by Sarah Gailey
I exhaled as slowly and evenly as I could, trying hard not to look like I’d been holding my breath. She’d just made two concessions, and now, I had to ask her for a third. “The library will be perfect,” I said. “Under one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“We close it off during the interviews. Put a sign up, make an announcement. Make sure everyone knows not to go in there.”
She pursed her lips at me, and I thought for sure I’d overplayed my hand. But then: “You can’t close the library for two weeks. I doubt anyone would be spending any time there anyway—they steer clear these days. I think the whispering ‘creeps them out.’ But they need to have the option of going in there, yes?” She tapped the side of her pen against the edge of her desk. “I can give you a day. And it has to be open during lunch and after school.”
I shook my head. “One week?”
“Two days. It’s the best I can do.”
“Sold.”
She looked me over. Something about our conversation was sticking out—something that she didn’t quite like. She drummed her fingers on her desk. “Do you usually do interviews? Is that normal?”
I chewed my lip. “Well. No,” I answered truthfully. “I actually almost never do interviews. But then, I don’t usually get murder cases across my desk, either. So I’m doing what seems like it’ll work.”
She nodded. “I suppose that’s all I can ask for,” she said. “Two days. Then the library’s back open, and you’ll need to find something else that ‘seems like it’ll work.’”
“Deal,” I said, and stood to leave.
“Oh, hang on,” she said, rummaging in a desk drawer. “I have this for you.” She slid a pass to the restricted Theoretical Magic section across the table. “For the purposes of the ward on the section, you’re now officially considered a member of the Osthorne staff. You shouldn’t have any problem getting between the shelves so long as you have the pass.”
“Thanks,” I said, taking the pass and stuffing it into my bag. Torres gave me a thoughtful look. “What?”
“Oh, it’s just—I was just thinking. As far as I know, you’re the first nonmagical staff member at this school. We’ve never hired anyone without any powers before.”
I smiled at her so I wouldn’t scream. “You haven’t mentioned that to the existing staff members, by any chance?”
Her brow, which had been furrowed for most of our meeting, cleared into a look of plain, blank surprise. I realized with a start that she was younger than I had guessed. “I haven’t mentioned anything to anyone, other than that there’s an investigator on campus and they should give you their full cooperation,” she said. “Why? Should I make an announcement…?”
“No, no, that won’t be necessary,” I said. “I’d like them to talk to me the same as they’d talk to anyone. I can look up anything I don’t understand, right? I wouldn’t want anyone to act differently just because I’m around.”
I don’t know if she believed that explanation. But I believed it, and that was enough for us both. I walked past Mrs. Webb’s empty desk and into the hallway where I would never belong, and I looked down a row of lockers, waiting for the disorientation to hit me—that strange double vision that I knew would come over me if I let it.
I waited for the double vision, not because I couldn’t work the case without it, but because I didn’t want to. When it came, I looked at the school where a different version of me could have belonged, and I straightened the starch-stiff lapel of my jacket, and I smiled.
* * *
I set up my detective-at-work tableau again, in the same place as before—visible, but not obvious. Just tucked away enough that people would feel like they were figuring something out. I’d made myself into a prize.
I taped a small piece of paper to the door that said the library was closed. It may as well have been a neon sign. “Nothing to see here, move along.” Throughout the morning, it seemed as if every single one of the two hundred students at Osthorne Academy for Young Mages stopped to peek in at the window while pretending to check their hair in the glass. I spent the first few periods of the day pretending not to watch them as I finished reviewing background checks and set up my interview list.
They all looked so much younger than I would have thought. Not just the freshmen—all of them. Somehow, I’d pictured Osthorne’s students as preternaturally self-possessed, as having some little extra bit about them that made them into something more than high school students. Maybe it was because Tabitha was the only high school mage I’d ever met before—she had always seemed to float a decade or so above our shared age, as if she had access to some well of wisdom that I’d never thought to drop a bucket into.
But these mages were, for the most part, kids. Sure, some of them looked like they could have been teaching the classes that they were making themselves tardy for by peering in at my little window display. Some of them were only identifiable as “students” because they wore dark-blue Osthorne blazers over their white uniform button-downs. But they were all kids—all elbows and try-hard hairdos and sidelong glances at each other. They shouted in the halls and passed notes and cried and made out against the lockers, sometimes all at once. I kept waiting to see something amazing, something different. Something that would help me understand what made these kids different from me. Something unexpected.
That’s not to say that there wasn’t magic happening—but I wouldn’t have called any of it surprising magic. Quite a lot of it was performed just within my range of vision, although the teenagers casting the spells assembled themselves into a statuary of nonchalance to make sure I knew that none of it was for my benefit. A sandwich levitated past the window; a paper airplane transformed into a flock of starlings; a tree burst out of a locker, heavy with ripe pink apples. Several varieties of penis-shaped clouds thundered loudly for about six minutes before Rahul burst out of his classroom to dispel them. He caught my eye as he worked his hands through the air to make the dick-clouds dissipate, and I dissolved into uncontrollable laughter at the look on his face.
