by Ivy Hearne
I walked in silence for several seconds, trying to think of something to say. Finally, I decided to go the route of least resistance since we had just seen a movie that I could talk about. Sort of.
“So what’s your favorite movie from the eighties? The one that your parents made you watch over and over when you were a kid?”
“Raiders of the Lost Ark,” Tony said promptly, without any hesitation.
“Is that movie kind of weird for people like you—I mean, the ones who grew up with magic and stuff like that?”
He shrugged. “Probably no weirder than a movie about a girl’s non-magical attempts to snag the high school’s most popular guy would be for you.”
I considered that. “True.”
We hit the edge of the buildings. “Want to keep going?” he asked.
“Not past the wards,” I said. I didn’t even have to explain why the thought of being out past them at night made me nervous. Tony had seen the imp that had gotten through and taken control of my mind. The memory of it still sent shivers up and down my spine.
I shook off the thought, trying to focus again on the conversation with Tony. “You know,” I started, “I read once about a major plot hole with Raiders.”
Tony frowned at me. “No. There’s no plot hole. Is there? What is it?”
I grinned. “I could tell you, but you would hate me if I did.”
He stopped in the middle of the path we were following and crossed his arms. “Now you have to tell me.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
I started walking again. “Indiana Jones has absolutely no impact on the outcome of the film.”
“He does, too.” Tony began listing all the things the protagonist had done in the movie.
I laughed aloud. “Seriously. Listen to me. Yes, he did all that. But think about it. The Nazis have trouble finding the Ark, but when they do finally find it, they open it up and their faces melt off.” I shrugged. “That would have happened, anyway, with or without all the running around and hiding in baskets and stuff. And then at the end of the movie, the Ark ends up locked away in Washington. That would have happened without Indy, too.”
“Oh, no!” He paused for a long moment, utterly silent. “I do,” he finally said. “I think I do hate you.”
I snorted. “Just like I said you would.”
We had strolled along the paths that led into the woods, but we had remained inside the Academy’s wards, and now we were skirting the edge of the Academy’s property. “So now that you hate me, are you going to quit going to movie night with me?” I teased him.
He glanced down at me out of the corner of his eye. “I guess I’ll give you another chance. But if you continue destroying movies for me, I will find some way to retaliate.”
We both dissolved into laughter. Tony stopped and turned to face me, taking my shoulders in his hands.
Then his hands moved up to cup my cheek, and my heart started racing.
He took my face in his hands and stared into my eyes for a long moment.
Angelica was right. He was very cute.
He leaned forward, and gently brushed his lips across mine. A thrill ran through me, straight down to my stomach. Then he pressed his lips more firmly against mine and dropped his hands down around my waist. I lifted my arms up to wrap them around his neck as he pulled me closer.
I opened my mouth under his just a little bit, and the tip of his tongue darted out and flicked against my top lip.
I shivered, wondering if I should stop him. But the kiss was nice, like his hand holding mine had been during the movie. So I let it go on a while longer. He finally pulled away, ending the kiss gently and sweetly. Resting his forehead against mine, he let his fingers trail down my arms to take my hands in his.
It wasn’t my very first kiss, but my constant migraines meant that I hadn’t done a lot of dating. So a lot of ways, it was my first real kiss. I hadn’t believed until now that a kiss could really make you dizzy.
But I was definitely disoriented.
I took a step backward from him to tilt my head up and look into his face. But when I did, I stepped off the path. The snow there was deceptively deep—the ground there looked like it was even with the path itself. But I stepped off into an unexpectedly deep drop off, made deceptive by snowfall. I was glad I was still holding his hand. I squealed and clutched at Tony when my right foot dropped into the small snowbank, and then came up against something soft and unsteady. My toes rolled off of it, and I tried to gain my balance with my other foot. Something crunched under that heel and rolled off again.
Tony solved my dilemma by grabbing me around the waist and plucking me out of the snow entirely, setting me back down on the hard-packed snow of the path.
Our eyes were adjusted to the dark already, and we both stared down at the black smear my boot had left across the snow.
“What is that?” My voice sounded more suspicious than curious.
Tony bent over and frowned. Picking up a stick from the other side of the path, he poked at the stain just as the moon came out from behind a scuttling cloud.
On the ground, a dark patch shimmered wetly in the moonlight.
Tony squatted down, leaned back on his heels, and spun up a small magical light.
I blinked against the sudden brightness, then looked at the ground again.
I’d been right. My boot had left a wet, reddish-black smear across the snow.
Slowly, without saying a word, Tony and I turned toward the edge of the path.
“Maybe it’s just an animal,” I said, but I didn’t sound very hopeful.
With the same stick he used to poke at the spot on the path, he shoveled away some of the snow.
When he got down deep enough, he stood up and stepped back. “Let’s go back to the main campus.”
“What is it? I asked, taking a step closer.
Tony reached for me, but it was too late. His digging had uncovered a face—a face with its eyes wide open and staring, and its nose smashed sideways.
