King of Cups (Stormcloud Academy 2)

PROLOGUE

BIBA

“Finger, bitte.”

The stocky officer wore a light blue shirt tucked into slightly darker trousers. A navy blue beret sat on his hopelessly disorganized desk. He couldn’t have been older than thirty-five, but his hair was already thinning, only offering slightly more coverage than the mangy beard on his face.

Before him was a black ink pad.

“I’m sorry?” I asked, trying to hide my shock.

“Bitte, frau,” the guard said coldly.

“Unless you are booking me for a crime, you’re not taking my fingerprints.”

“Sehr gut,” he grumbled.

My surprise, I think, was understandable. This appearance at the Wachsbrunnen police station had been framed as a polite chat about the unfortunate events surrounding Gail Monfort’s suicide with the girl who was closest to her, the American orphan, Biba Quinn—a.k.a. me.

The conversation was turning out to be remarkably less polite than the police had implied. I had been checked in at the front desk, photographed, and marched back to the room for questioning. Now, they were attempting to fingerprint me, and I refused.

So I was left alone in their interrogation room for a half-hour. Cooling my heels, I think they call it.

The interrogation room had plastered walls on three sides. The fourth, behind me, was mountain granite. Like many buildings in Wachsbrunnen, the local police station was built into the side of the mountain. One of its load-bearing walls was the rocky edifice. If you stood to the rear of the structure—in the holding cells, the armory, the evidence locker, or the interview room—you were essentially pressed against the Alps.

I sat there, the day after Zephyr had left for his summer holiday. He hadn’t wanted to be separated from me in the weeks following Gail’s death. He hadn’t wanted me out of his sight. But his father, Peter Williams, the shipping magnate, would not have his son moping around with some girl at Stormcloud between terms. So he left. It turned out the Wachsbrunnen authorities were waiting for the scion of one of the world’s wealthiest, most powerful families to leave town before taking his lover in for questioning.

It might not have been so bad, except for the one item left on the table in front of me: a glossy photograph of Gail.

It must have been taken when she was in high school. Her hair was longer and fairer than I recalled, and she wore a school’s crested blazer and Oxford shirt. But her eyes were as large, round, and hopeful as I remembered, her toothy smile totally devoid of guile. This was before her parents’ untimely death, probably—a more innocent time in her life.

I stared at the photo and thought of the last time I saw her, as her pallid corpse was cut down from the rafter. Her face was imprinted in my memories, beet-red from pooling blood, with bulging tongue and eyes, lips blue. Her arms and legs were stiff with rigor mortis. It was like she was a poorly carved statue of the vivacious, wonderful girl who had become my friend in our first term at Stormcloud Academy.

We two understood what it was to lose the most important person in your life only to find yourself in the strangest, darkest, most mystical place. More than that, Gail showed me through the openhearted way she approached Stormcloud how death, loss, and relentless negativity didn’t have to define us. I loved being around her and longed to be more like her.

But I was afraid there was something essential about my personality that had to steel over and punch back. I couldn’t look for the good like Gail. Now I was alive, and she was dead. And what did that mean?

Suddenly, the door to the room unlatched and swung open. In stepped a tall, lanky detective with sallow cheeks and stringy gray hair combed straight back over his thin-skinned scalp. He loped in—I suspected this guy loped everywhere. He could barely keep his bloodshot eyes open, let alone solve a murder.

“Miss Quinn,” he muttered in a Germanic drone, “I am sorry to keep you waiting.”

I nodded curtly, not feeling like the man deserved the slightest bit of deference. He slumped into the chair across from me.

“You were rather close, I have heard, vith Gail Monfort.”

“She was my best friend,” I replied flatly.

“Ja, and I am most sorry for your loss. You vere both new to the Academy, correct?”

“Yes.”

“I suppose you had a lot in common, both having lost parents.”

He let that hang in the air. My back stiffened. How did he know about my father? And what did that have to do with anything? That spiny part of me wanted to storm out right then, not only away from this detective but also away from thoughts of that phone call from Dad’s assistant. The car accident. Come home quick. . . .

I fought back against that urge. Better to stay in the present. Focus on this detective and his interest in my family tragedy. It wouldn't have been too complicated for an officer to learn my family history, but they would have to be researching it. Why was this detective digging into my past? I worked hard not to show my concern, but the guy seemed to recognize it anyway. A smirk crossed his lips.

“Let me ask you,” he proceeded casually, “did your friend display any changes of personality in the weeks before the end of the term?”