Page 114 of Malcroix Bones Academy

I opened my mouth, but he cut me off.

“It’s complicated, Shadow. Tracing curses is a nightmare at the best of times. If a curse is older than a few centuries, unregistered, and buried under a dozen generations of use, without any trail of origin, it’s near-impossible. They’re ghosts.”

“So likely a family curse, then,” I muttered. “And old. And that’s unusual, I take it? Someone pulling out an old, unregistered curse to kill someone?”

The seriousness in his eyes bewildered me all over again.

It was like talking to a completely different person.

“The use of a familial curse isn’tthatstrange, in and of itself,” he said. “Especially given who was likely behindthesedeaths. Everything about this points to Dark Cathedral, and their membership skews heavily towards the oldest families in Magique… the ones most likely to hide behind ancient murder curses.”

His eyes returned to the pages in front of him.

“But the fact I’ve not even foundrumorsof this exact spell is strange,” he admitted. “I’ve looked through the records, everything they’ve got in the library here, and nothing fits. I even wondered if the Praecuri deliberately mis-described the curse and what it does, to make tracing it harder. But, frankly, what they describe is what I remember, too?”

Seeming to realize what he was saying, he stopped. When he went on, his voice was more subdued.

“You’ll have to tell me if the same is true for you,” he said.

I felt my hands grow cold.

When I opened my mouth, he spoke before I could.

“Either way,” he said, brusque. “Barring the possibility of tampering by the Praecuri, I’m guessing our murderer isn’t one of the obvious culprits. They could still be involved, of course?”

“Obvious culprits?” I asked. “Who would those be?”

His smile grew a harder edge.

“You mean besides my family?” he asked dryly. “The Greythornes. The Warringtons. The Exegers. The Voltaires. The Bloodstones. The Fortunas. There are others.” His eyebrow lifted. “A hundred years ago, I would’ve added the La Feys to that list. But their orientation changed around the time your great-great-grandfather had a falling out with mine.”

At what was probably a stunned look from me, he shrugged.

“There’s a whole list of families who’ve widely been known to harbor certain views about Overworlders,” he said. “It’s the worst-kept secret in Magique. That list is significantly longer than the one I just gave you, incidentally.”

I frowned. “You’re telling me your own family are suspects? And Alaric’s?”

His mouth hardened. “Of course my family are suspects.”

Before I could react to that, he stopped suddenly, and turned.

“Wait…Alaric’s?”His gold eyes grew a harder scrutiny. “You know Greythorne?”

When I didn’t say anything, his jaw hardened.

“Howdo you know him?” His eyes slid out of focus.

After barely a second, I let out a low scoff. “Please stop trying to read my mind. I can feel it now when you do that, and it’s really obnoxious.”

“Do you know Alec?” he demanded. “Or not?”

I fought with how to answer that.

Alaric already told me Caelum was the reason he’d gone out of his way to avoid me for the past month. He’d also made it clear Caelum wouldn’t like it that we were friends. While I thought it utterly ridiculous on one level, to cater to Bones and his nonsense, another part of me hesitated on the possibility of causing problems between them.

Maybe, selfishly, I didn’t want to lose Alaric again.

“Youarefriends.” That time, he didn’t word it as a question.