier showed, other students in my class had a better idea for the Blackjacks than I ever would, mostly since they shared Ultra classes with them. The corpusmancer class doesn’t even number twenty kids . . . you’d have to get to know the Blackjacks whether you wanted to or not with so few numbers.
Me . . .
Just me and Plutarch.
Might not be so bad having to put up with a Blackjack or even one of the Queens means someone else is there to listen to Plutarch complain about there only being three hours of Murder, She Wrote reruns on today when his TV Guide copy said it was supposed to be four.
Teresa barely kept the sobs under control and did nothing to keep her anima under control. Felt the trembling in my feet. Was a good twenty feet away from the Learning Council, so that rumble was too heavy to be from one of them. Teresa Garcia, emotional enough she’s reverted back to a Single can’t control herself. Angry pyromancers . . . think I’d know better than to be near one of those.
Think I’d know better than to bother faking emotions I can’t quite feel too, but here I am staring grief in the face yet again, not a single blip of feeling for Scott Hardy at all. “Sucks,” I tried to, ya know, be human. “Losing someone.”
“What the fuck do you know about it?” Teresa snapped back at me, still not turning around. Had her arms crossed over her chest, like if she just gripped herself tightly enough it would all stop.
“I know,” I told her plainly. “Not from a classmate . . . but, I know. We ain’t ever been on the same side you and me, but this shit sucks.”
Finally she turned, dark eyes rimmed with tears. “We’ll never be on the same side. I despise what you are. Always something to say, always able to say it thanks to your big muscles and big fists and a face so ugly no one would ever notice if it was beaten or not.”
Threat that big, had to show her some canine. “Or burned, I suppose.”
She scowled. “Maybe if I tried really hard, maybe if I gave it my full commitment, maybe they would notice if half your face melted off.”
“I better not feel any anima flying over there,” Ceinwyn called a warning from over by the adults, “or you’ll be joining Heinrich Welf in the Holding Room.”
Teresa hissed, but the rumbling in my feet disappeared as a small flame worked its way between her fingers in a showy but useless dispersal conjuration. “Not worth it,” she proclaimed fervently. “None of this . . . none of it . . .”
None of this was worth it? I thought and saw a similar thought in her face.
“Mary find Scott then?” I asked instead to cover up I caught the mistake.
“What do you care?” she snapped.
“Don’t, usually. Not a very good person, just like you. But this time . . . well, guess I care cuz it might get Welf off the hook if it’s all true. Guessing it wasn’t all according to Catherine’s evil plan given the way you’re acting. What you do, make him do it and then he actually had a conscience? Couldn’t live with having killed someone?”
The anger failed before her uncertainty. “Nothing so dramatic,” she whispered.
“Or maybe it is part of Catherine’s evil plan, ever think about that? Maybe she’s gonna flip this one around somehow.”
“You’re paranoid,” Teresa spat, even as her eyes flickered. Thing about paranoia is that as soon as you mention it, it starts conquering your thoughts too.
“Got to ask yourself: would Catherine Hayes kill one of the Blackjacks like this if it meant she got something she really wanted?” I pointed out without a bit of sympathy. “Mary uses ‘em as her personal harem, has them all trying to be the one spends the night with her no matter how many times the position gets switched or what being the winner entails. You, you treat them like your little brothers. Sure, maybe pick on them a bit much, give them a singe to remind them who’s in charge, but you wouldn’t draw blood. Kitty Cat though . . .”
“You don’t know anything.”
“Yeah, yeah. Words of the blind to the one-eyed.”
“What?”
“Go ahead and inform me, Teresa. Do it. Tell me it was tiny ass Scott Hardy really killed Leo and all this is on the up and up.” I locked on her eyes. Eyes the color of charcoal. Not even an ember in them, just the remains of the fire already spent. “Tell me Scott Hardy just killed himself out of guilt.”
“Of—of—of course he did,” she stuttered.
Holy fuckballs! Did she just lie?
“Tell me what’s happening with Catherine didn’t just blow up in your face,” I dared next.
Her lips moved, but no sound came out. Those charcoal eyes zipped away to glance somewhere else, looking for something else to burn, something else to keep the flame strong for just a few seconds more.
“Maybe Kitty Cat didn’t do it. Maybe she’s not as omniscient as she seems,” I kept working on Teresa. “Makes no sense to give Welf an out like this, I will give you that. So what the fuck, right? It’s me saying this, Teresa, the fucking Foul Mouth ain’t ever followed the rules: two people dead, might be time to do some confessing and let those adults over there help us out. Cuz everything I tried to do, all my theory pushing? It’s fucked. All Root’s algorithms? They’re fucked too.”
Teresa glanced over at that huddle. At the Lady passing the suicide note over to Ceinwyn with a shake of her head. At Mama Welf looking smug and satisfied that her son would be cleared of Leo’s murder. At hairy, ol’ beastly Wolfgang von Welf putting a kind arm around Rin Yukimura’s shoulders as the Winterwarden teacher sobbed into her hands. At Mordecai Root appearing on the stairs above us, looking puzzled and unsure at what he’d found.
