Page 91 of Prey It By Ear

The stony Frenchman scratches his chin and says, “I am uncertain it will help, and I felt the chance wasn’t worth the damage. I apologize for not letting everyone make that decision rather than doing it on my own.”

“Okay,” Dolly sighs and continues knitting, probably to make sure she doesn’t strangle him for ‘protecting’ her by keeping her ignorant. “We’ll test it later. For now, I’m letting the lies go. Got it?”

He nods, his eyes still radiating apology.

Sensing the mood dip, I change the subject with the softest pivot I can manage. “So, Fitz, any update on Sterling? Dolly’s got his class again tomorrow, and it’s making the Raj’s hackles go up.”

Fitz’s entire demeanor changes: he sits up, puts his knitting aside, and taps his phone awake, all business. “I ran the name through every database I could get into—school records, Prednet, private industry, even the dark net. There’s nothing. Not even a gap where something used to be. I ran facial recognition against the class roster photo Chess sent me, and there’s no match in any global database, not even a dead relative or a police lineup. That’s weird, guys. Really, really weird.”

Felix grunts, “Can you get more data off the campus security system? If he’s only been here a few weeks, there might be a digital trail.”

“Already scraping it. Give me until tomorrow, but if this guy is as clean as he looks, I’ll have to do a deep social engineering run.”

Dolly’s mouth tightens in that way it does when she’s worried, but doesn’t want to show it. “He’s just a teacher. They swap them out every year. Maybe he’s from a family with privacy issues or something.”

“Maybe,” I say, “but the timing is odd, and the way he ran that first class was even odder. I just don’t want any surprises, especially not with you as a target.”

She shrugs, as if she’s tired of being the cause for concern. “If he comes after me, I’ll use the app and then we can all tattle to Midori.”

“Good plan,” says Renard, but I catch the frown he tries to hide.

No one here likes mysteries because they don’t end well for us.

* Premise

* I am sorry, my love.

How Bizarre

Delores

The door to Rockland’s office clicks behind me, and it’s the exact hollow, echoey thunk I hear in my nightmares—a noise I’d like to never associate with my frazzled psyche again. There’s a reason every villain in every cheap drama movie slams a big wooden door right before they fire you or dissolve your trust fund, and it’s because nothing says ‘fuck you’ like the finality of a heavy door snapping shut.

And she definitely wants to say that every time I open my mouth, but my companions being present holds it off.

Outside the office, the corridor is empty except for the anxiety that always follows me out of these sessions, and Raina, who followed me out with her crossbow and a look of practiced casualness. Her uniform is pressed within an inch of its synthetic life. She makes the bodyguard thing feel both invisible and omnipresent at once, which is a real skill when you’re a raccoon in a school where most predators prefer to pretend the prey types aren’t even breathing air.

“Well, that didn’t go too badly,” Raina says, falling into step with me. “She’s treading carefully since we put witnesses in the office with you. Plus, she’s so distracted, and it’s very odd that it keeps her from really paying attention to your answers.”

“No kidding! She wasn’t even all the way there, you know? The witch spent the whole time typing at a million miles an hour and only looked at me when she could sigh and squint simultaneously. There wasn’t even an attempt at subtlety today—just random questions, then back to her laptop as if it was the most interesting entity in the room.”

Raina hums, but the edge in it says she’s storing every detail for later reporting. “Distracted Rockland is the lesser evil, at least. But I agree that it’s worrisome that she’s not even listening when she forced this to get ideas out of you. What in the world could she be so obsessed with?”

“I don’t know,” I say ruefully. “She’s not even pretending to hate me directly anymore, and I’d almost prefer the screaming. At least it was honest, you know? And I was a lot less anxious about what could be going on when she was targeting me.”

We hit the elevator and Raina pushes the button for the main floor, her crossbow resting gently against the tile as she waits. I notice she’s checking every reflective surface for shadows or tails—her security consciousness is never off duty. The elevator dings, and as we step in, she leans close and mutters, “When enemies are quiet like that, it means they are working on something bigger. No one that aggressive gives up the sport for nothing.”

I chew on that, letting the elevator’s brutal lime cleaner and metal-smell fill my head for a second. There’s nothing I can do about it, so I shrug. “Guess I’ll have to wait for her to take the shot, then,” I deadpan, “and when it happens, I’ll duck as fast as I can.”

Raina snorts. “We’ll be there when it happens. However, now that we’re past that, I have a message from the Captain. The request your glorious gargoyle made went out on today’s preymail dispatch, so the puffin elder should see it by the end of the week. Also, Banjo’s picking you up after hip-hop to walk you to Diplomacy, so you’ll be covered then.”

My brain is two steps behind, still tumbling over the fact that Rockland is being so non-aggressive and what it might mean. “Raina,” I say, “am I the only one who’s getting weird vibes about that Sterling guy? Have you heard anything from the prey staff? That class is one that really sets my teeth on edge because we can’t find anything about him.”

She leans against the wall and fixes me with her shiny black gaze. “It’s not just the family wondering, Dolly. Our staff likes to know what professors prefer when we clean up their rooms and handle their clothing and such. That gentleman does not send his clothes out. His room was still as clean as a bleach bottle when one of the maids went in before, but I didn’t think much of it. It’s very odd for what seems to be a bachelor professor with an unconnected name who ended up at one of the schools.”

The elevator doors open to the main hallway, and we walk in step toward the quad. I squint up at the row of windows and then check the time. If I don’t book it, I’ll be late to hip-hop, which would be a travesty for more than one reason.

Raina follows my line of thought and adds, “But if you like, I can ask around the staff quarters on the non-residential side. The ostriches and emus do all the cleaning, but they stick together. I can see if any of them will watch out for clues left in Sterling’s room, like if he leaves anything in his trash. They can watch his office and the break rooms, too.”