King of Cups (Stormcloud Academy 2)

It was only when I’d kept screaming that they had realized it wasn’t a lark. Then I’d seen the horror in their eyes.

They’d scattered and fled, and I was running too—where to, I could not say. I’d just needed to get away.

Suddenly, I’d had arms around me. A familiar smell, cedar and musk.

“What happened?” Zephyr had asked. “It’s okay.”

“You’re back,” I’d observed in a daze.

“It’s okay; I have you. You’re safe. We’ll fix this. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

I looked groggily at the arm around me in bed. There was ink. Zephyr had returned from Morocco at the moment when all hope was lost.

Zephyr had taken me back to his room, carefully unlaced my blood-soaked dress, and led me back to the shower. All time was molasses at that point, but even so, I felt like it had taken a while to get the congealed bio-hazard out of my hair—and with it the atrocious stench of death. His shampoo and soap only managed to mask the lingering smell of Amelia partly. Her physical annihilation clung to me.

Zeph had given me one of his t-shirts and held me while I wept.

Then it was morning, and he was still holding me. I was a frightened animal. If he let me go, I would flee in terror.

Amelia had been my mentor, my friend, my surrogate mother. She hadn’t given of herself freely, but at a point . . . for whatever reason . . . she’d shown me I had promise, intelligence, value. And I’d found, somewhat to my surprise, that I cared quite a bit what she thought of me.

And now she was dead. Like Gail, she died trying to help me.

The knocking grew louder. Zephyr groaned in annoyance, but I told him not to worry. I’d get it. He was too travel-weary to argue.

I found my way to the door on unstable legs and cracked it.

A police officer waited on the other side. I remembered him from the Wachsbrunnen police station months before.

“Miss Quinn,” he said.

“Uh-huh.”

“Put on some clothes. I am to escort you to Herr Schmidt’s office.”

Schmidt was waiting for me, and Detective Soglio was right next to him.

They sat side by side behind the desk. I was led in, not in cuffs but with the officer’s hand wrapped firmly around my arm.

“Why is it,” Schmidt asked, “that the moment blood spills at Stormcloud Academy, I know Biba Quinn will be involved?”

My hands closed into tight fists, and my face grew hot with disgust. My mentor and the longtime leader at his school had been murdered. The student before the Dean had witnessed her death. The least he could do was not make glib remarks.

“I’m sorry if her death was an inconvenience,” I sneered. “I hope you feel better knowing I want to die too.”

Soglio winced. He looked me up and down, and for a moment, I wondered if he would improbably be on my side.

Only a moment, though.

“You were in zis backroom vith Miss Amelia, no?”

“Yes,” I said, “so we can all agree I wasn’t outside firing the shot, right?”

“Ja, dat’s most likely true. But you must understand our suspicions.”

“I don’t understand, actually.”

Schmidt leaped in impatiently. “Miss Quinn, you were set to meet Gail Monfort when she died. You were meeting with Amelia when she was killed. This is a pattern, is it not?”