by Erin Johnson
I chuckled. "Yeah. I'm sure that's what she'd use."
Hank went left, while I went right with Iggy. Even with the cozy fire burning in the fireplace, the room felt drafty and I shivered. We moved around the sitting area with its loveseat and two armchairs. Sheets of music lay scattered on the coffee table, along with an empty mug ringed with tea stains. I carried Iggy past it toward the four-poster bed, wardrobe, and the big picture window framed by silk curtains. I peeked out the window and curled my lip at the view. Ria's window looked down on the outhouses and the debris-laden alleyway behind the house. Not great. Hank pointed at a mirror on the wall.
"Magical?"
I gave it a thorough once-over, then shook my head. "Just a normal mirror."
He nodded and crouched down to check under the bed. On my side of it, a journal lay open on the bedside table. I hesitated—reading someone else's diary seemed like a real invasion of privacy.
"Um. You already broke in here. Do it!"
With Iggy's dubious permission, I looked down at the diary. If it was already open, and I just happened to see what was written, that wasn't so bad was it?
The entry was from today. I read,
Death is many things—inconvenient, one of them.
"Uh, Hank?"
He popped his head up on the other side of the silk comforter. I held the diary up before hopping up onto the four-poster to read. "I think you're going to want to hear this."
He moved around the side of the bed and perched beside me.
I read aloud:
"Death is many things—inconvenient, one of them."
"Guilty," Iggy said perfunctorily.
Seemed like it. I kept reading.
"Needing the help of a woman like Lady Cordelia is unbearable enough. But it shall be intolerable if I've done everything to no end. With the death of that fat man distracting her and everyone in the village, I've yet to speak to her about using her connection to Madame LaRue to get me another audition to the conservatory. It's disgusting. If vapid Pandora Allencourt can attend Valehaven, I, Ria Kapoor, certainly may as well. I am sure Pandora has some talents, but they are showy and overdone and she'd certainly not be at the school without her mother's influence."
I could almost hear the heavy sighs. But Ria only mentioned one death, so this must've been written this morning.
"I tried speaking with Beau Primpington to see if he might put in a word for me, but he hardly attended. He only had eyes, drunken ones at that, for ditzy Pandora. Urg. I know it was I who convinced my parents to attend the Allencourt's Bruma Eve party last night, but I'm beginning to think it was a mistake to come here. Even though I deserve a spot in the conservatory more than anyone else I know—"
"Someone has a high opinion of themselves," Iggy drawled.
"—it's not worth stooping to currying favors from some country bumpkins with one good connection to get in there. I shall simply practice harder and audition again, in the spring. And hope my nerves don't get the best of me again. My parents and I shall return to London as soon as that dreadful vine clears out."
I flipped to the next page, but it was blank. That was her most recent entry. I leaned forward and carefully set the diary back on the nightstand, in as close to the same spot as I could get.
"It doesn't sound like she did it." Hank rubbed his hands together and stared at them.
I shook my head. "No. Lady Cordelia had her all wrong. Ria's not after Beau, she's after a favor to get into the conservatory. But Lady Cordelia's had it out for her the whole time, poor girl. I mean, take this bed for instance." I rapped on the mattress with my knuckles. "Hard as rock. And this room? Freezing, and with a view of the outhouses. Lady Cordelia is really punishing her."
Hank chuckled. "You're right."
"So Ria wouldn't want to kill anyone and make a scene or risk being arrested. She just wants to get into that elite, fancy-schmancy music school."
Hank bit his lip. "Looks like we struck out with Ria."
I grimaced. "Well, now I feel bad about breaking in here."
We hopped off the bed and smoothed the mattress. My rear ached from sitting on the hard surface. Poor Ria. I grabbed Iggy's lantern and we crept back to the door, where we paused and looked around to make sure we hadn't left anything out of place.
"Ready?"