So, yes, there was magic. But even the magic was distinctly teenager magic. There was something in the flavor of it that spoke to a desperate lostness, a struggle to self-define; an occasional lunge toward the juvenile that said, We still get to be kids, right? The more time I spent looking for a way that they were different—looking for something that gave them the right to be magic—the more absurd it all felt. I caught myself smiling wistfully at some of the more juvenile spellcraft, but it was a nostalgia that didn’t belong to me. Every time I caught myself grinning at memories that weren’t mine, the realization was a little more bitter: This isn’t for you. None of this is for you.
As soon as the end-of-lunch tone rang through the halls, I visited Mrs. Webb to deliver the list of students I wanted to interview. I approached her warily, unsure whether or not she’d be exploding any of my other body parts. She took the page I offered and spoke to me while she looked it over.
“How’s the shoulder, Ms. Gamble?”
I gave it an exploratory roll. “It’s, uh. It’s all better, I think. Ma’am.” I didn’t think, I knew. My shoulder was completely healed. The swelling was gone, the heat was gone. The cut was gone. The gauze was gone. There wasn’t a scar—just an impossibly smooth stretch of skin. Even the freckles were the same as they’d been before.
Mrs. Webb still didn’t look up from the list of names I’d given her. She didn’t say anything. I shuffled my feet and took a breath to ask if we could have a quick chat, but startled when she raised her hand. My heart pounded, but she was just making a shooing motion.
“That’s all,” she murmured.
“Oh, okay. Thanks. Thank you,” I stammered as I left. On the way past the window, I looked in at her. She wasn’t pinching herself this time, but her hand hovered over her arm, one fingertip pressing at the place where I knew the bruise would be.
Forget it, I thought, and as I walked back to the library, I wondered
if her oubliette was overflowing.
* * *
When I got back to the library, the lights were off; gray light from the overcast morning filtered in through the bank of windows, filling the room with shadows.
I wasn’t alone.
Whispering echoed through the stacks—an extra layer of it, nested in among the constant whispers of the theoretical magic books. I closed the door behind me as quietly as I could, turning the knob slowly so it wouldn’t make so much as a click. I tucked myself into the shadows of the stacks and began making my way between the shelves, toward the voices.
They were incredibly tantalizing. I could almost make out words—howcouldyou whatwereyou whydidyou—and I wondered if whatever weird magic was cast over that aisle to make the books whisper was intended to keep students out or to draw them in. I wondered why anyone would think it was a good idea to make them whisper in the first place. I pressed myself against the endcap between the two sections, straining to make out what the books were saying.
You never but I wish I could have and maybe then we would have did you do it but she can’t know she can never know wait someone’s here—
There was a crash. A book cart rocketed out of the Poison section and smashed into the wall in front of me. I smothered a shout of surprise. I rounded the corner, looked into the Theoretical Magic section—but I’d left my pass in my bag by the tableau and my head spun. Too late, I backtracked and watched as two shadows detached themselves from the darkness in the Poison section. They ran away from me, rounded the shelves; I chased them, but then they were gone, the library door slamming behind them. When I opened it and stared out into the hallway, nobody was there.
Too late.
The books in the Theoretical Magic section were silent. I realized that they had been silent all along.
I closed my eyes, tried to remember the last thing I’d heard them say.
Did you do it?
She can never know.
I stepped into the Poison section. There, on the floor, was a crumpled piece of notebook paper. I took it to the window to look at it in the light. The strange pattern of creases looked familiar. I pulled the note from Friday out of my pocket and compared the two.
They matched.
The ink on this note hadn’t run the same way mine had, but it had been folded into the same elaborate star.
Meet me in the library, it said. We need to talk. I know what you did, but I still love you. We can’t let her come between us anymore.
I stared at it, waiting for the words to dissolve, but they stayed. I read them over and over again until my first student interview arrived. The more crumbs I found, the more certain I was that the whole cake was still at Osthorne. Sylvia hadn’t been murdered by just anyone. The killer was someone at the school. It had to be.
“Um, Miss Gamble?” Dylan DeCambray’s voice broke over my name. “Hello?”
I shoved both notes into the pockets of my jacket, tearing the tiny seam of threads that had stitched the pockets closed while it was on the rack. “Yes, Dylan. Hi. You can turn the lights on.” The fluorescents overhead buzzed to life, washing the shadowy room in thin, milky light. I glanced up at the flickering panels that checkered the ceiling and noticed a dark patch: the lights over the Theoretical Magic section were out. “Well, that’s a bit precious, isn’t it?” I muttered as I walked over to the desk I’d spread my files across. I shuffled a couple of papers before squinting at Dylan.
“Hi, uh. Miss Gamble.” He held out a slip of paper. “Mrs. Webb said you wanted to see me? She pulled me out of physics, which—”
“Would you like to take a seat?” I sat without taking his hall pass.
“Sure,” he said, not making eye contact with me. I couldn’t tell if he was nervous or pissed.
“Physics, huh? Do you mean physical magic? With Mr. Chaudhary?” Not that I cared.
He rolled his eyes, slouched in his chair so thoroughly that it looked like his spine was melting. I suppose that solved the nervous/pissed mystery. “No, I mean physics. We’re in lab today, and I really shouldn’t be missing it.” He stared at me like I gave a shit about his lab.
