Stupid, rebellious nature.
Eli brushed past me on the way to the door to Miss Norton’s office. He pulled the moonwort key from his pocket, unlocked the door, and stepped inside. I hurried after him, my breath quickening from sudden adrenaline at what we were doing.
I looked around at the untidy sprawl of bookshelves and the paper-strewn desk.
Eli strode to the desk. “Let’s get a move on.”
He took one side of the desk while I took the other. There was a lot, but at least we were looking for something specific—anything to do with the Beltane Festival.
“Found it,” Eli said a few minutes later. He pulled out a folder from beneath the rubble of essays and homework assignments and opened it.
I came around the desk to see the contents more clearly. Eli stepped aside to allow me room, his body rigid as if he feared touching me again. He flipped through the folder’s contents. “Here we go.” He handed me a slip of paper. “Looks like the list of participants.”
I scanned the names, committing the ones I didn’t already know to memory.
“And this looks like stage blocking,” Eli said, unfolding a map.
I set down the list of names and leaned toward the map to examine it more closely, unsure of what Eli meant. According to the label, this was the inner island of Lyonshold. I searched the map for Senate Hall, knowing it was here somewhere, and saw it was dead center of the island. In the open area surrounding the hall, someone had drawn little circles in a regular pattern. Inside the circles were written the names of the same Terra Tribe members on the list I’d just read.
“So now we know where they’ll be,” I said, drawing a line between two of the circles with my finger. “But we still don’t know what’s going to happen when they light those torches.”
“No but—” Eli broke off as the doorknob rattled, making us both jump.
I sucked in a breath. “Did you lock it?”
Eli nodded, his eyes darting around the room, no doubt looking for cover. But there wasn’t any, not unless Miss Norton was so drunk her vision was impaired.
“Dusty,” a voice called from the other side of the door. “You in there?”
Realizing it was Selene, I dashed for the door, unlocked it, and yanked it open.
Selene fell into the room. “Come on! Miss Norton’s on her way.”
I didn’t waste time with questions—like how on earth she could know that—but bolted through the door, shouting over my shoulder for Eli to follow.
He did, slamming the door closed behind him. The three of us started to move down the hallway, but an outraged scream froze us in place.
“What were you doing in my office?”
We all turned to see Miss Norton charging us, her little fairy ears making her look like a lioness getting ready to take down a herd of wildebeests. I gulped, trying to come up with an excuse. None came.
Sometimes when you’re caught, you’re caught.
* * *
For the first time since starting my career at Arkwell, I was sent to the principal’s office with two accomplices. I’d sorta hoped that would make it more fun, or at least more bearable, but it didn’t. Not really.
There wasn’t room for all three of us inside of Dr. Hendershaw’s office, so the Will Guard who’d escorted us to the admin building—including Captain Gargrave, much to my dismay—put us in the same conference room where Sheriff Brackenberry and Lady Elaine had first recruited me to spy on Paul.
I wasn’t happy to be back here.
Neither were Selene or Eli, but we didn’t have time to bemoan our unfortunate luck as we decided on our collective story.
“Let’s just tell them the truth,” Eli said after several failed attempts at a believable excuse. “We know the Terra Tribe is planning something and this will make sure they get stopped.”
“Fine,” I said. “But we can’t tell them the stuff about Paul.”
Eli drummed his fingers on the arms of his chair. “Oh? Why not?”
“Because we promised him we wouldn’t until we had proof, and we don’t have it yet.”
The door behind us opened before Eli could reply. We all turned to look as Sheriff Brackenberry and Lady Elaine stepped in. The former looked bemused and the latter concerned. But neither said anything until after they’d shut the door and sat down. Sheriff Brackenberry leaned forward, resting his thick forearms on the table. “You’ve got two minutes to convince me you had a good reason to break into a teacher’s office.”
Eli started to answer, but I spoke over him. I had a lot more experience dealing with Brackenberry, and I didn’t trust him not to mention Paul. “We think Miss Norton is helping a student organization plan some kind of protest during the Beltane Festival,” I began. Then I told him everything we knew and suspected about the Terra Tribe, including their involvement in the protest on campus the other day as well as Britney’s connection to the group.
When I finished, Brackenberry sat back in his chair and stroked his beard. I waited with my teeth clenched. As far as I could tell, this could go either way—big, big trouble or us getting off easy.
The sheriff glanced at Lady Elaine. She shrugged, the gesture weirdly articulate with her bony shoulders visible in the snug turtleneck she wore. “Miss Norton is the faculty advisor for the group.”
Brackenberry grunted then faced me again. “Do you have any proof that Miss Norton was involved in orchestrating whatever this demonstration is?”