“You grabbed it!” Embry squealed, her mind and body suddenly righting itself so hard her nose stung as if it’d filled with seawater. She pushed off the doorframe and nearly ran at Rye, elated. “How did you get it out without them noticing?”
Rye pushed himself to standing, making the same sheepish face he had as a much younger boy on her doorstep. He shrugged. “I cast the same spell you cast on me on it, wrapped it in protective magic to guard against any magical contamination, and snuck out with it, all while Headmaster Martinelli was reading you the riot act.”
“Hold on. Wait.” Ames tossed up both hands. “You were there? With Em? I literally saw her room before Martinelli made us all go back to ours, and she was the only person in it.”
“I may have perfected an invisibility spell.” Embry shrugged, trying to be nonchalant, but totally grinning like a fiend. “We used it to get in, it wore off, and I cast it on Rye again right as Valentina came running when I screamed.”
Ames whirled on Rye. “Ryszard, you saw Balthazar with your own eyes, framing Em?”
“That is correct.”
Now Fairfax did his own whirling on Rye. “Andwhydidn’t we learn this just now when we were discussing Balthazar’s assault on Embry and the coven at large?”
“I didn’t want anyone to know Rye was there with me,” Embry answered, sitting on the end of her bed and hauling Ames down next to her. “I didn’t want him to get in trouble, and, honestly,Brown and Martinelli didn’t take Rye seriously when he insisted that I didn’t follow Oakley after our confrontation and instead went straight to my dorm room. They seem to be of the opinion that Rye and Daddy have no credibility when it comes to defending me. So, I made the snap decision to take Rye out of the equation when my scream worked as expected.”
Ames narrowed her eyes. “And whydidyou scream?”
Embry had thought this was obvious. “Because I needed someone to see that Balthazar was with me, and it seemed like sacrificing myself to whatever punishment I’d receive for breaking in would be worth it to be caught with him.” Everyone knew how admin came running for the occasional screamer. “But thenhestopped time without breaking a sweat and hopped out the window—apparently it’s true that sorcerers are incredibly powerful because they can draw from their dark well or whatever”—as expected, almost everyone’s eyes wentreally wideat this news—“andIwas caught, red-handed, by myself with the dress and stain remover he’d planted—”
“And the backpack, which they didn’t notice but we now have,” Rye finished.
“Wait.” Fairfax tossed a hand toward the bag, now held aloft by Rye, “why’d you take the backpack but not the incriminating dress?”
“Because the bright red dress was too noticeable to make vanish with that many eyeballs around. The backpack was in shadow, deeper in the closet,” Rye said. “Plus, I’m hoping that even though it’s now out of the chain of custody, we can use it to learn something about Balthazar, and maybe Oakley, that will be useful.”
Embry quickly explained the things they’d learned from the autopsy—that Oakley had been made, not born; that her mother’s name was listed as Hannah Crawford (cue Ames gasping, “But she said she didn’t even know her!”); and about the corsage on herwrist but not in the video or in Rye’s photos. But the backpack was another story.
“And the backpack is important because it carried the dress?” Fairfax guessed.
“Well, it likely did that, yes, but what we really want to know is if it can answer other questions.” But even as she was saying it, Embry realized she needed to answer one they might not even know they had about Oakley—and Hiram Woodcross.
As soon as she explained that the vampire’s magical essence was no longer present and that apparently Hiram was a known magic thief who stole from colonial vampires, the mood in the room fell like a lead balloon. To say she was met with surprise was an understatement.
“Seriously?” Ames’s arched eyebrow was the kind that could draw blood. “I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that nobody was going to tell us that during our Coven Ascension mentoring sessions.”
“Not a good look,” Embry concurred. “Especially when it’s being used as circumstantial evidence against your great-great-great-great-great—a lot ofgreats—granddaughter and her coven all these years later.”
Wasn’t that the truth? Bad actions had a way of tainting those who had the audacity to come later.
“I don’t think it was a coincidence that he planted those itemswhileyou were in the room,” Ames said. “I mean, you were there for like five minutes before he showed up?”
Embry nodded. “Yes.”
The second the word was out of her mouth, an idea struck Rye so forcefully that he grabbed her wrist. “Is it possible Balthazar had been assuming you were going to try to break in at some point and had the room under surveillance?”
Rye gently released her, rubbing the back of his neck as she chewed it over.
“It’s possible,” Embry agreed. “Though unless it was a surveillance spell, it wouldn’t make much sense timing-wise, since it appears he was all over New England, killing Oakley’s vulnerable family members.”
Wait.
Embry looked to Rye. “Remember when I was joking that you tracked me on my phone? What if he was doing that the whole time?”
Rye immediately held out his hand for her cell, which he’d returned after she’d exited the police department. “May I?”
The techiest of them all by a mile, it only took Rye a few swipes to confirm, that, yes, malware sorcery had been installed on Embry’s phone. On the usage screen was a hidden app that Embry hadn’t installed. “Best I can tell, he embedded this in a message that he sent you that required you to click on a link. After it was downloaded, he was able to find you without you knowing.” Ames cursed, Fairfax scoffed, and Embry’s teeth ground together. “Then he texted you and not the group just to make sure your cell was still with you and went from there.”
Embry glared at the traitorous device, which, yeah, she’d carried with her, even if she wasn’t using it to communicate. “Can you remove it, or do I have to get a new phone?”
