Fighting the urge to cry, she limped down the grand staircase. Her knee ached, and the sound of her uneven footsteps (thump-THUMP thump-THUMP) echoed in the quiet like a cruel laugh.
With her head down, she took no notice of the polished oak panelling covering Cimmeria Academy’s walls. Or the grand oil paintings – some of which stood twice her height and held the images of long-dead men and women draped in gleaming silk and jewels. She was oblivious to the chandeliers made of hundreds of pieces of faceted crystal sparkling in the faint afternoon light, the heavy candle-holders that stood five feet tall, and the tapestries of wan medieval ladies and horses pursuing unworried foxes.
She saw none of it as, ducking into the great hall, she shoved the door to behind her. The vast ballroom was empty, illuminated only by weak afternoon light filtered through enormous windows at one end of the long room. Allie’s footsteps echoed hollowly as she paced the floor, her mind teeming with angry thoughts that pestered her like demons.
Thirty-three steps one way and pivot. Thirty-three steps back. And again.
Why should I be sorry? she fumed. Isabelle’s responsible for everything that’s happened. Jo trusted her. And now Jo’s dead.
Spinning on her heel she paced the other way.
As it always did, her mind flashed back to snow-covered woods, the flutter of a magpie’s wings, a small figure hurtling through the snow…
It was like a scab she couldn’t leave alone although it hurt to touch. She kept worrying at the edges of it so the pain never lessened.
Maybe she didn’t want the pain to lessen.
Jo is gone. Everyone failed her. And now Isabelle wants me to get back to ‘normal’? Screw her.
Allie pivoted and paced.
She’d never trust Isabelle again. It had all happened because of her and the fight she had with her brother that Allie didn’t even understand. They’d all been caught up in it, and Jo paid the price.
She didn’t trust Raj either. He was in charge of security for the school. He was supposed to be such an expert. But he’d gone off and left them alone, even after Allie begged him not to go. Begged him. So he wasn’t around when someone inside the school – someone Allie knew and trusted – opened the gate so Gabe could kill Jo.
She pivoted again in a tight, painful spin, rage giving her strength.
In the eight weeks that had passed since the murder, Raj and Isabelle hadn’t been able to find out who opened the gates that night. Who had been helping Nathaniel all along. A teacher, a Night School instructor, a student – somebody she passed in the hallway every day wanted her to die.
And they’d done nothing about it.
They all let me down. They all betrayed us. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to let that happen again.
Suddenly, she stopped pacing. She knew what she had to do.
Yanking the heavy door open, she headed straight for Isabelle’s office, running to get there before she lost her nerve. She was going to tell the headmistress she didn’t want to go to school here any more. She couldn’t go on like this. She’d go anywhere in the world as long as it was far away from here. Out in the real world she could find out what was really going on. She’d talk to her grandmother and together they’d find Jo’s killers. And they’d punish them.
Tucked away under the main staircase, which soared upward from the central hall in a theatrical swoop of ornate polished oak, Isabelle’s door was hidden so cleverly in the intricately carved panelling that when Allie first came to Cimmeria she’d had trouble seeing it. She didn’t have that problem any more.
Her jaw clenched, she shoved the door open without knocking. ‘Isabelle, you have to —’
The office was empty.
The headmistress had obviously left in a hurry – the black cashmere cardigan she’d been wearing earlier was draped carelessly across the back of a chair. Steam still rose from a cup of Earl Grey tea, which sat in the middle of the leather blotter on top of her desk next to her glasses…
And her mobile phone.
Her mouth slightly open, Allie stared at it. Her brain couldn’t register what she was seeing.
All electronic devices were banned at Cimmeria. Of all The Rules, this was the most strictly enforced. No computers, no televisions, and absolutely no phones.
If students wanted to phone someone they needed permission from the headmistress. They were only allowed to call their parents, and even then only if they had a good reason. But here was a phone, right within her reach.
As she’d stared at it, Allie’s mind had whirred through a checklist of things that would happen. Isabelle would never forgive her. She’d be expelled. She’d lose her friends. But she might also find out what was really going on. And that could force Isabelle and Raj to finally do something.
So she picked up the phone, stuck it in her pocket and walked out of the door.
THREE
O