Page 8 of Dance With Death

“Oh, so hilarious, Gray,” he calls back.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing suspicious. My teeth grind as I re-check boxes. Standing, I blow hair from my face and push past the guys to exit the stuffy closet.

“Found anything else, Rowan?” I ask. He shakes his head, but I didn’t need to ask; his shoulders are slumped in defeat as he hunches over the laptop. “Fine. Time for lessons. Half an hour.”

All three guys snap their attention to me. “What?” asks Rowan.

“If I am to watch Marci and her coven rather than interrogate them, I need to be in their vicinity,” I explain. “Then, once I have evidence, I’ll switch to the interrogation.”

“Or discover where they meet?” suggests Leif. “Rather than cause a scene.”

“How well do you know the woods?” I ask him. “Rowan? Are there any spots popular with witches?”

“Nobody visits the woods since fire night and the murders,” says Leif. “I’m also not keen on walking into the area for reasons you understand.”

“If we explore the woods, we go in the daytime,” Grayson says cautiously. “But it’s really not the best place for us to visit.”

“In case there’s another body on the ground that’s designed to frame me?” I ask. “Unlikely. Viktor has something new to use against me now.”

The three fall silent, unsurprisingly considering my behavior when they first entered the room. But there’s something more. Discomfort in Leif as he mumbles and opens the door, and Grayson’s sudden interest in his phone. Only Rowan looks at me, his energy now shifted from frustration to concern. Concern about what? Me, because Rowan’s attempting a mental block.

Only when I’m showering does the reason for their odd response slam into me, and I freeze midway through washing my hair.

Holly’s body might be the next one found in the woods.

3

VIOLET

“We saw the Hound of the Baskervilles roaming campus,” Cassie informs me the moment we arrive at Potions class. The gaggle of girls in their perfectly presented academy uniforms watched my every step as I approached the classroom, but this is not the comment I expected.

“The what?” I look to Rowan and Leif for clarification.

“Hound of the Baskervilles. A mysterious dog,” says Leif.

“A case for Sherlock and Moriarty,” adds Rowan.

“That is the most ludicrous thing I have ever heard,” I inform him. “You and I are not investigating a dog on campus, Rowan.”

Rowan chuckles. “Not us, Sherlock. The dog is fictional from the Sherlock Holmes books.”

“Oh. So, an imaginary entity.”

“There was a hound!” Cassie snaps. “Annie saw it too, and not for the first time.”

Annie clutches a textbook to her chest and nods. “Prowling around the outside of Darwin House. Looking for another victim. I bet Holly’s hurt, not sick.”

I fight commenting on the usual human dramatics, although I should be grateful that I’m not the one accused of seeking victims on campus. Marci evidently shared the news that Holly’s sick—and showed people the message she received from fake-Holly?

Nearby, Zoe and Nita sit on a bench and chat, not paying attention to the conversation. My jaw tightens. I will not be impressed if Marci doesn’t attend the lesson too.

“You didn’t see a dog,” puts in Logan from where he rests against the wall beside the girls. “You saw a werewolf.”

“Good grief. They’re fictional too.”

“Uh. Shifters aren’t fictional,” he sneers.

“Wolf shifters are not ‘werewolves’—that’s an offensive term,” I reply.

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