There was a pause. Lola ventured, “On a related note, there’s something I wanted to bring up.”
“We’re almost at the office,” Maggie said, pointing. “Dratting shame.”
“Where’s your homeroom?”
“Geo. It’s in the-”
“I know where it is. Whoever finishes first waits for the other, we walk back together.”
“Going back on the ‘never be friends’ bit?”
“No, but I need to run something past you, and-” Lola paused as someone walked by, “we can’t do it here.”
“I dunno, they check the times for the slips, and it’s a huge hassle if I have to go back to the office to explain why the walk took me-”
“At the back of the school after school then. This is serious. I need a few minutes of your time.”
“This is serious? Traps can be serious too.”
Lola sighed. “I promise no willful harm, direct or indirect, premeditated, present, or future, will come from me to you, as a result of this. You have my protection, up to the point that you abuse it.”
Maggie considered, then said, “Okay.”
Lola nodded.
Maggie stepped in Lola’s way, cutting her off, before the girl could cross the distance to the front office’s door. She opened it herself, holding it.
Equity. You hold the door for me, I hold the door for you.
Lola didn’t break eye contact as she passed, intimidating as all get out. Even her walk was graceful. Take away the makeup and the piercings and she was such a Duchamp. It was so disappointing. The style could have been a small rebellion, but… no.
Can’t help but wonder how that works with the whole arranged marriage thing, Maggie thought. Is it by choice, and she goes back to normal when the Duchamps want her to, does she define herself the way she wants, and they find a partner willing to take her, or is that look purely because the Duchamps wanted a girl with a particular style for a particular husband?
Whatever the choice was, it was gross.
Maggie followed Lola into the office.
When she’d moved here, Maggie hadn’t been able to shake the idea that she’d go to school and there would be only a handful of classrooms, with one classroom for each grade.
As it happened, St. Sebastian’s wasn’t that small. Eight hundred students, give or take. All of the trappings of a usual high school. The only caveat was that it was the only real high school in Jacob’s Bell.
Maggie waited patiently in line, trying to zen away the frustration and the urge to say something. That would be giving them what they wanted.
If a student was more than five minutes late for class, the school rules said they had to go to the office and get a slip. The backlog of students meant that there were twenty or more every morning around this time. Making the trip to what was bound to be the furthest point from the classroom, waiting in line, giving a reason, waiting for the secretary to write it all down, going back, it made everyone more late.
They wanted to frustrate. To think they were being clever, driving the point home with this ‘subtle’ time wasting monotony when they really, really weren’t.
Maggie’s interest was diverted by the arrival of another practitioner.
Her head wasn’t the only one that turned.
Blonde, but with features too sharp to fit a Duchamp, not pretty and maybe a little underweight, she was dirty to the point that you could tell from the other end of the room.
“Fuck me,” Lola said, under her breath. She stepped out of the line, hurrying.
But the principal was closer, and reached the Briar Girl first.
The tone of discussion in the room changed. From conversation to restrained questions and answers. It seemed like half the people in the room had no idea who the Briar Girl was, and the other half were eager to share the details, and all were trying to be quiet enough to overhear.
Maggie had another advantage.
She reached into her pocket, and gripped a pointed, leathery object.
“Listen,” she whispered under her breath.
The goblin’s ear in her hand got warm.
The principal eyed the crowd. When he spoke, Maggie could hear through her hand. “Step into my office?”
“No.”
“You haven’t attended school all semester.”
“I’m not attending school now. I want to meet someone. If you can tell me which class-”
“If you’d please step into my office-”
“No,” the Briar Girl said. “I don’t like confined spaces. Stop asking.”
“I’m going to call the CAS, given your situation-”
Lola approached the principal and the Briar Girl. She met Maggie’s eyes, then moved one hand to her own ear.
The goblin ear in Maggie’s hand went cold.
Then Lola said something to the principal. Enough power was spent in the process that Maggie felt jealous. If she had that much power… she’d hoard it. She’d have no choice. But Lola could fritter it away. Maybe under the expectation that someone would pay her back, maybe because she really did have power to spare. The Duchamps really were a step above.
The principal turned to the Briar Girl and said, “I am going to talk to you as soon as this is over. Please wait here.”
Then he was gone, out of the office.
The connection that extended from him went nowhere, like a ribbon with a frayed end. A wild goose chase. He’d reach the end of it, then find himself unable to recall why he’d left in the first place.
Maggie watched Lola’s furtive discussion with the Briar Girl, their furtive glances her way.
“Your name?” the secretary asked.
“Maggie Holt.”
“Reason for being late?”
Problem with being unable to lie, situations like this call for snark.
“Well, it’s that time of the month-”
Or time of the week, that Mr. Wrinkles shows up.
The secretary gave her a very unimpressed look.
“Bathroom concerns,” Maggie said, her voice low.
“If this trend continues, you might need to do some volunteer hours.”
“Volunteer hours?”
“Practical detention.”
Gah.
“Go to class,” the secretary said, handing Maggie a slip of paper.
Maggie did, glancing over her shoulder at the Briar Girl and Lola, who were still chatting.
When she was safely in the hallway, she used a kleenex to wipe the blood from the goblin ear off her hand. Maybe one more good use out of it before it was spent. It had been a bribe from a goblin, to get her to release it. If she wanted another, she might have to harvest it herself.
Reaching homeroom, she held up the slip, which the teacher didn’t even look at, then found her desk.
The class was quiet, and everyone was working on some worksheet, writing periodically.
The teacher appeared by her desk, leaning down to be quieter, as she handed over the worksheet and a marked test. “You’d be doing far better if you showed up to more classes. I can only give you so much leeway, given your circumstances.”
Maggie nodded.
The test sported a big underlined D.
There were two Duchamps and one Behaim in her class. She could feel their stares, each carrying the weight of Lola’s words, compounded by the grade and the fact that they probably knew what the teacher had said.
Accusatory, condescending. All thinking the same thing.
Murderer.
That thought led to the next, Blood, darkness, and fire.
She fidgeted with her pen more than she followed through on the worksheet. With the mention of the murder, the Thorburn thing, and her recent goblin capture, they all distracted. The capture was a good distraction, Blake wasn’t a bad distraction, and the murder was. Killing Molly was like all of the horribly embarrassing and hurtful things she said and did when she was a kid, bundled up together in one.
She’d been the middleman, passing on instructions from Laird to the goblins, but it still left her with a shame like a tender wound, aching constantly, all the worse when she was trying to find sleep, hurting ten times more when she or somebody else prodded at it.