Page 22 of Bonds of Magic
“Yeah, sure. That’s the ostensible reason. And I appreciate it. But I know you. You’re not exactly the mothering type. If you’re coming to see me this soon, you want something.”
I grimaced.
“It’s not a bad thing,” he continued. “My guess is that you’re trying to find out more about what happened two nights ago. I’ve told Isaac everything I know, but I bet you’re hoping I’veremembered more in the interim.” He smiled gently. “It means you care about the safety of Vesperwood’s students. It’s fine.”
“And faculty,” I protested. “I care about the faculty too. Or you, at least.”
“As I said, I appreciate it.”
Seb folded his hands on his lap and waited for me to say more. I sighed. There was no point in trying to be subtle, given what he’d already figured out.
“Would you mind telling me what you told Isaac?” I asked. “And anything else you remember?”
I doubted I’d get much more information than Cory had already provided. But still, it was worth talking to Seb. On the off chance that he’d seen Sheridan or Teresa out that night, I wanted to know.
Seb nodded. “Sure. Though there’s not much you don’t already know. Cory didn’t show up for his lesson, which was odd. We’d talked about the importance of consistency, and he didn’t—doesn’t—seem like the kind of kid to blow off something important. So I started looking for him and ran into you. Then we heard those shots and—”
He broke off and shook himself slightly, like he was trying to get rid of a bad memory. Then he grimaced at the pain the shake had brought him.
“Well, we split up and I went off looking for Cory. I honestly can’t remember how long it took me to find him. Cinda says it’s normal for memory to glitch around a traumatic event, but it’s uncomfortable, having hazy spots where you should have details.”
“I bet.”
“Eventually I located where the shots had come from, and stumbled into that clearing and saw Cory, fighting with a dark figure I couldn’t quite make out. The only reason I could tell it was Cory was because I know his face so well. It was too dark to really make out details.”
I grunted. I knew it was reasonable for Seb to know Cory’s face. He’d spent more time with the kid than I had. But I didn’t like it.
“I didn’t see Erika at first.” Seb’s voice was sad. “I thought she was a pile of clothes or debris on the snow. As if that made any sense. But even after I realized it was a person, I couldn’t make outwhoit was.”
“Did you ever—” I interrupted Seb, then broke off. How could I ask this delicately? “Did you have any concerns that Cory might have been the one who—”
“No.” Seb gave me a flat look. “And I’m kind of shocked you would ask that, Noah.”
Relief washed through me. Then defensiveness. I hadn’t really thought Cory could have been involved. Not my—well, not Cory. But I hadn’t seen the fight myself.
“I didn’t think so,” I told him. “But I needed to ask.”
“I suppose you did.” Seb rubbed a hand over his face. “In any case, it was obvious that the other man was trying to hurt Cory, maybe to kill him. So I did my best to stop that.”
“You killed him.”
Seb grimaced, like hearing those words hurt.
“That’s a good thing,” I said. “He’d already killed one student. He might have killed another. He had it coming.”
“I suppose I find taking someone’s life a little more complicated than ‘he had it coming.’”
“You don’t need to feel bad about this.”
Seb shook his head. “You don’t get it. I was aiming to wound, not kill. I wanted to know what was going on. But he shot me, and my aim was off. I didn’t have as much control as I wanted. And now, whoever he is, he’s dead, and we have no information about what he was doing here.”
“Let Isaac worry about that. If anyone can figure it out, he can.”
I didn’t like lying to Seb. But if Isaac wanted to keep things under wraps for now, I had to do it too.
“There was a rectangle,” Seb said slowly. “My memory’s not clear, but I swear it was there. Shimmering in midair. It disappeared when I killed that man, and now there’s no way to know what it was there for.”
“Like I said—” I began, but Seb kept talking.
