13. BY MORNING’S FIRST LIGHT
BY MORNING’S FIRST LIGHT
EMbrY DIDN’T SLEEP A WINK THAT NIGHT.
Or she wouldn’t have if she hadn’t knocked herself out with a heavy-duty sleep potion.
Embry didn’t prefer to use magic like that because it was akin to dosing with triple-strength NyQuil, but she couldn’t just lie there and let Oakley’s words and Rye’s admonishment circle like vultures in her brain until dawn.
Therefore, she woke ten hours later, feeling as if she’d been hit by the same train that had mutilated Rye’s Doc Martens from the night before.
Which made her think of Rye’s abject disappointment, which led to a fresh ball of emotion to gather in her windpipe as new tears pressed the corners of her bleary vision.
“Ugh,” she moaned, and forced herself into the en suite bathroom for a cold shower.
It didn’t help. But as Embry dressed for the day in Raven’s Head drama sweats and magicked away a pair of truly craterlike under-eye circles, she knew what would.
She owed Oakley an apology.
It shamed her so much it literally made her skin crawl, but Rye was right.
What you said was badly, badly done, and right now there’s no coming back from that. It was badly done. But Embry hoped there could be some coming back from it. Or at least that Oakley would be open to an attempt.
Before she could chicken out, Embry left her pride and her single room behind, hit the grand staircase, arrived at room 401, and knocked.
When there was no immediate noise from behind the door, Embry leaned in and listened. Nothing. She knew both the vampire and her revenant roommate preferred to sleep late if they could, owing to their naturally nocturnal nature, and after a night like the last one, it was likely—
“Have you seen her?”
The gray-white face of Magda Vulcovic loomed in the threshold. Per usual, she was dressed in black from the top of her nearly shaved head to the toes of her Kuromi slippers. But instead of her usual scowl, the revenant wore an expression of pure concern.
Embry blinked. Reset. “Hey, Magda, I was looking for Oakley?”
“So you haven’t seen her, then?”
“No, I came here to find her.”
Magda took a step back, opening the door widely. Though the room was dark with its heavy blackout curtains still drawn, there was enough light from the hallway and a salt lamp on Magda’s bedside table to display the obvious. Oakley’s bed was neatly made and unoccupied.
Embry’s stomach tightened. “She didn’t come home with you after the game?”
“She didn’t even sit with me. The last I saw her, she was promenading down the track with a crown on her head and that sorcerer on her arm.”
Embry’s mind was spinning. “Wait. The last you saw her was after the crowning? You didn’t see her after we all walked off?”
“Nope. I figured she’d just ditched me, but she wasn’t with you guys. Then I thought maybe she just didn’t want to wear her crown the whole game or something and came back here. But she didn’t.”
Embry tried to shake off the lingering effects of her sleeping draught. Rubbing her temples, she paged back to those final moments. Embry trying to explain, Oakley rushing off toward the opposite end of the stadium, and Rye catching Embry before she could follow.
Did Oakley actually turn and go toward the home-side seating and the game?
Did Embry actually see her round that corner?
She wasn’t sure. All Embry remembered was Rye’s disappointment filling her vision, the sob welling in her throat, the helplessness she felt at her own fault.
And then she ran off herself, in the same direction.
But she never turned toward the stadium, never saw Oakley anywhere—in the shadows of the risers, or on the path back to the dorms. But Oakley was a vampire and vampires were known to not only be silent, but fast. Perhaps so fast Embry never would’ve seen her up ahead.
Or maybe she’d even turned into a bat to avoid having anyone see her cry? That seemed like something she’d do.
“Are we sure she didn’t come back here?” Embry asked.
Magda sank to her own disheveled bed and waved a hand toward Oakley’s side of the room. “I mean, no, but that’s how she left things before she went to your room to get ready.”
“May I open these?” Embry asked, gesturing to the blackout curtains as panic rose in her gut. “Just to get a better look?”
“Go to town,” Magda grumbled.
Embry threw open the drapes. Sunlight streamed in, illuminating not a speck of—
“Hey, what are they doing?” Magda was at the window before Embry even realized what she’d meant. Revenant powers. “Where are they going?”
“Who—what?” Embry asked, peering over the girl’s slim shoulder.
