'I know ...' she began and then faltered. Taking a calming breath, she tried again. 'I need to know what happened to your parents and how you ended up here.'

When his dark eyes shot up to meet hers she saw a warning in them.

'I know,' she said quickly. 'And I hate to ask you this. But if I don't, they'll just make us do this again until I do. I'm so sorry, Carter. Can you tell me very quickly, maybe? I won't ask for any details.'

He was so still for so long she wondered if he was going to just get up and walk away. She could see conflicting emotions in his face.

Finally, as if he were giving in to the inevitable, he raked his fingers through his hair. When he spoke his voice was low, and he looked away from her into a dark corner of the chapel.

'My father worked in a car factory, but he lost that job before I was born when the factory closed. He couldn't get another. There just ... weren't that many factories around. He saw an ad, I think, in a paper. Isabelle told me once but I can't quite remember everything ... My parents lived near here, I think. Before.'

Allie was having a little trouble following his tangled narrative but she said nothing. She sat as still as she could, barely breathing. She didn't take notes she knew she'd remember this.

'Anyway,' Carter continued, 'at some point he was hired here to be the handyman, taking care of the boiler and the electrical system anything you could fix with a screwdriver or a spanner. This place must have seemed like a godsend, you know?' He looked up at her briefly then returned his gaze to the distance. 'My mum worked in the kitchen cooking and cleaning. They got a place to live rent free on the grounds; they were putting money in the bank. For them, even though the work wasn't, like, thrilling, I guess it was a perfect set-up.

'When my mum got pregnant they were really excited. They didn't have any other kids and I think maybe they thought they couldn't or something. I guess it was a big deal. When I was born my mum took some time off for a while but then she went back to work.' He stopped to think. 'It's hard to explain but, because they lived on the grounds, it was kind of like I was raised by everyone. Nobody else here had young children. The teachers and other staff took turn babysitting me. I was, like, a novelty.'

Her hands still in her lap, Allie watched his face.

'And you lived in that cottage?' she asked. 'The one we saw that night in the woods with the roses?'

He looked surprised, as if he'd forgotten the night they'd come across the little stone cottage with the lush flower garden. He nodded. 'Bob Ellison lives there now.'

'It looked like a beautiful place to grow up,' she said.

He shrugged as if it were a silly question, although she could see in his eyes that it wasn't.

'Were your parents happy here, do you think?' she asked.

A wistful smile flittered across his face. 'I think so. I remember us being happy. My dad was really good at what he did he could fix anything, you know? He was a genius with anything technical or mechanical. Everybody relied on him, and Isabelle says he liked that. Knowing he was needed. And Mum ...' He stopped to rub his eyes.

Allie felt horrible. She wanted to hold his hand, hug him do something aside from just sit there. But he sat stiffly, with his body turned away from her. She knew he didn't want that right now. So she stayed still.

His voice was steady when he started again. 'Mum was, I think, kind of like a mother to everybody. She'd make sandwiches for the kids if they got hungry after class. Make scones for the teachers' meetings. She fussed over everybody.' He stopped again for a long moment. 'So yeah,' he said finally. 'I think they were happy.'

Allie could feel tears prickling the backs of her eyes. She rubbed her nose fiercely as if it itched.

I don't want to do this.

'Carter,' she said quietly, 'what happened?'

The silence between them was like a physical wall. She felt as if she could touch its cold edges. The muscles in his jaw worked, and his hands were twisted into a knot in his lap.

'So,' he said as if she hadn't spoken, 'one day, my dad was sent out to collect some parts from a distributor in Portsmouth.' His voice was strangely steady. 'It was something he did all the time. This time, though, my mum wanted to go along too, you know? It was a sunny summer day. She thought we could have a day by the sea. So she made a big picnic, and they packed me into the back seat of the car and we all headed out. But ...'

This time when he paused, Allie held her breath.

'A lorry lost control on the motorway,' he said, his eyes on some invisible point far away from her. 'They say the driver fell asleep, came across the central divide and hit us.' He flexed his fingers, then squeezed them into fists. 'Everyone said they wouldn't have felt a thing. It happened so fast.'

A tear slipped down Allie's cheek. 'What about you?' she asked, striking it away. 'Were you hurt?'

'Bruises. A few scrapes.' He sounded almost angry. 'Nothing serious.'

'That's incredible.' Allie allowed herself a moment of gladness that he'd survived. 'What happened then? I mean ... You were just a little kid.'

'Bob Ellison and my parents were really close friends. They'd made him my godparent. He came to the hospital and got me. Neither of my parents had close family so I think it was all settled really quickly. I don't really remember.' He shrugged. 'Guess nobody else wanted me. He moved into the cottage with me, and I lived there until I was old enough to move into the boys' dorm.'

He met her eyes. 'And here I am.'

Resisting the urge to wrap him in her arms and squeeze the pain out of him, Allie cleared her throat. 'This is all so ... huge, Carter,' she said. 'I can't believe I didn't know this already.'

