Chapter 22

22

No escape.

No matter what would happen to me for this, I knew it was only a matter of time before the orbs found me and broadcast my grisly discovery anyway.

I uttered the words for the spell to raise the magical alarm and hovered near the body for a second until I was sure the message was out. Too close, my mind said immediately. Although I wasn’t sure it would matter now. It was another crime scene where I was the first one there. It meant yet another knife pointed directly at my heart and all eyes on me, determined to rip me down to the bone and examine every piece for answers.

Did I have any choice? No. Now the pure-blood Fae/half-shifter murders were going to be public knowledge, because there was no way for this to be pushed aside. No way for the king and his cronies to keep this private. It was going to be all over the news.

The worst part? I was sure the student had been killed by the same half-shifter. The same one who murdered the other three girls and attacked Juno. It seemed to be his same MO. Both arms had been wrenched from their sockets, with the legs twisted off in different directions, and three deep horizontal slashes—claw marks—across the midsection.

This one, though…she didn’t have the red hair. Juno didn’t have red hair either, but her connection to me stood out in terms of why she was targeted. This girl on the ground was on the periphery of the group of Mike’s shitty friends. I mostly saw her hanging around Lane and Arlyss, hoping for some scrap of their attention. They’d never given it but she’d persisted anyway.

That didn’t mean she deserved to die.

The moment I saw someone, anyone, arriving on the scene, I took off. Let the cavalry figure things out. They already knew who sounded the alarm and they’d come to talk to me later. I ran as fast as I could through the forest, all the way to the beginning.

I got back to the starting point only to have Mike run over and wrap me in his arms almost violently.

He let out a ragged breath. “I thought it was you.” His mouth pressed against the side of my head. “I was terrified when I heard someone was hurt. I didn’t know what happened.”

News traveled fast in Faerie, no doubt about it. “Not hurt. Dead.” I shuddered. I returned the hug, drawing strength from him. He had no idea how badly I needed the connection.

“Are you okay?” Mike’s hands traced soothing spirals along my shoulders and back.

“Nothing is hurt but my pride. I’m afraid I failed the Trial.” I swallowed hard. “Things became a little difficult for me.”

“Shh.” Mike stroked a hand down my hair and gathered me closer. “It’s okay.”

Didn’t he understand? It wasn’t okay at all. I’d failed utterly.

“Extenuating circumstances,” Mike insisted. “No one is going to blame you for not finishing when you found…what you found.”

I had a feeling the school, and the Council of Elders, wouldn’t see it his way.

“How about you? Did you use the spell you found?” I asked him.

He nodded against me before resting his chin on the top of my head. “I did, but the warning buzzer sounded before I could complete the transformation. My seed is still in the ground. Actually, I’m not sure anyone finished.”

I scoffed. “I’m sure Arlyss did.”

“Don’t worry. I’m going to talk to the school and Headmaster Cyrus. No one would expect you to keep going after stumbling on something like you did,” Mike continued. “You must be absolutely terrified, Tavi.”

I glanced over his shoulder to see Cyrus deep in conversation with the rest of the judges, those chosen professors from Elite in charge of determining the winner of each Trial. They clustered together and none of them looked particularly pleased with this disruption.

“I don’t think it will do any good. The rules are pretty explicit.” Compete or else. I’d barely even begun the spell to make the tree grow. Also, if these were the tests for the Seven High Values, by stopping when I found the body, I’d displayed the exact opposite. Fear. Panic. Definitely not Bravery.

“Miss Alderidge?”

I wasn’t exactly surprised to glance up from my Mike hug and see Rooker and Claribel from the bureau staring at me. Although Claribel looking at me with a smile like the cat who ate the canary was a bit startling.

Wow, they’d gotten here fast. I hadn’t even had time to catch my breath.

“I sincerely hope you are ready to talk about this latest discovery, Tavi,” Claribel said. “It’s important enough to have the rest of the Trials put on pause until the scene is secured. You must understand this is unprecedented. The king is quite concerned.”

Snapping back at her was likely one of the stupidest things I’d done in my life, but I couldn’t help myself. “Are you ready to finally catch this killer, or are you going to continue to waste time interrogating me? Because the more time you waste with this baseless suspicion the more the real killer grows in confidence to commit his next crime.”

There was a tiny pause before she finally answered. “You’re full of fire. Good to see this first Trial hasn’t sapped it out of you. You can use some of it to answer our questions.”

Mike reached down and took my hand when I made to step back. “I’m coming with you this time,” he said.

“I’m afraid not, Prince Michael,” Claribel said immediately. “We’ve been tasked with taking Miss Alderidge in for questioning about the corpse she found today. It wouldn’t do to have you subjected to the interrogation too.”

“Or having your presence influence her answers,” Rooker added with a deep rumble of sound.

So they knew how important Mike was to me. And I to him. I filed that little tidbit of information away for later.

