“I think she’s dealing with something serious right now.”
Guilt pangs with my next footsteps. I dismissed his suggestion, told him she’d be just fine, and days later she was getting carted out on a stretcher.
Who the fuck messed with her, and how soon can I eviscerate them?
I drag in a breath that sounds irritatingly shaky in the quiet and stalk toward the buffet counters.
The poison got into her food somehow. No one else fell ill, so clearly it was added sometime between her individual bowl being doled out and her collapse.
The impressions that quiver out of the ephemera saturating the cafeteria are even more fragmented and jumbled than in most places. Hundreds of students pass through here in a day, with different things on their minds and different interactions each time, and that’s been going on for over a hundred years since Luminary was founded.
I narrow my attention, seeking the bits and pieces with the sharpest clarity. Someone about to commit murder would havebeen experiencing some pretty intense thoughts and feelings, one would assume.
I dredge up a sniffle with a tang of heartbreak here, an image of a sneering face and a curdle of embarrassment there. A little pop of joy prompted by a mouthful of sour-sweet cherry tart. A spike of panic—"What’s going on over there?”
Genuine worry and confusion. Not someone who was prepared for the crime, if Elodie’s illness even was the reason for that particular fragment.
The general thrum of all the muddled layers of past impressions starts to condense into an ache at the front of my skull. Grimacing, I prowl on through the cafeteria.
All I need is a spurt of triumph or a jitter of guilty nerves,someindication of a figure with malicious motives. Once I have one thread to latch on to, I should be able to unravel more.
This is the strongest talent I have, the one I put the full force of my determination into honing like a master craftsman’s blade. The one that awed my teachers at Beacon Prep and brought a greedy gleam into the Luminary headmaster’s eyes, bright enough to overlook my background.
It has to work for me now.
But nothing unsettling reaches me as I weave between the tables. I catch scraps of reactions to Elodie’s sudden illness, all of them reasonable shock and distress at seeing a classmate suddenly afflicted.
Was the culprit someone she was sitting with? One of those equally snooty girls she considers her friends?
I finally draw up next to the table where they were sitting. The floor has been swabbed clean of Elodie’s vomit, but that won’t have erased the ephemera of the moment.
Circling the table, I trail my fingers over its smooth surface. Laughter, consternation, a disdainful curl of a lip. A gasp. Frantic voices.
I can taste rivalry in the lingering energies, but nothing that feels outright vicious. No satisfaction in the outcome.
This is the chair where Elodie herself was sitting. I rest my hand on its back, frustration already setting in.
If she had any idea what happened to her, she’d have spoken up as soon as she regained consciousness, wouldn’t she?Herimpressions aren’t likely to reveal anything new.
I can’t stop myself from pausing and reaching out, though, just like I couldn’t seem to find my common sense the other day in my office when she bent over my lap.
My fingers clench around the chair. My mind delves through the layers of ephemera.
I wasn’t in the cafeteria when the poisoning happened, but I’ve heard it described enough times. I summon a picture of her in my mind to guide my focus.
Her violet-dyed hair tumbling against this seat back. The deceptively coy smile that would have crossed her lips while she talked with her friends. The way those lips would have parted to admit her spoon…
A flicker of an impression brushes against my senses, with an edge of terror that grips me in the instant before I lose it.
Pulse stuttering, I stretch my awareness after the fragment again. If I aim all my intent at recovering that moment?—
There, again. A burst of fear and horror, a sour taste, a jab of a finger against tender flesh?—
The glimpse flees again, but I remain where I am, my spine gone rigid.
The poison didn’t make Elodie vomit. She forced herself to, with a finger jammed down her throat.
No one’s mentioned that factor. Maybe no one saw the furtive motion of her hand—her hair would have fallen around her face, they could have thought she was trying to wipe at her mouth if they noticed the position of her arm.