I nodded. Hank eased the door open, looked left and right, and then we slid out. Just as we closed the door, quietly, Ria's dark head appeared, bobbing up the staircase. I grimaced at Hank and shook my hands in panic. Silently, Hank cast a spell, and the lock clicked shut. Then he grabbed my hand and we padded down the hallway to the last door at the end, found it unlocked and dashed inside, just before Ria caught us. I opened my eyes wide at Hank as we listened.
Ria's door opened with a click of the lock and then thunked shut. I let out the breath I'd been holding and pressed my hand to my cheek. "We almost got caught."
Hank breathed out a laugh. "It was kind of… thrilling."
We leaned toward each other, my face lifted to his and my eyes closing for a kiss. Iggy cleared his throat, loudly. "Still here. Still."
Hank and I pulled apart and I looked around. We appeared to be in the governor's study. An enormous and heavy-looking wood desk took up the back of the room in front of the window. On the nearby wall stood a fireplace, the mantle littered with photographs of the family and a Bruma garland. The mouth of the fire lay dark, but white specks among the black charred logs caught my eye.
"We should go, before someone finds us," Hank said, his hand on the doorknob.
"One sec." I held up a finger and jogged over to crouch in front of the fireplace. The white specks turned out to be burned bits of paper. Gingerly, I reached into the back and extricated a stack of a few larger pieces, the edges rippled and charred.
"What'd you find?" Hank crouched beside me.
I handed him one of the larger pieces. "I'm not sure."
22
Records
"These are records." Hank held the paper up and used his thumb to brush away a layer of gray ash.
"What kind of records?"
He scooted closer. "These have names and land parcels detailed out. It seems to be a record of the transfer of land rights." He pointed at the hand-written ledger of neat lines. "See? Farmer Charles Swan, twenty acres, east fields, transferred to Eddy Kinn." He looked up at me. "The man who died today."
I frowned and looked over the scraps I held, but didn't recognize any other names. "Eddy Kinn…. Hey!" I looked up and Hank's eyes snapped to mine. "Last night, at the party, I heard Bridger telling Eddy Kinn that he had proof of something. It sounded like some way to get money to pay Eddy back. He seemed to have lost his copies, but said the originals were at the records building."
Hank's eyes lit up and he bit his lip. "This might have been the proof he lost… someone in this house burned it. Why?" Hank looked directly at me. "Imogen, someone set fire to the records building today. Did you notice that burned door up in the tower earlier? We passed it on the landing up to the top?"
I nodded.
"Francis looked around in there—lots of cabinets of papers, all burned. He thinks that's where the fire started."
I frowned. "Someone lit the records building on fire to destroy old records of land transfers?"
Hank nodded. "Maybe. Buy why?"
He pocketed the charred papers and we snuck out of the governor's study and back downstairs. My heart stopped pummeling my chest once we stood safely in the foyer—no one could suspect us of anything there. Just then, Sal, the maid, rounded the corner with a broom in one hand, and a duster in the other. She gave a little curtsy and lowered her eyes as we passed.
Hank and I murmured our greetings on the way out the front door. But then I paused and turned on my heel. Sal was halfway up the stairs.
"Sal?" This could totally backfire and I hoped like heck it didn't. I pulled a paper from Hank's pocket. "Do you recognize these?"
She came down a step or two and scru
nched her brows together as she scanned the scraps. "No, mum. I'm sorry. Did we accidentally throw your highness's work into the fire? I'm so sorry!"
Hank held up a hand before she could get too panicky. "No Sal, nothing like that."
I shook my head. "No, Hank—I mean, Prince Harry just happened upon these and we wanted to make sure no one needed them. You don't recognize them?" This was a very thin lie and I was counting on the maid's politeness not to ask a member of the royalty how he "happened upon" some burned records.
She swallowed and shook her head. "No. I'm sorry."
"Uh, maybe you saw Bridger with them?"
Her brows rose and she looked up in surprise. "You know, those might have been the papers he came by here with yesterday morning."
Hank and I exchanged excited glances. This seemed promising.
"Bridger came here?"
She nodded. "He came here with a stack of papers—those might be part of them, I didn't get a good look. In fact, no one did. He stormed in here, ranting and raving and demanding to see our master, the lord governor, who wasn't home at the time. I told him so, but he shook the papers at me—seemed very excited… and drunk, though I know it's not polite to speak ill of the dead."
