Page 14 of The Last De Loughrey Dynasty

“It’s fine.” I gave her a tight smile and laid my laptop beside me. “Maisie, is your grandmother’s name Alessandra too?”

She stopped what she was doing and turned to face me.

“No, her sister’s name was Alessandra. She named my mother after her.” Her voice started to shake a little, but I couldn’t think of a reason why.

“Was? Oh, I’m sorry, Maisie.” I felt like a complete arsehole, acting like I didn’t know she’d died at the age of sixteen, but I needed to know if she knew something.

“No, it’s okay. She died years before I was born.”

“Was it an accident?”

My roommate sat down on her bed and placed her clothes down beside her. I knew she was a talker, and I used that habit to my advantage because I needed answers,I needed to know.

“I don’t know a lot, but on May Day she sneaked around the school with the boy she fancied while the entirety of the students celebrated in the great hall. It was an accident. She fell off a balcony. Some even swore they saw the boy push her, but they never found evidence. It was ruled an accident, and it broke my grandmother’s heart. They were so close. She always loved to tell me stories about her time here with her friends.” Maisie’s gaze was not focused on anything, and I could tell she was distracted by thoughts and memories of her grandmother and the stories she told her as a child.

“I’m so sorry for your grandmother.”

“Me too.”

“You said May Day. I didn’t know the school also celebrated holidays.”Lies. But I’d do anything for explanations.

Maisie nodded. “Yes, we celebrate May Day like everyone else, but Aquila Hall also celebrates our motto. Everything is covered in white because that’s our colour of mourning and honouring the lost.”

The school motto?

It was Latin, but I hadn’t translated it yet.

“What’s the translation of the motto?” I asked curiously.

Maisie looked from nothingness to me. “Ut vivos mortuos honorent,” she mumbled Aquila Hall’s motto quietly before she translated it for me, “that the living may honour the dead.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

DOROTHEE

Owley was,without a doubt, a melancholy village, where you could barely find anything except one bakery after another, as if it were the most important thing in the whole of England.

It had been two days since I’d felt a glimmer of optimism that there might be something supernatural going on, rather than me simply losing my mind. Those two days had been torturous. I couldn’t concentrate in my classes, nor could I get a decent night’s sleep. My thoughts kept circling around the possibility that a girl’s suicide had been mistakenly ruled an accident. Worse still, since Maisie had mentioned that people believed they’d seen Christopher allegedly pushing Lessy over the edge, I’d felt sick. I’d seen the fear and pain in his eyes as he begged her not to do it. I could only imagine how he must have felt, enduring investigations, classmates’ accusations, and relentless judgment.

Neither of them deserved their fate.

Walking through the small town, I used my phone to navigate to the police station. As absurd as the number of bakeries seemed, Owley had everything it needed. The next big city was only ten minutes away by bus, but if you didn’t needfancy clothes or other luxuries, you could live perfectly well here for the rest of your life.

Unfortunately, students from the boarding school were only allowed to venture as far as the village. I think I’d read somewhere that students over the age of sixteen were permitted to travel into the city with at least one other classmate if there was a special event, such as buying costumes, gowns, or accessories for an occasion. The next festival would be Halloween, but that was still a few weeks away.

From afar, I spotted the small police station and glanced around. None of my new classmates needed to know why I was there. I was afraid they’d ask questions I couldn’t answer without sounding completely unhinged. Perhaps a part of me still doubted that this school was truly for people like me, and the fear of being mocked all over again haunted me.

An officer entered the station, and I managed to slip through the open door behind him. He gave me a brief, friendly nod before greeting the woman behind the reception desk and disappearing into another room. My gaze followed him before shifting to the elderly woman sorting papers at the desk. Clearing my throat to catch her attention, I spoke when she finally looked up with a gentle smile.

“Hello, dear. What can I help you with?”

Balancing nervously on my feet, I returned her smile. “Hello. I know this might sound strange, but would you know if, on May Day in nineteen seventy-one, a suicide happened at Aquila Hall that was falsely ruled as an accident?”

Straight to the point—rip the plaster off. Don’t waste time.

But the look on her face made me fear I’d just given her a heart attack.

“I’m sorry, dear, why do you need to know that?”

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