Magic for Liars

by Sarah Gailey

  I was trying to come up with a clever, flirty reply when a follow-up came through. Unrelated question—would you happen to be free around seven-thirty tonight? For a thing? Then, a few seconds later: A date-thing?

  I walked into the library and sat down, rereading the exchange. I waited for my cheeks to cool before responding. I tried hard to think of a good response—something that would make me sound as smart and charming as the person he thought I was—but in the end, the only thing I could come up with was yes.

  CHAPTER

  FOURTEEN

  I WAS DUE TO GET started on staff interviews, something I’d been dreading. The kids at this school were no picnic, but at least they mostly thought of me as holding some kind of intrinsic adult authority. The staff at Osthorne would be under no illusions about the amount of power I held over them, or the amount of cooperation they owed me.

  My first interview of the day was with Stephen Toff, the infamous English teacher. I wished I’d left him for last the moment he walked into the library. Tabitha hadn’t misrepresented him in the slightest—there was the man-bun she’d mentioned, plus a patchy, ill-advised goatee. He looked me up and down as he sauntered through the library, then sat down in the chair across from me. I caught a whiff of some kind of cologne that reminded me powerfully of ranch dressing. He was short, but he sprawled his legs out like a giraffe at a watering hole. I had an immediate fantasy of shoving him aside on the train so I could sit.

  “You’re Ivy, right?” he said with an upward twitch of his chin.

  “That’s me.”

  “Cool, cool. I’m Stephen Toff. You can call me Toff.” He winked, looking pleased with himself.

  We did small talk for a while—where are you from, where did you go to school, how do you like teaching at Osthorne. Inconsequential bullshit to get him comfortable answering questions. For the first few minutes, he didn’t ask anything about me—not where I went to school or who I knew or whether I ever tried to arrange a spell using a sponge made of slowly growing roots as a framework. He answered my questions, and he talked about himself and his teaching and the book he was writing. It was easy.

  I never even had to lie.

  And when the small talk started to drift toward me, I shifted gears—I took it as a sign that it was time to get into the meat of the thing. I cut off his question about where I was from, flipping through my file to the background check on him. His expression stiffened when he saw his own photograph at the top of the page. Good.

  “So, Stephen. I’m assuming you know why I’m here?”

  He nodded, leaned across the table. He was trying to get a peek at the background check; I closed the file before he could get a good look.

  “You’re investigating Sylvia’s death, right?” He said it in a respectful murmur, his face serious, and I wondered if I’d misread him at first.

  “Just following up on a few loose ends,” I said, trying to keep him from feeling too important.

  “It’s a damn shame she decided to play with fire like that.” He shrugged. “Some people just aren’t cut out for theoretical magic, you know?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you know. Sylvia was great and all. Really warm, totally sweet. Great when girls needed to talk to someone about, you know. Their changing bodies, and birth control and stuff.” I swallowed bile as he winked at me again. “But … she taught health class. She was the school nurse. She wasn’t exactly the brightest star in the Osthorne constellation.” His eyes twinkled, and I was pretty sure I knew who he thought the brightest star was. I congratulated myself on not having misread him in the slightest.

  “Did you say birth control?”

  He wiggled his eyebrows at me. “Comprehensive. Osthorne provides clinic-level care for the kids. Nothing invasive or whatever, but we do STD and pregnancy testing and prevention.” He said the last part like it was a line he’d memorized in a mandatory meeting. As he said it, he winked at me yet again. I wondered if perhaps he had an undiagnosed condition that rendered him incapable of keeping both eyes open for more than a few minutes at a stretch. “If you ever need condoms, just hit me up—I know where the cabinet is.” It is a testament to my unparalleled self-control that I nodded politely at this, rather than telling him to sew himself into a burlap sack so I could throw him into the ocean.

  I even smiled at him. A smile that would have made Alexandria DeCambray proud. “You teach … what, again? English, right? Is that a part of the nonmagical curriculum?”

