Layla doesn’t respond, and I don’t blame her. If she says it’s the hallway her brother’s room is in, Blackwood will say that she also knew Ash wasn’t there. And if she says we were just walking, it will look like she’s trying to justify herself, suggesting guilt.

“Are you aware that Matteo had class when you did not?” Blackwood asks.

“I am,” Layla says, still with the same poker face.

“After you were spotted coming out of that hallway, Dr. Conner inspected Stefano’s room,” Blackwood says. “He noticed something askew on Stefano’s nightstand. Do you know what I’m going to say now?”

Layla shakes her head. And I can’t help but think of Gupta, who would point out that she had answered every other question with a verbal response and no head movement, and that suddenly that had changed.

“He said there was a missing match that Matteo and his butler confirmed had not been used by them.” Blackwood keeps her gaze on Layla. It’s strange the way she’s only looking at and addressing Layla and not me.

“The case of the missing match, dun dun dun,” I say. Blackwood’s intensity toward Layla is almost overwhelming, and if it’s making me uncomfortable, it must be getting to her. I figure I can at least buy Layla a second to gather her thoughts.

And it works. Blackwood turns to me. “You think this is funny?”

“No. Not at all. I just thought someone needed to lighten the—”

Blackwood holds up her hand; she’s clearly annoyed. “I’ll get to you. Until then, remain silent.” There’s ice in her tone.

“Copy that,” I say, and I swear if her eyes were weapons I would be dead.

Blackwood focuses back on Layla and her expression is unreadable. “When the first homicide occurred last week, I thought that we were looking for one individual. But I now know that assumption was incorrect—that a network of persons is responsible for the recent events, and that if I miss one, the chaos and deaths are bound to continue. Sometimes strange things happen on purpose; coincidences aren’t coincidences.”

My chest tightens. Kartal said almost those exact words in my first class with her—strange things happen on purpose. And she was talking about coincidences that weren’t coincidences. I feel oddly relieved that I was right in suspecting that there was some sort of message or code implicit in those stories and that it wasn’t just my paranoia running the show. But now I’m wondering what I might have missed or overlooked by not taking the doublespeak seriously enough. In Dad’s games he used to say Look for the subtle things that are different, a pattern. They’ll point you in the right direction.

“It hasn’t escaped my notice that you have been angling to get closer to Matteo and Stefano these past few months, Layla,” Blackwood says, and snaps me out of my thoughts.

Layla tenses.

“Interesting that you would embrace a roommate whom Matteo so vehemently dislikes,” Blackwood says. “And then you’re conveniently in the dining hall when they get into a fight in the hallway.” She rolls a pencil on her desk, and besides the crackling wood in the fireplace, it’s the only sound in the room. “Then you sided with the roommate whom you barely knew. Seems cold for someone who’s supposed to be Matteo’s friend.”