I immediately regret my answer. I feel like I’m not only sweating all over her office, but that every single thought I’m having is knowable by her. The only tactic I really have is to take Layla’s advice. “Hang on. You don’t think I had anything to do with what happened, do you?”

“Oh, don’t I?” Blackwood says, and gives me a warning look.

“You read people or analyze them—you both do.” I wave my hand to include Conner. “And I know I’m new. But if you’re any reader of character, you know without a shadow of a doubt that I didn’t do it.”

“Don’t you dare suppose what I know or what I don’t,” Blackwood says.

“Don’t you remember what happened with Matteo? I didn’t even want to hit him in the face. You practically had to threaten me to get me to retaliate. If I’m uncomfortable punching someone, killing a person is an impossibility.”

Blackwood purses her lips and sits back in her chair. “Actually, if you planned to attack Stefano, the very first thing you might do is create a situation meant to illustrate how nonaggressive you are.”

I try to adjust my position, but there’s no place to shift to and I just wind up looking more agitated than I did a few seconds before. “I wouldn’t even be able to think of that, much less—”

“Enough,” Blackwood says, and her word is like a slap, which at least tells me that my naïveté must be convincing enough to frustrate her. “What were you doing out of your room last night?”

My heart races. There’s no way around it. “I was meeting Ash,” I answer.

“Where?”

“In the vine courtyard.”

She pauses a moment. “Why?”

I cringe reflexively. I’m in murky freaking waters right here. “To find out more about the school.”

“You were told that anything you need to know about the school, you could ask Layla.”

“I…well…”

“Unless you mean to learn more about the students, which I have already told you is strictly forbidden.” Her tone harshens and she leans forward.

“I just…I wanted to learn more about what the school is really like.” Here we go.

“By breaking the rules.”

“No,” I say carefully. “I’m not saying that it’s good to break the rules. But if I’m going to live here with these people who’ve known each other for years and understand the way this place works, I have a ton of catching up to do. And I’m the only new advanced student. Fifty percent of me was just curious.”

“And the other fifty percent?”

“I didn’t mean that literally.”

“But you did mean there was another reason.”