I left the cafeteria as soon as I’d choked down my food, unsure where I was going to hide until my next class and equally uncertain that Thea had been lying. The last girl who spent hour after hour in that house? My brain kept replaying the words. She died.
I made it down one hallway and was turning toward another when Xander Hawthorne popped out of a nearby lab, holding what appeared to be a mechanical dragon.
All I could think about was what Thea had just said.
“You look like you could use a robotic dragon,” Xander told me. “Here.” He thrust it into my hands.
“What am I supposed to do with this?” I asked.
“That depends on how attached you are to your eyebrows.” Xander raised his one remaining eyebrow very high.
I tried to summon up a reply, but I had nothing. The last girl who spent hour after hour in that house? She died.
“Are you hungry?” Xander asked me. “The refectory is back that way.”
As much as I hated letting Thea win, I was wary—of him, of all things Hawthorne. “Refectory?” I repeated, trying to sound normal.
Xander grinned. “It’s prep school for cafeteria.”
“Prep school isn’t a language,” I pointed out.
“Next you’ll be telling me that French isn’t one, either.” Xander patted the robotic dragon on its head. It burped. A wisp of smoke rose up from its mouth.
They aren’t what you think they are, I could hear Thea warning me.
“Are you okay?” Xander asked, and then he snapped his fingers. “Thea got to you, didn’t she?”
I handed the dragon back to him before it could explode. “I don’t want to talk about Thea.”
“As it so happens,” Xander said, “I hate talking about Thea. Shall we discuss your little tête-à-tête with Jameson last night instead?”
He knew that his brother had been to my room. “It wasn’t a tête-à-tête.”
“You and your grudge against French.” Xander peered at me. “Jameson showed you his letter, didn’t he?”
I had no idea whether or not that was supposed to be a secret. “Jameson thinks it’s a clue,” I said.
Xander was quiet for a moment, then nodded in the opposite direction from the refectory. “Come on.”
I followed him because it was either that or find myself another random empty classroom.
“I used to lose,” Xander said suddenly as we rounded a corner. “On Saturday mornings, when my grandfather set us to a challenge, I always lost.” I had no idea why he was telling me this. “I was the youngest. The least competitive. The most apt to be distracted by scones or complex machinery.”
“But…,” I prompted. I could hear in his tone that there was one.
“But,” Xander replied, “while my brothers were trying to take one another down in the race to the finish line, I was generously sharing my scones with the old man. He was awfully chatty, full of stories and facts and contradictions. Would you like to hear one?”
“A contradiction?” I asked.
“A fact.” Xander wiggled his eyebrows—eyebrow. “He didn’t have a middle name.”
“What?” I said.
“My grandfather was born Tobias Hawthorne,” Xander told me. “No middle name.”
I wondered if the old man had signed Xander’s letter the same way he had signed Jameson’s. Tobias Tattersall Hawthorne. He’d signed mine with initials—three of them.
“If I asked you to show me your letter, would you?” I asked Xander. He’d said that he usually came in last in their grandfather’s games. That didn’t mean he wasn’t playing this one.
“Now, where would the fun be in that?” Xander deposited me in front of a thick wooden door. “You’ll be safe from Thea in there. There are some places even she dares not tread.”
I glanced through the clear pane on the door. “The library?”
“The archive,” Xander corrected archly. “It’s prep school for library—not a bad place to hang out during free mods if you’re looking to get some time alone.”
Hesitantly, I pushed the door open. “You coming?” I asked him.
He closed his eyes. “I can’t.” He didn’t offer any more explanation than that. As he walked away, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was missing something.
Maybe multiple somethings.
The last girl who spent hour after hour in that house? She died.
