Contrary to my worst expectations, the staff of the academy had somehow managed to keep the incident quiet for three whole days. Given that they were constantly surrounded by noblemen and women for whom gossip was their favourite pastime – it came as a pleasant surprise. I was never once approached by another member of the student body and needled for my part in it. Though that hot streak came to an end on the first day of the next week. Talia waved me over while we waited outside of the lecture hall for our teacher to arrive. She had the good sense to keep it quiet though.

“I heard about what happened from my brother. He says that you saved his life!”

I cast a paranoid glance at some of the other students who were loitering nearby, “He told you?”

“Of course he did. I’m his sister, after all. He couldn’t just keep something that traumatising to himself. But I’m not going to let anybody else know about it. He gets enough unwanted attention as it is. I just wanted to thank you for protecting him; I didn’t know you were such a deft hand!”

I shook my head, “There’s nothing to be thankful for at the moment. I strongly suspect that they were targeting me. My presence may have been what endangered him in the first place.”

Talia was insistent, “Regardless, you risked your own life for his. So, thank you.”

“Do what you please. Just don’t expect me to be your hero from now on.”

“There’s the Maria I know and love,” Talia laughed. She was putting on a brave face, but it was obvious that she felt troubled by the news. She was right to be. Anyone would feel the same if they learned that a family member was nearly shot and killed. People dealt with shock in many different ways, Talia’s was to put on a smile and try to see the light side of things. She turned pensive and whispered to me, “Didn’t they tell you to stay around other people? That’ll be tough for a lone wolf like you.”

“Is that your way of asking to spend time with me?”

Talia waved her arms in mock denial, “No! I wouldn’t dare of using such an incident to advantage myself. I was just worried, that’s all.”

I was being too harsh on her. I softened my stance and sighed wearily, “I normally spend most of my time in the public areas of the campus anyway. You needn’t worry about me, I can handle it.”

“I know you have a stellar reputation for shooting – but you don’t carry a gun with you everywhere...”

My smile became less convincing as I gritted my teeth.

“...But I suppose you did manage to evade the culprit once. A confident young lady should always act decisively in times of crisis.”

Talia had said her thanks and gotten some kind of discussion out of me. I remained unwilling to call her a ‘friend,’ even though it was a distinction without a purpose. This kind of casual chatter was what friends did. The rational part of my brain was at war with my paranoia. Calling her a friend wasn’t going to change the calculus here, I wasn’t going to curse her by making it clear that we were closer than I liked to let on. I really was turning into a crappy tsundere with every passing day. As the silence between us stretched on, the decision was made to throw Talia a bone for once.

“I don’t mind your company, Talia. Apologies if I gave you that impression.”

Talia blinked the stars from her eyes, “Oh my goodness. The Lady Maria Walston-Carter, offering someone a compliment?”

I wagged my finger at her, “I do so from time to time when such praise is earned. I have to give people the credit they are due.”

Being ‘friends’ was going to be more of a problem for her than for me. Some of the other girls who leaned on the meaner side of the spectrum had been infuriated by her close proximity to me, yet made no such attempts to familiarise themselves with me in lieu of merely speaking ill about Talia. In their eyes my isolation was beautiful and worthy of admiration; a lonesome, lily-white flower atop a rolling hill. Or they merely believed that if they couldn’t crowd around me, nobody could.

It was too bad that Talia didn’t need my permission to sit next to me. She seemed a little awestruck that she had managed to wear me down to this point – but even my coldest persona couldn’t stop the foolish from chasing after me. Talia was happy no matter what I said. Even when I had given her this much, and she understood my feelings on the matter, being close to me was a big achievement. Some of the girls would kill for the opportunity to be in the same room with me, never mind speak to me on a regular basis.

There was no time for us to talk further, as the teacher had finally arrived for our mathematics lesson. We followed Samantha and the others into the lecture theatre and took our usual spots near the front. Samantha still felt sore about how I had rejected her when we first met, but I got an ominous feeling that something bad would happen if we became friends in the same way as I had with Talia. I couldn’t explain that it was all for their sake, there was no way that they’d ever believe me.

Fictional characters are one thing - but I had to act under the assumption that everything I was doing was real. I had a set of principles and standards that I would not stray from even if I believed that there were no consequences. I refocused my mind on the lesson and tried to give myself a break from worrying about killers and relationships – unaware of the eyes that were drilling a hole into the back of my skull from two rows behind me.

----------------------------------------

Claudius could smell something fishy going on.

It wasn’t just that Maria Walston-Carter had seemingly befriended Talia Escobarus; if anything, she should have done something about making friends sooner! Even the coldest people had a circle of connections and friendships. It was a vanishingly small circle, but a circle nonetheless. No, it was an overpowering feeling of strangeness that had come about after their previous magic lesson.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Claudius had left Maria and Talia’s brother alone together in a mad rush to get the hot food before it was snatched up. Now every teacher looked like they’d learnt something that they wish they hadn’t. He could see the way their eyes kept turning in Maria’s direction, with a glint in their irises that he couldn’t place. What were they thinking?

His first thought had been an illicit affair between Maria and Felipe. It was scandalous, shocking, and would have been kept secret thanks to his already existing engagement with Beatrice Booker. That idea hit a dead end very quickly as Claudius reasoned that Maria would prefer someone her own age. Additionally, Maria was such a stickler for the rules that there was no way she’d ever steal someone’s fiancé like that.

The girl wouldn’t dare break curfew even for a few minutes, she was always paying rapt attention in class, and aside from some mean-spirited words to Samantha, she kept to herself and did not engage in bullying. Claudius’ instincts, which had been finely honed through years of reading fantastical accounts of criminal investigations, had erred him on the side of caution. Maria didn’t come off like a culprit to him. If that was the case - then it meant that she was the victim instead.