“It’s fine,” I insisted before Mike could argue. I squeezed his hand. “It won’t take long. They need every detail they can get to catch this killer and I’m happy to help in any way possible.”

But inside, I was shaking. Let them think I was being cooperative. In truth, they wouldn’t get a thing out of me I didn’t want them to know.

I definitely didn’t want Mike around to witness me weaving more lies.

It took a little convincing but eventually he nodded, stroking his thumb across the top of my hand once before letting it go. “Find me immediately once you’re done.”

At least this time the two agents didn’t grab me and drag me away like a criminal. They waited for me to approach and then called up a portal to transport us out of the forest. It deposited us right on the doorstep to the same building we’d gone to the first time around.

Bureau headquarters. I might as well get used to being here. I had the sickening sensation I’d be spending a lot more time with the investigators.

Claribel wasted no time. “You sure seem to be around a lot of bodies, don’t you, Tavi?” She didn’t ask if she could call me by my first name. It would be the only question she didn’t ask.

“It must be a gift you have,” Rooker added.

The two of them settled behind the table, with Rooker glancing at the empty chair across from him. I knew the look. Sit.

I did, realizing I had very little experience to navigate this encounter. My fried brain didn’t want to work. My strength was all but completely sapped. Taken all together, it put me on thin ice. Very thin ice indeed.

Proceed with caution.

“A gift? More like a curse,” I replied shortly. I was done playing nice. Done pretending like I wasn’t absolutely exhausted by these proceedings. Did they not think this was hard on me? Did they think I actually liked all the trouble that kept finding me? The mounting pressure on my shoulders?

Silence reigned for a long moment. “There are five bodies, Tavi,” Rooker stated. “Five dismembered bodies of pure-blood Faes, taken down with a sort of ferocity we have not seen in this land for generations. You must understand why we’re concerned. Especially considering the issues you seem to be having lately and the fact that you’ve not only found yourself at this latest crime scene but seem to have in fact personally stopped the attack on Juno Ians. We simply want to understand what you’re capable of.”

“Tell us about this latest body,” Claribel finished for her partner.

I shrugged, trying for innocent nonchalance. “It was ripped apart.” But every part of me went numb as I pictured the body in my mind.

“Do you believe this is connected to the attack you interrupted the other day? The one involving Professor Ians?”

I grimaced. “Yes, I absolutely do,” I answered. “Now why don’t you tell me what you really think?”

More silence. Finally, Claribel sighed. “What we think about what?”

“About my involvement. Because I’m sure you’ve had the same thought I had. Someone has it out for me, especially considering how I stepped in to save my mentor.” Let them chew on those words. “I’m exhausted and worried and tired of dead bodies, too.”

Claribel tilted her head to the side. “I’m sure you are,” she said gently. It was the first spark of sympathy I’d ever seen out of her. “It does seem to happen to you more than the average Faerie citizen. I’d be disappointed if you didn’t put the pieces together.”

“I didn’t even get to complete the first Trial.” I stared down at the floor and noticed the dirt on my sneakers, the stray leaves and twigs attached to the soft fabric of my pants. Surely they knew, at this point, all about my issues with classes at the Elite Academy. They couldn’t possibly think I’d done this on purpose, brought more attention to myself with everything else going on.

Things had gotten complicated in a hurry.

Both agents took me through a round of questioning to make Detective Wilson’s investigations look like a kid with a school report. They made a big production now of keeping eye contact and going for the sympathy approach rather than the knuckle-down hard way they’d adopted the first time around. They even offered me a glass of water.

I turned it down, thinking it was better not to ingest anything.

I made it through without losing my temper and with as much honesty as possible. Until their final set of questions.

Claribel smiled. “We do appreciate your attention to detail, although I feel obliged to let you know there are a few holes in your story.”

I shook my head. “Not surprising. I’ve been having trouble concentrating with my classes. I believe it’s called being overworked.”

And let’s be honest. I had crappy memory retention at the best of times. My recollections of the crime scenes outside of today were vague at best. I’d already described the beast that attacked Juno, a large and shaggy creature whose face I didn’t recognize because, well, beast.

“I suppose we can’t expect a little halfling to have the memory of a pure-blood Fae, even one attending Elite Academy,” Rooker said with more than a touch of sarcasm.

He flipped through a stack of papers, and briefly I caught the flash of a color photograph. One of the same ones Selene had shown us during one of our meetings for the Claw & Fang. I saw a close-up of the second victim. There were pages of notes, probably more interviews than just mine.

“I’m not sure what you want me to say to that.”

“One last thing before we let you go,” Rooker stated. “We know you’re a halfling, of course. An orphan. And we know from your initial citizenship questions that your mother was Fae. What was her name? And who—or rather what—was your father?”

My insides screamed at me to keep the information to myself. Sitting there, staring at their faces, I knew one way or another they would extract the info from me. Whether I wanted them to or not.