Page 244 of Depraved Boys

“I don’t know.” My gaze dropped down to my keyboard. “Everything I’ve read in her diary so far tells me that she was tormented, but she hadn’t fallen into hopelessness. Corrine fought back… At least in her mind.”

“What do you mean?” he whispered.

“She hated a lot of people in the academy and thought certain practices were unfair, but she never expressed any of her anger inward. There were no single mentions of herself being unworthy or anything. She was a fighter, and she knew people had acted unfairly toward her.”

“Like you.”

My shoulders drooped, and I thought about all those times I let Ashley’s vitriol about my appearance and selfishness soak into my psyche. Corrine wasn’t like that. Everyone who barraged her with insults approached as an enemy, not as a sibling. “I don’t do nearly enough to defend myself.”

Cormac shook his head, and I didn’t bother to ask what he meant. It was either disagreement or disapproval of my relationship with the kings.

“What did Corrine say at the end of the diary?” he asked.

“It’s so difficult to decipher.” After plugging a memory stick into the school computer containing the OCR readout and my translations, I whizzed through an explanation of what I had done to turn Corrine’s numbering system into letters.

Cormac rubbed his chin. “She should have written this in base 26, using the alphabet after the ninth digit.”

I nodded. “Even simple words like 3118 are problematic.”

He chewed on his lip. “Car?” When I nodded, he added, “it also spells CAAH if you assume 18 is 1 and 8.”

“See what I mean?”

He twisted around in his seat and rolled up his sleeves. “What if I added a subroutine to your program where it recalculated nonsensical words until it found something that could be referenced in the dictionary?”

I shook my head. “That crossed my mind last term, but some of her words are in Latin and Spanish.”

Cormac blew out a long breath. “Maybe what’s needed is someone who knew her better. I think I can break this code if I make some amendments to your program.”

Hope sprung in my chest. Cormac hadn’t wanted to look at the diary in the first term, but it was a relief that he was now willing to help. I imagined his motive was to uncover incriminating information against Prakash, but I accepted his assistance anyway.

I emailed Cormac the scans, the OCR readouts, and the program I had devised to make the transitions. “Hopefully, we can get to the bottom of this puzzle.”

He gave me a sharp nod. “And we’ll send our report to the police.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

Weeks passed, and still no return of Prakash. According to Mr. Pinkerton, the Crown Prosecution Service had gathered enough evidence to bring his case to trial and decided there was a realistic prospect of conviction. To make matters worse, Mrs. Benazir had ordered Sebastian’s jeep clamped from Monday to Friday, so venturing to the hideout meant a mountain hike, which ended up taking too much time.

Due to not feeling safe in the west wing, I spent alternate nights sleeping in Sebastian and Leopold’s room. Although Cormac shot me disapproving glares, he didn’t report me or demand that I return to my room.

Late one Thursday evening, the three of us strolled out of the dining room toward the east wing, when a dark figure loomed toward us through the hallway. She was man-sized, and clad in a shapeless pantsuit draped with flowing, academic robes.

Miss Claymore… A boulder of shock knocked the air out of my lungs. What was she doing back on the premises?

Passing students gaped at her. Some of them even tried to engage her in conversation, but she continued striding through the hallway with her dark eyes fixed on us.

My autonomic nervous system turned to fight or flight, and my heart galloped into action. I wrapped both arms around Sebastian’s bicep in an attempt to keep her from snatching him away.

Sebastian’s muscles seized, and he ground out, “Oh, shit.”

Leopold gagged. “I thought we’d seen the last of that old battle-ax.”

We stood in the middle of the hallway as younger students walked in both directions around us. As she approached, a happy flush stained Miss Claymore’s cheeks, and the corners of her mouth curled into the subtlest of smiles.

“What are you doing here?” I blurted.

Miss Claymore raised her brows. “That’s no way to speak to your deputy headmistress.”