Audible gasps popcorned among the students surrounding her now as Oakley’s voice came through, crystal clear. Alive.Filmed.
Embry stilled at the anger in the vampire’s tone, the shrillness of her own retorts, the scandalized reaction of the gathered crowd until every last, terrible word of their final encounter was out in the open. Then, just like that night, Oakley ran off, Embry took several steps after her… and the video cut off.
What happened after wasn’t part of it. No Rye stopping Embry. No Oakley vanishing into the dark. Just two girls fighting, one chasing the other…
And now one girl dead.
From behind, a throat cleared. Embry turned to see Headmaster Martinelli, flanked by two members of the campus police, and three men she vaguely recognized, the star symbol of the Table sewn in gold thread on their black suit jackets.
Behind them, a swarm of Table agents netted the grounds in the distance, glittering golden lockdown wards shooting like fireworks every twenty paces, sealing the Raven’s Head perimeter. Smothering the safety wards Embry herself set with the other prefects and administration.
Raven’s Head School for the Magically Gifted was on lockdown.
“Miss Woodcross, I think you better come with me.”
CHAPTER 14
ONCE AND FOREVER A WITCH
ALL HER LIFE, EMBRYWOODCROSS HAD ONLY ENJOYED THEspoils of being a witch. The power, respect, adoration. The envy, leverage, clout.
Of course she knew the burnings of her ancestors like the magic that ran in her veins. But that was forever ago. In her time, everyone loved a witch. Embry had never personally felt the coin flip ofwhatshe was—until now.
Until the eyes of her classmates clocked the lump in the grass. The body, the blood, the reality of what lay in the rising sun.
A pale end etched on a face they all knew.
The newest royalty of Raven’s Head School for the Magically Gifted, crowned just the evening before at homecoming, was irrefutably, irrevocably dead. There was no reasonable possibility for her demise other than a killing strike from very powerful magic.
The kind of magic possessed by Embry. Thewitchwho had been her friend, her mentor, her competition.
Her classmates had added it together and turned a collective cloud of suspicion upon Embry, as thick as the fog of unease in her own gut.
Everyone loved a witch… until they didn’t.
And now, for the first time in her very charmed life, Embry had to explain herself.
She sat, legs crossed as primly as possible in her unfortunate choice of sweatpants, facing the desk of Headmaster Martinelli.The headmaster herself had left Embry alone for more than a half hour before finally sweeping into her grand office on the top floor of the administration building, depositing Merlin in his birdcage by the windows overlooking the quad and herself in the squeaky, high-backed roller chair behind her naval barge of a desk.
A pudgy, mustachioed agent of the Table trailed her into the room and took up sentry over Martinelli’s shoulder.
“Thank you for your patience, Miss Woodcross,” the headmaster said, and a sharp pang stabbed Embry in the solar plexus at the idea that she was not Head Prefect Woodcross in this situation. Surely she still had that title? They were just here for questioning. It wasn’t as if she were actually guilty of anything that would cause her to lose the title she’d worked very hard to earn. “There are many moving parts when something like this happens.”
Headmaster Martinelli had been at Raven’s Head in various capacities since it had opened as a witches’ institution a century ago. In fact, she was one of the school’s first non-witch hires, because though demigoddesses were many things, including excellent falconers, they technically weren’t witches. Given her tenure, it was likely that there was a procedure here, and she was accustomed to it, even if she hadn’t utilized it in a long time. But Embry didn’t want to be presumptive. “When was the last time something like this happened?”
Surprise rolled across the woman’s makeup-free face. And then a flicker of something else… spiky. Martinelli drew a thin breath in her nose, wet her pale lips, and replied, rather directly, “Miss Woodcross, not to be blunt, but Inspector Brown and I will be the ones who will ask questions here.”
Martinelli gestured to the Table agent behind her—Inspector Brown, then.
The headmaster continued, her expression grim. “We have known each other a very long time. You are a bright and cooperativestudent. I need you to be both of those things right now, Miss Woodcross.”
Her words sounded like compliments but felt like anything but. Embry’s empty-yet-heavy stomach roiled.
“It is important that you answer my questions as honestly and directly as you can so that we can make quick work of this investigation and provide clarity not only to Miss Riddle’s loved ones but also to the Raven’s Head students, faculty, and board.”
Oakley’s family—Embry hadn’t even thought of them yet. What was it that she’d said? Her mother had “cold feet” about her becoming a student outside of home. That’s why she’d missed orientation and been stuck with such a terrible initial schedule.
Her parents didn’t want Oakley to come. She did anyway. Now she was dead.
