The Nightmare Charade (22 page)

“Wait, what?” I blinked, taken aback by the sudden assertion.

Paul glanced over his shoulder as if to make sure we were still alone. “Detective Valentine interviewed him, and he doesn't have an alibi for the night Titus was killed. Claims he was at home by himself the whole time.”

My heartbeat began to quicken, a steady
thump-thump-thump
against my rib cage. I didn't want a Nightmare to be guilty of the crime, but I would take it if it meant getting my mother free. “Valentine said my mom didn't have an alibi. If Corvus didn't either, why did Valentine mark him off the list of suspects?”

“Well, the DNA evidence for one thing.” Paul sighed, his tone regretful. “And I hate to say it but it looks pretty convincing. I don't know a lot about that stuff, but it was hard not to be impressed.”

I gritted my teeth, hating the doubt in his voice. “If it really was my mom who came onto the ward that night, it's possible that's where the DNA came from. It's just circumstantial.”

Paul raised his hands. “I'm with you. I know your mom didn't do this, but I'm just saying the case against her looks bad.”

I folded my arms over my chest and stuck out my chin. “What else convinced Valentine that Corvus is innocent?”

“The guilt thing, like you said. Valentine noted that Corvus's guilt didn't spike a single degree. That's a direct quote.”

My nostrils flared as I inhaled, my temper on the rise. Bellanax burned against my wrist. “Is that all?”

Paul shook his head. “Valentine couldn't find a motive for him either. There's a background check on Corvus, but it's thin. It's like the guy has done nothing but teach school for the last twenty years. He's never been married, no kids. And no criminal record. He's never even had so much as a speeding ticket”

“Huh … I wonder how he lost his eye.” It seemed to me the result of some kind of violence, given the scarring around it, visible despite the eye patch.

“I don't know.” Paul ran a hand over the stubble on his face. “His records only went back those twenty years. It didn't even have a date of birth or anything.”

“That's weird.” I looked down and noticed the burn kit tucked beneath Paul's arm. “But I've got to get back to class.”

“Right.” Paul handed over the kit. “Before you go, I've got an idea on how we can investigate Corvus.”

I glanced at the door, getting nervous about my long absence. “How?”

“Well, neither you nor Eli are going to get away with a lot of sneaking around this year, not with the Will Guard tailing your every move.”

I scowled, my hands tightening into fists. The two flash drives pressed against my palm. He was right about that. The Will Guard had dogged us every step, from our evening homework sessions to our Dream Team meetings in the library.

“What if I can get you a shape-change necklace like mine?” Paul said.

My mouth fell open. A hundred questions darted through my mind, but I couldn't seem to snatch one long enough to ask it.

“Eli won't like it, I know,” Paul pressed on. “But I think it's our best shot. I can only get my hands on one, but I don't want to give it to him. It wouldn't work. He doesn't trust me enough, and investigating Corvus is going to be a two-man job.”

“Why a two-man job?” I asked. “All it takes is a key to get into his office, and I know how to get it.” At least, I hoped I did. Last year I'd been able to convince the school janitor, Mr. Culpepper, to let Eli and me in. I'd spotted Culpepper once or twice so far this year, and each time he'd cast me a very faint, hardly there smile. But for Culpepper that was practically a hug.

“I'm not talking about just his office,” Paul said. “We need to break into his home. And get this, it's off campus.”

“That doesn't make sense.”

“I know. Pretty much every other teacher lives on campus, but not Corvus. He's renting a house off Canal Street.”

“Weird.”

“You mean suspicious.”

I frowned.

An exasperated look crossed Paul's face. “Don't you see? By having a house off campus, there's no way of tracing his activity that night. Or any other night for that matter. Every vehicle leaving campus and coming onto it gets recorded, standard security. But he would've left Arkwell at like five that day and could've gone anywhere.”

I slowly nodded, catching on. “So if he did live on campus, the police could've figured out when he left and came back, but not in this case.”

“Right,” Paul said. “It gives him a lot of anonymity. So long as he comes and goes about the same time each day, nobody would question it.” He hesitated then blew out a breath. “Marrow did the same thing when he was teaching here.”