“No one can help,” Teresa whispered.
“Catherine—”
“This isn’t about Catherine!” Teresa spat in my face before swirling around to stalk towards Admin, likely to regroup with Mary. “I’m not scared of Catherine and Catherine would never hurt one of our boys, you psycho!”
Funny, cuz there’s plenty of fear in those eyes, I thought but didn’t say, not seeing any more reason to push her.
Scott Hardy.
Leo’s killer?
Mentimancer just like I wanted.
Don’t like it when I get what I want.
Don’t trust it.
Fate ain’t ever that easy on me.
Gives me what I want and I start listening for ticking clocks about to go BOOM.
[CLICK]
Ain’t often a peer’s death is greeted with relief, but this one was.
Blackjack did it. Of course he did. Wasn’t that Welf bloke, Heinrich von Welf is Old Mancy after all and Old Mancy kids are too upstanding to kill someone, even on accident. Blackjacks though, can’t trust them. Always been bullies and always been troublemakers, haven’t they? Of course one of those lot would end up being the villain.
Was the opposite expression of what I saw in Teresa’s face and it had spread to everyone around me. The world was exactly as it was supposed to be. Wrong and on tilt for a few days, maybe, but now the truth was revealed. Sure, half the school was about ready to lynch Welf yesterday, so ready the teachers had to throw him into the Holding Room for protection, but . . . that’s in the past!
Bla
ckjacks!
All their fault!
World exactly as it’s supposed to be!
Cog, cog, cog away!
Hey, have you heard about the crazy theory the Foul Mouth had?
Turned out to be half right, didn’t it?
No Three Queens behind it all, but it was a mentimancer!
Never liked those mentimancers . . .
Can’t trust someone who can change a person’s memories like that, can you? I know they regulate them, but maybe they need to regulate them even more. Or just stop teaching them at all, save some spots for the rest of us. Russell Quilt? Well . . . he’s the only one of them that’s okay really. But the rest . . . don’t like them at all!
All of the building animosity towards Welf and Class ‘09 vanished as news of the suicide raced throughout the campus. Lady did another PA announcement about Scott Hardy taking his own life and claiming responsibility for Leo’s accident. Mordecai Root had checked the suicide note against essay records to prove that yes, it was Scott’s handwriting and for now all evidence did point towards him committing suicide. Four Years got out of their classes for the day a few hours later. Graduate classes got called off early. Groups congregated, more rumors spread, but with far less paranoia now that a killer wasn’t lurking about.
Relief.
Almost two-thousand teenage butts unclenching as one and quite a few older faculty butts loosing as well.
Ready to spray all their collective shit around the school once again.
Amazingly enough, wasn’t even animosity towards the Three Queens and the Blackjacks about it all.
Wasn’t a murder any longer, was it?
Just a huge mistake and the person responsible paid for it more than anyone.
Eye for an eye and all that.
Class ’07 lost a student too, so why shouldn’t they get the same stream of parishioners tonight that Class ’08 received the day before?
Relief, spreading like it was the plague, a new high that could outlast any designer drug.
Relief, just another name for bliss.
Me . . . I couldn’t be blissful.
I’ll never be blissful.
Kept thinking about it.
Victim Number Yank.
What the fuck just happened?
I put all that effort into my mentimancer theory and then just when I’m starting to doubt myself, when Teresa and Root and Miss Strange have me convinced that maybe there is something else going on . . . it is a mentimancer after all?
Took to watching Catherine that night.
Mary was still in the Infirmary on the mega happy pills, Teresa had closed herself off in her apartment to cry the emotions away, but Catherine held court at her usual place among the Blackjacks, right at the center of the Cafeteria’s second floor. Subdued Blackjacks maybe, but still surrounding the Prime Queen, watchful and wary of everyone approaching her. Approach they did, all to give their condolences over Scott. Naomi and her group of girls even went over to talk to her. Fucking Sabine crossed the Cafeteria to spit some pleasantries in French.
I don’t know how, but Kitty Cat was involved somehow.
And no one but me seems to care.
She just gets away with it.
Again.
Just like with Vicky at the start of the year.
I spit out the truth about her parentage hoping that it’ll break the deadlock and still . . . somehow . . . Catherine Hayes emerges as invincible as always.
What the fuck just happened?
It couldn’t have been the plan from the beginning.
Did she kill Scott to save herself once it got too hot?
But that didn’t match with the conversation from earlier in the day. Catherine was ready to go all the way, no matter the cost to herself or those around her. She held court now, yes, and she forced a smile, but it was bitter.
Like when I beat her with the shrine, I thought.
She didn’t want this.
Teresa, Mary, the way Catherine smiled . . . wasn’t part of the plan.
Maybe I’m better than I think. Maybe Miss Strange and Root were wrong about the menti-anima and Scott was the one messed with Leo’s mind. All for it until the guilt and the pressure got to him and then he snapped. Wrote a confession and tied that belt noose, ended it all before he got found out. Shit, maybe it was some white-knighting shit to protect Catherine and the other Blackjacks . . . put all the blame on himself.