I let him simmer while I made a show of flipping to a fresh page in my notebook, of turning on a recording app on my phone and setting it on the table between us. He had the long, lean look of pulled taffy, and I wondered if he was done growing yet or if he had one more torturous season of outgrown pants to deal with. He looked almost-there, smudgy, like someone had pulled him off the press a moment before the ink had dried. His hair was messy, but I noticed that he didn’t run his hands through it; instead, he occasionally ruffled it at the roots with his fingertips. This was a Look—he was channeling something. I flashed back to our Chosen One conversation, looked him over one more time. Yes—he was definitely cultivating a persona. I had my angle. I took a deep breath, tugged at the cuffs of my jacket, and tried to slip myself into the game. Into his story.
“I’m sorry I had to make you miss your lab, Dylan. I know that’s so important, and I’m sure your lab partner is missing you. It’s just that … well. There are bigger things going on at Osthorne than physics class. I think you know what I’m talking about?” I raised my eyebrows significantly: can’t say too much, you don’t know who might be listening. “I need your help.”
He stopped breathing for a couple of seconds, just long enough for me to see it catch in his mind. Is it happening? Oh my god, someone is finally listening.
“What can I do?” he said, leaning forward against the table. His elbows rested on a folder full of black-and-whites from an archived case.
Careful, Ivy. Not too fast now, I thought. I leaned forward too, mirroring him. “Let’s start with what you know. Then we can discuss what I need you to do.”
He frowned at me. “What I know?”
“I know you’ve been investigating too, Dylan,” I said, going out on a limb. “I need to know what you’ve found. It may be the key to finding out who—or what—is behind the murder. So, can you help me catch the killer? Or not?”
He sat up as straight as if a snake had crawled up his pant leg to get warm. The hook was set. I’d picked the right tactic, playing on his desperate need for there to be a conspiracy, dark forces at work, something, anything bigger than what he already knew was going on. If he’d done anything wrong, he’d hang himself trying to get on the inside of the investigation. If he hadn’t done anything wrong … he’d still have the rope. Maybe he’d lasso someone for me.
“Okay,” he said, his voice pitching low. “I’ll tell you everything I’ve found. But you can’t record it, and you can’t take notes.” His eyes flicked to my phone, then to my notepad, where I’d written the date and his name along with a few illegible faux-notes to make him feel researched. “If anyone finds out what I have to tell you, my shit will be one hundred percent wrecked. You understand?”
I put my notebook down and reached out a deliberate finger to hit the big red STOP RECORDING button on my phone. I sat back in my chair, let him see that I wasn’t hitting a secret button hidden under the table, wasn’t signaling anyone hidden behind a one-way mirror. I spread my hands wide as I bumped my digital recorder with my foot. The little green LED blinked up at me from the floor.
“Okay, Dylan DeCambray,” I said in a clear and carrying voice. “Tell me what you know about the murder of Sylvia Capley.”
He took a deep breath.
And we’re off.
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
DYLAN HAD A LOT OF groundwork to lay. He spent the better part of an hour telling me the details of the Prophecy. He told me that it was important, and after my first few attempts to interrupt him, I decided to let out some line and see where this thing was going.
The Prophecy had been passed down through his family for generations. It was from a time when soothsaying wasn’t considered a magical pseudoscience; his family had never let it go. It foretold that a child would be born into his generation, and that child would be
the most powerful mage of the day and would forever change the world of magic (“and stuff,” as Dylan helpfully added). There was some lace and fringe about the position of the planets and the weather when the child was born, and a long epilogue about the child changing the world of magic before they even came “of age.”
He was sure it was him.
“I turn eighteen in March,” he said, “so this is it. This has to be it. It’s all my father and I have been working for this whole time. I know that I can help, just tell me what to do. Do you need me to anchor a spell? Or pull together a working group? I’ll do anything.”
The weight he put behind the word “anything” carried a dark kind of desperation that I wanted to give a wide berth. This kid was ready to jump off a bridge if it meant fulfilling his destiny. I nodded slowly and leaned forward on my elbows. “What I really need right now,” I said, in tones of great import and mystery, “is to know what you know about the murder.”
“Right. Well.” He looked over his shoulders, reminding me of a hunched-over version of Alexandria. “The school is trying to keep people out of the area where Ms. Capley died.”
It took all my strength not to slam my head against the table. “Oh, I see. Very interesting. What else?”
“Well, they don’t want anyone investigating. Asking questions. I almost got suspended for trying to cast an illumine charm over the stacks.”
“An illumination charm?”
He raised his eyebrows back. “No, an illumine charm. I invented it. An illumination charm just casts sunlight. An illumine charm does that too, but it can also reveal secrets if you put the right twist on it.” I could only just hear the difference, but I nodded as if I were impressed. As if I understood. “I cast it over the stacks and I was looking for clues, and then I got in trouble because I guess the light is bad for the books or whatever, but obviously it can’t be bad for the books because then why would they have these big windows? Anyway, Ms. Gamble caught me and she totally ripped me a new assho— Um, I mean, she was really mad. And she took me to the office and said I was skipping classes—”