At the discovery of my missing shirt, the internal peace didn’t shatter, per se, but it did splinter.
Had Lottie given it to the police?
Again I waited for the surge of fury.
Nothing. Just more calm understanding. She was probably scared, of the murder and now of me. If she suspected I had something to do with it, she had every right to go to the police.
Seriously. Who am I?
By now, the almost-impenetrable sense of serenity was beginning to feel oppressive, like a veil I couldn’t see beyond, even though I knew there was something on the other side. Something terrifying in its lack of clarity or form. I was detached from myself in some kind of fundamental way.
In an attempt to focus my mind on the perilous situation – someone wasdead, there were hours of my life missing from my memory, and I’d woken up covered in unexplained blood – I grabbed a notebook and a pen, turned to a blank page, and tried to recall the night as best as I could. If the police were going to come knocking, I needed to have answers.
11:35 p.m. – Walked to library
11:55 p.m. – Arrived at library, saw Amanda Bell, Kate Feathering, Hafsah Al-Hadi + ginger friend (they can all verify?)
12:05 a.m. – Performed ritual
12:05-4 a.m. – ?????
4:15 a.m. – Woke up in dorm covered in blood, body found at North Tower
This did not look great.
It was immediately and abundantly clear what I had to do next: figure out where I was in those four hours.
I looked down at my watch: not even 6 a.m. If I headed back to the library now, would Kate Feathering still be there? She seemed to be sitting behind that U-shaped desk no matter what the hour, but logic dictated she had to sleep too. My own eyelids stung with exhaustion, the black hole of my night having provided little rest.
Yet Feathering might be the only one who could account for my whereabouts during those missing few hours, and the thought of waiting for her to wake up seemed counter-intuitive. Why be a sitting duck by staying in bed? There was likely a detective hunting me down right now, if Lottie had anything to do with it. Hell, Harris would probably have gone straight to the police too, given what I did to him mere hours before.
The idea of cold steel handcuffs around my wrists spurred me out of the door. Although I knew that realistically I wouldn’t be arrested just yet – likely just brought in for questioning, ifThe Billhad taught me anything – I wanted to fill in as many mental blanks as I could before that happened.
The beginnings of a plan solidified in my mind. If I couldn’t find Feathering in the library, I’d quickly head up to the philosophy section and make sure the ritual book wasn’t splayed on the carpet for all to see. Then I’d go to the sheltered glade in the woods and bide my time until the black-lipped librarian returned from her rare slumber. I would also attempt to pierce the oppressive emotional veil and psychologically process the morning’s events, because feeling so inhumanly detached was wholly unnerving. I had no idea how I would survive cross-examination when I came across like an unfeeling psychopath.
The morning was crisp and dark, although the obsidian sky was fading into indigo. The almost-dawn was clear of clouds. I breathed in great lungfuls of the air; it was deep and heady, tinged with rosemary and woodsmoke and something metallic.
The main convent building was stony cold and unrelentingly quiet. My every footstep echoed as I walked as calmly as I could down the cloister to the library. My heartbeat quickened and deepened; an insistent thump, as though my body remembered something my mind could not.
To my surprise, Feathering was sitting behind her library desk reading a mammoth tome. She looked much the same as she always did: polished, groomed, achingly aloof. It was not the appearance of the sleep-deprived or the overworked. I briefly wondered whether she might be a vampire.
It was also not the appearance of someone who knew a girl had just died mere metres from where she sat. I decided not to be the one to break the news. It would make what I had to ask her sound even more suspicious.
‘Hi,’ I said, and she looked momentarily shocked as I approached the desk. In the time I’d been coming here, I’d only even seen one other student go over to her, and that was because they couldn’t get in.
‘Can I help you?’ she said tersely.
‘Yeah, erm, I was here last night – a few hours ago, actually – and I need to prove where I was in that time.’ I swallowed hard, then spouted the excuse I’d come up with on the walk over here. ‘My roommate accused me of sleeping with her boyfriend, and I want to show her it would’ve been impossible. Does my student record show what times I scanned in and out of the library?’
If she was surprised by the request, she didn’t show it. She turned to her computer screen, clicked on the mouse a few times, then typed my name on the keyboard.
‘It says here that you scanned in at 11:54 p.m., and left at 3:58 a.m.’
Relief flooded me from head to toe. When I first checked my watch back in the dorm, it had read 4:09 a.m. I must have gone straight back there from the library. There’s no way I’d have had time to go up to the North Tower, quickly murder someone, and then hurry back to my room. I was in the clear.
And I could prove it.
There was only one problem: I’d told Lottie I was at the Refectory.
I was so busy focusing on that dilemma that I didn’t notice something crucial.
Feathering had known what name to search for in the system without me ever having told her.