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She cut herself off so hard it left a mark in the air.
“They remove what?” I asked.
“Obstacles,” said a voice behind me.
Kit.
Of course.
Pippa looked like she wanted to be anywhere else on the grounds.
Kit leaned against the stair rail, all lean limbs and a mouth built for… nothing. I wrenched my mind away. He wasn’t looking as pleased with himself as usual either, which was saying something. “That’s one way to describe it anyway.”
“Kit,” Pippa warned.
“What? We’re all being so educational today.”
I turned to him. “Explain.”
His eyes flicked once toward the tower door above us, then came back. “Veres manage memory.”
“Meaning they remember things?”
“Meaning they decide what other people remember.”
That landed in my stomach and stayed there, cold and heavy, like a stone dropped into a well that I hadn’t realized was that deep.
Pippa’s face had gone pale. “It’s more complicated than that.”
“Usually is,” Kit said. “Still true.”
I thought of the woman at the window, the folder with my name on the tab, Pelham wondering if I intended to remain.
“Why would they put someone like that on me?”
“That,” Kit said, and the smile he gave me was not a smile at all, “is a very good question.”
Pippa hugged her books to her chest. “It might be a good sign. Honestly. They don’t spend a Vere on a student they’re planning to dismiss. Cormac is... he’s young, but he’s brilliant. Terrifying, obviously. But brilliant. If they gave you him, they think there’s something there.”
“Or,” Kit said, “they want the best man in the building to prove there isn’t.”
Pippa glared at him.
“What?” he said. “Still educational.”
I looked from one to the other and sighed heavily. That night, a new line appeared on my paper schedule in dark green ink. I watched it write itself onto the page, which I was apparently now the kind of person who watched happen without screaming.
Cormac Vere. Supplemental Evaluation. East practice room.
Not instruction. Evaluation.
EIGHT
Billie
Cormac Vere was already in the room when I arrived. Of course he was. Men like that were never late. They either arrived first or made everyone understand that time itself had been waiting for them.
Finding the East Practice Room had been a challenge but now that I was there I realized why it was used. It was, essentially, just a stone cube that was mostly empty on the inside with the exception of a table and two chairs. The room itself was quite small with two windows high toward the ceiling on the connecting walls. The whole place was illuminated with two lamps on opposing walls. The air smelled of cold rock, lamp oil, and old leather, with no softness anywhere in it for a smell to catch on and warm.
