THE PUPPET PUPPETEER . [ᴛɪɢ - ɢ. ᴅ. ʜᴀᴡᴛʜᴏʀɴᴇ]

{𝚒𝚡}

-ˏ ༻❁༺ ˎ-
'ˢᵒᵐᵉᵒⁿᵉ ᶠᵒʳᵍᵒᵗ ᵗᵒ ᵗʰᵃⁿᵏ ᴮᵉʸᵒⁿᶜᵉ'
-ˋ ༻❁༺ ˊ-

Well, shit.

"Two girls what?" I wouldn't say I liked the fact that there wasn't much surprise in my voice, despite me actually being flabbergasted.

"Her name was Emily," Avery said as she stuffed her hands in her pockets. We mindlessly walked the halls some ladies supposedly spent time in before they decided to go up, or maybe down. The other girl's name, I still don't know."

I looked ahead, letting dimly lit halls swirl in my vision. I stared at the darkness, waiting to see if it stared back, "What do you know about them?"

"Not much really. I met this girl at school, Thea I guess, she told me just that the last two girls spending time at the Hawthorne House died." Avery's eyes darkened, "It has been on my mind since then, and when we found some clues regarding Jameson's letter—"

"Jameson's letter?" I tilt my head. 

Avery quickly explained to me how Gameboy's visit last night (hah! I knew it.) made them both team up to find out why Tobias Hawthorne did what he did. Jameson had shown her his letter and they'd found out a clue hence why they were in the library.

"Don't judge a book by its cover," I said, letting my eyes meet hers. So, what? You go through every thousand books, not judging their covers?"

She shrugged, "Pretty much so. You could help, I was gonna tell the clue to you first but I came to the conclusion that dead girls were a higher priority."

"Good call,"

"I know, right?" Avery raised her brows, her lips twitching up. She was doing well, playing the part of a calm and collected detective. Yet I knew better to believe her facade. "Anyways, the second girl? It was as if she was Voldemort."

"She had no nose?"

"Her name was her nose." Avery looked me dead in the eye, "She had none. No one spoke of her. When I asked Jameson..." She let out a shaky exhale. Her eyes were windows, and outside those windows was a hurricane of emotions, "something happened to him. He froze and... and turned away. For a second he was so silent, it was suffocating." She sighed, "He hit the wall. Hard. And then pretended like nothing happened."

A surge of protectiveness shot through me, "Did he hurt you?"

"No, no," She shook her head, "he wasn't even near me."

"Doubt it."

"Leena!" I grinned at her. Even if a small little bug called guilt was eating me out alive. I should've been there for her. Yet something in me knew that I wasn't just lying around.

Bambola. 

We walked past the opera rooms, the theaters, and the stages. I should probably have told Ave about what I learned today but we came to a stop near the music room and holy moly...

Imagine Mozart had a baby with the greatest interior designer ever and that baby had a baby with royal dark academia vibes. That would somewhat explain the room. Gee, Xander was starting to rub off on me in all the wrong offspring terminology ways.

The second my eyes drank in the room, that weird knot in my chest was back. As if a word just on the tip of my tongue yet I had no idea what it was. The room was filled with instruments. Pianos, flutes, guitars, some things so fancy I didn't even know their names. 

I bent to look at a violin with an S carved to one side of the strings, its mirror image on the other. Beautiful. Avery bent down beside me, tracing the other side.

"That's a Stradivarius."