Night School: Legacy

Busy writing notes, she didn’t really clock Carter’s hesitation, but when he replied, something about his tone caught her attention.

‘Not that I know of,’ he said.

She glanced up at him, her pen poised between her fingers. ‘What?’

‘I said “Not that I know of”,’ he said. ‘I haven’t told anybody in Nathaniel’s group anything as far as I know.’

She squinted at him, confused. ‘I don’t understand. What do you mean “as far as you know”? How could you tell them about me without knowing it?’

‘Well, I talked to Gabe, didn’t I?’ He shifted in his seat uncomfortably. ‘And now he’s one of them.’

Allie felt her pulse accelerate. She kept her voice as calm as possible. ‘What did you tell Gabe about me?’

He shrugged. ‘You know … Stuff.’

‘Stuff.’ A tiny seed of suspicion flowered in her heart. ‘What kind of stuff?’

He shrugged. ‘You know … Guy stuff. Come on, Allie. He was my friend. We talked about stuff.’

Sitting up straight, she fixed him with a disbelieving look. ‘No, Carter, I don’t know. What kind of stuff about me did you discuss with Gabe?’

‘I don’t know.’ With a stubborn look, he crossed his arms across his chest. ‘He used to ask a lot of questions about you. I didn’t really think about it at the time. I just answered them, I guess.’

‘And you never mentioned this to me before?’ Her voice rose, and she paused to take a calming breath before continuing. ‘Did you tell Isabelle?’

‘No.’ Under questioning, he sounded increasingly defensive. ‘I guess I didn’t really think about it until now. Allie, would you mind not treating me like a murder suspect?’

‘OK,’ she said evenly, ‘I’m sorry. Can you remember any of the things he asked you?’

Exhaling loudly, he stood and walked across the room to where an ancient wall painting of a yew tree stretched up towards the ceiling. Its elaborately tangled roots spelled out the words ‘Tree of Life’. It was one of Allie’s favourite things in the 900-year-old chapel but right now she barely glanced at it.

‘He asked me,’ he said after a long pause, ‘about your family. Where you lived in London. Who your friends were there. You see?’ He looked over at her.

‘What did you tell him?’ she asked.

‘What I knew,’ he said, ‘which wasn’t a lot. South London. Some crummy school you hated. Some guy named Mark, and another one named Harry. That you didn’t get along with your parents.’

Allie was trying very hard not to feel betrayed. But it felt as if he’d told Gabe everything he knew about her life before Cimmeria.

I don’t know how to handle this.

She remembered something Eloise had said about keeping it like an interview.

‘Think like a reporter,’ she’d said in their one-to-one training session in the vividly painted library carrel. ‘What would a reporter ask if they were interviewing him? Keep your emotional distance and you’ll find it easier to separate what’s important from what isn’t.’

So now Allie tried to think of what she would ask if she wasn’t Carter’s girlfriend. ‘Was there anything he asked that you thought was especially strange? Anything that weirded you out a little?’

Walking to the altar, Carter turned so his back was to her. His hands were shoved deep in his pockets. When he spoke, his voice was so low she wasn’t certain she’d heard him right.

‘He asked about your brother.’

‘What?’ A tingle of electricity ran through her fingertips. ‘Did you say he asked about Christopher?’

His back still to her he nodded. ‘And the thing I couldn’t figure out was …’ he turned so she could see the worry in his eyes, ‘… how did he know you had a brother in the first place? You never told anybody about him. And even if he did know, why did he care? He asked me about him a lot.’

Suddenly the room felt colder. Allie swallowed hard. ‘Maybe Jo told him?’ she suggested hopefully, drawing the scarf closer to her neck. ‘I told her about Christopher, and she was Gabe’s girlfriend at the time. What did he ask about specifically?’

Carter walked closer to her, his footsteps echoing in the empty chapel. The sun must have dipped low outside, because the glow from the stained glass windows had disappeared. The room suddenly seemed gloomy; dancing shadows cast by the candles jerked nervously on the white walls.

‘How close you two were. Whether or not you talked about finding him.’ He stood in front of her, his dark eyes filled with concern. ‘Once he asked if you’d ever mentioned looking for him. And where you might go if you did.’

Allie wrapped her arms tight around her torso.

‘That’s so creepy,’ she said, her voice low. ‘I don’t like it.’

‘No,’ he said, and the candlelight flickered in his eyes. ‘Me neither.’





FIFTEEN