“Brianna! Stop right there!”

Brianna pivoted. “I swear to God, I didn’t do it!”

“Well, you can go and tell whoever did do it that I want it gone within the next twenty minutes or there will be serious consequences.”

“We can’t. The Year Nine girls kept him because they think he’s Lockie reincarnated.”

Her mind reeled. “Reincarnated?”

“They found him sitting on Lockie’s grave, sleeping there…”

Hail Mary Full of Grace, now I’ve heard everything. At her wit’s end, Kate bit back a groan of frustration. She raked a hand through her hair and glared down at Brianna. “Why on earth are you in the boarding house before the last bell? Where are you supposed to be?”

“With Tilly in Religion.”

“So why aren’t you across the road?”

“We were helping put the Christmas tree up in the convent with Sister Mary Monica and I asked to go to the bathroom…”

Kate thought back to the day before, to the unusually high number of requests that had been made to visit the bathroom in each and every class—and all by boarders. It wasn’t difficult to deduce what was going on. These girls were clever. Like shift workers, they’d arranged a very effective babysitting schedule.

“Get that rabbit in a cage,” she growled. “I have a meeting now but I will deal with this as soon as it’s over. You’re to be in my office with whoever started this at five p.m. Understood?”

“But it wasn’t me!”

“Bad luck, Donald Duck!”

She jogged down the path to the cottage, past the garden, a sweat breaking out across her lower back. Reincarnated? Kate shook her head as she pushed the front door open. For God’s sake. So much for Christian bloody ideals. Are we Buddhists now? No wonder the lettuce beds had been budding so perfectly for the past week. What point did a goddamn rabbit find in hunting for his own dinner when he had a luxury five-star catering service and a penthouse suite inside St. Joan’s? She threw a glance at the convent. If she had time to go inside and speak to Tilly about the situation before her meeting, she would. But it would have to wait until later.

The cottage was even stuffier than the school. Kate stripped off her shirt and swiped at the sweat between her breasts with the discarded shirt. Rounding the kitchen table, she headed for her bedroom. The moment Tilly got wind of the reincarnation thing, she’d probably side with the girls, encouraging their spirituality, empathising with the fact that they’d lost Lockie. I just can’t win, just can’t catch a fucking break…

Kate stumbled in the doorway of her bedroom, the sight that greeted her stealing the breath from her lungs.

Tilly stood before Kate’s oak bureau, black leather straps loose in her grasp.

Kate’s arms fell limp at her sides as their eyes met. Fisted in her hand, the dirty shirt fluttered to the carpet. Her gaze snapped from Tilly to her open underwear drawer, and back again to what Tilly held in her hands. Her stomach flipped. Her pulse slowed. “You have a bit of a habit of going through my drawers…” she said, her voice deep, the words pulled from the back of her throat.