But he just couldn’t imagine Maria being victimised! She was utterly terrifying, with a gaze that could freeze the soul in your chest and enough raw talent to blow her way through any problem without breaking a sweat. While one-half of the academy admired her for being the perfect lady, her naysayers feared her. The end result was the same. Maria emitted an ‘aura’ that kept people well away from her proximity. What kind of psychopath could muster the bold-faced courage to do such a thing? Whoever it was, they were in a world of trouble. They’d better hope that Maria didn’t get her hands on them.

“Why are you staring at Maria so much?” Samantha whispered as the teacher scribbled notes onto the chalkboard. Each noisy intermission summoned forth a torrent of hushed conversations between the students.

Claudius looked up and crossed his arms, “Nothing. Well, not nothing. But I’m just curious. I feel like she might have been involved in something.”

“Something?” Samantha repeated incredulously, “What kind of something?”

“I heard that every single teacher was called to the staff chamber for a meeting a few nights ago, and they came out looking as pale as the white ghosts you’d find on the high moors. They’re keeping an eye on her, haven’t you noticed the way they’re looking at her?”

Samantha shrugged, “I don’t tend to pay attention to that kind of thing.”

“If you did – you’d think the same way.”

Samantha had heard this all before. Every day Claudius had a new pet mystery that he seemed determined to solve. They ranged from the mundane, like who placed the books back in the wrong place in the study, to the absurd, like his belief that one of the staff members had a dark and mysterious past just waiting to be uncovered. His very real powers of observation were constantly undermined by his lack of reasoning; leading him to contrasting statements and ideas.

Nothing got past him, but he always put the pieces together in the wrong order. It was for that reason that Claudius had correctly noted the sudden emergence of paranoid behaviour in the staff members. They were all concealing a major secret from the students, one about a clear and present danger to everyone’s safety.

Maxwell was not amused, “Just ignore him. He’s being weird again.”

Claudius smirked, “Ah. But you never did thank me for solving the mystery of your missing underwear.”

“They just got misplaced in the laundry!”

“So? I still found them.”

“There’s a big difference between solving a murder and finding a pair of lost boxers – Claude. And for that matter, you originally claimed that a goblin had broken into my bedroom and stolen them when I wasn’t looking,” Maxwell didn’t know why he was bothering. They’d had this argument hundreds of times over the years they had been with each other. The time before Claude developed his detective obsession was now shorter than after.

“That was just my running theory at the time. Obviously, I revaluated when more evidence came to light.”

Before the argument could go any further, the teacher cleared his throat and demanded the attention of the class once again. Maxwell and Claude would be going at it all day. Samantha sighed and copied down some of the diagrams from the board, but her eyes kept focusing on the finely tucked braid that ran down the back of Maria’s head. She just couldn’t get over how she had been treated upon their first meeting, even if it was how Maria acted around most of the people in the academy.

Samantha had tried to be discreet in the ways that she watched Maria from afar and she had become familiar with her routine. She spent a lot of time studying in the library and common rooms. She never allowed herself any downtime, retiring to her room at the earliest possible hour and awakening before everyone else. She had no real friends to speak of, and only Felipe had the courage to stop by and make small talk while he was doing his rounds.

Samantha was so deeply entrenched in her thoughts that she only snapped back out of her trance when Claudius reached out and grabbed her shoulder, “Period is over, Sam.” She stood up from her seat with an embarrassed grin and followed them down to the door. Maria was already standing by the window in the corridor and was being hounded by an unfamiliar boy from the fourth year.

“Who’s that?” she asked of Max.

“That’s Cromwell – he’s a ranking member in the academy’s shooting club.”

Cromwell was making a big pitch to Maria about something, though Sam quickly identified that the topic at hand was that of shooting, just as Max had implied. His hands moved in grand, sweeping motions in a lost attempt to sway him to his side of things. “You’ve already won nearly every competition that there is to win. I was shocked to hear that you didn’t want to join the society.”

Maria was curt in response, “I am not old enough to join.”

“The age requirement is just a formality. I promise that if we speak to the headmaster and tell him about your achievements, he’ll see the value in having you represent our academy.”

Maria was not moved.

“Apologies, but I have no interest in joining the shooting club. I see it as entirely separate from my enjoyment of the sport.”

Cromwell’s mouth opened and closed like that of a fish as Maria turned on her heel and marched away, braids bobbing up and down as she went. His face ran through a complex spectrum of emotions before finally settling on frustration. “I knew she was unsociable, but that was something different.”

His clubmate patted him on the back in consolation, “You’re not the first to get shot down by Walston-Carter. She never speaks with anyone unless they address her first.” The two boys left by heading in the opposite direction. Their plan had been a spectacular failure, and Cromwell had spent a week figuring out how to approach her! Claude, Max and Sam watched with some bemusement as she effortlessly deflected two boys who were three years her senior.

“She didn’t even flinch,” Max chuckled.

“She’s a stone-cold killer,” Claudius added.

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

Samantha wasn’t so sure. Maria was different to everyone else, anointed with maturity and nerves of steel. She could have been the most popular girl on campus if she merely chose to take advantage of those gifts, and she could curry genuine friends instead of hopeless lackeys like some of the ones who followed her like lost birds. The matter was quickly forgotten as Claudius and Maxwell reignited their previous debate on what the grand mystery really was. Samantha’s mind was elsewhere. She followed them to a seating area so they could wait for the next period to start. Her fascination had not been dulled yet. The only thing left for her to do was try to get closer to her.

For that, she would need to study hard and earn a place as one of Felipe’s personal protégés.