And Veronica had walked right into the trap.

  She poured the potion into the bottle cap and into the glass with trembling hands. She filled it with water and gave it to him.

  He drank, while everyone in the room watched him. When he finished, he pulled a face and set the glass back on the table.

  They waited.

  You could cut the silence in the room with a knife.

  “Tell me about the day that the spellbook went missing,” Veronica said, keeping her voice as neutral as possible.

  He took a deep breath, his nostrils flaring. “Those rotten kids. The twins. You know which ones I’m talking about. They failed their tests fair and square, and I could prove it, and yet this woman tells me I have to pass them. Why, I ask. She says because they’re good kids. They don’t deserve to repeat a class. And I say, anyone who doesn’t measure up should repeat a class. No matter if their parents are on the council or not. No matter if they’re the mayor’s dearest cousins. If you can’t even complete a simple spell, you should repeat the class. No, the woman says, I’m sure you are being too harsh on them.”

  He glared at Mrs. Everhart, his nostrils flaring.

  “And then there’s the little kid, who can’t string together two correctly spelled words, I’m supposed to pass him, too? I tell you what’s going on here: money. It’s all about important families and their status in town. Well, I’ll tell you what: I’m not playing that game. If the kid doesn’t pass the exam, he fails!”

  He brought his fist down on the table with such force that the glass jumped and the potion sloshed inside the bottle.

  “Please, Mr. Stone, tell us about what happened that morning,” Veronica said.

  “That’s what happened that morning. I got told, you will pass these students because we want them to pass. And then this birdbrain comes into my classroom…”

  He stared at Veronica, perhaps realising that he was looking at the “birdbrain” in question.

  He snorted and wiped his face.

  Mrs. Everhart said, “Fabricius, I think that’s enough.”

  “Too right, it’s enough! Too right!”

  She got up, took his arm, and dragged him up.

  He continued to rant about being told not to fail students while she pulled him to the next room, and even after the door had shut.

  Well. That was embarrassing.

  “Who’s next?” said Mrs. Everhart after shutting the door.

  One of the junior teachers began, “I’m not sure this is such a good⁠—”

  “We’ll complete it,” Mrs. Everhart said, looking at Veronica, who would also much rather have stopped.

  Mr. Stone was still shouting in the next room.

  Mrs. Everhart banged her fist on the door. “Shut up, Fabricius.”

  “Bootlicker!” he yelled back at her.

  Mrs. Everhart snorted. “Veronica, who’s next?”

  Veronica took a deep breath. “Mr. Bloom. He has a class to teach soon.”

  Although she felt she had lost control over her carefully prepared arguments for her interview order. This was not at all going to plan.

  While Jasper got up, Mr. Stone opened the door to the room.

  “Fabricius, take a while to cool down,” Mrs. Everhart said.

  “I have a class to teach.”

  “There is no need for you to walk through this room again. Use the door on the other side.”

  Mr. Stone turned around and left, leaving the door open. They could hear the door on the other side of the room open with a creak, and then slam.

  “You should have told him to wait until the potion has stopped working.” Mrs. Everhart looked at Veronica.

  “He wouldn’t have listened.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Mrs. Everhart went to shut the open door, but Barnaby asked, “Can I go, too?”

  “Are you still here? Yes, Barnaby, you can go.”

  Veronica poured the potion for Jasper and mixed it with water. She couldn’t bear to meet his eyes as she passed the glass to him.

  He drank, pulling a face.

  Veronica said, “Please tell us, Mr. Bloom, what you remember about the key and the spellcraft tower.”

  At first Jasper said nothing.

  Veronica waited and watched, her heart thudding. What would she tell her parents if it turned out he had taken the book?

  Then he jumped off the chair and dropped to his knees with such force that he slid across the wooden floor towards her. He held out his hands to her. “Veronica!”

  Veronica pushed herself from her seat, stumbling back.

  “Veronica, take my hand!”

  He crawled to the front of the chair, and Veronica jumped behind it so that the chair was between them. What in heaven’s name was wrong with him?

  “Veronica, accept my hand. I cannot imagine life without you. Your green eyes, your chestnut hair, your whip-smart comments. I don’t want a noble wife. I don’t care about money. I only want you.”

  Veronica took a step back, mortified.

  “Please, Mr. Bloom… can we leave this discussion for later? Can you tell me about the day the spellbook went missing?”

  “The day I sent my proposal! I have no need for a spellbook. If I can’t make you see how much I adore you, doing it with a spell would be a betrayal of my proposal. I don’t want to bewitch you in any other way than the way you bewitched me: by being the smartest, most beautiful woman ever.”

  “Well… uhm… the spellbook was in the tower that morning.”

  “I don’t care about the spellbook. I was teaching. I didn’t see anything. My classroom is on the other side of the building. I only care about you.”

  “Please, Mr. Bloom.” Veronica’s ears glowed. Everyone was looking at her. She wanted to tie his mouth with his fancy jacket and drag him out of the room.

