“Perhaps I failed to see how soft and sentimental you are. Or perhaps I saw it and I hoped it would pass, an unfortunate by-product of your upbringing in that stench of a Quarter you were raised in.”
She could be right. One thing I’ve learned since I gained my powers and entered the ranks of the shadow weavers, there’s no room for softness and sentimentality, not while you’re watching out for that knife coming for your back.
“Who was it?” I ask her again.
She leans forward, folding over her knees, the smoke from her cigarette curling in the air, the distant demons squawking, their shapes passing overhead.
“Why, the old headmaster, of course.”
I stare at her. Too shocked for words.
The Head has been missing for years. He barely made an appearance when I was a student and by the time I’d been given the job as professor and returned to the academy he had vanished. There were rumors that he’d died, rumors that he was ill, rumors that some scandal had come to pass and he’d been quietly removed from his post.
But he was the one who had groomed, seduced, and turned Veronica, in exactly the manner she had changed me. And she’d bided her time and punished him for it.
“You killed him!”
A shadow passes over her features. She shifts on her seat. The intensity of her glowing eyes fades a fraction.
“I wanted to, but maybe I have a heart after all, darling, maybe I’m as sentimental as you are. Then again, perhaps I prefer to watch him suffer.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Beaufort
We leave the old man sleeping upstairs and join Dray and Briony on the ground floor. Dray has lit a fire with his magic and it does a good job of chasing away not only the coldness but the gloom and repression as well.
Thorne unpacks the sandwiches he packed for us and the four of us sit around the fire, unwrapping our make-do dinner, Blaze snoozing behind Briony, his great head resting on his paws.
“I think we should take that man some food,” Briony says.
“We asked him,” Thorne says, “he refused any.”
“You think he’d be starving,” Briony mutters.
“He seemed too weak to eat.”
Briony shakes her head, her sandwich hovering in front of her mouth. “How many years has he been missing?”
“I don’t know,” I tell her. “Five, six.”
“How has he survived out here for all that time?” she mutters.
“Maybe he was somewhere else before,” Dray says.
“He was the head of the academy, Briony,” I add. “He was a powerful shadow weaver. Maybe he found a way to survive.”
“What’s he even doing out here? Did he say?” I shake my head and she takes a bite of her sandwich, chewing as she thinks. “What did they say when he first went missing?”
I lower my own sandwich, and scrub my hand through my hair, attempting to remember. “I was younger then. Not necessarily paying attention. I don’t remember an announcement of any sort. I remember there were rumors and gossip but all that faded away. I always suspected that he was going to come back. Otherwise, they’d have made Bardin headmistress.”
Briony scowls. “I bet it was the Madame who brought him here, who got rid of him, all so she could take his place.”
“Wouldn’t she have killed him, though?” Dray says, munching on his sandwich loudly. “If it was her?”
“We should talk to him some more,” she says, “he may know more about these demon wastelands. He may have an idea where Fox is being held.”
“Or where Bardin is hiding out,” Dray adds.
