Dead King's Sword (Old Draft)

40. When Our Seats are Reversed

Erin

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Two days after Mitzy went rogue, abducted Princess Anne, and nearly killed Zeren, I was summoned to the principal's office. There, I met a royal detective named Lazaran. He was a tall, neat man dressed in a long olive robe with swept-back white hair and a thin, curling mustache. His eyes, dark brown, seemed to register everything at once.

When you saw someone catch fire, the image never quite left you. The bright flames leaping across their body, their screams. You saw it when you closed your eyes. How could Mitzy do that to Zeren?

Detective Lazaran invited me to sit across from him, and I did so. It seemed he had borrowed the principal's office as the small man was nowhere in sight. Lazaran rested his elbows on the hardwood desk and observed me quietly for a minute or so. Though I had done nothing wrong, I felt like I had. He tutted and pressed his pen to his notebook. "Run me through the events of September twenty-three."

He knew something about what had happened from interviews with the princess's guards and the principal himself. He read over his notes as he waited for me to begin.

"I woke up, showered and dressed, then spent most of the day at the market with Zeren."

"Zeren was the one in the grizzly bear costume—the one that caught fire."

I winced, seeing Zeren ablaze. "Yes."

"And you kissed her while disguised as the princess?"

"Yes?"

"Why did the princess allow you to take her place?"

"Well, the three of us got together earlier in the year and formed a detective agency... more or less. Mind you, Zeren and I never made much progress because we weren't very good at it, but behind the scenes, Princess Anne was unburying clues that led her to suspect Mitzy Trent."

Lazaran pinched his bottom lip as he contemplated the matter. "She found opal stones in Mitzy's room. Stones that are commonly used for demon summoning. They are far too expensive for the average student, or the farm boy Mitzy framed, to purchase. Not without help."

I didn't know that someone had been framed but nodded.

"At no point during your investigations did you stop and think that this was a dangerous venture that was better left to the proper authorities?"

"For Zeren and me, the investigation was simply a way of passing time when we didn't have much else to do. We don't have any friends here; we are new, and we didn't bother getting involved in extracurriculars because we had lost our magic, so... I guess we decided to try solving a mystery. We never expected that the people we were investigating would try to kill us."

"But you were pursuing them following the assumption that they killed Sasha and Victoria. If they could kill those two...why not you?"

I thought back to our early days together, our interviews in the library, searching the school grounds for clues, and hanging around popular places to catch a bit of gossip. At no point did it strike me that I might die. "I don't know; I just never thought...." I pressed my hand to my forehead, thinking of Zeren lying in a bed in the nurse's office, wrapped in bandages like a mummy while her burns healed, a feeding tube inserted via her nostrils. If only we had been more careful.

Lazaran smiled sympathetically. "Do you have any idea where Mitzy might have taken Anne?"

"No, sorry."

"You have experience summoning demons yourself?"

"Yes, at a dance last year, I lost control of my magic and summoned some imps by accident."

He nodded. "I believe that's all the questions I have for you, Ms. Williams. You may leave."

***