“As long as they take,” Daddy answered. “I’m sorry, I don’t have a definitive answer.”
“So we’re supposed to sit here in time-out like we did something wrong?” Ames muttered, though she knew the answer. Fairfax slung a comforting arm over her shoulders. For once she didn’t shake him off as she so often did when annoyed. Even Fairfax seemed astonished, cautiously wrapping his fingers around her upper arm for extra support.
“Honestly, yes, that’s exactly what we’re supposed to do,” Lazarus said, with a nod at her. Then, with a clap of his hands, he changed gears. “So, go home, reset your wards, get some sleep. Then let’s just make sure everything looks like business as usual for the Woodcross coven.”
As they broke apart, Embry sighed. Waiting for the Table to do the right thing in this instance seemed like an exercise in futility.
But what else could they do?
CHAPTER 37
HARD EVIDENCE
“HEY, THERE’S SOMETHINGIWANT YOU GUYS TO SEE,” RYE SAIDto Embry, Ames, and Fairfax as they piled into Embry’s room after the meeting adjourned, milking the time they had before Ames and Fairfax were required to return to the dorm for the night for curfew.
“That’s a terrifying prospect, considering you aren’t carrying anything in your hands and your phone is literally the only thing I canseeyou have in your pockets,” Ames sassed back, folding her arms over her chest. “If you start undressing, I’m leaving out that window.”
Ironically, Ames pointed to the very window Rye had arrived at just a few nights ago.
“Babe, I can assure you from my time on crew with Knighton that you might want to stick around if what he wants to show us is himself,” Fairfax told her. “It’s worth a gander—his insistence of being the personification of shabby chic is just a cover to avoid well-deserved objectification.”
Embrydid notneed this clarification.
Rye sighed, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes. “I’m not undressing, guys—minds out of the gutter and pointed back at the very real prospect that your sorcerer buddy is trying to frame all of us for vampire murder, starting with Embry.”
He thrust a hand at her for emphasis. And Embry’s eyes shot to her running shoes because her body had betrayed her the secondthere was any discussion of Rye disrobing. She didn’t need to check the nearby vanity mirror to know she was blushing. Profusely.
“Ryszard, my dear.” Ames sighed. “Have you considered that we’re stressed out enough to take literally any bait to get our minds off what a fucking cluster bus this is?”
“Gutter balls all around,” Fairfax agreed, not even screwing up his face to turn the termgutter ballsinto an obvious double entendre. “I even read fifty pages ahead inWar and Peacelast night in my attempt to forget that Embry had been perp-walked out of the dorm by Inspector Brown. If readingaheadof assignment pace onWar and Peaceisn’t the ultimate attempt at disassociating, I don’t know what is.”
“Knighton, what do you want to show us?” Embry blurted, yanking the conversational steering wheel and giving herself something to do—shutting the door—while furiously hoping the heat in her cheeks would recede. She’d already applied her blush, and it would benoticeable.
That’s when Rye surprised Embry by rolling up the corner of the cloud-fluffy area rug that sat under her queen-size bed, revealing a blast from the past: a loose board.
A loose board, which, when removed, revealed a secret compartment.
A secret compartment where the pair used to hide video evidence of the one-act plays they’d written after particularly inspiring movie nights in their early teens. The “plays” would always halt after a few scenes because invariably Embry and Rye would get in an argument over their very different notions of artistic vision or because one of them had the audacity, ahem, to try an illegal love spell out on a squirrel. Then they eventually stopped altogether. After that, Embry rearranged her room, got her new glorious rug, and completely forgot about the hidey-hole under the floorboard.
But apparently Rye had never forgotten.
It was all still there—his dad’s old camcorder with the micro tapes that he’d snuck out of the house without his aunt noticing; a handful of notebooks dotted with stickers and Embry’s flowery hand; even a few flat, dusty bags of microwave popcorn, long expired.
Embry’s heart lurched as the memories flooded back, and her body did, too, her hand scrabbling for the knob she’d just turned, catching it and holding on for dear life. Her shoulder blades hit the doorframe, her breath shallow as her head suddenly spun with a new truth.
ThatEmbry, that twelve-, thirteen-year-old girl, had loved spending time with Rye Knighton more than anyone else.
It was a thrill when they’d made something together, recording take after take on that old camcorder. It was a thrill when they’d started squabbling and the whole thing had fallen apart until the next day. It was a thrill when Rye would appear at her front door, hands in pockets, pre-crew shoulders thin and bunched, sheepishly asking if she had plans… and if not, he had an idea for something they could make or something they could watch together to get some ideas. Even when the camcorder was retired, the movie nights stayed. Especially in the dead of winter and the middle of summers when their boarding school friends would flock home.
“You had a whole-ass, main-character-in-a-YA-novel under-the-floorboards hidey-hole and you never told me?” Ames asked, whirling rather dramatically on her BFF. “I know you’re going through hell right now, but just for future reference, this is absolutely something a best friend should know.”
Guilt twisted Embry’s stomach as she realized her best friend at the time the compartment was created knew, because he’d made itwithher.
Embry reached for a snatch of levity and fell short as Rye said,“We can argue about that later.” He didn’t look up, rummaging around. “Right now, we need to talk about this.”
Dramatic timing a thing of beauty, Rye sat back, revealing the item in his grasp: Oakley’s ratty backpack.
It was as decrepit as ever, even wrapped in a protective bubble of magic.
