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“’Tis I.” I pirouette with a flourish. “The constant thorn in your side.”
It was meant as a joke, but her pout grows. This melancholy is very unlike her.
“Is everything okay, Peablossom?”
“We are smiling, oh yes, we are.” Her merry laugh is so forced that she sounds hysterical. “All is well, dearest confection.”
My lips purse, then I notice her missing eyebrow is growing back. “You’re almost back to your usual stunning self. That must be a relief.”
Tears glisten in her eyes, and she gives a dramatic sigh. “If only such tidings were enough to elevate the fortune of us all, yet the Earl is stirring disorder. Puck insists I prepare a change in the schedule. Your Knights are away again! Even Lady Selene has changed the curriculum. No one wants to clean the constant messes in the Nothing dormitory. Everything is out of control!”
A knot of dread tightens in my gut. “What messes?”
She shivers, and then her mask is back on, her voice once again whimsical. “Shadow O’Leary-Nightstalk, while we take pride in avoiding tardiness, you are rather eager to prove this point for your first class. Please ensure you do not add to the brewing chaos, lest we devolve into our enemy. We are smiling, yes?”
She grins and points to her cheeks.
Okay, then. I return a tight smile and continue onward. So many things could have gone wrong over the weekend. I should have been here. I’m still lost in my thoughts when I open the door between the commons and the dormitories, so I’m not prepared for the figure running out. We clash. I’m knocked backward and skid on my spine across the wooden floor. The wind knocks out of me. It takes a moment to gather my wits. Heavy breathing in my face. A whiff of cologne. Male. He carelessly scrambles over me in his haste to leave. My fist comes up, but I miss and barely recover to see him rush through the exit leading into the woods.
A scream from the dormitories jolts my heart into my throat. I’m running toward the Malachite suite without a secondthought. The hallways are empty as all other exhibitors are now roomed in the Towers.
The suite’s door is wide open. The instant I cross the threshold, someone swings a knife at my face, but this time I’m ready. I deflect, forcibly twist their wrist, and disarm my attacker. When I round on them, I point my stolen weapon at Geraldine’s tear-stained eyes.
It’s Rory’s dagger. I lower it. “What happened?”
Her lips open and part, gasping for words. Too distraught. I spin and find blood everywhere. This suite is the largest and most simply furnished. Five rows of six bunks line the space. All but five bunks are made with fresh linen and haven’t been slept in. Two bunks are covered in blood with lumpy, body-sized shapes beneath the blue sheets. A quick calculation tells me only three slept-in, untouched bunks remain.
Three left alive.
“Geraldine?”
She drops to her bunk, head in her hands, and sobs, “You weren’t here.”
My throat tightens. “Where are the others?”
A choking sound at the door turns me. Max and Peggy, freshly showered and wrapped in clean towels, faces ashen. Three. That means... I glance at the lumpy, bloody bunks.
“Bob?” It hurts to speak his name.
Geraldine’s shaky nod releases a keening wail from Peggy’s lips. She limps toward one of the bunks, and I’m ashamed to realize I don’t know which one belongs to Bob. I’d planned on coming into this room to help them set up an alarm system or to teach them to protect themselves. But instead, I was partying it up with Alfie and his self-involved crew, fucking Fox in a cave, and . . . there is no excuse.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper, stricken.
After Peggy drops the sheet on Bob’s slack face, she rounds on me with more vehemence than I thought she owned.
“You,” she hisses. “You act like you’re one of us, but you’re not.”
“Peg.” Max gets between us and tries to push her away. “That’s not fair on Willow. This isn’t her fault. I’m sure she had a good reason for not being here.”
Guilt shreds my heart into ribbons. I dig into the pocket and then hold out my palm with the three charms. “I know this won’t bring him back, but I found a way to activate a portal stone home to Elphyne if you want to go there. I also had these keyed to hide your flaws. Well—actually, one is for Bob.” My breath catches in my throat. The charms blur as I stare. “I’ll have it changed. I’m sorry, Max. I only had three, and I thought... I thought... ”
“I would have insisted the others went first. You were right to pick them.” His kind eyes give me far too much credit than I deserve. He turns to the two women and adds, “Let’s not forget Willow owes us nothing. We all chose to enter this exhibition. We knew the odds.”
Sniffing, I kneel before Geraldine and hold out Milford’s red charm. “If you secure this to your uniform, always keep it on you. The glamour will hold in place. Just speak your name as you touch it, and it will activate for you.”
Red-rimmed, shell-shocked eyes blink at me. “I don’t have a chain.”
“Shit. I didn’t think that far.” I’m still unsure why the charms work around metal, anyway. But maybe I’ve been thinking about it all wrong. Perhaps the isolated magic inside the stone still works regardless of being connected to the Well—like how I still sense magic without an active connection.
