“You don’t have to say anything. I’ll do my own explaining, thanks. Put me in touch with the Queen of Hearts. I can answer for myself.” The image of the girl from the carnival came to mind.
Haley collapsed back onto the couch with a great groan. “You know that’s not going to happen.”
“All I need is her number. I’ll text her from my burner and that will be the end of it. Unless you think she’d prefer a handwritten apology. I do have an engraved stationery set that I got for my birthday that I have been dying to use.”
“You’re so funny,” Haley deadpanned. “Just tell me what happened. No more messing around. If you’ve done any damage, we need to get it under control.”
I filled Haley in on Matthew. How I followed him around for days, and that something just wasn’t adding up. It didn’t make sense that Matthew would want to hurt Gideon, and I needed to figure out why before I could take any steps to undo his request.
“When I saw him at the coffee shop, I didn’t think about the ramifications. I just wanted to talk to him. I wasn’t going in there to blow the lid off anything.”
Haley cut through my argument and went right for the kill. “But you did. You told him who you are. You did the one thing that could endanger everyone.”
I looked away. “I never told Matthew that I was part of the Red Court. Not exactly. If he was questioned, all he could say was that I advised him against making big decisions when he was emotionally distressed.”
Haley sat with her arms folded across her chest and her legs crossed. The only way her body language could have been more closed off was if she shut her eyes.
“It’s not like we still don’t have Matthew.” It was time to woo Haley with cold logic. “He made a request, which we will have forever. He still asked us for something, and we could use that if we had to.” If they ever called on Matthew, I’d find a way to help him, too.
The whoosh of the HVAC was the only sound for a few long moments. “You’re on probation.”
“That’s it? You don’t need to discuss this with anyone else first?” It was too much to hope for that Haley would lead me to the Queen of Hearts herself.
“No one else needs to know. You’re right, we have Matthew on the hook if we ever need him. This stays between us.”
“Wow, I’m surprised. I thought there’d be some big tribunal with torches and cloaks where you’d get me to confess all my deepest secrets.”
“Is there something else you should tell me?” A glimmer of suspicion flashed in Haley’s narrowed eyes.
I met it with a sweet, repentant smile cutting across my face. “No, ma’am. Cross my heart.”
And hope to die.
“Fine. We have another job to do. It’s complicated.”
Another job meant the possibility of earning Haley’s trust back and perhaps another favor from the Queen of Hearts. I could devise something to get her personally involved this time.
“As long as it’s not Gideon, you have my full attention. Let me prove how committed I am.”
“This isn’t something you’ll be doing by yourself. Every step of this, we do together. Clear? Probation means that you don’t so much as blink without asking me first.”
“Sir, yes, sir.” I gave her a mock salute.
She rubbed her temples like she had a headache that pounded in time with the rhythm of my name. Em-ber, Em-ber, Em-ber.
“We have to take out a faculty member—get them fired—which is never very clean.”
“Faculty? I’ve never heard of the Red Court taking on something that big.”
“We’ve never done it in all the years I’ve been a member. We don’t often take requests for hits on faculty or staff. If we catered to the whim of every angry student with a chip on their shoulder, there’d be no one left to teach. But we have to.”
“Why?” This seemed like a question someone should have asked by now. Why did we have to do anything we didn’t want to? Why not focus on accepting jobs for people who really deserved what they got, like Alec?
“It’s a big enough ask that I wanted to know why we’re taking it on, too,” Haley said. “One of the Red Court requested this as her favor.”
I didn’t have a response for that. Haley had told me that no one had ever been denied their one big ask before.
“Here.” She handed me the folder and I flipped it open.
My stomach bottomed out. It was Gigi’s mom, Mrs. Martin. This couldn’t be happening. My fingers seemed to stop working and the folder fell from my loose grip.
Gigi’s mom. I was going to get Gigi’s mom fired. My brain was overloading.
“Mrs. Martin. This is major, Haley. This is her career, her life.”
Haley regarded me coolly. “You didn’t seem to have any problem going after Alec and threatening to ruin his relationship with his fiancée. How is this any different?” She bent down and compiled all the pages neatly back into the folder.
Because Alec was a jerk and Mrs. Martin wasn’t. Who would want to hurt Mrs. Martin, anyway? She was voted “Best Teacher” by last year’s seniors and she wasn’t even a teacher. I felt ill.
“I know Gigi Martin. She’s my...my friend. Alec, Gideon, and now Gigi’s mom. Doesn’t it seem weird to you that I know all of these people? These feel personal, Haley, like they were created to make me suffer.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Haley was looking pointedly at me. “We’ve all had to do things we didn’t like.”
“That is not my problem, I promise.”
Haley placed the folder back in her bag, pulled a tablet out, and started tapping on the screen, just like this was any other job. “One good thing about this job is that we don’t have to do any of the planning. Everything has been laid out for us.”
I dropped onto the couch next to Haley and caught my head between my hands.
“We got a tip on the Whisper Wire that Mrs. Martin was having an affair with that physics teacher, Mr. Hall. All we need to do is get proof and send it out.”
Gigi’s parents were married. Maybe Mrs. Martin wasn’t that innocent. I remembered the takedown in the hallway and the broken girl caught up in the mix of her ex-boyfriend’s drama. My mind replaced her with Gigi and I cringed.
Haley continued, “Apparently, they have a usual spot at school.” Her upper lip curled in disgust. “That’s gross. We need to be in place on Monday afternoon for photos.”
Two days. That wasn’t enough time for me to stop this or dethrone the Queen of Hearts. It had taken me almost a week to untangle Gideon’s takedown. How could I even begin to undermine the work with Haley breathing down my neck because of my “probation”?