  He nodded. “I like to think of it as a kind of magic all its own, though. I teach the kids to create something out of nothing, using just the power of—”

  “Did you two get along well?” I cut him off before he could get too hard about his ability to galvanize youths.

  He leered at me, his lower lip buckling under his front teeth. “Uh, yeah. We got along pret-ty well.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Were you two … involved?”

  “No, no. Never officially. But we had, you know. A lot of chemistry.”

  I nodded, remembering Tabitha telling me how much Sylvia had hated him. Remembering the huge fight Dylan had ever-so-briefly mentioned. I decided to let him have a little more rope. “So you two were fucking, then? Sorry—” I gave an apologetic smile. “‘Sleeping together,’ rather.”

  He blinked a few times, startled by my candor. His eyes fell on my phone, which was lit up and recording. He shook his head as if to clear it. “Uh, no. We never did anything. Together.”

  I kept my face smooth as I scribbled on my notepad, keeping my satisfaction to myself. It felt good to throw him off his game. More importantly, if I had read him right, off-his-game was exactly where I needed him to be. I needed him scrambling to regain his certainty that he was a big dog.

  “So, your big fight wasn’t a lovers’ quarrel, then?” I leaned forward in my chair just enough that he checked to see if I was showing cleavage.

  “Our big fight?” He did a very convincing I-don’t-know-what-you’re-talking-about face, all pursed lips and furrowed brows. I flashed him a conspiratorial smile.

  “Oh, sure. Your big fight on the first day of school. The one your students overheard? Sounds like it was a real whopper.”

  He laughed. “Oh, gosh, that! I had forgotten all about it. It was really nothing, I don’t even—”

  “Tell me about it anyway,” I interrupted. I flashed the smile again. “So I can tell those kids there’s nothing to worry about, when they bring it up.”

  “We just had a little misunderstanding,” he said. I nodded, encouraging as I could muster, and he eased into a lopsided smile. He spread his hands, all charm and humility. “Sylvia could be a little uptight about things, I guess. Not to speak ill of the dead, of course.”

  “Of course,” I said. “Some people think they know what’s best for everyone, right?”

  “Exactly.” He smoothed down one eyebrow with the pad of his thumb. “Sylvia was a great little health teacher, but she was really wrapped up in inconsequential things.”

  “So what was she wrapped up in on the first day of school?”

  Looking everywhere but at me. “I mean, it was really not a big deal. I guess she saw me having lunch with this girl I was seeing, and she didn’t think it was ‘appropriate’ for me to kiss her goodbye.”

  “Wow.” I quirked an eyebrow, looked around, lowered my voice. “You weren’t kidding about uptight, huh? I mean, I had heard some things, but—”

  “You heard right,” Toff said.

  “So, walk me through it.” I drew tight spirals on my notepad, keeping my voice light and easy. “She sees you with your girlfriend—”

  “Girl I was seeing,” he cut in. “Not my girlfriend.”

  “Right, my mistake. She sees you with this bird and doesn’t like it, and, what? Tears you a new asshole about bringing your arm candy to work? Like it’s any of her business, right?” Tighter spirals, but I still didn’t let the lines touch.

  He rolled his eyes.
“Sylvia just had a lot of outdated opinions about who it’s appropriate for a teacher to date, I guess. The girl I was seeing used to be one of her students, or whatever, and it weirded her out, and she wasn’t cool about it.”

  I stilled my pen. “She used to be one of Sylvia’s students? Not one of yours?” Still light, still breezy. Just a small detail. And yet, I felt a thread of tension tighten between us. I made myself look up with a winky you-sly-dog kind of grin, and he smiled back, but the thread stayed taut.

  “I mean, she was probably in my class at some point, who can remember? Anyway, she was already eighteen by then, and that’s what matters. And who I date is—er, was. Who I date was none of Sylvia’s business.”

  “So you and this girl you were seeing—”

  “Woman,” he corrected.

  “Right, sorry. The woman you were seeing,” I said, feeling like I was swallowing a mouthful of oil. “You broke up because of the fight?”