Room 401 faced the lake and the sports complex. And at that very moment clumps of students were spilling out of the dorm and snaking toward the football stadium.
Something dropped in Embry’s stomach, like a silver dollar in a shallow fountain. The hairs on her arms immediately stood up. This was unusual, and the last five minutes were already very not right.
“We need to go there. Now.”
They made it in a flash. A hundred, if not two hundred, students and faculty had poured through the open stadium gates across the track and onto the football field turf, glittering from the rising sun catching the melting frost tipping the grass.
As they approached, a buzz zinged through the mass, voices rising and falling as bodies maneuvered, stepped back, made way. All words fell to ash in Embry’s mouth as they grew closer, something compelling her not to ask what was going on, just to keep moving forward.
To see.
As such, the crowd parted, shifting until there was a direct line like an airplane landing strip connecting Embry with the point of interest on the turf.
A lump.
A body. Unmoving. Bloodied. Battered. And, strangely, clad in the blue tulle monstrosity that was Embry’s finalized Witch costume for Into the Woods.
That’s when Embry registered the person’s face: pale and blood-smeared, and framed with silver-blond hair and one perfectly placed streak of ruby red.
Oakley Riddle was dead.
Embry gasped, her hand flying to her mouth, her body immediately racked and trembling. Magda let out a scream and took off. But Embry was pinned to the spot, a pressure rising in her chest as she tried to make sense of it.
Oakley was a vampire. Yet there was no wooden stake protruding from her chest, no silver bullet, her head was still attached to her body.
But this was real. It had to be magic. Very powerful magic, something that…
Something that a witch could do.
Embry tore her gaze from Oakley’s form and read the crowd from left to right, a new page turning in her life as she watched the features of so many faces she knew flood not with sympathy for the girl’s friend, but with anger, accusation, certainty.
Then the thoughts behind those expressions poured into the crisp morning air, shouted in jumbled succession.
“Witches are the real Bitches.”
“She’s a jealous shrew, not a Bitch. Don’t sully our name!”
“Illegal spells aren’t illegal if your name’s Woodcross! Am I right or am I right?”
“I’m sure Oakley would’ve just given her the crown if she’d asked nicely. She didn’t care about material things.”
“Embry didn’t even take the crown. Girl just wanted revenge, not that mass-produced piece of crap.”
“It’s just a title; you didn’t have to kill her, Embry!”
Oakley Riddle was dead a second time over. And everyone here—hundreds of people who’d known Embry for all high school—had already decided it was her fault.
Embry held up her hands, placating, even as her voice quavered.
“I would never do this to anyone, let alone my friend. I would never—”
“Call a friend some clueless homeschooler with Beetlejuice hair?”
Embry whipped around to find the speaker—Skye Wolverton. She stood with five Bitches at her back, meaty forearms crossed over all half-dozen chests.
“I—What? That was a joke!”
“A joke?” the werewolf parroted. “Or proof that Oakley wasn’t actually your friend, she was your rival?”
Skye produced a cell phone and stabbed the screen. A shadowy pair of people appeared and then came Embry’s own voice booming through the device’s speakers.
“… I mean, look at you! You’re literal royalty right now instead of some clueless homeschooler with first-period gym BO and Beetlejuice hair!”
Audible gasps popcorned among the students surrounding her now as Oakley’s voice came through, crystal clear. Alive. Filmed.
Embry stilled at the anger in the vampire’s tone, the shrillness of her own retorts, the scandalized reaction of the gathered crowd until every last, terrible word of their final encounter was out in the open.
Then, just like that night, Oakley ran off, Embry took several steps after her… and the video cut off.
What happened after wasn’t part of it. No Rye stopping Embry. No Oakley vanishing into the dark. Just two girls fighting, one chasing the other…
And now one girl dead.
From behind, a throat cleared. Embry turned to see Headmaster Martinelli, flanked by two members of the campus police, and three men she vaguely recognized, the star symbol of the Table sewn in gold thread on their black suit jackets.
Behind them, a swarm of Table agents netted the grounds in the distance, glittering golden lockdown wards shooting like fireworks every twenty paces, sealing the Raven’s Head perimeter. Smothering the safety wards Embry herself set with the other prefects and administration.
Raven’s Head School for the Magically Gifted was on lockdown.
“Miss Woodcross, I think you better come with me.”