I remembered the crunch under my stomping feet, and my stomach heaved.
I stepped on a dead body buried in the snow.
Tony scooped me up in his arms and spun me around to another part of the path for the second time that night—right before I leaned over and vomited.
“I don’t want to mess anything up in case it’s a crime scene,” he said apologetically, holding my hair back from my face.
I waved my agreement while I tried to get ahold of my reaction.
This was a hell of a way to end to date.
Chapter 5
“She’s been on campus for just one day, and already there’s a dead body,” Mr. Jamison hissed at Ms. Gayle. “You can’t keep her here.”
Tony and I stood on the edge of the group of people who had descended on us as soon as we had reported the body. As much as I had hated to stay there and wait with it, I had a bad feeling about walking away from the corpse even long enough to tell someone in charge about it. So I’d suggested we call it in.
As I stood there waiting while Tony called the main number, I couldn’t help but think of the movie we’d watched earlier. Granted, it had been a comedy, and this—well, this would definitely have been an eighties slasher film. Either would have benefitted from the judicious application of cell phones, though.
I suspected that train of thought was an attempt to get my mind off of what I’d seen. Either that or I was actually in shock.
When the adults began arriving on the scene, Tony and I had been told not to go anywhere, then shunted off to the side and ignored. That had been fine with me in the beginning. Once I’d gotten the vomiting under control, I’d dealt with this whole scene by thinking about anything other than what was actually going on.
Mr. Jamison’s words brought me back to reality, though.
She’s been on campus for just one day...
The parabiology instructor? Could that be who he was talking about?
; I drifted closer, trying to get into position to hear more without looking like I was trying to hear more.
“I won’t let you railroad her just because you don’t like her,” Ms. Gayle was saying sharply.
“And I won’t let you pardon her just because of your connection to her,” Mr. Jamison snapped back.
Obviously trying to calm herself, Ms. Gayle drew in a deep breath. “We’ll run this like we do any investigation.”
“I want to be in charge of it. I deserve that, at least.” I’d never seen Mr. Jamison so angry.
Then again, I wouldn’t have wanted to be on the receiving end of Ms. Gayle’s glare. “I will appoint the primary hunter to investigate tomorrow. For tonight, we will simply gather information and take the body back to the campus morgue.”
There’s a morgue on campus?
Although I knew I was still basically the new kid on campus, I couldn’t believe how many things I discovered about the Hunters’ Academy on a daily basis.
Mr. Jamison made a noise that was remarkably similar to a growl and stalked back toward the body, now being magically levitated out of the snow, if I understood the incantation correctly.
I drifted back to Tony and leaned in close as if I were a typical girl asking for comfort. He obliged, wrapping one arm around my shoulder. But then I leaned in close and murmured, “How does a normal murder investigation on campus run?”
He startled, but quickly gained control of his reaction. I felt the tiny shrug he gave under my cheek. “I’ve only seen one before,” he replied, equally as softly as I had spoken.
“Do you know where the morgue is?”
“On campus? Sort of.”
I had just inhaled to ask my next question when Tony went absolutely still as if he’d been turned to stone by a spell gone awry (I heard it had happened once during a former student’s entrance exam).
But when I glanced up at Tony, he was staring at the recovered body in wide-eyed horror.
I glanced over, and an involuntary cry escaped me. I covered my mouth and bit down against another bout of vomiting.
Three instructors—not including Ms. Gayle or Mr. Jamison, though they were the only ones I recognized—were holding the victim’s body magically aloft, along with some other items that had come out of the snow. I’d gotten the sense that the spell had been designed to include anything that might be connected to the victim.
But the body itself was what had caused my gasp.
It was naked and in two pieces.
It had been severed at the waist and I closed my eyes against the horror that invoked. But I couldn’t get the image out of my mind of the top and bottom half, floating separately.
Then Tony said, “That’s Davis Carruthers.”
“You know him?” I gasped. I wrapped my arms around my waist, clutching myself.
Tony nodded, his face turning green. “He’s an upperclassman, a year above me.”
I glanced around at all the Academy instructors. The three who were floating Davis’s body were especially grim.
And no wonder—they were all upper-level instructors, so that meant he was their student.
I hadn’t allowed myself to wonder if the body belonged to a student.
At Tony’s horrified announcement identifying the body, Ms. Gayle seemed to suddenly remember we were there. She made her way over to us and spoke to us as if she were trying to sound kind. “I appreciate the two of you staying around, but it will probably be morning before anyone can talk to you. Why don’t you go ahead and go back to your rooms? Someone will be around tomorrow to talk to you. Try to get to sleep, okay?”
She didn’t do kind very well.
I glanced up at Tony, who hadn’t taken his eyes off his friend’s body since he’d realized who it was.
“Come on,” I said gently, tugging at his arm. “Let’s go back to the dorms.”
He nodded and followed me.
“Oh, and students?”
I turned around to look at Ms. Gayle. “Yes?”
