King of Cups (Stormcloud Academy 2)

“And what about Theo?”

“I’ll send him away again. I decided that the moment I happened on him in the archives. He’ll never be safe here.”

“He won’t go.”

“Then I’ll expel him, if necessary—”

I didn’t relent. This was too important.

“Listen, Amelia or Simone or whatever your name is . . . my father is dead. So are Gail and her father. It sounds like Theo’s father died too. All this death needs to end. I won’t stop searching, and neither will Theo. Help us, and we’ll be safer.”

Tears were streaming down her cheeks. I kept going.

“One more thing. Theo doesn’t know the truth about you, but I’m sure he suspects something. You and I both know it’s only a matter of time before he discovers it himself. Wouldn’t it be better for you to tell him on your terms?”

She seemed to be shaking almost imperceptibly. Amelia’s thin, avian features never seemed weak before. She counteracted her physical smallness with unbreakable sternness. I watched as she reconstituted. She mopped her cheeks and cleared her throat.

“Miss Quinn,” she said, her voice only barely breaking, “it would seem I have no choice. Will you give me some days to collect my records?”

My eyes locked on her. Could I trust her not to disappear or run to someone like Peter Williams?

“How long?” I asked.

“Give me until All Hallows Eve. Then you and Theo come to me. I will have a full accounting of the events that brought you and Gail here.”

“Fine,” I agreed quickly, “but if I suspect anything in the next five days, I will tell Theo everything. And I won’t be kind in the telling.”

She nodded and met my gaze, indomitable once again.

“That’s fair, Miss Quinn. Quite fair.”

CHAPTER 22

THEO

“I have to say I’m sorry. I’m sorry you saw Arvo and me. I didn’t mean for that to happen.”

She sat next to me on the bench. Our bench in the courtyard—the one we’d shared in the waning days of summer as we’d bandied ideas and theories about Gail’s murder. It had been comfortable then, sunny and warm. The air was bitter now, and the trees dormant.

My resolve never to talk to Biba again had lasted a week, barely. She’d waylaid me after class, basically begging me to give her a few minutes. She’d told me that she’d discovered something important.

So I’d relented. Provisionally.

Now she wanted to re-litigate the damned Arvo thing, which I was doing my level best to wash out of my memory. Zephyr Williams was bad enough. Knowing that she was knocking boots with Arvo Hurley, the most asinine, self-possessed douchebag I’d ever known … well, that was beyond the pale. I was choosing to live in denial about that.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I told her in a neutral voice, the politest tone I could manage. “You said you found something.”

“Okay, I got it,” she mumbled. “I found out a lot of things, actually, and all of it was based on you discovering that redacted statement.”

Loathe as I was to engage, I had to admit this excited me. All I wanted from Biba was enough trust to find Gail’s killer and make him pay. I did my best to make that happen, and she checked out, it seemed. Or did she?

“Here’s what I have,” she began. “That statement destroyed the Kings that were here in the mid-80s. Sol’s father, Dmitri, had to leave Stormcloud, as did a dude named Rafael Scamarcio—”

“From the statement I found in the archives. He was one of the Kings?”

“He was. . . .” She stopped, seeming to be searching for the right words. “Well, it seems like he was a King.”

“That’s weird. The families that produce Kings are powerful and rich. Williams, Stamos—they’re famous. I’d never heard of the Scamarcios—”