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She didn’t need Fenway to show her the way. But neither was she ready to give away that she had been a student here herself. No doubt Joanne and Ruth—if they actually remembered her—would reveal that little nugget soon enough. Plus, making Orla chase her had a purpose. Perhaps a nefarious one, but a purpose nonetheless. Showing this gossipmonger who the new boss is was worth listening to Fenway huff and puff beside her.

It gave Magdalene a dark frisson of pleasure. A miniscule one, granted, but it gratified her nonetheless that she could pay this woman back a little, a tiny sliver, for her earlier vitriol.

Enjoying the clacking of her heels on the alternating wooden and marble floors, she sped up a bit, lengthening her stride for the sake of being a touch mean.

A few turns and another floor later, Fenway finally stopped and doubled over, dropping her hands to her thighs, breathing hard.

Magdalene halted too, a couple of steps away, watching the older woman breathe and groan. She hoped her face gave away nothing, but her tether was getting shorter by the minute.

“Running is a bit different from running one’s mouth, isn’t it, Doctor Fenway?” Magdalene lowered her voice and sneered with enough contempt to make her intentions abundantly clear. She would not tolerate insubordination and gossip.

There was another groan, one Fenway didn’t bother trying to disguise, and then a pair of tired, red-rimmed, blue eyes peeked at Magdalene from under matted hair.

“If you don’t want to hear people badmouthing you, you shouldn’t hide and listen through doors.”

Magdalene pursed her lips. Some people didn’t know when to stop digging their own grave. Who was she to prevent them?

“I wasn’t. The doors were open. I have ears. I stood there for over ten minutes, in plain view—not that anyone cared enough to turn—waiting for someone to notice me, or for an opportune moment for me to finally break through the onslaught of gossip and be able to interrupt you.”

“Now you’re just splitting hairs, Nox. But…” Fenway’s voice faltered slightly. “I do apologize. I have no idea who you are outside of the rumors and newspaper articles about you. And you do have a reputation.”

“Ah, the perfect non-apology apology. ‘I lied viciously about you, but it’s your own fault.’ Spare me, Doctor Fenway. Now if you could show me to the Headmistress’ office and start packing?”

“Look, Nox—”

Yeah, okay.

Fenway really didn’t know when to let go of that shovel and seemed to think she still had some kind of power around here.

Well, so be it then.

“No, you look. I have been on the premises for less than half an hour, and you have already started disparaging my character, insinuating that I got this job because of my connections, rallying the faculty against me sight unseen. Have I missed anything? Now, my office? Preferably sometime before the trustees arrive?”

She realized both her voice and face were be cold enough to snap a bone. Any other time, with any other person, Magdalene might have been kinder. After all, the woman had just been forced to relinquish her life’s work, according to Magdalene’s sources.

Moreover, one did catch more flies with honey. But the realization that, yet again, she was a pariah in this building, an ‘other’ to be combated, to protect the school from, to ultimately be cast out, cut her deeper.

Magdalene was also aware that she was giving Fenway and her cronies too much power. Their opinion shouldn’t matter. What they thought of her, what they did. She’d fired the lot of them, after all. A stray thought about wounded, burning gray eyes intruded, and she hastily shoved it aside. Sam was a regret for later.

Finally, Magdalene’s words seemed to snap Fenway out of her stupor, and she appeared to gather enough stamina, and perhaps dignity, to lead her down the hallway in the direction of the Headmistress’ office.

Magdalene wasn’t sure exactly what she’d expected to find when they arrived, but the macrame-infested, stale-food-smelling disaster more reminiscent of a hoarder’s den than an actual space in an educational institution was not it.

She desperately tried not to touch anything, nor to lean on anything, even as her shoes squelched on the floor when she walked on what looked like spilled coffee. Obviously with enough sugar in it to have insects and Louboutins alike stick to it.

Chaos reigned everywhere. Chaos and rot. And wasn’t that emblematic of the place?

Belatedly, she realized she was being spoken to, but as she slowly positioned herself behind the cluttered desk—there were seven dirty mugs and what looked like a half-eaten donut—she finally allowed her eyes to wander back to Fenway.

The woman who’d had a rather ruddy color as they’d sprinted through the corridors was now a distinct shade of fuchsia. She glared at Magdalene, either unperturbed by the mess, or defiant.

“You think you know everything? Well, this school will prove you wrong. You know nothing, thinking you are so superior to all of us. I know what you’re doing, Nox.”

Magdalene felt the distinct urge to open a window. The smell was making her queasy. And whatever Fenway had been imbibing earlier clearly had gone to her head.

“What am I doing? Well, I’m trying not to gag, Doctor Fenway. And I’m also trying to figure out whether I will have any money in the already stretched budget to hire a crew to shovel out this mess.”

“I will lodge a protest against this overreach! This is preposterous!”