I forcibly shook away the direction of my thoughts and crossed my arms over my chest.
“Seriously? You’d be better off asking my opinion on the weather. It’s nice, Caden. There’s a real crisp quality to the air. I might go apple picking later.”
He squeezed his eyes shut and expelled a breath through his teeth. “I don’t know how to fix things, Graves. But that’s what I want.”
“What you want doesn’t matter. You lied! You claim the Spellwork Organization has been infiltrated, and even if I believed you, how am I supposed to trust you’re not one of the infiltrators? ’Cause that seems like the perfect plan to me. Seduce the Spellwork newbie, get her to lead you to the Soulbinder, then stab in her the heart with her own demon blade. I could write the playbook.”
He growled in frustration under his breath. “If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead.”
“How sweet. You should put that in a greeting card.” I flashed him a strained smile.
Determination hardened the line of his jaw. “I’m not going anywhere, Graves. You’re angry, I get it. You have every right to be, but I’m staying. You’re my partner, whether it was sanctioned or not. Oscar is your mentor. Loki is despondent without you. We’re a team, and we want you back.”
The timer ticked down to zero.
I inhaled a shaky breath.Walk away, Elle.I took three steps toward the door then stopped. Turning on my heel, I went back, swiped the extra coffee cup from Caden’s hands, and hurried toward the exit.
His voice echoed behind me. “That gives me hope, Graves. We’re waiting for you.”
By the time I sank into my seat in the lecture hall, my nerves were rattling. The last thing I needed was more coffee, but I sucked down the caffeine as if it were the nectar of the gods. The coffee was pumpkin flavor. My favorite.The wretch.
Caden’s speech kept repeating over and over in my head. Maybe it was foolish, but I didn’t believe my accusation that he intended to kill me. It was hard to wrap my head around his claims though. Spellwork was a centuries-old organization, and there had never been the slightest hint of corruption. What made more sense? That a young man would lie to get out of a murder conviction, or that a revered society was undermining the very fabric of its existence? My money was on murder every time. The other option was too horrific to imagine.
The proper thing to do would be to turn Caden in to the council. He’d be sent away. My real partner would be activated, and things would progress according to the rightful order. But the thought of picking up my phone and calling it in made my stomach twist into knots.
Professor Henry walked to the front of the class and cleared her throat. The students settled down, opening their notebooks and preparing for class to start. I removed my tablet from my backpack and placed it on the desk in front of me. It was time to push Caden’s olive branch aside and focus on my plan.
The first part of the class passed with Professor Henry reviewing last week’s homework and assigning us new chapters in our textbooks. Then she switched to the lecture, fired up her laptop on the podium, and dimmed the lights. She clicked through her slides slowly, lecturing for a few minutes on each slide. I dropped my attention to my tablet and opened the folder of photos I’d transferred from Professor Roberts’ phone. There was an entire series of images of just the two of them together: pictures of them laughing at a conference, standing in front of a monument with arms over each other’s shoulders, and a handful taken on a European vacation.
I had a feeling Oscar’s theory that Professor Roberts would have enlisted help to get rid of the book was right. It was easy to assume, based on their argument the night of her murder, that they were enemies, but I knew better than ever that looks could be deceiving. Their photos spoke of a lasting friendship, and I planned to apply a little pressure to get Professor Henry to open up.
Opening the images on my tablet, I summoned a wave of magic inside my palm. I spoke the incantation and shifted my hand over the pictures, then I held my palm up to the projector screen. When Professor Henry clicked to the next slide, the first image appeared.
She didn’t notice right away until the class began to murmur. Turning to face the screen, she went still in the face of the vacation photo. She clicked onto the next slide. Another photo of the two of them surfaced. A strangled sound burst from her throat as she continued to click. The last photo was a close-up of the Soulbinder.
Professor Henry lurched toward her laptop and slammed the lid closed. Her hands trembled, and she faced the class with glazed eyes. “Class dismissed,” she said, snatching her laptop from the podium and walking from the room.
The students gathered their belongings, confused by her strange behavior. I waited until the room had emptied before making my way to the front of the lecture hall. In her haste to leave, Professor Henry had forgotten her purse. I opened the bag and quickly riffled through the contents. Deep in the bottom, I spotted a small pill bottle.
The bottle looked nearly full, and I glanced at the label. They’d been prescribed to Professor Roberts: pills to combat insomnia. Jake had said he witnessed Julia putting something in Professor Roberts’ drink. Could it have been these pills? If so, why?
I returned the bottle to the purse just as the classroom door opened and Professor Henry returned. She dashed a hand over her eyes, and I noticed it looked as if she’d been crying. When she spotted me, she froze.
“You left behind your purse. I was going to try and find you to return it.”
“Thank you, Elle. Sorry about how the class ended. I just needed a moment.”
I nodded and held out her bag. “That’s totally understandable. I’m guessing you didn’t put those pictures in your presentation on purpose.”
“No. Someone must have been playing a trick, and it just took me by surprise.” She dabbed again at her eyes, and I dug around in my backpack for a tissue.
“Here—take this. Do you want to talk about it? You offered me the same thing a while back. Maybe it would help.”
Professor Henry took the tissue and moved to sit in one of the chairs in the front row. “Sometimes, I think Laura’s accident was my fault. It was a freak thing, you know, but she’d been acting so strangely, and I wonder if there’s more I could have done.”
I sat in the seat next to her. “What was going on?”
“I’m not sure I should say, but I guess it can’t hurt now she’s gone, and you should be aware of the signs to look for in case someone you know needs help. In the last few days before her accident, Laura was feeling very paranoid. She was convinced one of her students was following her.”
