After I was released from a three-hour cafeteria duty, I found the flowers in my classroom had been removed. If that had been the gift that weakened the school ward, and it had created a thread that a Fae had used to find me, I wondered why she hadn’t snatched me right then. Was her intent not to kill me or kidnap me? Or had that thread not been strong enough to do so?
I had a feeling Thatch might be able to tell me. If he chose. Or I could do some investigating on my own. I intended to discover who the Princess of Lies and Truth was and if she might have a motive to kill me.
Or do something worse.
CHAPTER TEN
No Strings Attached
Fae royalty liked their titles. The best place to do research on Fae was the school library. The library was full of students, more so than on an average weekend because of the lockdown. Maddy worked restocking books. I didn’t see Gertrude Periwinkle, the librarian, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t nearby.
I used the card catalogue and found books on Fae peerage, looking up royalty to see if I could identify the Princess of Lies and Truth. I couldn’t find the book on the Silver Court because it was checked out to Vega. That didn’t surprise me considering she was “dating” Elric.
I remembered King Viridios possessed many titles including: King of the Silver Court; Lord Muse of Artists, Dancers, and Musicians; Ruler of Birds, Beasts, and Bees—though Elric claimed it was more accurate to say Ruler of Birds, Beasts, and Insects—but the king liked the alliteration.
I found a book on the Raven Court. Some of the Raven Queen’s titles were: Giver of Pain, Ruler of All That Is Evil, Queen of Pain and Pleasure, and more along that vein.
The Princess of Lies and Truth sounded like a Fae title, but maybe it was a made-up one. This might be a wild-goose chase, like something out of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I tried not to compare my life to fiction. It always turned out poorly in the end when I thought I was Hermione Granger.
After an hour of nosing through books, I went to Maddy where she sat at the counter checking books back in. “Do you know any spells for doing a keyword search?” I asked.
Her azure eyes lit up in excitement. “Like you would do in Google?” She lowered her voice confidentially. “Mrs. Lawrence taught me to use the Internet last summer, and I did research like a Morty would do! Isn’t that cool?”
I was happy my adoptive mom had taught her useful skills when Maddy had stayed with her, but she was missing the point. “Do you know a spell to do something like that?” Vega did, but she was a Merlin-class snob.
Maddy’s shoulder slumped. “No. That kind of magic is hard to do. It’s Celestor magic.” A curtain of blonde hair fell into her face, partially obscuring the pink scars that had been caused when the golem had attacked and she’d tried to rescue me with the other students. Another reminder of one of my many epic fails.
“Maybe Imani knows. She’s learning Celestor magic,” Maddy said.
I noticed the way she didn’t say, “Because Imani is a Celestor” since she knew Imani wasn’t. Imani only pretended to be one like Thatch did. I wished Imani hadn’t given away her secrets to her friends. They might accidentally out her. Then again, Imani was the one who had advocated that I needed to trust people. I needed a support network of friends whom I could confide in.
Like Josie.
Gertrude Periwinkle might have known the spell for doing a keyword search, but she didn’t show up in the library all afternoon. Eventually Imani came in with Greenie and Hailey. None of them knew the spell, though they grudgingly accepted my delegation of research, each of them skimming books for Fae titles. There were twelve major Fae families, each with multiple volumes. Then there were the lesser families.
“Why are we spending our day off doing research?” Hailey stretched in her chair and yawned.
“Because we like Miss Lawrence,” Imani said, kicking her under the table.
Hailey shrugged. “Who is this Princess of Lies and Truth anyway? It sounds like a game to me. Like truth or dare. Or two truths and a lie. Or is it two lies and a truth?”
If this was a game, it was a dangerous one—the only kind that Fae played. All Fae were liars as far as I could tell. That title could have fit anyone.