  Imagine the gossip this would cause.

  But he wouldn’t be quiet, and he wouldn’t listen.

  Eventually two male teachers grabbed him by the arms and dragged him into the room nextdoor, while he was still calling out his admiration for Veronica.

  Well, that was embarrassing, but also, he had to be joking.

  No, wait.

  Mr. Fairweather had made a truth potion. It meant that he was telling the truth.

  So Jasper had revealed that her suspicions of him had been wrong, while Mr. Stone had a motive to remove the spellbook.

  She couldn’t say that these facts improved matters. Not at all.

  Chapter Twelve

  It took a while for Jasper to calm down.

  Veronica distracted herself by interviewing the other spellcraft teachers. In those interviews, she learned embarrassing things about the relationships of the teachers with each other, about the students they taught, and what they thought about Mrs. Everhart. It wasn’t all good. The words busybody and know-it-all featured quite a bit. But she learned nothing new about the spellbook.

  The only people who remained serious suspects were Barnaby and Mr. Fairweather. She couldn’t begin to entertain the thought of suspecting Mr. Fairweather. No, that was impossible. If he was the kind of person to steal things, he’d had more than fifty years in which he could do it, and there was no way you could keep stealing things for more than fifty years and never be found out.

  But then who had done it?

  When everyone was gone, Mrs. Everhart came to her.

  “I hope you got some use out of this charade, Miss Mayflower.” Her voice was prim.

  “I think so.”

  “I’m sure our teachers don’t like embarrassing themselves. They don’t like to see others embarrass themselves. You had better apologise to the ones who don’t remain suspects. Why didn’t you just test Barnaby?”

  “I did. He was the first one. I interviewed him before you came. He didn’t touch the spellbook.”

  “Did you ask him directly?”

  “I followed instructions from Mr. Fairweather. He said not to put words in people’s mouths, because extra pressure to confess might cause the subject to make up facts. He told me the truth potion compels people to reply. Replying with the truth is a secondary result.”

  “I know what a truth potion is.”

  “Then why are you asking me why I didn’t put pressure on Barnaby?”

  Mrs. Everhart glared at Veronica, who felt ever more insecure, but she ploughed on.

  “Mr. Fairweather told me to ask them vague questions so that they would volunteer the information they found important. Wouldn’t he have mentioned the spellbook if he’d taken it?” Why did she keep suspecting Barnaby had something to do with it?

  If anything, Veronica now began to doubt Mrs. Everhart’s motives. Maybe she had “misplaced” the spellbook in order to get rid of Barnaby and was now frustrated that Veronica wouldn’t play the game.

  Maybe even Veronica’s job was in danger. Then she would have to marry Jasper and suffer the embarrassment of having heard and seen what he said to her.

  She had to assume, since no one had asked Jasper about his feelings for her, that he was genuine. But it was rather strange for him to be so attracted to her. Since she started at the school, he’d had plenty of opportunity to start a conversation, and yet he had not done that.

  “So, since this exercise was fruitless, what are you going to do now?” Mrs. Everhart asked.

  “I have some ideas. I’ll go over my notes.”

  But those ideas involved nothing except having to apologise to Jasper and having to ask Mr. Fairweather some questions.

  She didn’t know which of those tasks terrified her more.

  Veronica was never one to leave difficult tasks for the next day. At the Academy, fellow students would poke fun at her for being a try-hard, but she just liked to work that way.

  She saw other students put off difficult tasks, and put them off until they became so big that they became insurmountable. And then it was her turn to laugh.

  So once she had checked on her class—they were doing quite well with the student teacher—she went to Mr. Fairweather’s potions lab.

  He had just finished with a class of students, and most of them were making their way out of the classroom, carrying bags. A couple of girls were still cleaning up mess from one of the benches, while a group of boys were laughing at them. Apparently, the girls had done something wrong, and the potion had blown up in their face, which the boys thought hilarious.

  The dress of one of the girls was all wet down the front, and little leaves were growing from the fabric.

  Veronica knew the experiment. She had learned to make the growing potion at the Academy. She was surprised that these young students were taught this quite advanced magic. By all accounts, he was a good teacher, even if he was also very old and terrifying.

  Mr. Fairweather sat behind his desk, writing in a large book.

  The moment he looked up and saw her in the doorway, Veronica knew that he had expected her to come.

  “Yes, how can I help you know Miss Mayflower,” he said.

  “I am investigating the disappearance of the spellbook.”

  “Tell me about it. Have you finished tormenting the teachers? I heard it turned into quite the spectacle that even the principal was too weak to stop.”

  That made for an inviting start to the discussion.

  Veronica ploughed on. “When I came to ask for the potion you said something that made me think. I didn’t want to ask you to take your own potion so I’m asking you in private. I need to have the answers so I can report to the school board and later to the mayor, if it turns out we can’t locate the spellbook.”

  He made a snorting noise, and gestured at the door.

