THIRTY-THREE

DON’T MAKE ME RIP THAT paper out of your hands, Foster,” Keefe told her, and Sophie blinked, wondering how long she’d been staring at the horrifying photograph. “I’ll do it,” Keefe warned. “I won’t like it, but I’ll do it.”

“You’ll try,” Sandor corrected. “And you won’t like what happens—but I’ll enjoy it immensely.”

“Hmm, that’s a tricky dilemma,” Ro noted. “It would be fun to watch my boy get goblin-clobbered. But I’m supposed to protect him—and if I do, then I get to clobber a goblin, so… decisions, decisions.” She held her hands out on each side of her, dipping them up and down like a shifting scale.

“No one’s clobbering anyone,” Sophie told them, taking a cautious step toward Keefe, trying to figure out the best way to guide him through this latest nightmare.

He’d had his world ripped out from under him so many times already.…

But maybe that would make this easier.

“You know what I’m going to show you,” she said carefully. “You guessed it from the beginning.”

Keefe swallowed hard. “My mom?”

Sophie nodded.

His knees wobbled hard, and Sophie rushed to steady him—until she realized…

“It’s fine,” Fitz said when she glanced over her shoulder, hoping he couldn’t tell that she’d momentarily forgotten he was there.

Keefe’s going to need you right now, he transmitted.

He’s going to need both of us, Sophie corrected.

Maybe, he conceded. But you’re better at this part.

Sophie wasn’t so sure about that—but she closed the distance between her and Keefe, keeping the photo pressed against her chest as she wrapped an arm around Keefe’s shoulders.

“Show me,” he told her—the words more of a plea than a command.

Sophie pulled him as close as she could and held up the photo.

Keefe sank to the grass, no longer able to stay standing, and Sophie sank down next to him, keeping the photo where he could see it.

And he stared.

And stared.

And stared.

Ro peeked over Keefe’s shoulder. “Wow. Leave it to Mommy Dearest to make Lord Jerkypants seem like the good parent.”

“She really did kill the guy,” Keefe whispered. “And his daughter—what was she, ten?”

“Yeah,” Sophie murmured, glad the obituary hadn’t included a photo.

“I mean… I knew it,” Keefe said, mostly to himself. “But that’s different than knowing it, you know?”

Sophie bit her lip, trying to decide if what she wanted to say would make things better or worse.

Focusing on truth and facts seemed like it had to be the best way to go, though, so she reminded him, “Technically we still don’t know that she killed them. I know coincidences are hard to believe, but they do happen. It is possible that she went and visited the guy, and then a few hours later he got hit by a bus—or that he got hit by the bus before their meeting and she was trying to figure out what happened.”

“That photo is from after the accident,” Mr. Forkle chimed in. “It has a time stamp.”

Sophie’s eyes took a second to find the string of tiny white numbers hidden in the corner, and if she was reading the time stamp correctly, then Lady Gisela had been standing in front of Big Ben at 8:14 p.m.

The obituary said the accident happened at 7:09 p.m.

“Does anyone know how close Big Ben is to the British Library?” Sophie asked, realizing how silly the question was as soon as she’d said it.

She was talking to elves, goblins, and an ogre.

And yet, Mr. Forkle told her, “I looked it up on the map before I left my office. It takes an average of fifty minutes to walk from one to the other—and significantly less time if one takes something they call ‘the Tube.’ ”

“That’s their underground train system,” Sophie said, because that was so much easier to think about than the fact that Lady Gisela definitely would’ve had enough time to kill Ethan Benedict Wright II and Eleanor Olivia Wright, and then walk—or ride the Tube—over to Big Ben for a little sightseeing before she left.

“See?” Keefe asked, obviously picking up on her mood shift. “She killed them.”

It was looking more and more that way.

But…

“We still haven’t technically proven anything,” she had to point out. “If this was a human murder trial and the only evidence the prosecution had was this photograph, there’d be plenty of reasonable doubt. It shows your mom nowhere near the scene of the accident—and I’m guessing she’s not in the accident footage, either, otherwise Mr. Forkle would’ve brought that.”

She glanced at Mr. Forkle to verify.

“Actually, there is no footage of the accident,” he informed them.

“None?” Fitz asked.

Mr. Forkle shook his head. “As I said, the system at Watchward Heath is unprecedented. But it’s not without its gaps.”

“Well… that’s… convenient,” Fitz said slowly. “So the accident just happened to take place in one of the rare gaps in the Black Swan’s surveillance? Nobody else thinks that’s odd?”

“Oh, I think it’s very odd,” Mr. Forkle told him.

“And I think it proves my mom did it,” Keefe added with a hollow sort of authority. “Come on, Foster, even you have to admit that’s one too many coincidences.”

Sophie sighed. “I just… I wish I understood why she would do something like that.”

“Because she’s a creepy psychopath!” Keefe crumpled the photo and flung it as far as he could—which wasn’t all that far thanks to the wind.

“Keefe,” Sophie called as he stood and stalked to the fence of the nearest pasture. But he ignored her, leaning against the rails with his back to everyone.

“Give him a minute,” Mr. Forkle told Fitz when he moved to follow.

Sophie sighed again and used her telekinesis to retrieve the crumpled photo, laying it flat on the grass to try to smooth out the wrinkles.

“What do you think she’s looking at?” Fitz asked as he squatted beside her.

“I don’t know—does it matter?” Sophie wondered. “She’s on a busy city street. She’s probably trying to avoid a car or a pedestrian or something.”

“But she’s not moving,” Fitz said. “See? Her feet are planted. And her head is turned to her right, her eyes focused on something taller than she is.”

He traced Lady Gisela’s invisible eyeline across the photo, following it up and off the paper, to some point beyond the frame.

“Well… maybe there’s another building over there?” Sophie guessed. “Or a billboard?”

“What do you think she’s looking at?” Mr. Forkle asked when Fitz frowned.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, squinting at the photo and tilting his head. “I guess it’s not important.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Mr. Forkle corrected. “Do you know that for the entire five minutes and forty-three seconds of footage that I have of Lady Gisela standing there, she doesn’t look away from that spot once? Even when the wind blew back her hood—which is the moment I captured for this still shot—her eyes remain trained on that single point.”