“Right. Beyond that, I have no idea what happened.” He looked around like he’d never been in the office before. “Looks bad, though. How did the chair break?”

Agent Cole smiled gently, then leaned forward. “Forsythe… do you go by that, or something else?”

“Fort,” he said.

“Fort, I can appreciate that you’ve gotten used to dealing with regular administration here at the school,” she said, looking him straight in the eye. “They’re good at what they do, but there’s a reason that I’ve been put in charge of bringing our two fugitive students back into the fold. I’m very good at seeing through falsehoods, whether magical or otherwise. So why don’t we start again?”

His eyes widened, and he gripped the arms of the chair tightly. “I don’t know what you mean… I told you, I can’t remember anything.”

“Two books of magic went missing last night,” Agent Cole said, standing up to come around toward him. She stopped a few feet from Fort and sat back against the desk. “Now, no one went in or out of the building, so there would have only been one person who could have removed them. Unfortunately for you, he was busy running from my agents last night. So why don’t you tell me where the books are?”

Fort tried to speak, only to swallow the wrong way and launch into a coughing fit. “I told you,” he stammered. “I don’t know anything about that.”

“I’ve got agents searching your room as we speak,” she said, watching him closely. “And this will go much easier on you if you admit what happened before we find anything.”

“You’re searching my room?!” Fort said, incredibly thankful that he’d thought to hide the book elsewhere now. “I’m telling you, I didn’t take any books.”

“So what, you’re going to say Gabriel stole them?” She shook her head, smiling again. “I think we both know better than that.”

“No, I’m not saying that Gabriel did anything. I’m… I’m trying to say that no one… that I don’t know who took the books! I didn’t even know they were gone!” He could feel sweat running down his neck now and fought the urge to wipe it off.

She sighed and leaned in closer. “From what I can tell, you’re not a bad kid, Fort. You shouldn’t even be here at this school. But the colonel decided to bring you in, to see if that would wake Sierra up, and here we are. Now, the connection you shared with Sierra wasn’t your fault. But getting her help to steal the books… that’s not something we can forgive, not unless you tell me what happened so I can fix this.”

“I’m telling you, she was in my head! I don’t know why, or what happened!”