"We understand, Sal." Hank nodded kindly at her to go on.
"Well, the butler demanded he leave the papers in his care and then go. Butler said he'd deliver the papers to our master, but Bridger refused. He said they were for the governor's eyes only and that we better not think about stealing them from him and burning them, because he had more copies."
But evidently, someone had burned them.
"Then the mistress came downstairs…."
"Lady Cordelia?" I asked.
Sal nodded. "She said Bridger could come upstairs and wait in the governor's office. Bridger was so rude to her." Sal clenched her fists and pursed her lips. "Butler had to hold Dylan back from attacking Bridger, though what the boy would have done, I don't know."
I lifted a brow. "Dylan? The governor's errand boy?"
Sal nodded. "He is that. But he does things for our mistress, and the butler, too." She chuckled. "He sure has a crush on Lady Cordelia."
Interesting, though not entirely surprising, given his peeping on her earlier at the dressmaker's shop.
"So, did Bridger wait for the governor to get back?" I asked.
The maid shook her head. "No. It was strange. For all his hollering, he came downstairs a few minutes later, empty-handed and calm as dirt, and then just left. He showed up later last night for the party, and said not a peep to me nor anyone else about his papers or seeing the governor."
I chewed that over for a minute. "Thanks, Sal. Hey, one more thing. Speaking of the party last night—what happened with the clock? I overheard Lady Cordelia asking you if you'd set it."
Sal's cheeks flushed. "I feel right awful about that. I could have sworn I set the time right. And everyone counting on that clock to know when the countdown to midnight was… I'll never forgive myself. It's all the worse when I don't know how it could have happened. I must have been too scatterbrained with all the preparations for the party."
"Thank you again, Sal. And don't worry about it." Hank smiled kindly at her and we parted ways.
Outside, once we'd climbed down the steps of the porch, I turned to Hank. "Wow. So Lady Cordelia took Bridger up and then he came down minutes later a changed man? So, it really could be her, right?"
He nodded. "She's still a strong suspect—though we don't know how she could have killed Eddy with such a good alibi."
Oh right. That.
"What about Dylan?" I lifted my gloved palms as we walked down the drive. Afternoon was fading into evening, the shadows growing long and blue. "He seems really into Lady Cordelia—obsessed maybe. He might be a hothead and killed Bridger for insulting her. Between the spying and the cheating, Dylan appears to have loose morals." I lifted my brows. "Plus, he was standing beside the ice cube tray just as the fireworks went off. Maybe he purposefully set the clock wrong as a distraction—he had access to the mansion."
Hank nodded, thinking it over. "That makes sense for Bridger, but why would he kill Eddy? And again, he has an alibi for the second death. You saw him in the alley a few moments after the alarm bells rang, right?"
"He's got you there," Iggy chimed in.
I nodded and rubbed at my temple with my free hand. What a mess.
"It'll be dark soon." Hank looked up at the pale sky, his breath coming out in misty puffs. "We'd better meet up with the others at the inn before the tree lighting ceremony."
I agreed and we struck out toward the inn.
23
Back at the Inn
We joined the rest of our friends at the inn, and sat at the same table we'd eaten at yesterday. A fire in the giant fireplace kept the place toasty warm, even with the tall peaked ceilings. The mounted deer, moose, and monster heads didn't seem to bother Sam as much as they had before. He smiled and met Annie's eyes while speaking to her. I sighed with relief. Even though we compared notes and found that none of us had turned up much, at least ice skating with Amelia seemed to have cheered Sam back up.
He smiled when the innkeeper brought him a mug of hot cocoa and happily slurped up the miniature marshmallows floating on top. I wondered if they were homemade, as I'd have done it. It didn't matter—it was just good to see Sam back to himself again. I smiled at him across the table and he grinned back, a mustache of foam on his upper lip. Maple and Wiley giggled as they fed Cat scraps under the table. Maple kept an eye out for the innkeeper, while Wiley reached under.