Maybe that statement wasn’t fair. Khaba had never lied to me that I knew of. Pinky was honest. Bart the Unicorn technically was Fae. He was full of himself and full of b.s., but I wasn’t sure that he was truly a liar. Maybe I was biased against Fae because of my dealings with the Raven Court and the Silver Court.
After a fruitless search, I scoured my dorm room for Vega’s library book on the Silver Court’s peerage. I only found the old yearbooks from the twenties and early thirties with photographs of Dox Woodruff. My frustration at being unable to do anything useful boiled inside of me. I wanted to find out who my enemy was before she tried to hurt Thatch or me.
As I searched again, I found Vega’s voodoo doll under my bed. She’d given the doll striped stockings and a pink polka-dot dress. From the stripes and hot-pink hair, I knew it was supposed to be me. It looked like the hair was made from human hair. I supposed she could have collected hair from my hair brush, but it was too much. I felt my own hair for uneven patches. At the nape of my neck, a blunt section had been sheared off.
That wicked witch had cut my hair in my sleep and made a voodoo doll of me? It was times like this that I wished I was still sharing a room with Josie. I would take a giant spider trying to eat me any day over Vega. I shoved the doll into my sweater pocket. If she wanted to stab pins in my eyes, she would have to make another voodoo doll.
I went to Vega’s classroom where she was grading papers and monitoring a group of studying students. “What the hell is this?” I waved the doll in front of her.
“What does it look like?” Not even looking up, she reached out to snatch it from me.
I yanked the doll back before she could get her claws on it. “You made a voodoo doll to stab my eyes out.”
“I don’t see any pins.”
“You probably did something to it.” What I didn’t know.
“Probably.” She wrote “F+” on a student’s paper with a red pen.
“Why do you try to make my life miserable? What is it with you? You have no right to cut off my hair and make a voodoo doll of me.”
Vega waved her hand at her small group of students. “Would you mind keeping your voice down? Students are studying for their most important class.”
Students feigned interest in doing work, but snuck glances at us.
I waved the doll into the air and then stopped, afraid I might jostle myself around. “You need to undo this right now.”
“Certainly. Give me back the doll, and I’ll undo her.” From the little smirk on Vega’s lips, I suspected that was the last thing I wanted to do.
I could see I wasn’t going to get anywhere with this. I could ask Josie or Thatch to help me undo any curses on my mini-me later.
“On to the next subject.” Not that I expected this one to go any better. “I need to examine a library book you have in your possession.”
She lifted her nose into the air. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t have any library books.”
“The book is checked out to you. I saw the ledger in the library.” Maybe Vega was also a princess of lies—but probably not of truths. “I know you have this book because it has an entire chapter devoted to Elric.”
She snapped her gradebook shut with an air of finality. “No, that isn’t why I have it.”
“Then you do have it?”
She turned back to her grading without answering. Her lips pressed into a grim line.
I hated the way she snubbed me and refused to even look at me. “I suppose you don’t want to let me look at this book because of your supposed lover from a past life? Don’t you think that’s a little unhealthy considering you’re now dating his father?”
The room was as still as a gr
aveyard. I was aware of how all the eyes of students were on me. Their quiet conversations had stopped. Surely they wanted to know about this juicy gossip between feuding teachers.
Vega’s eyes narrowed. “Have you ever thought that every time you open your mouth, it might be helping you dig your own grave.”
Not the response I’d hoped for. Later I found the blouses she’d cut sections of fabric from in order to make the voodoo doll of me. Vega always was a treasure trove of delights.
That evening, Thatch requested my presence in his office. Priscilla, his raven, stared at me with black unblinking eyes from her cage. He examined the doll and detected nothing dangerous.
“She may have placed it under your bed to absorb more of your essence. I will have a talk with Miss Bloodmire tomorrow.” He opened a drawer to his desk and tucked the doll away.
That made me feel better.
Thatch steepled his fingers. “Let us discuss your . . . premonition, if we may call it that.” His eyes were tired, his frame leaned back in his chair as though he couldn’t force himself to sit up for another moment. Probably he’d been reinforcing wards with Pinky and Khaba all day.
