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She stares at me blankly for a moment and I feel that pinch of intrusion at my temple, like she’s trying to read my thoughts. I remain steady in blocking her. I don’t even flinch.
“I don’t…” she begins. Then she clears her throat and gives me a hard look. “I mentioned Goruun to you on the first night we met.”
The memory slides into place. I knew I had heard it somewhere the moment that Brom mentioned it.
“I wasn’t put on this earth by Goruun to blend in,” I say softly.
“That’s right,” Leona says. “And it’s still true.”
I fix my eyes on her. “And so Goruun is…God?”
She rubs her thin lips together, her eyes seeking the ceiling in thought. “Goruun is…divine. He is not God. He is the deity of our coven. So, a god if you will.”
More likely a demon, I think.
“And you believe your coven’s deity has something to do with me?”
“Oh, he has something to do with everyone who crosses my path,” she says brightly. “Think of this school as a web.”
I swallow hard, my nails digging into my knee. “And we’re all just flies in it?”
“You don’t have to be a fly, Ichabod,” she says. “You can be a spider instead. Your long legs, your black hair, your dark nature—I think you’d be a very apt arachnid, wouldn’t you agree?”
“I don’t have a dark nature,” I say, wishing I didn’t sound so defensive.
“But you do,” she says. A pause follows, heavy enough to fill the entire room. “I know you killed your wife.”
I bare my teeth at her, anger turning my hands into fists. “It was an accident. You know it was an accident.”
“Was it?” she asks. “Or is that what you’ve told yourself so many times that you’ve come to believe it? You were involved with that other man, the one she had the affair with. She caught the two of you fucking. She threatened to divorce you, tell the school, and you couldn’t have that so you killed her.”
My eyes pinch shut, blocking out the memories. “No, no, no.”
“You killed her and coerced that man, what was his name? The witness report said it was Ray. You coerced him to cover up for you, to tell the police it was an accident. You were going to blackmail him too.”
My heart is beating so hard in my head that I can’t even think.
“How would Katrina feel if she knew her lover killed his wife?” she goes on.
I glare at her. “She wouldn’t care because I’d tell the truth, I was going to tell her the truth.”
“No you weren’t,” she says. “You wouldn’t risk it. Accidents happen but you’re afraid that she’ll find out the truth anyway, perhaps by getting inside your head, or perhaps just by looking at you. You wear guilt so well.”
“It was an accident!” I shout, the chair toppling over as I spring to my feet. “It was an accident, that’s the fucking truth!” I lean over the desk and shove my finger in her face. “You’re trying to place false memories into me, I know what you’re doing, you witch!”
She stares at my finger, so calm, so poised, and for one horrible second I want to jam my finger straight into her eye, press it into her brain and make her stop, make her just fucking stop.
“That rage inside you will break you until you face it, until you let it out,” she says smoothly. “And you’re already a broken man, Ichabod. You want to lash out but the person you truly wish to hurt the most is yourself.”
“Fuck you,” I growl, turning around and striding to the door.
“Let me clear here,” she says loudly.
But I don’t want to listen to any more of this. I put my hand on the knob and try to turn. It won’t open. Of course I’m locked in here.
I pivot to face her but she’s already on the other side of the desk, hovering several inches above the damn floor.
“This is my school,” Leona says and I can’t stop staring at where her feet don’t touch the ground. “It always has been and it always will be. My coven has more power in our fingertips than you’ll know in your sad, angry little life. You’re saying to yourself that you don’t want to give up Kat, that you’ll quit and give up being a teacher, because she’s worth it and this school is dangerous anyway. You would be right about that last part of course, but you won’t quit. Because you can’t. Because you’re needed here. The students need you to teach them, to take care of them, and that’s what you want more than anything, anything to soothe that guilt in your soul. You need to be here to protect them, isn’t that right?”
I try to swallow but can’t.