"Yow!" Wiley snatched his hand back and shook it. "He's got sharp teeth." He didn't seem to mind as much when Maple took his hand and looked it over for injury.
Francis drummed his white fingers on the tabletop as we sipped tea and coffee and munched on the platters of appetizers they'd ordered before Hank, Iggy, and I arrived.
The vampire cocked his head to the side. "Cordelia could have bitten Bridger and altered his memory. That's why he might have left the mansion without his papers in an entirely different mood than when he arrived."
My jaw dropped and Maple and I looked at each other. "Vampires can do that?"
"Not all." Francis examined his manicured nails. "But some."
"Can you?" Maple blurted.
Francis's dark eyes flicked to hers. "Remember the time you and Imogen were carrying trays of scones to one of the princesses and ran into me in the hall and graciously decided to give me one of them?"
I frowned. "One of the scones?"
He lifted a brow. "One of the trays."
That would never happen. "No…."
A sly grin stretched across Francis's pale, sharp-angled face. "Exactly."
I gasped. "You—I—Why didn't you erase my and Hank's memories when we found you and Rhonda in the bat room in the library then?"
Rhonda leaned over and waggled her brows. "And deprive you of that gem of a memory? Never."
She and Francis laughed.
"Sea snakes," I cursed.
"Could Lady Cordelia control more than memories?" Maple asked. "Could she make someone do something against their will?" She shuddered, and Wiley grabbed his coat from off the back of his chair and draped it around her shoulders. Nice anticipating her needs, Wiley, nice. I winked at him and he gave me a furtive thumbs-up.
Francis shook his head. "No. And she can't alter memories, just erase them if she's taken a person's blood. And only the memories immediately surrounding the biting. It's a way for vampires to feed and make their fuel sources forget the attack."
"Fuel sources?" I gasped.
He shrugged a thin shoulder. "Vampire term."
Amelia put down her fork pointedly.
I frowned. "You have to bite them to make them forget? So… you bit me and Maple just to steal a tray of scones and make us forget? Have you bitten all of us?"
Rhonda and Francis turned to each other, lips pressed tight, and then burst into hysterical laughte
r.
The rest of us exchanged incredulous looks. Except for Sam, who just sipped his hot cocoa, content as a clam.
"Wait, are you two joking?" I scoffed.
They laughed harder.
"Guys!" I pounded the table to get their attention, but they were gone in a fit of glee. "Okay, we've lost them."
"So she can erase memories," Amelia ticked the list off on her polished fingers, "and magically teleport and transform into a bat, too?"
Francis shook his head, still recovering from his bout of hysterics. "Unlikely. If we believe her story of the attack that turned her, she is a made vampire, not born, and a young one at that."
She wasn't that young, despite her appearance, but maybe in vampire terms.
"Both of those qualities mean her powers will be limited. Though she's still incredibly strong and fast compared to the rest of you."
"She's seeming pretty guilty again." Annie shook her head as she ripped a thick hunk of bread into bite-sized pieces. "And if she is the killer, it's dangerous out there." She nodded towards the darkening windows. "We should stick together."
The diners at a table near ours stood and left, chattering about leaving in time for the tree lighting ceremony.
Francis pushed back from the table. "You all stick together and eat—you'll need your strength. Cordelia should be up on that stage for the tree lighting and I want to keep an eye on her. I'll meet you outside." He stooped to kiss Rhonda's forehead, right where it glowed when she had a vision.
"Be safe out there, sweetums." Rhonda cupped his chin.
"I'm a vampire, darling." Francis floated out of the dining hall, his feet dangling a few inches off the ground and one sleeve of his black cloak hanging empty.
I turned my eyes back to my friends at the table. "I agree that we should keep an eye out for Lady Cordelia. But I still think Dylan might be involved somehow." I explained how he'd nearly attacked Bridger for being rude to Cordelia.
Annie narrowed her eyes. "If Cordelia bit Bridger and made him forget the records, Dylan might have overheard part of it and understood enough to know Bridger was threatening her."