Joan the Made (Throwbacks Series, Book 1)

Chapter 32

The next few nights are uneventful. The headmaster stays in his office late and then walks home. Harriet, Sun, Marie, and I decide to follow the headmaster in pairs, so that one of us can run for help if anything goes wrong. Marie is with me tonight, and by the way her eyes dart around the darkened street, I can tell that she's praying for an uneventful night.

I have the opposite wish. My desire to take down the headmaster has only grown after he almost threw Justus in jail. Never mind the information Harriet and Justus uncovered about his work with Lexi White. The idea of an alliance between those two makes my stomach twist, and I worry that waiting until Circe Night to confront him is a mistake.

"I hate waiting," Marie confesses.

"It's okay if you want to go back to the dorm."

She steels her jaw. "No way. We're in this together. It just reminds me of the nights me and my mom would sit waiting up for my dad to come home, hoping he'd be sober."

"That's awful."

Her eyes connect with mine. "Sorry. I overshare when I'm nervous."

"It's refreshing to talk to someone with nothing to hide," I say, and I mean it. "My parents were addicts, too."

"Did they hit you, too?"

I pause before responding. "No."

Marie nods and looks away. I reach down and give her hand a brief squeeze, which she returns.

A figure exits the Little Theater, and a glance to the headmaster's window reveals that his lights are turned off.

"He's coming," Marie whispers, though there is no way he can hear us from where we're standing, in the shadow of the dorm building a fair distance from the Little Theater.

Instead of taking his usual route to his penthouse a few blocks away, the headmaster walks in the direction of downtown Seattle. After giving him a good head start, Marie and I follow.

"Maybe we should ask one of the senior students to come with us, like Nic," Marie says, her hands shaking again. "We have no experience spying on powerful people."

Actually, I have some from the past few weeks, but I doubt Marie will find my spotty track record very comforting.

"If we take the time to find someone else, we'll lose his trail."

As we slip through the shadows, dogging the headmaster's steps, Sparkle rounds the corner in her waitress uniform. I whip out my phone to call her and warn her to turn around, but I'm too late. The headmaster yanks her by the arm, and Sparkle stumbles.

"I thought perhaps you were out fucking some boy, but I see the reality is more serious. You're breaking the law by working without a license," he says, his voice ringing in the nearly empty streets.

"You have to understand, sir—" Sparkle begins, but the headmaster smacks her across the face before she can finish her sentence.

Marie releases a surprised yelp, and his head snaps in our direction, trying to see who is watching him. Both of us escaping his notice is impossible, so I shove Marie behind a tall tree and step into the light.

At the last moment, I remember Leo's lesson and adopt a smile that's worthy of my Sweet Lil' Joanie persona. Nonthreatening. Passive. I feel like I'm taming a snake.

"Everything okay here?"

The headmaster fingers the whip on his belt. "Who's with you?"

"I'm alone, sir," I say, as Sparkle spits blood onto the pavement. "Please, my roommate is dressed in a costume for a scene we're rehearsing. It isn't what you think."