“Sure,” I said. “But first, you tell me about those flowers. Who were they really from? The Raven Queen? Some other Fae?”
“I told you already. They were a gift . . . from me.”
“Then why are they gone from my classroom? That was the way she got in, wasn’t it?”
“Surely those flowers must have been in a state of decay by now. It wouldn’t surprise me if the school’s brownies disposed of them.”
“Then where’s the note? And don’t tell me you’ve lost it.”
“Moving on,” Thatch said. “How did—”
I put up a hand. “Not so fast. I’m not ready for your agenda of distraction yet.”
I would let him have this small battle for the moment; I already had a plan to do my own research, but I had another battle to wage. “I don’t feel right about keeping secrets from Josie. She’s my best friend, and it’s wrong not to tell her about us. She told me her deepest secrets today, and she needs to know we’re dating.”
He sighed in exasperation. “She has made you her confidante. Now you feel the need to tell her every aspect of your life out of some misguided sense of loyalty. How touching.”
“Stop being so condescending. You don’t get what it’s like for her.” I didn’t want him to know how she felt about him. It seemed wrong to tell him what she’d told me in confidence, but I didn’t see any other way around it. “She still has feelings for you.”
“Indeed. Feelings of disgust, loathing, and annoyance.”
I rose from the uncomfortable chair. “If she finds out that we’re dating, and I kept it a secret from her, she is going to freak. She’ll never speak to me again.”
His eyebrow arched upward. “Wouldn’t that be a tragedy?”
I crossed my arms. “Yes, it would. I want to be friends with Josie. I want everything to be back to normal.”
He glowered. “Things will never be back to normal for the two of you. Don’t you see that? Nor should you attempt it. You will draw out her affinity again, and she will lose control. Next time she might kill you because you aren’t strong enough to contain her.”
Josie had also said we would never be able to go back to how things were before, but today I had felt like we’d had a breakthrough. She trusted me enough to tell me about her secret crush, even though it shamed her.
If she was going to make an effort to reconnect, I would too. “I can’t tell her about my affinity. I get that.” Or about the Fae Fertility Paradox. Or about my skills in necromancy. Or about me regaining my magic. “But our relationship isn’t a matter of life or death. It doesn’t put her at any risk like the knowledge of the Red affinity does.”
The gray of Thatch’s eyes flashed like an electrical storm. “I want you to consider your dilemma, to truly examine it from an unbiased perspective outside of yourself. If what you say is true, about Josephine Kimura having feelings for me, you have even more reason to hide the truth. If she learns you have slept with me, she will hate you. She will become your enemy. Telling Khaba, who is looking for a reason to fire me, will be the least of my worries. You’ll be lucky she doesn’t sell you out to the Fae.”
“Josie would never do that!”
“Go ahead, then. Tell her your darkest secrets.” He shrugged, as if indifferent. “But if you do, I will end this relationship between us the moment you do. I will not risk my career, endanger the students at this school, or your life, all because you feel the need to tell Josie Kimura your every secret.”
My heart clenched with anguish. He couldn’t have hurt me more than if he’d slapped me.
“You’re making me chose between you and Josie?”
“No. I’m making you choose between discretion and making yourself vulnerable for attack.” He offered me a little smile. His voice wasn’t unkind, which made the content of his words feel all that much more patronizing. “Think it over. With time, you’ll agree with me.”
I didn’t know how I could love someone who would give me that kind of ultimatum.
He smiled, almost pleasantly. “Now then. Are you done making demands, or do you have more questions of me?”
I couldn’t answer. It took everything I had not to cry. He might have said he wasn’t making me choose between him and Josie, but he was.
“On to business. When we were . . . in the midst of your lesson, how did you know someone wanted to kill you?”
