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I drain the last of the spritz and slide off my stool. Milo makes a grab for my arm, but when I jerk out of the way, he doesn’t follow me.
I stride back out to the street, both my mind and my stomach stewing with everything I took in.
Julita pipes up again, sounding more collected but still raw.What are you doing now?
I could leave and tune out the voice in my head until she fades away or dislodges herself in her frustration. It still isn’t my business. It’s not my problem to solve.
But she’s here. I’ve got her.
I’m the only person who knows what happened to her who might care enough to see that her story doesn’t end with its final chapters missing.
The assholes who did this to her aren’t just a threat to the haughty rich in their fancy castle of a school. Their experiments in vicious magic could destroy every person I’ve spent the last eight years trying to help.
If I turn my back on my ghostly guest, I’m turning my back on all of them.
And that might be even worse than anything I’ve done before.
I set off toward a shop with a tendril of greenish smoke wafting from a side window. “I’m going to ask a few more questions. And then the next time we see your friends, I’ll tell them everything I possibly can that’ll take those bastards down.”
Nine
As I raise Julita’s bracelet to the gargoyle at the college gate, my heart gives a swift stutter. I swallow against the dryness of my mouth.
Stepping through the opening door, I risk a murmur. “You’re sure the password won’t have changed since last time?”
The men Julita’s working with only have their meetings every two days. It’s been three now since she was stabbed in the alley.
Julita’s back to what seems to be her usual unflappably confident self.They only change it once a week, and the last time was six days ago. I’m sure of that. We’re good.
I’d have more faith in her sense of time if she had her own corporeal body to experience it with. Girding myself, I march onward.
Lively fleas—
“I remember.”
Lively fleas rip from royalty like ribbons. An absurd phrase, but I’m in the habit of committing every bit of information I can glean to memory. Left, forward, right, forward, right, left, right.
When the door to the first courtyard opens up in front of me with no blare of a conjured alarm or onslaught of furious guards, I exhale in a rush. My nerves shudder at the deluge of cleansing magic, but it washes over me in an instant, and I’m through.
A couple of men are walking over to the gate hand-in-hand. I veer around them on my stroll toward the main college building and wait until they’ve disappeared through the gate before speaking to my ghostly passenger again.
“I’m going to tell them, I’ll let them ask you any questions they can think of that would help them investigate—and then we’re done.”
The statement feels more like a question than I’m comfortable with. We’ve already hashed the plan out, but I don’t know how much good faith I can expect from my unwanted guest once we’re back on her turf.
An incredibly fair deal,Julita says in a reassuring tone.I’ll depart from your body if I can determine how, and if I can’t right away, I’ll keep my thoughts to myself while I work it out.
She sounds like she means it, but her dormmate’s accusing words linger alongside the tingle of Julita’s presence in the back of my skull. She could say anything she wants to keep me cooperating—it’s not as if I have any idea how to force the issue if she goes back on her word.
But it doesn’t really matter. This is the right thing to do.
I’m the one controlling my body. I can make sure I walk back out of here once I’ve fulfilled the mission I agreed to.
The rest I’ll deal with when I get there.
Julita waits patiently while I navigate the campus, taking the same route she directed me on last time. When I tap and tug the sconce beside the tapestry of Signy, she lets out a bright chuckle.You really do have quite the memory.
“I had to hone every skill I could,” I murmur as I step into the hidden staircase. Every skill other than the riven magic that would both drive me mad and bring the rage of the royal family down on my head. Or rather, on my neck.
