We weren't meeting in the usual council room. It was in the main hall, decorated in all the usual ways. I looked up at the brilliant crimson red flag hanging down. Almost four feet of heavy cloth with a curved dragon confident and proud to be here.

I would just have to follow its example. I could do this, I hoped.

To my relief, the others were in casual clothing too. I was a little shocked that Horus even owned something other that the Kelpie uniform. He wasn't even wearing a tie.

He was wearing a dark green suit jacket but the point still stood.

Set was wearing a pastel pink button up shirt. He was waving at me from where he was sitting with Bastet and Maat.

They were all wearing some shade of their Tower color. I was, by comparison, wearing very little red. It would be fine, I could get through this.

I gave a slight wave back, causing Set to break out into a massive grin.

Seeing a familiar sight made the icicle in my wrist start to melt just a hint. It was something. Not a massive something, but I would take it.

I sat a little ways off from him and his cluster. Close enough to get involved with whatever conversation we apparently needed to have without the rest of the school here, but far enough to have a buffer from his Pixieness.

"Hey Serafina, how was your break?" He asked immediately. I liked the question solely for how predictable it was. It was the best about Set, how simple and straightforward he was.

"Quiet and uneventful." Half truth and half lie. But this was not the time, place, or company to talk about any of it. "Very relaxing to be away from my Tower for a bit."

I was a little annoyed when Thoth seemed to genuinely chuckle at that. Like there was some camaraderie there or something. I was the only one who got to complain about my Tower.

"How was yours?" I asked mostly to just be polite.

"It was fun. My family and I went sailing for a while. All re-charged and ready to conquer this last semester as Representative."

Last? Wasn't he in his fourth year?

"Has Pixie already chosen it's next Representative?" Horus asked. "I have to start holding tryouts for a successor next week."

Successor, like he was a king or something. Ridiculous. Was choosing a Representative for next year really that complicated? I wasn't even going to get a say in the selection for Dragon Tower, most likely.

I knew they were probably going to make me do this again next year but I didn't have to like it.

"Not yet, but Professor Dellik and I talked about it and I told him I wanted to take it easy my last year," Set explained. "So we'll have to hold an election at some point. I'm gonna help him narrow down the candidates next month."

This was the real reason first years typically weren't Representative. Because they had to be picked before the current school year was even over. A soft measure to keep out students who probably weren't ready or knowledgeable enough to do it. Which was hard to argue with, I wouldn't recommend this to anyone.

We'd probably just do another vote on the last day of school or something. Meh. Vivian would bring it up if she thought it was a critical to-do list item. One of the benefits to a Tower so small was that getting everyone together was pretty easy. It took us minutes to do something the other Towers probably needed hours or maybe days for.

"I think I might do another year. I always hear the fourth year is the most boring." Helena Osiris said. "What about you Serafina?"

Right. Osiris was in her third year.

I blinked and snapped myself out of my thoughts, "I…I don't know yet. We were pretty casual about it the first time around. They might pick me again, but we'll just do a simple vote whenever the time's right."

Maat spoke up, "No need to complicate choosing between five people, I understand."

"Pretty much. What about the rest of you? What do you guys do to pick Representatives?" I asked to get attention away from me. There was a tiny bit of real curiosity, but at least this conversation wasn't too bad so far.

"Gorgon's going to select someone personally from the current third and fourth years." Anubis looked kind of smug about that, but she did answer so I would take it as a win.

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Even though her answer boded poorly for what I should expect next year. I doubted having Gorgon's stamp of approval meant they'd like me very much. Oh well, I'd made this work so far.

"I'm helping my Tower Head make a selection. I'm picking an essay topic for the candidates when it's time," Maat responded.

Ugh. That would be awful. No thanks.

I guess this was all part of why I wasn't like any of them. I was a Dragon. I still wasn't fully sure what that meant. The lines between all the Towers were a bit blurry, but I did know they were there. I could feel them when we talked, whenever someone had expected or wanted me to be a real Pixie. They were like membranes, penetrable barriers with rules of what was and wasn't allowed.

We were different. And that was okay.

The only thing really worth worrying about was the mystery of Death's Echo. If we could just find it, then maybe we could get rid of it forever. We had to at least try, right? We had an advantage here, so how could we use it?

I needed to focus on something else right now, this would have to wait until the others got here.

Thoth was being…oddly quiet for some reason. Curious but I cared so little about what he thought of me or the others I had no desire to ask or call him out on it. Sitting there just tapping his fingers on the wooden table. He glanced up at something behind me. Out of the corner of my eye Set followed his eyeline.

"Is something wrong Thoth?" Set asked after a moment.

Thoth ignored Set's question and asked his own. "Anyone else notice that the Tower Heads have been extra secretive?"

"What?" What did they have to do with anything right now? I glanced behind me, the professors were all together in a circle. Talking amongst themselves quietly. Odd, but not concerning by itself.