I didn’t want to talk about this right now. I wanted him to understand how important it was for Josie to be my friend again.
“Miss Lawrence?” Thatch walked around his desk and sat on the edge. He took my hand in his.
I drew back, not wanting him to touch me.
“Clarissa, I know you’re vexed with me right now. Please understand, it isn’t my wish to displease you, but I need you to be aware of the many dangers that lie ahead of you. I want you to be safe. And Miss Kimura as well. If she loses control of her affinity again and she hurts someone, you won’t be able to explain away her transformation and claim she is innocent.”
I knew he was right, which made his words even worse.
He held his hand out, waiting for me to take it. Reluctantly, I did so. The warmth of his hand on mine was welcoming.
“I need you to help me understand what you sensed. You are our best chance for discovering who would want to hurt you. If I am to protect you from harm in the future, I need all the facts.” He hugged an arm around my shoulder.
“Do you really not know who it was?”
He ignored the question. “How did you know someone had gotten through the wards?” He brushed his thumb over my hand.
I captured his hand between mine, not wanting his touch to fog my mind and make me complacent. “I didn’t know someone had broken through the wards. I just felt someone there. Each time, I couldn’t see her clearly, but I could feel her. She was so full of loathing it soaked into her body, and I couldn’t ignore it. I was outside myself and sank under her skin and could feel the anger in her muscles. Maybe she didn’t want to kill me, but I could see myself through her eyes—even if it was only for a second.”
Thatch stared off into space. He drummed his fingernails against the edge of the desk. “Fascinating.”
“Whatever, Mr. Spock. I don’t think it’s fascinating. It’s scary.”
“Your ability to detect another presence with so little practice is what I find interesting. One might consider it a kind of telepathic resonance. Perhaps physical empathy based on connecting to the electromagnetics from your own body to another’s. It’s a useful skill. We shall practice this more at a future opportunity.”
I should have been happy to hear I could do some cool magic. But it wasn’t what I wanted at the moment. My heart still felt heavy from our earlier argument. Thatch stood close, but with his businesslike tone an
d brisk manner, he felt so far away.
“Before we begin a new regime of tutoring, I believe we have unfinished business to attend to,” Thatch said, eyes staring so intently at me I felt as though he saw inside me. “Using my own empathetic skills, I can sense the pain I’ve caused you. Here.” He touched a hand between my breasts, over my heart. “Will you let me alleviate this ache inside you?”
He opened his arms and folded me in his embrace. That was all it took to soothe the heartache over our quarrel.
Unfortunately, my respite was short-lived.
Practicing this new skill of awareness happened to be fully clothed in Thatch’s office. Over the following weeks, our time together involved affinity lessons and secret magic lessons. Secret, because I was supposed to be drained. No one besides Vega and Thatch knew I had magic. And Elric.
Imani knew as well.
If Imani knew, I wondered if Maddy, Greenie, and Hailey also knew. Hopefully not.
I prayed my newest enemy didn’t also know what I was. But if that Fae presence I had sensed was the Princess of Lies and Truth, and she had feared or hated my biological mother enough to want her dead, I suspected she did know what I was. It was only a matter of time before she broke through the wards again.
I asked Khaba if he knew who the Princess of Lies and Truth was, and interviewed other staff, but no one had heard of a Fae using that title. I wrote Elric several times, but he didn’t write back. I hadn’t seen a whole lot of him since the All Hallows’ Eve Open House, other than when he picked up Vega for a date. Either he was hurt that I still hadn’t trusted him, or he was playing some kind of new game. Maybe he was still trying to make me jealous.
With the threat of a Fae presence looming over our heads, this might have been why Thatch scheduled magic lessons with him every day. The lockdown had been lifted, but a student could bring some shiny object or a piece of candy back from Lachlan Falls with a string attached to a Fae at any time. My enemy would get in again. Surely this had been how the Fae had gotten in before the flowers—something a student had brought in.
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