Page 99 of House of Ruin
“I told you the man needs to go,” Octavia chimed in, her arms crossed. Her face was settled into a determined expression, her eyes blazing at Alatar.
Alecto’s father didn’t seem as alarmed as the rest of them.
“Well, are you sure it wasn’t that devil child of yours after all?” Reverie asked, arching a well-groomed eyebrow. She sat in the armchair next to the wall lined with bookshelves. In one of her hands, between gloved fingers, rested a white cigarette holder with a roll-up smoldering at the end. “Maybe if he didn’t have such an awful reputation, it wouldn’t have been this easy for someone to try and frame him, bringing trouble to our House.”
For a moment, the whole room fell silent. It was ringing in Blaze’s ears as he waited for his father to explode at Jolene’s aunt.
But the explosion never came.
Disappointment and then embarrassment flooded Blaze. How stupid of him was to expect his father to say something in his defense.
And it wasn’t as if Reverie weren’t right anyway.
“Should we maybe tell them?” Alecto whispered, sitting on the opposite side of Blaze. He threw her a sideways glance and shook his head. “They might be able to sort this shit out if they knew—”
The door to Blaze’s room opened, and an unfamiliar face walked in.
“Joy, you’re right on time,” Alatar said, waving a hand at the stranger.
The person, whoever they were, hid their face behind a veil, only their lips visible through the sheer material. They were dressed in a black shapeless suit, so Blaze couldn’t identify anything about whoever this Joy was.
“Do you have what I asked you for?” Alatar asked.
Joy nodded. They walked over to Blaze’s desk. Ignoring the mess—the typewriter and papers, and empty whiskey bottles—Joy placed their briefcase on the desk and popped it open.
From it, they took out a folder and handed it to Alatar.
Nobody seemed to know what was going on because Rufus asked, “What is going on, Alatar? Who is this?”
“Joy is a trahi, private investigator, I hired when Detective Vin first showed up and questioned the kids,” Alatar said.
Blaze couldn’t stop staring at the weird witch standing next to Alatar. They hadn’t said a word since they came in.
“Do trahi still cut their tongues out to heighten their senses to this day?” Reverie asked, scrunching her nose the exact same way Jolene did sometimes. “I suppose magic is magic.”
“Is that why you’ve been so calm about this?” Rufus asked. “That explains your lack of concern.”
Alatar smiled and opened the file in his hands. Quickly, he scanned the pages. At the last page, he tapped a finger on the file and looked Blaze’s way.
“Have you been feeling weird lately?” Alatar asked him. “Dizziness, headaches that never go away, nausea, and maybe even long periods when you don’t remember what happened?”
All eyes were on Blaze.
He didn’t need to think for very long to find the answer to Alatar’s question. “Yeah.”
“There are traces of poison in Blaze’s blood,” Alatar said. He handed the file to Galliermo. “From Poisonous Widow. It’s a slow-working poison that weakness and then kills the witch in a slow and extremely unpleasant way. It has been found in the other victims’ systems, which shows Blaze couldn’t have been the murderer, but rather that he was supposed to be the next victim.”
Blaze was too stunned to speak.
The weird blackouts he never used to have. Memory loss. The constant feeling of sickness without reason.
He looked at Val. She shook her head, her lips pressed into a tight line.
“This is impossible,” Octavia said, reading the file over Galliermo’s shoulder. “How can he be poisoned? Romeo prepares their food. Nobody else has access.”
“It’s not like the kids don’t eat in the cafeteria or other places,” Lyra said.
“One more reason to get Gondalez fired,” Rufus said, crossing his arms. “If that man allows someone to poison his students, then he’s not fit to be the Dean.”
