You Owe Me a Murder(16)

This was it. I was really in London. I was still trying to put my finger on how it was different from Vancouver. It was larger and everyone seemed to have an accent, but it was more than that, as if the history of the city were peeking out at odd places, catching me off-guard. You’d see a Starbucks nestled up to a building that was at least two hundred years old. It wouldn’t have shocked me at all to see Shakespeare or Harry Potter ducking into a storefront or pub. London was a place where magic was possible; mystery crackled in the air, filling in the spaces, setting me alight.

This was my chance. I glanced down at my arm still linked with Alex’s. A warmth spread through my chest.

“Check it out—?there’s a Thai place over there.” Alex’s nose twitched. “Thai is my favorite. Want to grab something after the walk?”

Did he mean just the two of us? “Um, sure.” A small Thai flag fluttered above the restaurant window. “I bet whatever they have beats olive loaf.”

He wriggled his eyebrows. “Everything beats olive loaf.”

I laughed, realizing I was hungry and my hangover was gone. I’d been in London for only a few hours, but so far, I loved it.





Six


August 17


14 Days Remaining


I shivered and pulled the hood of my rain jacket down far-ther. Summer in England was a flexible concept.

“Let’s check the Wakefield Tower.” Alex looked down at his map and then scanned the area. We were on a scavenger hunt through the Tower of London. Tasha had combined our group with some of the other study abroad programs staying at Metford, but what had seemed like a large group on the bus was now lost in the sea of tourists all over the grounds.

I touched the walls as we walked, trailing my fingers along the wet stones, trying to wrap my head around the idea that the castle had been there since 1066. My mind would start to calculate how many years had gone by, how many people had touched the same wall, and then my circuits would overload. I’d turn a corner, or duck under a low doorway, and there would be a flash where I’d think I could almost see into the past. History, and the dead, seemed closer in this space. The air in the building was thick with the breath of the millions of people who had passed through it.

“You guys having any luck with the last clue?” Sophie asked.

Alex shook his head and Kendra scowled. “They shouldn’t have made it so hard,” she declared. “Everyone still has jet lag and now we’re supposed to figure this stupid thing out.” She crumpled up her paper before stalking off to join Jamal, who was madly scanning information on his phone, trying to Google his way out of this situation.

“It’s just supposed to give us a reason to see everything,” Alex pointed out to Sophie, who was still standing nearby. “There’s not, like, a grade or anything.”

Sophie nodded. “I know, I told her.” She shrugged and motioned to Jazmin. “C’mon, come with Jamal and me—?we’re going to check out the chapel again.” The three of them wandered off.

Tasha had created elaborate clues with the other group leaders, and dozens of us had swarmed over the site in our matched pairs looking for the answers. They were tricky, more riddles than clues. Pretty much everyone was down to one last question that no one could figure out. There’d been a promise of a prize for the winners, which was rumored to be a pair of theater tickets to one of the big musicals in the West End.

“The rest of you shouldn’t even bother trying—?we’ve got this one,” Connor had crowed on the bus on the way over. Miriam jabbed him in the ribs as though it was a joke, but I could see the competition burning in his eyes. He wanted to win. Badly.

As I watched him, I’d realized something. A month ago, I would have thrown myself off one of the tower walls if it would help him win. A day ago, I would have pushed him off, if it meant keeping him from winning. Now I didn’t really care either way, and that made me feel like skipping. He’d been like a toxic fever, but it was breaking.

“That’s it!” I called out. Alex jerked around and came back to where I stood. My brain had been thinking about Connor on one level, but on another it had put the riddle together. I pointed to Traitors’ Gate.

Alex’s forehead wrinkled. “I don’t get it.”

I looked down at the sheet. “Listen to the clue again. ‘This is the place where they say there was a cry of innocence and pleading, but rather it’s a fake Judas doorway.’ We thought it had to be something in the chapel because of the Judas reference, but what if we’re looking at it wrong?” I lowered my voice in case anyone else was listening. “Remember Tasha’s lecture about Anne Boleyn this morning over breakfast?” There might not have been homework in our program, but they were determined to teach us a few things. We couldn’t move an inch without Tasha spewing out random facts about history or art.

“Yeah,” Alex said slowly.

“How she was brought here by Henry the Eighth, and when she came, she—?”

“—?fell on her knees and declared she wasn’t guilty,” Alex completed for me, his blue eyes flashing. “A pleading of innocence.”

“And how everyone used to say she came in through Traitors’ Gate”—?I motioned to the gate over my shoulder—?“but historians now say this wasn’t likely because she was a queen, that they never would have brought her this way. And what is another word for traitor?”