The door to my secret hideaway has no lock. It's the only flaw of the place, as far as I'm concerned, other than the mildewy dungeon smell and total lack of insulation. I ease the door shut behind me. When I can trust nobody has followed me, I pad over to my window alcove. It's deep enough that I'll have time to hide this book if anyone walks in on me. I spend a good minute arranging myself until I'm able to both see the door and trick myself into thinking this seat is comfortable. Only then do I retrieve the book from the back of my waistband.

It's the same one I saw Exie pretending not to read in the library. The same kind, anyway: this isn't her copy, unless she found a way to stash hers in the school's penitentiary room since yesterday. It gives me a certain thrill to know I'm only a step behind her own investigation. I examine the book's cover first. There's no title. No author name. No attribution at all. The gold-embossed angel is the only decoration, even, and the spine is bare as horse's backside. Its leather is old enough to crackle as I crack the book open. My smile fades.

It's a bible. I should have expected that. I found the thing in the back of a pew, for God's sake, but I was hoping for at least a hymnal. The miniature text runs about the pages like someone's bottled an ants' nest and poured it out for me in some kind of cursed communion. I hate text. I hate reading. It's always been like this, no matter the efforts of the few truly amazing teachers I had through my first experience of boarding school. As a kid back then, I cried when told it was time to head back home for the holidays.

I leaf through wafer-thin pages, not even attempting to read their contents now. There are variations of the bible, I know, but identifying them requires one of two things: preexisting knowledge of where to find the discrepancies, or a great deal of stamina for reading. I have neither. I flip through the rest of the book because the page texture is gratifying, then let it fall shut in my lap. Only then does a different thought occur to me. I open just the cover this time, and am faced with the very obvious title page that almost all bibles still possess. Pressure builds behind my temples as I struggle to parse the words. At least the pages are old enough to provide a pleasant tan background.

The Miranda Bible, it says.

I frown. I don't trust my first pass, so I repeat it, this time tracing out the letters so they don't run away on me. I was right on the first reading. I might not know my Proverbs from my Psalms, but I know enough about bibles to know this isn't one of the variants. Not one in common circulation, anyway. I flip it shut on my finger and inspect the angel on the cover again. In keeping with the atypicality of the bible itself, I've never seen a cathedral so obsessed with angels, either. Maybe the two are connected.

So Melliford Academy occupies the former home of a cult. Delightful.

There's no other annotation on the title page. I check the next few for additional detail, and find a date for this biblical edition. It's properly gothic—a sixty-year-old reprint of an original manuscript more than five times that age. At least something here has a timeline that makes sense. Most cults aren't known for their wealth. If this one originated three hundred years ago and took two hundred and forty to afford a building, its younger cult-spawn might have built this place and populated it with special bibles in honor of their predecessors' legacy. 

The question, then, is where they went. I lower the book again and let my eyes wander the expansive grounds outside the window beside me. How did Melliford Academy come to exist in a cult building? I open the book in my lap for the third time and leaf through its opening pages, but there's no sign of any Massinghams. Maybe headmaster Massingham had a thing for angels and the pocket money to buy a cathedral off a cult that bankrupted itself on all those stained-glass windows. Maybe I'll get to the end of this week and find out in chapel that this place has some rather angelically inclined patrons on its roster. Or maybe our esteemed headmaster is descended from the Massingham that commissioned those angel paintings. I've never heard of nepotism strong enough to land someone a full cathedral for their remedial academy, but there's a first time for everything.

I want to know what Exie found in her reading of this book, if she did indeed have the same one. She strikes me as the type to go over even something as dense as a bible with a fine-toothed comb, probing for inconsistencies. For the first time, a pang of regret pokes a hole in my abdomen. I'd like to work with Exie on this. For a long moment, I wonder what it would be like to put aside my pride and ask to work together. Then I remember why I'm here. Why I'm trying not to be here, more specifically.

I lean my head against the wall and stew in my own thoughts for a long time. The sparrows in the bush outside sing the hymns I was hoping to find between these pages. I'm not supposed to care about cults and the history of this school or its building. I'm not supposed to care about what Exie said—and not just said about me. About Melliford Academy. About its history, and what it does to its students, and how she knows so much about all that when the school puts up a good front to the parents it woos. An investigation of this has no bearing at all on my plans at Melliford Academy. Not unless I change my plans.

I trace a finger around the angel on the bible's cover. My parents might also be sufficiently humiliated if they send me off to school only for me to expose the institution in question as accepting cultish benefactions. My parents' capacity to distinguish good schools from foul would be called into question. Then I remember they probably knew Melliford Academy's reputation already. Why else would they have sent me here, like Exie said? It certainly wasn't to give me a premium education. They have my sister already. They have their heir. She's training to take over my father's business-mongering already. My family doesn't need their spare child anymore.