Didn’t buy that it was all an accident between Scott and Leo like the suicide note claimed.
Don’t buy that at all.
Sat pretty silent through dinner that night, just grunting at whatever Raj, Pocket, or Jesus said to me. My friends knew better than to try to interrupt me when I focused in on a problem like that. Ruminating. Sometimes it’s all you got left.
Didn’t have an answer.
Couldn’t take joy in the world working as it was supposed to, being I don’t like the world much. Being I think the whole thing would look a lot better if it got kicked over and crashed into a few million pieces. Couldn’t fix it, but maybe you could break it enough to work. Always liked that thought.
Broken.
Plot of the last few days felt broken.
Just wasn’t sure how.
Or who.
Struggled going to bed that night.
Tossed and turned in my sleep.
Clicked on the TV just to get the dead air message Admin sends, the one that tells you there’s no programming at the moment.
Turned it off.
Thought about tapping on the wall to bug Jesus or Eva, but decided against it.
Thought about knocking on some girl’s door and trying to flirt my way inside.
Maybe Val . . . or Naomi, could sneak over and throw rocks at her Casa de Gullick window . . . shit, forget the flirting, might even take a scold and an Absolute No Sex Ever from the Ginger Nemesis at this point.
Frustration.
Such a part of my life.
Brings the snarl into my being. What drives me to curl my hands into fists, to show them canines, to smash every piece of art I come across. The spirit of the vandal. The spirit of the outsider. Wreck and ruin.
Not sure when I eventually fell asleep, but I know it wasn’t long before the nightmares started.
Falling to the ground.
Going splat.
Over and over.
Sometimes it was Catherine pushing me, or a Construct, or even Mama Welf.
Sometimes I wasn’t the only one went splat.
Landed next to Leo.
Next to Scott Hardy.
To Mom.
Wasn’t so bad of a nightmare then.
Our smiles might have been bloody, but at least I could remember exactly what she looked like for a few seconds.
[CLICK]
Woke up cranky.
Crankier than usual.
Crankier than Plutarch maybe.
Murder is solved, guess I can’t skip his class no more.
Tuesday.
Hadn’t seen Plutarch since Thursday.
Bachelor party.
Wedding.
Murder.
Solving it all.
We didn’t solve shit!
Decided to enjoy some of the schadenfreude in the situation. Decent word that. German’s do have a way for words that no one else has bothered to think up. Like backpfeifengesicht. Sure, sounds like the noise your asshole makes twelve hours after you had yourself some McDonald’s, but it means a face that deserves to be punched. Being I’m King Henry Price, happen to feel that glorious emotion quite often.
Schadenfreude less so, but it got me through the morning.
World might be back to normal, but that morning wasn’t quite there yet.
Shower and a change of clothes sure, but no time for a decent Cafeteria breakfast. Word spread from on high that Welf would be released from the Holding Room. My whole class planned to wait outside of Admin for him, give Welf a cheer and all that. Cuz when you think senti
mental . . . you think King Henry Price.
No proper breakfast.
Just to watch Welf walk on down some stairs we’ve all walked down at least a thousand times over the last five years. Bacon . . . gone. Hash browns . . . gone. Eggs . . . gone. Cup of coffee . . . nope, actually did have one of those. The To Go variety. And a blueberry muffin Miranda handed out to me and everyone else in our inner circle, her grief baking continuing whether or not you believed the world was as it should be or still all fucked up. Cafeteria might run out of supplies she keeps up this rate . . .
“Raj,” Jesus declared after having a bite of what I got to admit was a hell of a muffin, whether it might be of ginger origin or not, “just a bit of warning: once these things stop coming, I might murder you to kick production back up a notch.”
“Why Raj and not Pocket?” Val teased from Raj’s other side, her muffin secretly returned to Miranda’s bag when her friend wasn’t looking. Val preferred spicy stuff, or at least something with cinnamon in it. See, she’s not totally perfect. “Admitting to favorites, Jesus?”
“Not about my favorites, is it?” Jesus laid out logic on which one of us he’d murder for baked goods. “About Miranda’s favorites. We get most bang out of our blood sacrifice if it’s Raj goes down the volcano.”
“I don’t know if I should be insulted or not,” Raj mumbled around a mouth of muffin. Just not the muffin he wants from Miranda.
“Why wouldn’t you kill me then? I’m her best friend,” Val pointed out, “surely I’m worth more than Raj.”
“Too hard to kill you,” Jesus decided.
“This conversation is in very poor taste!” Miranda scolded us, only returning to her stash long enough to grab a whole bucket filled with cookies. She started distributing it to other members of our class before one of them came over and attacked us for our muffins.
Only Raj had the grace to look ashamed over our topic of choice.
Me, I don’t know what shame is.
The Pit of No Return (The King Henry Tapes Book 6) Page 41