Shit!
I glare at them accusingly. "Were you guys eavesdropping on my thoughts?"
It's not eavesdropping when you were gasping your thought out loud.
"Shit." The other gods laugh, and I can only make a face, knowing that the buck stops with me when it comes to guarding my thoughts.
"We apologize for ruining your date plans, little sister," Himeros says gravely. "Did it make you pine for our big brother?"
"Ha. Ha. Ha. Can we please just get back to talking about the hunt?"
Anteros' expression turns grim. "There isn't much else to talk about, unfortunately. None of us were able to track down any individual or place that bears her imprint."
"Is it possible that someone's gotten rid of her imprint in advance?"
Imprints are unlike any human evidence. They are indelible for as long as they exist.
I bite back a sigh, thinking that nothing seems to be going our way. "Is there anything else we can do then?"
There is, little bird...but it will require your participation.
Anteros draws my attention back to the wreckage with a gesture of his hand. "I asked Eros to meet us here when he spoke of your desire to help. I want us to go over the events of that night again. One last time, before we have school maintenance clean this up."
'I knew it' pops in my mind the moment the dark-haired god mentions maintenance. I've always thought those guys seemed a little too professional to just handle dust and broken glass, but knowing that there are guys like them who can "clean" crime scenes up isn't also exactly comforting.
Still, at least those guys are on our side, so that's a good thing. Right?
Anteros calls my attention then, and at his nod, I do my best to recount the events that night with as much detail and accuracy as I can manage. We circle around the wreckage as we talk, and although the sight is upsetting, it also helps jar my memories, and the parts that have gotten fuzzy become clearer again.
While Eros and Erma don't speak much, and Anteros' tough questions are something I've already expected, it's Himeros that ends up surprising me. Himeros with his long blond hair is as ethereal as a god should be, but the usual air of gentle compassion I sense from him disappears the moment we get down to business. Himeros' attention to detail is meticulous, and he asks me to go over the words Cen and I have traded multiple times.
We analyze each and every detail from every angle, but in the end, none of it changes a thing, and I can't even say we're back at square one since we never left square one in the first place.
Just as it was from the start, all we have going for us is the timeline.
On the night Cen tried to kill me (for the second time), I let my guard down. And I did so because she was able to cross the school's property lines without coming to harm.
It's no secret that Rosethorne has magical barriers in place to keep anyone with evil intentions from coming in. But four days ago, Cen was able to do exactly that...as well as kill one more person before taking her own life to curse me.
"Can you tell us how many seconds it took for her to walk past the gates?" Himeros asks.
"I can't say for sure, but maybe...three? Four? Five?"
"Was she in a hurry to get in at least?" Anteros prods.
"No." This one, I have no doubts of. "She was crying. Or pretending to. She wasn't in a rush to get in."
All four of them swear, Eros included, although his expletives are something I sense rather than hear. "Am I missing something?"
"The barriers are like a living alarm system," Erma explains in an uncharacteristically sober voice. "There may be times when it's accidentally disabled, and so the barriers make allowances for that. It waits precisely six seconds before sounding off an alarm, regardless of its reason for shutting down."
"But there was no alarm." I distinctly remember Eros telling me this. "Was there?"
"None." Anteros' voice is colder than usual. "But even so, we also have other safeguards in place. Every time the barrier goes down for instance, anyone who comes immediately rushing in will be repelled..."
And yet Cen hadn't done that either.
It was as if she knew exactly how to sneak past the barriers, and if she had succeeded in killing me, she could've slipped out of Rosethorne just as easily, and no one would've ever suspected her. Why should they when no one with evil intentions was supposedly able to come in, and no one would have any reason to suspect the barriers were temporarily shut down?
My blood runs cold when I think about how close she had gotten to carrying out the perfect murder, but I also know there's no damn way she could've planned all of that on her own...without inside help from someone high, high up in the Order's hierarchy.