And then the secret sub-basement beneath the storage area, full of the magickal essences stolen from our fellow witches and mages. The missing chunks of hair, all bagged and lined up neatly on the bulletin board.
And Professor Phaines himself, the Dark Hierophant, hooked up to his magickal IVs, siphoning stolen magick until his killer came and put a stop to it.
“I shouldn’t have been surprised,” I say. “The Hierophant card was stalking me all day. Even Carly had a premonition about it when we met up at the coffee shop. We kept assuming he fled campus, but the cards were trying to tell me the truth. He was right there all along.”
“Show him the pictures,” Carly says.
I’d nearly forgotten about those, but now I take out my phone and pass it around, showing everyone the photos I snapped on our little torture tour.
Beneath the table, Isla reaches for my hand. “Goddess, Stevie. What if you’d been caught?”
“Trello was on a mission,” Carly says. “She only had eyes for Phaines.”
“And you’re certain she killed him?” Doc asks.
“Totally. She had these big-ass syringes filled with some kind of glowing red potion. She went in, said her piece, and then it was done. She was gone in a blink after that.”
“We checked the body,” I say. “No pulse, no signs of life, and all the machines and IVs went dead.”
“If I’m doing the math right,” Professor Maddox says, “the approximate time of death jives with the time his connection to Casey and Janelle broke. What did the headmistress say to him, exactly?”
“Something about how Phaines was drawing too much attention, and they’d reached the end of their agreement.” I lift my mug to my face, inhaling the calming scent of the mint. For all Trello’s bullshit, I still can’t believe she was in league with Phaines.
“Obviously Trello knew he was there,” Carly says. “Probably the whole time. They were working together—she said as much. They had an agreement.”
“But to what end?” Doc asks. “And who else knew about it, other than Janelle?”
I blow out a breath. “Honestly, we still don’t know Janelle was totally in on it.”
“Stevie, she’d been ingesting Fairy’s Breath since her first day on campus,” Doc says. “You said so yourself.”
“Right, but it’s possible she was drugged. Most people can’t smell it.”
“She wasn’t drugged, guys,” Carly says. “My mother came here with an agenda, like I said. She literally showed up the day after Phaines’s disappearance. That can’t be a coincidence.”
“Okay, but are you saying that because you truly believe it, or because you’re pissed at her for being such a shitty mother?” I ask.
Doc holds up a hand, attempting to head off a confrontation. “I’m fairly certain Janelle was a willing participant. When I… sat with her earlier, she made a comment in her half-awake state to that effect.”
“What did she say?” Carly asks.
He lowers his eyes, his energy pulsing with something that makes my skin crawl. “That she did it for… for Baz.”
“Thatbitch.” Carly’s energy spikes with the same kind of creeped-out vibe as Doc’s. But before I can press her on it, Professor Maddox pipes in.
“The good news is if the magick in the jars is still viable, there’s a chance—small, but a chance—we might be able to return it to its rightful owners.”
“Seriously?” I ask. “I thought the damage was permanent.”
“It won’t be easy, and I’m certainly not the expert—Professor Broome would know more about such things. But if we could somehow match the magickal signature to each individual student, and we could come up with a powerful enough spell, we might be able to reverse the process.”
“That’s if we can even get to the jars again,” I say. “Trello may have already notified APOA, or gone back herself to take care of the evidence.”
“Yeah, I can’t imagine she’d leave all that stuff there for someone else to find. When she left there tonight, I got the sense she’d either be back, or she’d just report it and make it look like she just discovered everything herself.”
“What a fucking mess.” Doc’s energy shifts again, a wave of anger and frustration so powerful it’s got him jumping to his feet, nearly knocking his chair backward. “What is Trello’s angle here? She all but ordered us to bring Stevie to the Academy and put her to work translating her mother’s prophecies. She called in APOA to investigate the crimes against students. I thought she was on our side, for fuck’s sake. But then the attacks started on campus, and she completely lost her spine. She fought me on putting additional security measures in place—I had to threaten her just to get access to this house. Now we discover she’s involved with the Dark Arcana and the student attacks, not to mention Janelle Kirkpatrick… What the hell is her end game?”
“Maybe she wants the artifacts too,” Nat says. “Maybe she and Phaines have been planning this for years. Decades, even.”
