Chapter 51 The Prom Invitation
The music room the next morning felt smaller than usual, or maybe that was just the weight of everything they spread across the piano.
Mia had printed the screenshot of the unknown text, added it to the growing folder. Silas looked at it for a long time without saying anything.
“Bluff,” he finally said. “Probably.”
“Probably,” Mia agreed. “But she did break into my room. She’s looking.”
“She’s been looking since you arrived.” He set the paper down and leaned back against the piano, arms crossed. He looked like he hadn’t slept much either. There were shadows under his eyes that hadn’t been there days ago. “The question is what she’s found, if anything.”
“I burned the photos last night.” Mia said it flatly, but something in her voice must have given her away because Silas looked at her differently for a second, something quieter in his expression.
“All of them?”
“The physical ones. The social media’s already been scrubbed.” She picked up a pen from the piano bench and clicked it once, twice. “We need to move faster. Whatever she’s doing, she’s escalating, and eventually her instincts are going to catch up with the evidence.”
Silas nodded slowly. “I’ve been thinking the same thing.” He reached into his bag and pulled out a folded piece of paper. “There’s something I want to pursue. The forensic pathologist who signed off on Ethan’s autopsy report.”
Mia went still. “You think he was paid off.”
“I think it’s the most obvious gap in the entire case. An experienced swimmer drowns in a calm lake with no signs of trauma. The report is filed inside forty-eight hours. No toxicology screen included, which is standard protocol for an unexpected death in someone under thirty.” He unfolded the paper, showing a printout of a financial disclosure database. “I’ve been trying to trace any connection between Dr. Hale and the Vance family. It’s slow going through public records, but if we can get access to his communications around the time of the death, even just email logs…”
“The registrar’s office,” Mia said, following the logic. “The school’s administrative system would have records of any formal correspondence. If Elara or anyone from her family contacted the school around that time under any official capacity…”
“We’d need someone to be looking in the right places.”
They were quiet for a moment, both thinking through the same problem. Getting into the registrar’s office without authorization was a different level of risk than what they’d done before. The clinic had been private, off campus, no direct connection to St. Augustine’s administration. The registrar’s office was the institutional heart of the school. Security cameras, staff, electronic access logs.
“We need a reason to be there,” Mia said. “And everyone else needs to be somewhere else.”
Silas looked at her. “There’s a prom in two weeks.”
She blinked. “You’re joking.”
“The spring formal. The whole campus will be there, or most of it. Faculty, admin staff. The arts building would be basically empty.”
Mia considered this. “You said prom like it was a normal word.”
“It is a normal word.”
“Silas, you have never used the word prom in a sentence in your life.”
The corner of his mouth moved, just slightly. “That’s a strong accusation.”
“Well, it’s an almost if not accurate claim.” She looked down at the financial printout. “Okay. So the spring formal. I go in, you keep watch, I find what I can in the registrar’s files.”
“There’s a complication.” He picked up his phone and showed her a text thread. At the top, Elara’s name. Mia read the message and felt her eyebrows rise.
It was an invitation, cheerful and warm, the way all of Elara’s most strategic moves were. She was inviting Mia to prom. Not just that: she was also requesting, in the sweetest possible terms, that Silas offer Mia a public apology at the event for his behavior in the student union. The “delusional” comment. She framed it as wanting everyone to feel welcome and included, wanting Mia to have a good last memory of St. Augustine’s before she transferred.
It was so perfectly constructed that Mia had to admire it for a second before feeling sick about it.
“She wants to watch you apologize to me,” Mia said. “In front of everyone.”
“She wants to see if I’ll do it,” Silas said. “It’s a test. If I refuse, she knows I care more about my pride than keeping her happy, which makes her suspicious. If I agree, she gets to see me humiliate myself in public, which she’ll enjoy, and then she gets to feel generous for suggesting it.”
“So you’re going to do it.”
He looked pained. “I’m going to do it.”
Mia pressed her lips together to keep from smiling, because this was not a smiling situation. He saw it anyway.
“Don’t,” he said flatly.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were thinking something.”
“I was thinking,” she said carefully, “that you apologizing to me in front of the entire student body is an objectively funny image and I’m allowed to find that privately amusing.”
“It’s not funny.”
“It’s a little funny.”
He gave her a long, withering look that she met with complete calm. Something shifted in his expression, and for just a second he looked almost human, like he might actually laugh if he let himself. He didn’t, but it was close.
“The apology gives you cover,” he said, reorienting. “Everyone’s attention will be on us in the moment. That’s when you slip out.”
“And find the registrar’s office.”
“And find whatever Elara doesn’t want found.” He folded the printout and handed it to her. “We’ll go over the building layout before then. I can get the floor plans from student council.”
Mia tucked the paper into her bag. “She’s going to be watching you the whole night.”
“I know.”
“Which means you can’t follow me. You’ll be stuck with her.”
“I know that too.”
She looked at him. He looked back, steady and tired and completely resolved. The same expression he’d had on the bus back from the theater, when she’d texted him about Elara and he’d responded in seconds.
“Don’t let her out of your sight either,” Mia said. “If she realizes I’ve slipped away…”
“She won’t.” He said it with certainty that was probably slightly more confidence than the situation warranted, but she found herself believing him anyway. “I’ll keep her occupied.”
Mia stood, shouldering her bag. “This is either our best plan yet or a complete disaster.”
“Most of our plans have been both,” Silas said.
She couldn’t argue with that.