Seth stopped walking. “You got suspended more than once?”
“Indeed, although I’ve always felt that my suspensions were a bit of an overreaction on the Sherwood Academy’s part.” Annaliese stopped walking as well. “I mean, how could I have been expected to ignore that Mrs. Austin St. John arrived at the Sherwood Academy one day with a cage filled with birds she’d picked up from a street market on her way to retrieving her daughter from school? Fortunately, I overheard her telling another mother that she was going to take the birds to her milliner with the expectation that they would pluck the birds and use their feathers on a hat Mrs. St. John had her heart set on to wear to a garden party.”
“Do not say you set those birds free.”
“Without a second thought. But then Alice Leery tattled on me because she’d seen me sneaking outside, and just like that, I found myself suspended.”
“And the other time?”
“It was hardly my fault that deciding to take a tarantula to class after my instructor encouraged everyone to bring their favorite pet to school to celebrate the end of term resulted with numerous students suffering fits of the vapors. Tarantulas, if you’re unaware, are incredibly docile creatures and rarely bite”
Seth was grinning a second later, his grin causing the butterflies to return to her stomach again, which was odd, given the circumstances. Before she could contemplate that further, though, Harriet released her hold on Annaliese’s hand and scampered up the steps leading to the castle entrance.
After taking a second to rewrap the scarf around her face, Annaliese waited while Seth tied a handkerchief he’d pulled from his pocket around his face, then together they followed Harriet down the long hallway and into the great room. They then followed her along one of the tables that still had all the dishes from lunch on it, Harriet stopping a moment later, where she promptly started chattering as she pointed underneath one of the chairs.
Seth strode forward, poked his head underneath the table for all of two seconds, then reared back right as he began coughing, undoubtedly due to the stench emitting from under the table.
Annaliese snagged hold of his hand and hauled him through a door that led to the back courtyard, releasing his hand as soon as they stepped outside. She then pulled her scarf off and continued walking until she reached the balcony that overlooked Lake Michigan, gulping in breaths of fresh air as she leaned her elbows on the railing, stopping mid-gulp when the sight of her mother and Seraphina captured her attention.
Concerningly enough, those two were standing on the shoreline and seemed to be in the process of supervising three girls who were standing in the shallows, all of whom were armed with scrub brushes, and all of whom were no longer wearing their school uniform of white shirt and gray skirt, but old-fashioned bathing costumes that she and Seraphina had recently unearthed in an old trunk in one of the castle’s turret rooms.
“Everything alright down there?” Annaliese yelled over the balcony.
Irma looked up. “They got skunked,” she called back. “The soap isn’t working.”
“We smell horrible,” Penina Zambarello called next as her sister, Donata, nodded beside her.
“Our clothes are ruined,” Mabel called before she lost her balance and tumbled into the water, Donata hauling her to her feet a moment later.
Annaliese turned to Seth. “Any thoughts as to how to eliminate essence of skunk from one’s person?”
“Yes, but before we get into that, you should know that you definitely don’t have any skunks roaming around the castle as thatwasone of my vials smashed underneath the chair.”
“I probably should have asked this before, but on the chance that Norma Jean took your entire supply of them, how many vials of eau de skunk did you make?”
He winced. “I had forty-three stoppered vials at last count, which was far less than I was planning on making, as I was originally intending on giving every student here a vial if I thought they were a viable safety device. However, I didn’t make it past forty-three because the smell was getting to me, even though I was wearing a modified smoke inhaler over my face, one I invented for firefighters that does a somewhat credible job of masking scents, as well as smoky air.”
Annaliese’s mouth dropped open. “Forty ... three?”
“I’m afraid so. But given that I’m thinking only five students were involved with today’s event, I’d say the odds are at least sixty-two percent that not all the vials were deployed.”
“Dare I ask how many vials you’ve calculated that may have been used?” Annaliese forced herself to ask.
He tilted his head. “If I were planning an attack, I would have armed everyone with two to three vials to utilize, so ten vials at the least, fifteen at the most, which, if you think about it, is far more manageable than forty-three.”
It really wasn’t much of a surprise when, even though she readily admitted, at least to herself, that she’d been finding Seth McCormick rather appealing of late, she suddenly found herself wondering how one could go about the process of throttling a gentleman in a civil fashion, especially when one was a decorum instructor, and as such, was certainly expected to proceed with matters of throttling in the most proper of ways.
Thirteen
Seth couldn’t help but notice that Annaliese’s eyes were now flashing in a rather telling fashion, but before he could figure out why, she turned her head and took to muttering under her breath. Concerningly enough, he distinctly heard the wordthrottlebefore she lifted her chin and returned her attention to him.
“How did you arrive at the conclusion that only five students were involved?” she surprised him by asking since he’d been certain she was going to expand on the whole throttling business.
He pushed aside the idea that she might have been contemplating throttlinghim, although since hewasresponsible for the skunk situation, he couldn’t say he blamed her, and nodded to the students in the water. “There seems to be only three students who got skunked down there. Since we know that real skunks weren’t involved, it stands to reason that those girls got in their smelly condition because they didn’t know the vials were meant to be thrown and probably stomped on them instead. It also stands to reason that Norma Jean is, unfortunately, behind this attack. Since Velma is always in cahoots with my sister but Norma Jean is put out with Phoebe and Coraline, that makes five girls in total.”
“But then why aren’t Norma Jean and Velma in the water with the other girls?”
“I have no idea, which means we’ll need to run them down, or question the girls in the water.”
