Jack rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Where else is she supposed to go?” He kept rubbing his nose and then finally his eyes as tears started dripping down his face. “I can’t lose her, Em. She was my lifeline that first year. I really don’t know what I would have done if she hadn’t come along. And now…” He wiped his eyes with his sleeve.
Emmy put her arm around him. “We’ll figure this out. We won’t let her go.” She wished she was as brave as she sounded. She couldn’t imagine life here without Lola, either.
“We should never have let Brynn be on the committee. We should have known he’d do something horrible.” She’d never imagined it would be this horrible, though.
Heat rushed through her body. There was no way she’d let Brynn frame her best friend for something she didn’t do. She whirled around and marched down the hallway and across the grounds with Jack trailing behind her. She flung open the Audrey House door and scanned the common room. Brynn wasn’t there.
She slammed her hand on the Edmund staircase banister and stomped up the first few steps.
“Whoa,” Jack called, “what are you doing?”
“I’m going to find that little weasel.”
“And do what?”
Emmy whipped around. “Force him to tell the truth! That he took that money and planted it in her room.”
“And how are you going to do that?”
Emmy stopped. She had no idea how she’d force Brynn to confess.
Jack ran his hands through his hair. “If you go up there, you’re just going to get in trouble. Brynn will rat you out for being on the boys’ side.”
Emmy crossed her arms and looked away. She didn’t care about getting in trouble right now.
“Look,” Jack said, “nothing you say or do to Brynn is going to get him to tell the truth.”
“Maybe not, but kicking him would sure make me feel better.”
“But it wouldn’t help Lola.”
She sighed. Jack was right. She couldn’t give Brynn even more ways to get them into trouble.
They sat on one of the couches, and Emmy rubbed her legs to try to get them to stop twitching. Maybe when Lola came back, they could go for a run. They’d probably both need it. It was over an hour before Lola came through the door. Her eyes were dry now, but her face was still pale and blotchy.
“Well?” Jack asked quietly.
“Dad’s going to ring an estate agent in King’s Lynn tomorrow,” Lola said dully. “He’ll rent out his flat in Glasgow, and since he works from home, he says it’s not a big deal for him to move down here, at least for now. Hopefully he’ll find a flat right away we can both stay in, and I can start at a state school close by. I’m allowed to stay in my mum’s flat until then.”
It felt like someone kicked Emmy in the gut. Lola’s dad was moving, which meant this was really happening. Unless they could figure out a way to stop it, Lola was going to leave Wellsworth.
* * *
Emmy helped Lola pack her things and move them into her mom’s apartment in the teacher’s housing. Jack came along to help Lola get settled, and by the time they made it back to the house, it was well past curfew. Not that it mattered. Madam Boyd wasn’t about to get mad at them for it.
When she finally got to bed, Emmy tossed around more than she slept. By morning, she felt achy and queasy. She just wanted to curl up and cry. She felt like a zombie in her classes, and Jack didn’t look much better. Sam seemed to be sticking closer to him than usual and trying to make him laugh. It was nice that Jack had a roommate he could depend on.
When the bell sounded at the end of humanities, all Emmy wanted to do was take a nap.
“Miss Willick?” Master Barlowe was standing beside the row she was sitting in. “Do you mind if we have a word?”
Emmy nodded and trudged down the stairs in the giant lecture hall. Barlowe’s desk sat in a corner of the round platform at the bottom of the stairs. He waited at the door until everyone was gone, closed it, and ambled down the staircase.
“I heard about Miss Boyd,” he said. “I’m so sorry, Emmy.”
Emmy nodded again. She was too tired to be angry right now.
“Obviously you believe that she’s innocent?”
“Yes,” she said firmly.
Barlowe put his hands in his pockets and leaned against his desk. “Do you know who the real culprit might—”
“It was Brynn.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
He slowly paced across the platform, his shoes clicking on the old hardwood. “Do you have any idea why he’d want to frame her?”
“Because he hates her,” she said immediately. “He hates all three of us.”
“And you don’t think there might have been another reason?” Barlowe stopped walking and looked at her. “That he might have been doing it on someone else’s instructions?”
Emmy blinked. He was talking about the Order, but why would they come after her now? They couldn’t possibly know what she’d put in that safe-deposit box in London. Could they?
“I don’t have anything they want,” Emmy said. “Besides, the Order doesn’t have any reason to go after Lola.”
Barlowe pressed his lips together. “Sometimes going after a loved one is…more effective.”
Something icy crept up her spine. “I don’t have anything they want,” she repeated, but a little quieter this time.
Barlowe leaned against his desk again and looked at his shoes. “Is it possible that some of the items that you lost…weren’t actually lost?”
Emmy shuffled her feet. Other than Jack and Lola, she hadn’t told a single soul that she still had the medallions, and she wasn’t about to start telling now. “It’s not possible.”
“Have you heard about the Latin Society’s latest project?”
She shook her head.
“They say they found evidence of Roman ruins on the cliffs near the round tower church. They’ve sponsored an archaeological dig to see if there are any remains off-shore.”
“I’m sure anything that went into the sea there is long gone,” she said truthfully. All she’d tossed in there was a cardboard box. That wouldn’t have survived long.
“As it happens, that area was already searched by divers.” Barlowe looked at her. “We didn’t find anything, either.”