Unfamiliar (Unfamiliar Series #1)

Chapter 40

"Be ready," Astrid whispers and I shudder at the cold air that is starting to make my nose burn.

She looks like a ghost in the light of her flashlight, which she's only using because the moon has waned into nothingness and has resulted in the night being extremely dark. It had been decided in the privacy of our dorm room that we would head out after lights out to speak with Mr. Ivie in his office. Though from what we've planned, 'speak' isn't quite the right word, but more like interrogate since Astrid has a few tricks up her sleeve in order to get him to confess truthfully.

I feel a thrill of nerves when Astrid shuts off the flashlight and plunges us into darkness.

Game on, I think to myself as she sprints out of the cover of the bushes that we've been hiding in and I follow close on her heels with Tessa at my side.

It's one thing to sneak off of campus, it's another to sneak into an office on campus. Astrid had warned us that the security guards have designated patrols, two of which that would have the potential of crossing paths with us as we made our way to the secretary's office.

Astrid skitters to a stop when we've made it to a hedge that we crouch beside, letting the darkness swallow us up as we peer through the thickly interwoven branches.

"Two minutes," Tessa breathes as we wait.

"Are you sure?" Astrid rasps.

Tessa had volunteered to memorize the guards patrols and we look to her as she checks her watch again, her 'two minutes' being a warning as to when one of the guards should be walking through this area.

"Yes," she confirms.

"We go, now," Astrid says as she gets up and we sprint across the next stretch of the grounds, which includes a narrow sidewalk that our shoes clap against briefly.

We get down next to a bench on the other side to catch our breath as Astrid checks around us and nods as we dash for the next place, which is a set of bleachers that rim the polo field. The empty field is eerie at this time of night, the barn just beyond it even more so since it's silent, the paddock on the other side devoid of any horses.

The hulking form of the lecture hall looms in the distance as we sprint across the grass that lines the sidewalk, a layer of dew from a late evening thunderstorm making the grass slick beneath our shoes. We're gasping for air by the time we make it to the back doorway, where we duck inside to hide.

My pulse is already beating in a rapid fire tempo, I know in my heart that I'm going to get some sort of answer tonight. The only question is whether or not I can handle the truth.

"Let's go," Tessa hisses as she looks down at her watch.

She's right, we need to keep moving and even though I want to linger, I relent as they start around the front of the building at a light jog. The door to the secretary office gleams at us in the dark and Astrid makes a motion for us to slow down as we creep up to it.

"Stay back," Astrid warns as she reaches for the doorknob.

She hesitates for a brief second before she flings the door open, one hand twisting the knob and pushing the door while the other brings up her wand to point it inside. An older man is sitting at the desk, his dark hair peppered with gray as he looks at us over a set of thick-rimmed glasses.

He's sitting unnaturally still, like he's been paused as he looks right at us, but doesn't appear to see or notice us.

"I have questions for you, will you answer them?" Astrid asks as she keeps the wand trained on the man.

The man nods before he speaks, his eyes still glazed and focused on a distant point, "Yes."

"Did you murder Finn Delacroix?" Astrid begins and I hold my breath as I wait for an answer as the door shuts behind us.

"No."

"Were you working the night that Finn was murdered?"

"Yes," his voice cracks, like there's emotion in his voice but his face remains the same as his dark eyes tick back and forth.

"Why didn't you call Kara's parents?"

"I was...I was told not to call anyone," he says as he stares right through us, his eyes glassy.

"But you knew that it was wrong not to call," Astrid pries and he nods, the motion jerky and unnatural.

"Yes, yes of course, but I couldn't...I couldn't pick up the phone, something was wrong," he murmurs.

"They cast a persuasion spell on him," Astrid says in a low voice to us, "they may have also wiped his memory." She clears her throat before she speaks to him again, "Who told you not to call?"

"I don't remember," he rasps.

"See?" Astrid points out.

"Okay, so he's not involved, but he did have a spell cast on him," Tessa says as the doorknob suddenly rattles behind us.

In a flash, Astrid has her wand put away and Mr. Ivie's face has reverted back to normal as he starts to type at his computer. The door creaks open then as a balding, heavy-set security guard tromps into the office.

"Thank you so much for transferring me out of that dreaded statistics course," Astrid says a bit too loudly as the guard pauses in the doorway and eyes her.

"It's no trouble, Ms. Hallewell, I was a student myself once," Mr. Ivie chuckles as the printer ejects a sheet of paper and he passes it to her, "I just need your signature."

"Of course," Astrid giggles as she takes a pen and scrawls her signature on some sort of form as I exchange a puzzled look with Tessa.

How did she manage to put a spell in place so quickly?

"It's lights out," the guard interrupts, his voice gruff from where he stands behind us.

"Yes, it is," Mr. Ivie notes amusedly, "but this young lady had asked for my help earlier and I obliged."

"So she had to bring all of her friends with her?" the guard asks as he glances at Tessa and I.

I swallow nervously as the man eyes me and I can almost feel like he's reading my mind and will know the truth as I look away.

"It's quite unsafe to go out alone lately, don't you think?" Astrid asks and turns around to tilt her head innocently as she looks the guard in the eye.

The guard nods after a second before he points toward the door, "I'm still going to have to ask you to return to your dorm."

"Of course," Tessa says quickly before she looks to us, "let's go, guys."

In a flash, she's slipped out the door and we're quickly making our way back to our room, though it's only after we've made it upstairs and finally closed and locked the door that any of us speak again.

"So Mr. Ivie had a persuasion spell cast on him-," Astrid says, her voice eerie in the darkness of our room before she summons a ball of light in her palms.

"Which makes him innocent," I reply.

"I'm crossing him off the list," Tessa announces as she grabs a sheet of paper from her dresser and scrawls across it.

"Yes, he's innocent," Astrid says as her eyes narrow, "but I have a bad feeling about that security guard," she murmurs as the light in her hand casts dark circles under her eyes as she frowns.