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“No, you don’t. You know nothing of my concerns. None of you could.”
Proving my point, Castile offered, “If it’s about the money, I can increase your bonus upon your success. Ah, I see that’s made you angrier.”
I felt exposed like a raw nerve. It was as if my skin had been peeled back, open to the elements, and this moron just offered me a steak to ease my pain. “Clave isn’t my ally, President. I do not trust him. This wasn’t your decision to make.”
The president pulled an envelope from his inner breast pocket and handed it to me. “Read it.”
After thirty seconds of scanning, a tad of my outrage lessened, but not entirely. “So, he signed a non-disclosure agreement.”
“He fought me with all the high-brow, coded insults he could, but it was my call in the end. Calling me a weak-blooded mountain goat was not, in fact, enough to convince me to back down.”
At this point of the day, my filter was as useful to me as cocaine for a panic attack. “I don’t trust him. Now, I don’t exactly trust you. This whole place is fucked, and I swear to fucking heaven, there better not be any more surprises. Do I have to make a contract for that too, or can you manage that simple instruction?”
The president gave me the oddest look. He was curious and bemused, almost like he was watching a cat bark, and it fascinated him. “No more surprises. Promise. Good day, Miss Valence.” On a final breath, he added, “I definitely see the appeal.”
The door clicked shut behind him, trapping me in my own silence. My magic yanked me toward the window. Metaphorically, of course. I glanced out to the quad, curious what my intuition sensed.
Then, I found it.
A student sat on a bench right in front of the administrative building. His wings were absent, and a hoodie hid most of his dark hair. His gaze trained on me. Or my window, at least. At this time of day, he couldn’t really see past the glare across the glass.
It’s a good thing I raked through those files last night, otherwise I may not have recognized him. “This day just keeps getting more and more interesting,” I muttered. “Hello, Nathaniel Harlock. What do you want?”
Chapter Sixteen
Before I could ease outside and casually fake a trip, crash into Nathaniel, and trigger an offhand interrogation that would solve the entire mystery, he stood and left without warning.
Well, fuck you too, then.
Disappointed, I got to my filing. The rest of the day was a bust. Not only did I get zero tugs from my intuition magic, but I was also exhausted. It had taken way longer than I expected to process a complaint report against the violent boy—Cole Highland. While I’d been typing it out, Quinn had asked me thirty fucking times ‘Are you sure you want to submit this report?’ like she was watching me write my own eulogy.
It didn’t matter how powerful Cole Highland was. My career didn’t bank on his approval, and I didn’t suck metaphorical cock to get a pat on the head from anyone. Much less a temperamental, arrogant archangel like him.
At the back of my mind, Azra’s voice warned me that I was taking this too far. It was probably right. But ever since I’d taken this job, it’s as if Gray-Wilder-the-illegal-person couldn’t keep herself hidden anymore.
Even Clave drifted to the back of my mind, barely registering as a worry.
Have I always been this impulsive? This uncaring about my survival?
Being so exposed made my insides quiver, sure. But the fact that I hadn’t died yet only bolstered my new risky streak.
I’d tried walking around the campus and concentrating on my goal. The murder. The attacks. But thanks to my spotty power, I found nothing at all. Looked like it only had space for Nathaniel Harlock this morning, and yet I couldn’t even get my intuition to lock onto him.
So, after the clock struck seven, I returned to my room and pored over the files again, wine glass full of vodka.
Yeah, a classy bitch.
Razai was busy training students until nine, so it’s not like I could just interrupt him and give him a full report of the day. So, I set the files on my lap and returned to the first one on my mind. The kid watching me through the window.
Nathaniel was in his third year at Hartfall. His angelic powers were fire-based. Incineration, to be exact. Extremely powerful. The irony was thick, considering his car had been burnt to a crisp, nearly catching the trees on fire.
The reports detailed something interesting. Two cans of gasoline had been found empty and piled only fifteen feet away, which likely meant the culprit likely didn’t have a fire affinity. After all, if you could summon a magical flame, you wouldn’t need any help.
He’d woken up the next morning to a summons from President Castile, who’d informed him of the arson. Nathaniel had shared no thoughts on who might have been behind it, and the investigation didn’t go much further than that.
I closed his file and moved on. The itch of the puzzle urged me on, completely blanketing the vodka.
Sydni Valinas was a wildly more interesting case. She’d been kidnapped and tied up in a storage room behind the performing arts stage. She described the experience as a “daze, something that felt like ten years and ten minutes all at once.”