"Am I the only at this table that knows about the Gallery Hall's recent situation?" Thoth asked us all.

The coldness in my left wrist spiked as my heart pumped lava into my veins for a single moment of panic. "How is that any of our business though?" I asked him. Probably not doing a great job at hiding what I knew but what could he possibly prove? And besides, Thoth was basically the rumor mill incarnate. Maybe he knew something, but was it something I didn't?

"The school is partners with them. I hadn't heard of any incidents recently," Horus commented.

"Before the break one of the exhibits was stolen, I think it's got the staff nervous," Thoth continued.

Death's Echo. Which was here in the school and had been for nearly two months. Not that I could prove it. Not when the only source was M. Who was a two-thousand-year-old ghost. That only me and my towermates could hear.

Yeah that wasn't going to go over well, not when my track record of being believed was complete garbage. I either needed to keep completely out of this or make them realize it without telling them what I knew.

I doubted my ability to do either in this situation.

"Has Professor Vivian Hearth said anything to you, Stewart?" Horus suddenly asked. Addressing me. Outright. With my name and everything.

I couldn't not answer him. So I focused on the part of the truth that was relevant to his question. He didn't need to know what my other sources had said. "She told me something was missing, but that they didn't know who did it."

Anubis' face went particularly sour. I wanted to flinch at the sight. Horus may have shifted his thoughts towards me, but whatever I'd done to offend Anubis' entire existence was still a factor. I wished I knew what her problem with me was.

I doubted she had any involvement in what was happening with Death's Echo though.

She seemed too proud of her place in the world to risk it. Not unless something far more serious was happening with her. Plus a student couldn't have taken the knife. If any of us left campus everyone would have heard about it.

Staff could come and go though. At least without too much trouble.

I figured it was someone with less responsibilities, that way they could disappear without being noticed as much. Someone like the Tower Heads going MIA would be noticeable.

So probably not any of them either.

Non-staff couldn't step foot on campus without alarms going off. At least outside of very special events like the parent visit. And even that was all planned and carefully done.

Too little information to point a finger at anyone, and the only people who I knew with certainty I could trust was my own Tower and Angelina.

Which was a distressingly small number of people when compared to the population of the school.

"Do you think she'd tell you if there were any big updates on that?" Thoth asked.

It was so strange that they were actually holding like a real conversation with me. Or at least pretending very well. "I think if Professor Hearth thought it was a real cause for concern she would let the entire school know."

It was the truth. But Vivian didn't know what I knew. Nor did I have plans to tell her. It was too risky right now. And she would have even less evidence to do anything with than we did.

Anubis narrowed her eyes at me. "That sounds practiced."

I shrugged, "I just trust her. She knows what she's doing." At least as much as anyone could without all the facts. But the statements themselves were true, if Vivian genuinely believed there was a real immediate risk of threat to a student she'd do something about it.

"What are the chances of you keeping us updated too?" Thoth asked.

And just like that, all of his behavior made sense again. He wanted information from me. So, like always, it was best to assume anything Thoth heard would be found out by the whole school. Definitely best to not let him find out what I knew if I didn't want to risk the culprit finding out that Dragon Tower knew.

"If Vivian tells me something I'll share it. But I doubt she will unless something is going to affect us directly," I told him. I wanted some deniability here. Not a lot, just enough that I could play ignorant later.

Hopefully I wouldn't need it.

"It must be stressful for her, to have her family's legacy under attack like that," Anubis said. Something about the way she said that bothered me a little. Like she was talking about something else too. There was something there, but frankly compared to my list of things to worry about it wasn't ranking very high.

"Probably. She's busy so I try to not bother her unless I have to," I conceded. I wondered why Anubis cared about this so much. Well whatever it was it probably wasn't my concern.

"Well I suppose there's nothing for it right now, only thing for us to do is start working on the next semester stuff. We should be getting those schedules any minute now," Thoth said as he leaned back on the bench in a way that was fairly precarious. There was a barely visible dull red haze around where he was lounging.

He wasn't wrong, and the distraction was welcome. All this thinking of doom and gloom was going to get to me if it kept going much longer.

Gorgon appeared behind him with a sudden soft pop and a small burst of purple. "We've managed to sort out the minor delay."

There was a delay? I hadn't even noticed.

A loud snap and then there were stacks of paperwork in front of all of us. I felt a twinge of sympathy for Bastet, his had to be split into two stacks.

Mine was positively pathetic by comparison. It comprised of the class schedules and a copy of school safety procedures. A hint to how the staff were feeling about this situation or regular second semester business?

It would probably be good to go over regardless. Though whether or not my Tower would listen was unknown. While I mostly trusted them to not do anything too stupid, sometimes it felt like rules were suggestions to the others.

Though they were taking this situation seriously enough. It was a small source of comfort.

Tomorrow they would be back, and then we would have to figure out what to do about all of this together.

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