Edward cleared his throat and we both snapped back to attention, caught bickering in the principal’s office.
“You’ll each be teaching four classes a day with two free prep periods. You don’t start until after lunch today. The lessons are already prepared for you and left in each of your rooms. You have free rein of the building for your investigation.” Lowe pulled two keys from his top desk drawer and handed one to each of us. “But of course, you’ll keep your true intentions for being here from the student body. The girls were quite stirred up when the uniformed men were on campus. I don’t know what kind of CSI-type havoc they’d wreak if they knew two undercover FBI investigators were here as well.”
Lowe grinned and I smiled back, impressed. FBI investigators, huh? I made a mental note to thank Sampson for giving us a decent cover; the last time I went to investigate some supernatural bumps at a house in the Marina, Sampson told the lady I was an exterminator and I wound up with a tetanus shot and a vague certainty that her demon spider had laid a dozen eggs in my left nostril.
Lowe shrugged, his slim shoulders hugging his ears. “I wish I could give you some more information, some direction about the girls or the administration. Everyone here is like a family. I can’t imagine . . .”
“So, I believe our—FBI boss, Pete Sampson—told you what we’re investigating?”
“Of course.” Lowe nodded. “The possibility of a coven.”
“Yes.” I nodded back, flipping over my notebook in a bid to look uber FBI-like. “Do you know which students are a part of it?”
Edward swung his head and stiffened. “If there even is a coven. All the girls have been pretty tight lipped about their clubs and activities off campus. But I’ve heard the murmurs in the halls.”
“We met three girls earlier. Kayleigh—”
“Finleigh and Fallon,” Lowe finished. “They’re like the three Musketeers.”
“Yes. Are they—is Fallon perhaps part of the murmuring? She seems sort of . . .” I let my words trail off, hopeful that Edward would get the message without me having to say that the pubescent bombshell seemed a bit witchy.
“Fallon? No. She’s a star student here. Very friendly and helpful. Heads up the blood drive every year.”
I shifted in my seat. Nina was in charge of the blood drive at the office, but it was less a good-citizen thing, more of a lunch-truck thing.
I instinctively didn’t trust Fallon. And I swore to myself it had nothing to do with her perfect curves or the lascivious way she rolled her tongue over her bottom lip while hanging on Will’s every accented word.
“Fallon helps out a lot of students—especially new ones. High school can be pretty intimidating—especially here.”
Didn’t I know it.
Lowe turned us out into the hallway and my heart was thudding. Our footsteps echoed through the deserted corridor and I couldn’t help thinking about the green mile, a prisoner walking toward their death.
“Brings back a lot of memories, huh?” Will said. “Bet you were rollicking around here with your pigtails and your high-heeled shoes.”
I felt my upper lip curl. “I was going to high school, not a fantasy porn shoot. And my memories weren’t all good. I’m pretty sure if there’s witchcraft around here, it’s going to be right out in the open.”
“Why would you think that?”
I got a flash of my fifteen-year-old self, dwarfed by a backpack and a headgear, being Ping-Ponged between the popular girls as I tried to make my way to my locker.
“Just a gut thought.”
I pulled the file Sampson had given me from my shoulder bag as we walked the hall in silence.
“Here,” I whispered. “This is Cathy Ledwith’s class schedule. These two are Alyssa Rand’s from the last two years. Anything significant?”
“Yes. Absolutely. American teens are sadly behind in math. Look at this—juniors. Geometry One. A shame.”
I glared at Will, but kept the fact that Geometry One and I had shared more than a few tearful years together a secret. “No. I meant any crossover classes or teachers.”
He scanned the sheets. “They both took art with Mr. Fieldheart in 6B. Both third period last year, Alyssa second period this year. Both took Honors English in their junior year, both with the teacher you’re replacing.”
“Okay, okay, that gives us something to go on.” Will handed me back the pages. “What, exactly, does it give us to go on?”
“I haven’t figured that out yet. Let’s go upstairs and check out room 6B.”
We climbed the stairs and peered into classroom 6B, where a ring of girls sitting at easels turned to glare at us and no one adamantly jumped up and tried to turn us into toads.
“So much for your walk-around-and-stare-atthings plan.”
“I have other plans.”
“And they are . . . ?”
Saved by the bell.