I winced at the name, and even more at the reminder that Paul had once been Marrow's supporter. The enormity of what he'd known and had let happen struck me anew, and I shook my head. “I don't know, Paul. I'll have to think about it.”

“Oh.” Hurt flashed across his face before he hid it behind a falsely pleasant smile. “I understand. Just let me know. I'm still going to get it. If you decide you're in, we'll need to take some time for you to practice wearing it. It's hard to be someone else at first. You don't have your private lessons with Mr. Deverell this week, right?”

“Right,” I said automatically. Deverell had been out sick since Tuesday. “How do you know about my lessons with Deverell?”

“You mentioned it to Eli the other day. I overheard.” Paul smiled again, this time it wasn't false. “I promise I'm not spying on you if that's what you're thinking.”

It was, but I wasn't about to admit it now. “Okay, but so what about my lessons?”

“If he's still out tomorrow, we can meet up and I'll show you how to use it,” Paul said.

I nodded. It really was tempting. Even if I didn't go snooping Corvus's off-campus house with Paul, I still could use the necklace. It would make a lot of things a whole lot easier—like secretly meeting up with Eli.

I exhaled, glanced at the clock, and nearly shrieked. “I've got to go. I'll think about it. Probably yes, but I'll text you for sure.”

“All right,” Paul said, and I could detect the hopeful note in his voice.

Its presence gave me pause. I stopped in the doorway and turned around, narrowing my eyes at him. “Why are you being so helpful with all of this? I mean, if you get caught, it'll be big trouble, right?”

“Yes.” His expression turned grave for a moment, then he shook it off. “But it's worth the risk.”

“Why?” I pressed, eyes still narrowed.

He glanced away a moment, then met my expression head on. “Because I care about you, Dusty. And I know how hard it will be on you if your mom is found guilty. I'll do whatever I can to protect you from that.”

I swallowed, a cocktail of sudden unnamable emotions churning in my stomach. I turned and left the classroom without replying.

*   *   *

I didn't tell Eli at lunch about Paul's offer to get me a shape-change necklace. I decided to wait until I'd made up my mind what to do.

“Did you get it?” Eli said as soon as he arrived at the table.

I tapped my pocket. “Flash drive.”

“Good. We need to dive into it right away.”

I nodded. “I'm going to go through it while you're at gladiator training. Deverell's out again today.”

“Oh.” Eli's look was almost comically disappointed, like a puppy being put in its cage for a nap.

“You don't mind, do you?” I said. “I've come to the last two, and you're doing great.”

He grinned. It was a true enough statement. He certainly wasn't the best player out there, but he wasn't the worst either. And considering how much less time and experience he had compared to the others, that was quite an accomplishment. “I don't mind you not being there,” he said. “I just wish I could skip and go through it with you.”

I smiled, trying not to ignore my own disappointment that he wasn't going to skip. But tryouts were coming a week from Saturday, and I knew he was too anxious to ease off now.

It seemed Lance was getting anxious, too, because he asked Selene not to come to practice tonight either. “You make me distracted,” he said, planting a kiss on her forehead.

She rolled her eyes. “How are you going to handle it when I try out for the team then?”

Lance clucked his tongue. “Ha, ha. Very funny.”

Selene gave him a look to cut ice. I stared at her, brow furrowed. She wasn't joking. I knew her well enough to see that. Lance clearly didn't—or was choosing willful ignorance—as he planted another kiss on her forehead. “See you at dinner.”

I said good-bye to Eli and then made plans to meet up with Selene after classes in room 013. She'd offered to help me go through Valentine's files even before Lance asked her not to come.

“So,” I said as we rounded the corner into the room later that day, “you're trying out for the team?” The question had been bugging me since lunch. I couldn't quite accept that she really meant it.

She rolled her shoulders, not meeting my eyes. Mostly this was because Buster had commanded her attention the moment we entered.

I set my backpack on one of the desks. “Why are you? You've never expressed any interest in the team before.”