Or maybe they'd be proud of me. My father's all about anti-corruption, after all, pretending to weed out seedy actors as he connects suppliers with shipping companies. I swallow hard against the fishbone suddenly lodged in my throat. My father has hinted that he was a lot like me in his youth. I wonder sometimes if that's why he seems to hate me.

I'm still tracing the line art on the bible's cover. Angels. I can think about angels right now. It's easier than everything else.

I've never heard of a cult dedicated to angelic entities, though I'm not surprised it exists. I want so desperately to read this book for clues to it. Also just to read in general. Not because I actually care about the bible as it's presented, but because the stories it contains are among the most bizarre, beguiling, and bloody I've ever encountered in published literature. Also because they're among the few I've ever heard out loud without having to pester someone. The upshot of being dragged to church every week of my childhood is that God-fearing religious folk love telling stories.

I stay in that alcove until the cathedral bell tolls for lunch. Only then do I slip the bible back into my waistband and pause before sliding off my perch on the windowsill. I'm rooming with a kleptomaniac. I don't know if there's anywhere safe to stash this among my own things, though the rest of the school isn't much better. I could hide it on a shelf of the library, perfect camouflage when most students here don't give half a stork's left ass-feather about reading. The problem is, I don't trust the librarians not to notice. The last thing I need in an angel-cult inquisition is to tangle with staff. I trust them all about as far as I can throw them, and I always failed arm sports.

My room really is the best locus I have right now, that's both semi-covert and free of staff. If Clarice finds the book, meanwhile, maybe I can just recruit her. We're all troublemakers here. And someone smart enough to be sticky-fingered might be fun to conspire with. It's not like I have anything to lose, either—the worst the school can do is kick me out.

I return to my room, where I stash the bible under my mattress. Then I lie on my back and let my mind wander aimlessly until the doorknob clicks. Clarice slips inside. She startles when she sees me, and treats me to the same unsettling smile she did when we first made acquaintances.

This time, I return it. "What did you find this time?"

Surprise jumps across her expression. I can't actually see any stolen treasures on her, but the covertness of her arrival says enough for me to make an educated guess. So does her hesitation.

"I won't tattle," I say. "I hate this place. We owe them nothing."

"Oh. I'm glad someone says that out loud." Clarice sits on her bed and begins to unload trinkets from corners of her blazer that I never imagined could hold such a stash. She's got two more pens—one looks expensive—an assortment of silverware, and the brass knob of what looks like a desk-drawer. Shiny things. She shakes out her clothing, then fiddles at the back of her neck. What she unclasps there is a necklace I do not remember her putting on this morning. It's a standard-issue silver cross, but there's something else on it that catches my attention.

"Wait," I say, and sit up as Clarice makes to drop the necklace with the rest of her loot. "Can I see that one for a moment?"

She hugs it defensively to her chest.

"I'll give it back," I say. "Property liberation isn't really my style."

Clarice reluctantly hands over the necklace. The moment it lands in my palm, my suspicions are corroborated. The cross has tiny angel wings. I flip it over and find a near-microscopic inscription down the back.

"My eyes are bad," I say, returning the necklace. "Have you read it?"

"Oh yes." Clarice lights up. "As soon as I—ah. As soon as I found it. 'Justice for the fallen.'"

"That's what it says?"

She nods enthusiastically.

My mind has whirred into high-focus mode again. "Have you ever seen that before? On things you've... found."

"Military honorariums. Oh, and martyrs. I don't think I've seen it outside of that."

I can't stop a smile. Clarice is an ally here—and a valuable one at that. Martyrs. Now we're talking. "What about angel iconography?"

"That's not typical in the church. I was a bit surprised when I started. Christmas ornamentation has angels, but outside of that, it's normally just crosses. With and without people nailed to them. Also saints." She wrinkles her nose. "I've seen a lot of saints. Just not here. It's only angels here."

"That's what I've noticed. Anything particularly valuable?"

"Valuable? Oh, definitely the stained glass. But you can't take windows without lots more people. Also those paintings in the chapel, and the organ. It's a nice little organ. Ivory keys and gold inlay, and there's lots of tin in the pipes. I like the furniture, too. The library shelves are gimcrack, but the podiums are quality wood. They're very pretty."

My smile keeps spreading. "If you made off with one of those, I'd be very impressed."

"Oh no, I can't take furniture. I think the biggest thing I've ever managed was a ten-prong candelabra. And it tarnished quickly in the end."

"You like the shiny ones better?"

She gives me a guilty grin.

"Can you let me know if you find that phrase on anything else?" I say, with a nod to the necklace. "Or any other angel iconography small enough to lift."

"You can't have it."

"Yeah, just to see. Sorry."

"Then sure. Are you interested for any reason?"

I lie back on my bed, sprawling comfortably with the newfound expansion of my scrutiny. "Nah. I'm just very, very curious about this school."

Like this chapter if you're happy to see Des and Clarice working together!

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