Page 39 of A Heart of Bluestone

I bite down on the end of my pencil. My teeth dent the wood, and I watch her move around the foot of my bed for her own.

The other two beds are unoccupied.

I don’t care where Serena and Asta are, I just hope they stay gone for a while.

Courtney tugs off the damp jacket, then tosses it onto the dresser. “Where have you been?”

“In the cigar room,” I say, luring the pencil’s end out of my mouth. I tap it on the bone of my knee. It smarts a little, but what smarts more is Courtney’s disinterest in my vanishing act. “Did you look for me?”

She nods, her cheeks and nose all red, and so I know she has been outside this evening. “I checked the infirmary before breakfast.”

“And…?” I hike my brows, waiting for more places she checked, more of a search effort.

“You weren’t there.” She drops onto the foot of her bed and kicks off her snowboots. “I ran into Master Welham on the staircase, so I told him you were missing. He sent some imps to look for you in all the vacant classrooms and broom closets”

“I wasn’t in a classroom.” I toss the pencil down. It smacks onto the spread of papers. “I was just downstairs. You didn’t think to check the toilets in the cigar room?”

That is, after all, where I had gone. Where she knew I was going.

“Why would I check the toilets in the cigar room?” She throws a frown at me, and the red of her face is ugly in the firelight. “Only juniors use those toilets. It’s on the other side of the Living Quarter.”

“Because you knew that’s where I was going,” I snap and strike at my books. “You told me to go there.”

Her brows hike and she stares at me, a blank look of surprise and offense. “I did not.”

I cock my head to the side as I imitate her in an unkind pitch, “Go to the cigar room, it’ll be empty at this time.”

“Olivia,” she scoffs. “I didn’t say that.”

I’m about to say it, the obvious question with the obvious answer.

Well who the fuck did say it, then?

But the answer comes before the question.

I slide my gaze to the bed in the far corner.

Asta’s bed.

Asta, the illusionist—and the only thing she can manipulate is sound.

“Fuck.” I hiss and fall back into my pillows. “Asta,” I say with a bleak look at Courtney. “Asta used your voice—and made it sound like it was coming from your bed.”

And I wouldn’t have known it, because the curtains were pulled over just enough that, if I’d bothered to look, I wouldn’t have seen that Courtney wasn’t awake, her mouth not moving with the words she wasn’t speaking.

It clicks, and I realise I am a fucking idiot.

Courtney’s drapes were pulled closed all the way. The muted enchantments would be in place—she wouldn’t have heard me bicker with Asta, or toss and turn, or even the door shutting.

Asta’s curtains were only partially closed.

I’m so stupid.

So fucking stupid.

After a moment, Courtney shakes her head. “Alright, new rule. If we don’t see each other, then we can’t trust that it’s us.”

I would nod if the trap didn’t stun me so much.

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