“It must be an odd feeling for you, Ash,” Layla interrupts, “not having a girl fall all over you in two seconds. I think I’m going to enjoy this. And to answer your question, November, I’ll be working another angle. I’m much better at research than Ash is.”

“By better, she means more patient,” Ash says.

“By better, I mean better,” Layla says, and Ash grins at her. If they were typical siblings, I could see him bribing her to help him with his homework and her asking him to teach her how to flirt. But there is nothing typical about them.

Chapter Sixteen

I GLANCE FROM Brendan, Charles, and Nyx on my left to Aarya, Felix, and Ines on my right, wondering if one of them murdered Stefano and figured they could blame it on me. Layla gives me a look that tells me I need to stop staring, and I lean back in my chair.

Professor Kartal spins an ancient-looking globe in a wooden stand. Her shoulders are pulled back and her chin is held high, giving her a commanding presence. She watches the globe and not us. Kartal…her name means “eagle” in Turkish.

“Strange things happen by accident every day…every single day,” Kartal says, and sighs. “King Umberto the First of Italy once ate in a restaurant where he discovered that the owner was born the same day he was and in the very same town. What is further puzzling is that they both married women named Margherita. Then in July of 1900, King Umberto learned that the restaurant owner had been shot and killed in the street. Later that same day, the king was assassinated.”

I’m not sure where she’s going with this, but so far, this isn’t like any history class I’ve ever had.

Kartal looks up at us, still spinning the globe under her fingertips. “And during World War One, the British army turned the passenger ship RMS Carmania into a battleship. They then disguised the Carmania as the German passenger ship SMS Cap Trafalgar. Are you following? This is all about to come back around. In 1914, this disguised British ship sank a German ship. That ship was in fact the real Cap Trafalgar”—she laughs—“which the Germans had disguised to look like the British Carmania.”

A laugh bubbles out of me and a couple of people look my way. Apparently I’m the only one other than Kartal who enjoyed the story.