I shook my head. “No. And if it was, you’ve just put your fingerprints all over it.”
Emma scowled. “Well, I’m not leaving here empty-handed.”
She pocketed the necklace. There was a tap on the glass outside, and we jumped.
Alexei and Theo had lost the guards. They were hovering by one of the large picture windows. We unlocked it, and pushed it open. Theo asked, “What did you find?”
“Tell you in a minute,” I said. I opened the window wider. I helped Kiara onto Alexei’s back, and Odette onto Theo’s.
Stefan was sitting on the roof. He curled his neck over and poked his head into the room. “Hop on, babycakes. I’ll give you a ride,” he said to Delmare.
“As if.” She pushed his head away and got onto Theo’s back, behind Odette. I helped Emma clamber onto Stefan’s head, then pulled myself onto the dragon behind her. I made sure to close the window behind me before we took off.
Theo, Alexei and Stefan flew us above the royal grounds so there’d be a better chance we wouldn’t be spotted. After we’d touched down in the woods outside Arcanea University, the five of us put our feet back on the ground while Theo, Alexei and Stefan changed back.
“So? Did you guys findanythingin there?” Stefan asked.
The girls glumly shook their heads, and I added, “Not anything that proves Lady Korva has something to do with the attacks.”
“Great.” Theo sighed. “I risked getting arrested for no good reason.”
“Oh, it was an adventure, anyway!” Odette said optimistically. “And so fun, too.”
We began the long walk back to the university. “Well, that was for nothing,” Delmare said in defeat. “Looks like Lady Korva can continue her killing spree in peace.”
“Not for nothing. We found this.” Emma showed her the obsidian necklace. “Kiara’s right. It’s definitely dark magic. I can feel it.”
“Yeah, but not enough to prove Korva’s got any sinister motives. Possessing an object from the Unseelie isn’t even a felony. It’s a minor offense,” Kiara stated.
“Depends on how powerful it is,” I said. “But Lady Korva could just buy her way out of a sentence like that, anyway.”
“Doesn’t matter. I don’t think something like this should be in Korva’s hands,” Emma finished. She placed it back inside her pocket.
There were muted murmurs of agreement. I kept quiet, but secretly, I had a bad feeling that necklace shouldn’t be in Emma’s hands, either.
Chapter Sixteen
Emma
“Pick up the pace, ladies! This is basic magic!” Lady Korva barked at the head of the classroom.
Illusion was still proving to be my least favorite class. Today, we were learning how to transfigure our appearance. Beside me, Kiara scrunched up her nose. She turned her hair pink, then blue, then back to black again.
I tried to make my hair purple, but only the roots changed. I checked the mirror on my desk again to see if I’d managed to make my freckles disappear, but no go.
Lady Korva stalked around the room in a mood more sour than usual, which was entirely impressive— even for her. She’d been in a bad way for days. She obviously hated that her necklace had turned up missing, but no reports of a break-in at the Zlodia mansion had been reported, nor had there been any gossip on the grapevine that a thief had taken something from Lady Korva. It confirmed my suspicions that the necklace was something she wanted to hide.
I didn’t want to get rid of the necklace. Ethan had already assured me something powerful like that couldn’t be destroyed by students at our level, and I didn’t know or trust any other sorceress to ask them to destroy it for me. Lady Magdalina could, I was sure, but then she’d question where I got it, and I wasn’t sure if I’d be in trouble when I revealed that I’d stolen it from Lady Korva.
I worried if I tried to get rid of that someone else would find it, and we’d end up in a worse situation later one. So I threw it into a dresser in my dorm and tried to forget about it, though the necklace was still at the back of my mind.
Across the room, Gabby was working on shrinking her nose. She’d accomplished making it a smaller size. Beside her, Morgan worked on making her boobs larger. They were so ridiculously big that they seemed comical on her small frame. Beside her, Melissa attempted shrinking a few pounds off her figure. It didn’t work, and she frowned as she looked into the mirror.
“Changing your appearance is vital when blending into a crowd,” Korva announced. “The illusion won’t last forever, but a skilled sorceress will be able to keep up a disguise for at least the span of a few hours— if not days.”
Morgan waggled her huge boobs at Gabby. Gabby rolled her eyes and leaned closer to the mirror, continuing to change her nose to find one she liked.
“Plastic surgery is way cheaper when you’re an Arcanea,” I said to Kiara.