“Please don’t talk to anyone about this yet.”
It was couched in terms of a request, but it sounded like an order. I gave a short nod. I didn’t think something like this would be kept quiet for long, anyway.
Tony didn’t answer as I led him away. Nor did he speak as we made our way back down the path toward the dorms. I was pretty sure he was in shock.
My mind, on the other hand, was racing.
Who could have done this? And why?
Was Mr. Jamison right? Had Ms. Gayle brought a killer onto campus?
And if she had, was there anything I could do about it, anyway? After all, I was just a student.
But I’m the student who found the body.
Surely that counted for something.
Was it somehow my duty to get involved?
Could I conceivably leave it to the adults?
I really, really wanted to.
After all, I didn’t have anything personally at stake in whatever was going on here. Not like I had in the other things I’d dealt with since I’d arrived at the Academy.
Shane had been my tutor, and I had accidentally discovered that he was behind kidnapping our headmaster. And my discovery of the imp that was connected to the Santa demon was equally accidental. I’d gone into town and happened across children being taken over.
And this time, you just happened to stumble over the dead body on campus, a tiny voice inside my head whispered.
I clenched my teeth and tried to avoid thinking about how that might end up being significant, too.
About three-quarters of the way back to the dorms, Tony started talking. “Davis was a good guy,” he said out of nowhere. “He basically got me through second-year chemistry. I wouldn’t have passed the class without his help.”
I squeezed his arm. “I am so very sorry.”
We kept walking for several minutes in silence.
“I don’t get it,” he said.
I waited for him to continue, and when he didn’t, I gently prodded, “Don’t get what?”
“Why he was in his human form.”
“Davis was a shifter?”
Tony nodded. “He is—was—a centaur shifter.”
“Well. We have a centaur shifter in my class, and she’s always in her human form. She says it’s easier to sit in chairs in class and that sort of stuff.”
“But that’s the thing. Davis made a point out of being in his centaur form whenever he was on campus. He said it was his most comfortable shape, and he couldn’t use it most places, so it was like stretching out into who he really was when he was here.” I glanced up to see the skin around his eyes tightening as if he were about to cry. “No. There’s no way Davis would have been out in the woods in his human form. He ran those woods as a centaur almost every day.”
I frowned. “That is a little strange.”
“I can’t believe he’s gone.” Tony shook his head before running a hand over his face.
We made it to his dorm first. As we walked up to the entrance, Tony seemed to come to himself, shaking his head and glancing around. “I should walk you to your dorm. This is not right.”
“No, I replied. “I don’t think you should be out wandering around.”
He pulled his fingers through his hair. “No. If there’s a killer on campus, you shouldn’t be out here alone.”
I shrugged. “Technically, probably neither of us should be alone. We probably shouldn’t even be out here together.” I glanced around. What had Ms. Gayle been thinking, sending us wandering back through the woods to campus on our own?
Maybe she was kind of in shock, too.
Or maybe she knows who the killer is, and she’s not worried about the two of you.
Wow. That little voice in my head had some ugly thoughts. I shushed it and went back to the problem at hand.
“I’ll see if I can get someone to wake up Souji for me.” I wasn’t sure how my hunting partner would react to being fetched to come to get me late at nig
ht from my date’s dorm, but I knew he would come to pick me up, no matter what.
“Oh, here. I can call him.” Before I could think of a suitable excuse to keep him from doing it, Tony spun up some sort of magical message and sent it winging on its way. I could see it drift off as a shimmer in the air.
“How is that different from a psychic sending?” I asked.
“That’s right, you haven’t had those lessons in your magics class yet, have you?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to get a handle on it, anyway. I suck at magics.”
Tony laughed. “I’ll help you figure it out.” Then he seemed to remember why we were standing outside in the cold late at night, and he quit laughing, his face shutting down.
I reached out and gave his hand a squeeze. “I think you should go in and get something to drink. Maybe coffee? Or hot chocolate?”
He smiled down at me sadly.
“Or apple cider?” I offered.
He shook his head. “No. I think I need to just try to go to sleep. Let’s wait inside the door.”
We stood inside the small vestibule between the glass door and the main entrance to his dorm. Within a few minutes, I saw Souji loping through the snow.
“There he is,” Tony said.
I nodded and gave his hand a squeeze. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, okay?”
He nodded and leaned over to brush his lips against mine in a kiss.
I would’ve thought it was especially sweet, if not for the fact that I saw his gaze flicker toward Souji right before he did.
Great. Now Tony was participating in the territorial behavior.
I didn’t know what I was going to do about those two.
Especially when I walked outside to find Souji pacing back and forth. When I got close to him, he spun around and began stomping back to our dorm without even waiting for me.
Well. This was going to be fun.
Chapter 6
“Would you wait up?” I called out after Souji.
He kept going, so I finally stopped in the snow, put my hands on my hips, and called out softly after him, “If you would stop and listen, I’ll tell you what’s going on. I think it might be important.”