  “Well, I stopped hanging out with her after that,” he said. “Not worth the hassle. Not like I can’t get what I want when I want it from other sources, anyway.” He winked at me.

  “I’m gonna grab some coffee,” I said, standing up. I needed to get the hell out of there before I slapped him so hard his wink turned permanent. “Do you need anything? No? I’ll be right back.”

  “Oh, actually, I probably should go,” he said, glancing at the clock behind the returns desk. “My prep period is almost over.” He stretched, his shirt riding up to reveal a large silver belt buckle. He grabbed one of my cards and stood close enough to me that I could smell that salad-bar cologne. “Can I call you sometime?” I opened my mouth to give him a vehement no, but he didn’t let me get the word in edgewise. “For research. I don’t know if I mentioned, but my novel is a murder mystery.” He had indeed mentioned this. “I’d love to ask you some questions. It’s about an adjunct professor who gets murdered by his psycho girlfriend when she doesn’t pass his class. Really dark stuff. You’d probably be into it.” He nodded, agreeing with himself.

  “Mmmm,” I said.

  “Anyway, I’ll call you about it. We can get a drink or something.” He didn’t wait to hear whether or not I accepted the invitation; he waved over his shoulder as he walked toward the door. I let him get halfway across the library, just far enough for him to wonder if I was checking out his ass, before I interrupted him.

  “Oh, hey, Toff,” I called, and he turned around with his brows raised, every kind of expectant. “I almost forgot to ask, what were you doing that night?”

  “What night?”

  I took a few steps toward him, leaned my ass against a worktable. Casual. “The night Sylvia died,” I said. “Were you on a date?”

  “I was at the welcome dinner, same as everybody else,” he said, already turning back toward the door. He waved over his shoulder, not waiting to hear if I had a follow-up question. “Ciao.”

  “Ciao, Toff,” I muttered under my breath. I sank into my chair and rolled my neck, waiting to make sure he wasn’t coming back.

  I had a break between interviews, so I put my headphones in and started playing the interview back, taking notes on important parts. There was a lot of chaff to sort through. In the playback, Toff’s attempts to steer me away from asking about the fight were more glaring. I added to my list of leads: find out the name of the poor kid he’d been dating, make sure Torres knew about it. Check with Webb to make sure he’d actually been at the welcome dinner. I was rewinding to the section of the conversation about the student, hoping there would be something I’d missed that might point to her identity, when I caught a flicker of motion in my peripheral vision.

  I looked up and saw Brea Teymourni silhouetted in the doorway, her hand still holding the door ajar as though she could bolt at any moment. I smiled at her, but didn’t move toward her. I kept my voice low, like I was trying to coax a cat out from under a car. “Hey, Brea. Did you want to come in?”

  She hesitated, looked out into the hallway with something like regret. A hand appeared on her shoulder, and Miranda Yao appeared from around the corner, still wearing her off-uniform basketball shorts. She was murmuring something too low for me to hear, and her high, glossy ponytail fell over Brea’s shoulder as they talked. Brea took a deep breath and nodded. Then she crossed the room and sat in the chair that had been occupied by Stephen Toff just a few minutes before. Her shoulders were hunched, and her warm brown eyes couldn’t seem to land on any one thing. She pulled at her Osthorne blazer, fidgeting with the edges of the long sleeves she wore underneath. There were goosebumps on the backs of her brittle-looking wrists. Miranda hovered in the doorway, looking uncertain, until Brea looked back at her. Their eyes locked. Miranda jogged over to sit beside her.

  It wasn’t a show. That was the first thing that struck me. These two girls weren’t putting anything on for me, weren’t trying to make me think anything in particular. They were scared, is all. They were scared, and they were helping each other to be brave.

  “Brea,” I said, setting my pen down. “Is something wrong?”

  She swallowed hard. “I was hoping maybe you wouldn’t be here,” she whispered, then cleared her throat. “I was, um. I thought I could just leave you a note or something.” She sounded louder, more confident, but she was still looking everywhere I wasn’t.

  “A note?” My heart leapt. “Are you the one who left me a note the other day?”

