Sarah Benadine is Dead

Chapter IX, Part IV

"Oh, good. You're here."

Headmistress Patience Lea sat at her desk, staring at Howard Nesbitt with something that resembled disinterest. Perhaps displeasure. Her hawkish eyes dissected him, holding him in his place. In the corner, behind her desk, two chickens sat unmentioned.

"You knew I'd have to come, Patience," Nesbitt said. "You found a skeleton in your school."

"Just a skull, actually," Lea corrected dryly.

"Yes," Nesbitt allowed, smiling slightly. "Douglas Wein's, I hear. And you alerted the normal Clearwater police. An interesting choice."

"What was I supposed to do?" Lea asked. "There was a skull in my school!"

"You should have told me first," Nesbitt said. His voice was polite but his face was hard. "I could've found a way to...handle it."

"Make it disappear, you mean," Lea said. She snorted. "I've got some news for you, Howard: the days of making things disappear are long gone. There's no covering this one up. And, honestly, I'm tired of your games anyway."

"Patience, when the school closed thirty-two years ago—" Nesbitt began.

Lea held up her hand and pinched the bridge of her nose. "You were still a student thirty-two years ago, Howard. A student who'd just gotten into a fist fight with Regina Babbitt. And lost, as I recall."

Nesbitt flushed. Lea had obviously struck a nerve. Nesbitt pulled uncomfortably at his collar and cleared his throat.

"Patience, you know that when those murders happened in '23, the Administration dealt with it," he said, his face still an ugly, splotchy red. "And again, in '49 when that boy was tragically attacked."

"What was that student attacked by, Howard?" Lea asked, knowing full well that he would not answer.

True to form, he simply cleared his throat uncomfortably and said, "Isolated incident. The point is that there was no need to call in the normal police. This school is no place for them anyway."

"Why not?" Lea asked, eyeing him curiously. "You've ensured that even the students who attend this school barely know it's a supernatural school. We don't have anyone doing magic in the corridors or fighting monsters in the classrooms. I don't think you have anything to worry about. Except, of course, whatever it is that's causing all of this."

"Patience, I assure you, whatever is doing this is human," Nesbitt said with conviction. "There simply is no creature, no monster of any kind. They were almost all wiped out in the war, and the ones that weren't are so few as to be completely benign."

"How do you explain Sarah Benadine and Shannon Malone being marked then? I've only heard of that in connection with a Follower."

Nesbitt struggled for a response. "It does seem...suspect, for sure. But I'm certain that if the time is taken to think things through thoroughly we will find that there is an absolutely reasonable explanation for all of this."

"May I speak frankly with you, Howard?"

Nesbitt seemed taken aback. "Of course, Patience."

Lea smiled. "You're full of shit. I know it, my staff knows it, the students probably know it, I'm sure the rest of the Administration knows it, and I think if 'the time is taken to think things through thoroughly' you'll find that you know it too. But, since you're the President, I guess you get paid to be full of shit."

Nesbitt pulled at his collar again.

"And everyone has to listen to you," Lea continued. "But you and I both know that a Follower killed Sarah Benadine, just as you and I both know that it was most likely a vampire that ravaged that farm, broke into the butcher's shop, and killed those dogs. And if that's true then a vampire probably nailed that damn cow head to the West Wing lounge wall. For God's sake, I have a witness who that very night claimed she saw a vampire. What more could you want?"

"Ah, yes, the foreigner," Nesbitt said like the words left a bad taste in his mouth. "How reliable can she be?"

"Oh, of course, I forgot foreigners have no eyes or ears to see and hear with. My mistake."

Nesbitt held up a finger, almost like a warning. "See here, Patience, it's just not possible—"

"Of course it's possible," Lea said belligerently. "And as the President of the Administration, you should be doing something about it. Things can't continue like this. My students are getting restless, my community members are in a panic, the police are frantic, and there are chickens in my office!"

Nesbitt opened his mouth for an immediate response, then closed it again. After the pause, he said, "Yes, I was going to ask about that. Why are there chickens in your office?"

"We can't have them in the kitchen, Howard!"

Nesbitt nodded, no less confused. "Right. Um, yes. Good. Well, believe me, Patience, I'm doing all I can. But when you go and invite the normal police into your school, it puts me in an awful position—"

"Oh, you're useless, Howard, always have been," Lea said tiredly. "Perhaps the normal police will get something done. Now, if you're not going to do anything legitimate about the death of Dougie Wein—or anything that's happened recently—then you can leave my office, all right?"

Howard Nesbitt stared wordlessly at her for a moment or two, then left with his tail between his legs.

At the very same time, across the school, Tuly Lewis was hearing voices that didn't belong to anyone she could see.