“Y-You shouldn’t be here.” Dean Felling tried to stand, but his rolling chair caught under his desk, and he fell back slightly onto it. Fumbling, he freed his legs and stumbled into a standing position. He used the chair like a shield, positioning himself behind it.
Okay, weird. “First classes haven’t started yet,” Nix replied in a confused tone. “Look, I wanted to ask you about—”
“Youreallyshouldn’t be here.” Dean Felling glanced nervously at his phone as if he wanted to make a call but feared Nix would stop him. “My secretary let you in?”
“Your secretary loves me,” Bael said.
“I—I know what you did,” Dean Felling told Nix with an expression of fear and accusation. He sucked his bottom lip intohis mouth and glanced back at his phone. “W-What do you want from me?”
He knew “what I did.”What was that? Nix started, “I want to know where Mr. Lemmuns is. The man you plan to replace Professor Bowen with.”
Dean Felling’s brows furrowed, and he shook his head. “Whatever for? Do you plan to kill him as well?”
Nix frowned.As well?
“How’d you read our minds?” Bael asked jokingly, but there was a palpable edge to his voice—as sharp as his pocketknife.
“I knew I should have never allowed a dragon and a demon into this school,” Dean Felling scolded himself as an aside.
“Focus,” Nix snapped. “Where is Mr. Lemmuns?”
“He is preparing for the announcement in the auditorium.”
In the last timeline, Nix had been with Adar and Elle off campus. What announcement had they missed? “We can find him in the auditorium?”
“You are not supposed to be here,” Dean Felling told her in an eerie tone. “Why are you here? You are not supposed to be here.”
The tiny hairs on Nix’s arm rose with unease at his words. Surely, he meant that he knew Elle and Adar were “supposed” to take Nix off campus today and not that he knew she had traveled back in time by one day.
“I’m bored,” Bael commented before heblurredover to Dean Felling’s chair. The incubus’s arm shot out. In the span of a single second, Bael held his shiny, sharp blade to the dean’s throat.
“Baelfire!” Thierry gaped.
“Why did you replace Professor Bowen?” Bael asked the dean. “And remember, I can tell when someone is lying to me.”
“That is not an incubus trait,” Thierry stated.
Bael cast Thierry a “Really, Stoney?” expression before focusing back on the dean. “Tell me why you planned to replace the best professor at this academy.”
Thierry sighed. “Rude.”
“B-Because he wasn’t loyal,” Dean Felling stuttered. “P-Please don’t kill me.”
“Loyal?” Thierry asked. “To whom?”
“He was asking too many questions.”
“Like what?” Bael politely inquired as he pressed the blade harder to the dean’s throat.
“I—I can’t say.”
“Who are you so scared of?” Nix asked him, already knowing the answer.
“The council will punish you for—” the dean cut off as a thin trail of blood trickled down his neck. “Oh gods! Y-You’ve cut me!”
“He was asking questions about enchanted students, wasn’t he? Professor Bowen.” Nix guessed. “There are more enchanted students on campus.”
“You need to l-leave my office at once.”