  She shook her head, looking confused. “No? I just … I don’t want anyone to know I talked to you. Sorry, I hope that’s not rude or anything.”

  Damn. “Okay,” I said, putting my chin in my hand. I kept my voice low. “That’s okay. Nobody has to know that we talked.”

  Miranda looked to the door. “Can you put up a vocal barrier or a distortion wall or something? Just in case?”

  I shook my head, and the answer came out of me before I realized what I was saying. “Not in here. That requires a blood-as-sand approach, and you know the light levels won’t support it.” I sounded so confident, so clear. I sounded like the kind of person who could write a journal filled with arcane equations and reflections on my academic insecurity.

  I sounded real.

  Miranda’s shoulders slumped. “Okay.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said, not pausing to digest what I’d just done. “No one will see you. And if they do, you can tell them that I called you in here but you didn’t talk to me about anything, okay? Now, what’s up?”

  Brea was quiet for a long time, biting her lip. She looked over at Miranda, her wide eyes brimming with worry, watching her girlfriend like a claustrophobe watches elevator doors. I could tell that she was working up courage, and I gave her the space to do it.

  Finally, she lifted one delicate hand and touched it to Miranda’s square, clenched jaw. Brea nodded, then took a deep breath.

  “I have to tell you something, but it’s probably not a big deal.” She turned to me, wary. I would have bet my PI license that what she wanted to tell me was definitely a big deal.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s hear it.”

  She did some more fidgeting, fraying her sleeves. Eventually, Miranda reached out and grabbed her hand, squeezing it tight enough to turn both of their knuckles white. I wondered what story Brea thought she was in. Her eyes kept darting to the window. She was afraid that someone had followed her, that someone would be reporting back on her. I decided to try poking at that fear.

  “Brea, if you don’t tell me what it is, I can’t tell you that it’s not a big deal.” I glanced out the window, then looked pointedly toward the door. “And the longer you’re here, the more likely it is that someone will walk by that window and see you.”

  “You can do it, babe,” Miranda murmured. She ran her thumb over Brea’s knuckles.

  Apparently, that was what she needed to hear. She straightened in her chair and got down to business, looking at me like I was a multiple-choice test that she was about to slay. “Okay, here’s the deal. You know Alexandria,
right?”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said, cool as anything. “What about her?”

  “Okay, look,” she said, leaning forward over the table. “Alexandria is my friend and I don’t want her to get in trouble or anything. But…” She took a deep breath. “IsawherfightingwithMissCapleythedaybeforeshedied.”

  I took a moment to process the rush of words. “Okay,” I said slowly. “What happened?”

  She told the story in fits and starts, with Miranda periodically nudging her onward. Her story was peppered with “but it’s totally not a big deal,” and “but Alexandria would never do anything like what happened to Miss Capley.” When she said the latter, she couldn’t look at me, and I knew that I wasn’t really the one she was trying to convince.

  I could see why she’d waited to tell me the story. The way she told it, she had gone to Miss Capley’s office to get weighed. When she explained that she had to go and get weighed every week, a flash of something crossed Miranda’s face—frustration? worry?—and I wondered but didn’t ask. When Brea had gotten to Capley’s office, she’d heard voices inside. She said she recognized Alexandria’s voice right away.

  “She talks kind of different, when she’s angry,” Miranda interjected. She grimaced with some painful memory. “Her voice gets … bigger? Scarier. Not like shouting, but it just. It makes you feel like you’d do anything to make her stop being mad. Like you’d do whatever she wants, just to keep her happy.” She bit her lip and glanced over at Brea, who nodded in agreement.

  I spoke quietly, trying to make my voice the opposite of everything she was remembering. “What were they saying, Brea?”

  “Um. They were saying—Miss Capley was saying, ‘I can’t, I can’t, I could get fired,’ and Alexandria was saying, um.” She trailed off, looking like she’d come up to the edge of a swimming hole but couldn’t tell whether the water was deep enough to jump in. I could have pushed her, but instead I waited. I let her decide that she was brave enough.