Selene sat down on Buster and crossed one leg over the other. “Actually, I've always wanted to play. I just wasn't motivated to go through with it until I realized there wasn't going to be a single girl on the team this year.”

I beamed at her. “You're my hero.”

“Heroine,” she corrected me. “And you should try out, too. We'll kill them.”

I snorted. “I'm not interested in public ridicule and disaster, thank you.” I pulled out Paul's flash drive from my pocket and plugged it into the computer.

“I think you're just afraid you might be great at it,” Selene said, rolling Buster over to get a better look at the screen.

I sat down and began pulling off some of the files, saving them to the desktop for the time being. Once done, I ejected the flash drive and moved to another computer while Selene took my place behind the first one.

Fortunately, the files on the drive were labeled by subject and not something less convenient like date. I'd given Selene a couple of folders with names I didn't recognize but could guess had been suspects at one point. The three folders I was most interested in, I kept for myself: Moira Everhart, Ian Corvus, and Titus Kirkwood.

I started with the latter one, not quite ready to face the stuff on the other two just yet. In minutes I discovered that Titus had indeed been killed by ordinary means. According to the autopsy report, he died from a single stab wound to the chest that pierced his heart. Death had been instantaneous.
An execution,
according to Valentine's note. The crime scene technicians estimated the knife to be six inches in length with a serrated blade made from a human femur bone.

I read this detail three times before I was finally able to accept it as real. It appeared a small piece of the blade had broken off when the killer wrenched it free of Titus's rib cage. Shivering at the idea of how much it would've hurt and how hard it would've been to do, I resisted an impulse to de-glamour Bellanax and examine the hilt. It too was made of bone, but it was polished smooth, comfortable to touch and hold. But then again I could easily imagine someone carving the material into something sharp.

A knife with a bone blade. My mother owned no such thing. Not that I had ever seen. And how would she even get one? Surely something made from a human femur bone wasn't an object you could order off eBay. It sounded like a black magic item.
She could've gotten it from Culpepper
. The realization increased the chill spreading over my skin. Especially when I read Valentine's note below the knife's description—
finding it is crucial
.

Yes it was. The smoking gun. It would be the key to getting my mom off this. Assuming, that was, Valentine hadn't already found it. It was a guarantee he hadn't told me everything about the case against her in our short interview.

With dread now pulsing in my temples, I opened my mother's file and began to scan through it. In seconds I came across the details of her alibi. Like Mr. Corvus she claimed to have been home all night—
watching my unconscious daughter,
the transcript read. I could almost hear her saying it, face drawn in anger, teeth flashing. My mom was fierce on any given day, but doubly so when it came to me.

I swallowed down guilt. It was my fault she didn't have an alibi. If only I'd been awake by then. But it didn't matter now. What did was the presence of her DNA on Titus's body. How did it get there? I scanned the rest of the transcript and saw that Valentine had asked the same question.

MOIRA:
How should I know? Perhaps those ordinaries who ran the test are idiots and made a mistake. Or perhaps you are the idiot who collected it wrong. Or maybe I just make an easy target for the real killer.

VALENTINE:
There's no reason to be hostile. This is just an interview.

MOIRA:
The hell it is. This is a witch hunt.

I winced as I read it. My mom was usually more clever than this, less prone to emotional outbursts. Beneath the last line of dialogue, Valentine had written a note about Moira's “visible agitation” and her “clearly spiking guilt.”

Fighting back a growing sense of despair, I scanned the rest of the files until I came to an inventory of the “items of note” the police had collected from my mother's house. The knife wasn't there.

Satisfied at least by a small degree, I clicked on Mr. Corvus's folder and glimpsed the contents. Paul had been right about the skimpy background check. Actually, the whole thing was skimpy. Aside from transcripts of the one interview, there was little else in there. That was, until I noticed the part of the background check that listed “Distinguishing Physical Characteristics.” The missing eye was mentioned, of course, as well as a tree tattoo on his right shoulder. That was a weird idea—a teacher having a tattoo, especially one as old as Mr. Corvus.