  She followed him into the corridor and into the staffroom that was empty at this time of day when students and teachers had gone home.

  “During our talk, you said something to the extent that the mayor and the council would not recognise the spellbook and therefore we could just replace it with a different book.”

  “Yes. That’s because these people are stupid and they’re ignorant about all things to do with magic. They just want to show everyone the magic book that will give them magic powers and somehow the council year will be fruitful or something. It’s superstition all the way. Pomp and ceremony. They know nothing. The book is just a gimmick. Anyone involved with magic should know that.”

  He glared at her as if challenging her to disagree.

  “In all my interviews about this subject with people who took the potion, I’ve not heard anyone make a suggestion like that, so I was intrigued by the thought of replacing the spellbook. Why would you do that other than if you have misplaced the original one?”

  He looked at her sideways, and on his face, Veronica could see that he started to realise how she interpreted the meaning of his words.

  “Hang on. You’re not saying that you think I stole the spellbook?”

  “I’m not insinuating that at all. But I need to look at all the options.”

  “In other words, you are.”

  “Only for as long as I definitely can’t rule it out.”

  He pressed his lips together, obviously not impressed with the turn of events. He thought for a while. Then he said, “It is utterly ridiculous to suggest that I had anything to do with the book’s disappearance. In the first place, I helped put the book together, and I know all the things that are in it, so I have no need for the content. In the second place, I was visiting the city for a gathering that day in my capacity as the head of the potions department. You can check this with the principal. I don’t take kindly to being accused of being a thief, but if that is the way you want to go, sadly, that is the modern state of affairs. I can prove that it would be impossible for me to have been responsible.”

  “Thank you. That is all I wanted to know.”

  He snorted.

  Veronica backed out of the room before he could subject her to additional verbal roasting.

  Her next stop was one she dreaded even more, the principal’s office. Fortunately, the secretary informed her that the principal had gone out early for the day. Whether or not that had anything to do with Veronica’s questioning, she did not elaborate, and Veronica was not keen to ask.

  She asked the secretary to see the book in which she recorded the movement of teachers. She found that it was true that Mr. Fairweather had been in the city that afternoon, and what was more, she found that the principal had left school early on that day, and could never have removed the spellbook herself to make it look like Barnaby had taken it.

  The question of why she was so keen for Barnaby to take the blame remained. Maybe because she was small-minded and couldn’t imagine any of the teachers having done it? Veronica understood that Mrs. Everhart was a spellcraft teacher before she became principal, so maybe it was out of the sense of defending her fellow teachers.

  Veronica was exhausted from this very eventful day, and hadn’t come one step closer to solving the problem of the whereabouts of the spellbook. But it was time to go home, or she’d be late for dinner, and would cop her parents’ displeasure as well.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Hey, you look like you’re feeling down,” a male voice said.

  Veronica gasped and turned around in the street. She’d come out of the school gates, walked in between the school’s herb plots and animal barn and was just about to turn right to walk to her family’s farm.

  It was Jasper. How long had he been walking behind her? Had he waited until she left so he could follow her?

  She stopped along the road to let him catch up with her.

  “Hi.” And then she didn’t know what to say. This was awkward.

  Veronica started, “Look, I…”

  At the same time, he said, “I have to…”

  And they both stopped. He looked as awkward and red-cheeked as she felt. They remained silent as a teacher from the calculus department walked past, raising his eyebrows.

  Had he heard about Jasper getting down on his knees, declaring his love in front of all the other teachers?

  Veronica said, “I’m sorry that I…”

  And Jasper said at the same time, “I want to make…”

  And then they stopped again.

  Veronica raised her hand to her mouth and giggled. This was so stupid.

  “I’ll take you out for tea,” Jasper said.

  “You don’t need to do that.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “But this was my fault. If I hadn’t given you the potion…”

  “But you had to, because you need to find out who took the spellbook, and all teachers in the spellcraft department have access to the key. I understand that. I want to make up for being a burden.”

  “You’re not a burden.”

  “My mother says so. She says I’m too shy and I should take you out and buy you dinner.”

  “Only if you want to.”

  “I do want to.”

  “All right. But not tonight. My parents are already waiting for me. They worry if I don’t come home on time.”

  “Yeah. I have parents like that.”

  Veronica cringed at his tone of innocence. No, she had given all spellcraft teachers the potion because she suspected him of having removed the book to try spells on her and instead had discovered that he’d been infatuated with her since she started at the school. She didn’t even know him well enough to have an opinion about whether she should worry or be happy about this. He seemed painfully shy.

  But he was all right, and she had been quite dishonourable to him.

  “Would you really like to marry me?”

  “I’m sorry about that meeting with my parents. They’re very oldfashioned. My mother wants me to get married, and this is the only way she knows how to make that happen. She’s not happy about what she calls the modern way and…” He shrugged. “My parents aren’t happy about my choice either, but I don’t like any of the girls they propose.”

  “You’re not answering the question. I asked: would you really like to marry me?”

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8