Sooz made a disgruntled noise and went to the window facing the front of the house to get as far from Julian as the room allowed. From the loo in the hall, there was a final cluster of retching coughs and the flush of a toilet.
“I’m fine,” Yash called weakly to no one. This was followed by the sound of him unevenly ascending the stairs, punctuated by one or two full body falls.
More silence after that. Julian kept his position on the far side of the room, and Sooz was riveted to the window. Sebastian sighed.
“Boring,” he said. “Sooz, come back over. I’ll tell you a terrible story I just heard.”
Sooz remained at the window, her focus fixed at something out on the lawn.
“There’s someone out there,” she said. “I just saw a torch flash. Did you give Rosie or Noel a torch?”
“No,” Sebastian said. “Torches are for seekers.”
“They must have found one, because I just saw a torch flash by. They must still think we’re hiding. I’ll go get them.”
She went out to the main hall and yelled to them from the front door, her theatrical voice pushing back against the storm.
“Nothing,” she said as she came back into the room. “There’s no way they didn’t hear me just now. It seems like they don’t want to come in.”
“Should we go out and get them?” Julian asked. “I mean, it’s absolutely shitting out.”
“Let’s leave them to whatever it is,” Sebastian cut in before any more discussion of Julian and Rosie resumed. “It’s a violent night, but they have each other. Now. Who’s hungry? Fish fingers? Oven chips?”
And so, Rosie and Noel were briefly forgotten, superseded by some frozen fish dumped onto a baking tray and shoved into an unheated oven. The rain beat on against the windows and walls of Merryweather, as if to mock its name.
Sebastian was right—it was a violent night. Just not in the way that he meant it.
3
“WHAT DID YOU ALL DO THIS TIME?” LARRY SAID AS A GREETING.
Security Larry had been fired over the course of the events of last year, and then subsequently rehired after he trekked up the side of a mountain in a blizzard to help Stevie and some others who were stranded there. He was now at his traditional position by the front door of the Great House, at his desk with his tin mug of coffee. He regarded the four students before him with a resigned sigh, which was Larry’s way of showing affection.
“You know I don’t answer questions like that without my lawyer,” Stevie replied. “And they had pumpkin maple rolls left over from this morning.” Janelle slid over the container.
“What’s the mood?” Stevie asked.
“She was humming when she came in.”
“What does that usually mean?” Vi asked.
“Hard to say. Might be good, but one time she was humming after she saw someone on an electric scooter ride into Lake Champlain. You can go up.”
Stevie let her gaze float up the grand staircase, to the balcony above, where Dr. Quinn was waiting in the lofty quiet.
The Great House was at the heart of the Ellingham Academy campus. When Albert Ellingham constructed his school in the 1920s, he’d built himself a mansion right in the middle of it. It was an elegant monster, made of tons of imported hardwood, cut crystal, stained glass, and marble. It had been the scene of great tragedies, which were immortalized in a family portrait that hung at the landing—a surreal image of Albert, Iris, and their daughter, Alice, as painted by Leonard Holmes Nair.
There were no paintings of the more recent tragedy.
Dr. Quinn had taken over the office formerly occupied by Dr. “Call Me Charles” Scott, the overly enthusiastic head of school who had left the position the year before. When this had been Charles’s office, it had signs on the door that said things like I REJECT YOUR REALITY AND SUBSTITUTE MY OWN, QUESTION EVERYTHING, and CHALLENGE ME—the last of which was generally considered the most odious. They had, in fact, challenged him. It was no longer his office. Instead of the posters and the corkboard, the door had been restored to its original smoked-glass panel with delicate Art Nouveau swirls etched into it. There was a simple and elegant brass plate on the door that read: DR. JENNY QUINN, HEAD OF SCHOOL.
They stood in the dark of the hall and Stevie gently rapped on the door.
“Come,” said a voice from inside.
Dr. Quinn was seated at her desk, her attention focused on her laptop. She wore Actual Fashion—expensive, confusing things with lots of folds and extra material, and heels with red undersoles. She was the kind of person you would expect to see at a global summit, probably because she attended global summits sometimes. Her job as the head of Ellingham Academy was a bit simplistic for her, but it was a prestigious school, with a massive endowment and excellent skiing right on the doorstep. She could jet off to New York City or Washington, DC, if she was needed, and she had the summers to go around the world, negotiating treaties or wrestling alligators or whatever it was you did for fun if you were Dr. Jenny Quinn.
“Sit,” she said, not looking up.
This room had originally been Iris Ellingham’s dressing room; it still had her dove-gray silk paper on the walls. There was a hole in one of those walls that had been patched over to the best of the ability of the maintenance crew, but there were still tears in the paper, clear signs of where the wall had been punctured last December. These four students had been in the room when it happened—had put the hole in the wall, in fact.
When Dr. Scott had been in charge, the room had been full of sofas and Funko Pop figurines. That nonsense was gone. The only things that had been kept were the large, framed map of Ellingham Academy that hung between the windows and the green marble clock on the mantel that was said to have belonged to Marie Antoinette. Dr. Quinn had her own bookcases installed and a wooden desk that could house a family of four.
Janelle, Vi, Nate, and Stevie planted themselves in the chairs arranged in a horseshoe and waited until Dr. Quinn finished typing. She looked up, removed her glasses, and regarded the students in front of her with the disappointed look of a hanging judge who’d been denied a rope.
“So,” she said.
Nate cleared his throat nervously, which was a mistake. It was important not to show fear in front of Dr. Quinn. Or was that bears?
Same difference.
Dr. Quinn did what police detectives in interrogations do—she let the silence accumulate past the point of comfort. People can’t help but fill it. It’s human nature, and it’s what sinks a lot of murderers. This was something Stevie knew from her compulsive viewing of interrogations on YouTube.
“I’ve sent you the spreadsheet. . . .” Janelle began, breaking the silence. “About our proposed week of study abroad.”
“I’ve seen it,” Dr. Quinn replied. “I want to hear it from you in person. Tell me what it is you plan to do if you’re allowed to go. Explain it to me.”
The “explain it to me” didn’t sound good.
“The first few days would be dedicated to cultural landmarks,” Janelle continued. “The Tower of London, the Houses of Parliament, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Gallery. If you look at page three, you’ll see I’ve compiled a list of supplemental reading that I’m . . .”