He arched a sardonic eyebrow. 'Yeah well, it's not something I go around telling people.' He held out his hand. 'Hi, I'm Carter. My parents were killed in this awful car accident when I was little but I'm handling it remarkably well under the-'

'Stop it, Carter.' She interrupted him sharply. 'That's not fair. And it's not real. I'm your girlfriend not just "people". And you can be real with me.'

'I know,' he looked chagrined. 'I'm sorry, Al. I just don't know how to ... you know ... say this stuff. It's hard. Not talking about it makes me happier than talking about it. So I don't talk about it.'

Spontaneously, she leaned over to hug him. 'Thank you for telling me,' she whispered into his shoulder. 'I know it was hard. And I'm so, so sorry.'

His arms were like bands of iron around her ribs. Behind her back, she could feel his hands clenched into fists.

They held each other like that for a long moment.

When he leaned back, he rubbed his eyes before straightening.

'Right.' His voice was gruff but he forced a half-smile. 'This is really great so far.'

'Just a few questions left,' she said, flipping through her notebook. 'Are you now or have you ever been sympathetic to Nathaniel? Do you want to destroy the school? Are you plotting against Isabelle?'

'No. No. No,' Carter said, stretching out his legs. 'Anything else?'

'I don't think so.' Looking down at her list, Allie made a few quick notes. Then she noticed a question she'd forgotten to ask. 'Oh, here's one: Have you ever told Nathaniel's people anything about me?'

Holding himself oddly still, Carter tilted his head to one side. 'That's a strange question.'

'Yeah. Eloise wanted me to ask that one. No idea why.'

Busy writing notes, she didn't really clock Carter's hesitation, but when he replied, something about his tone caught her attention.

'Not that I know of,' he said.

She glanced up at him, her pen poised between her fingers. 'What?'

'I said "Not that I know of",' he said. 'I haven't told anybody in Nathaniel's group anything as far as I know.'

She squinted at him, confused. 'I don't understand. What do you mean "as far as you know"? How could you tell them about me without knowing it?'

'Well, I talked to Gabe, didn't I?' He shifted in his seat uncomfortably. 'And now he's one of them.'

Allie felt her pulse accelerate. She kept her voice as calm as possible. 'What did you tell Gabe about me?'

He shrugged. 'You know ... Stuff.'

'Stuff.' A tiny seed of suspicion flowered in her heart. 'What kind of stuff?'

He shrugged. 'You know ... Guy stuff. Come on, Allie. He was my friend. We talked about stuff.'

Sitting up straight, she fixed him with a disbelieving look. 'No, Carter, I don't know. What kind of stuff about me did you discuss with Gabe?'

'I don't know.' With a stubborn look, he crossed his arms across his chest. 'He used to ask a lot of questions about you. I didn't really think about it at the time. I just answered them, I guess.'

'And you never mentioned this to me before?' Her voice rose, and she paused to take a calming breath before continuing. 'Did you tell Isabelle?'

'No.' Under questioning, he sounded increasingly defensive. 'I guess I didn't really think about it until now. Allie, would you mind not treating me like a murder suspect?'

'OK,' she said evenly, 'I'm sorry. Can you remember any of the things he asked you?'

Exhaling loudly, he stood and walked across the room to where an ancient wall painting of a yew tree stretched up towards the ceiling. Its elaborately tangled roots spelled out the words 'Tree of Life'. It was one of Allie's favourite things in the 900-year-old chapel but right now she barely glanced at it.

'He asked me,' he said after a long pause, 'about your family. Where you lived in London. Who your friends were there. You see?' He looked over at her.

'What did you tell him?' she asked.

'What I knew,' he said, 'which wasn't a lot. South London. Some crummy school you hated. Some guy named Mark, and another one named Harry. That you didn't get along with your parents.'

Allie was trying very hard not to feel betrayed. But it felt as if he'd told Gabe everything he knew about her life before Cimmeria.

I don't know how to handle this.

She remembered something Eloise had said about keeping it like an interview.

'Think like a reporter,' she'd said in their one-to-one training session in the vividly painted library carrel. 'What would a reporter ask if they were interviewing him? Keep your emotional distance and you'll find it easier to separate what's important from what isn't.'

So now Allie tried to think of what she would ask if she wasn't Carter's girlfriend. 'Was there anything he asked that you thought was especially strange? Anything that weirded you out a little?'

Walking to the altar, Carter turned so his back was to her. His hands were shoved deep in his pockets. When he spoke, his voice was so low she wasn't certain she'd heard him right.

'He asked about your brother.'

'What?' A tingle of electricity ran through her fingertips. 'Did you say he asked about Christopher?'

His back still to her he nodded. 'And the thing I couldn't figure out was ...' he turned so she could see the worry in his eyes, '... how did he know you had a brother in the first place? You never told anybody about him. And even if he did know, why did he care? He asked me about him a lot.'

Suddenly the room felt colder. Allie swallowed hard. 'Maybe Jo told him?' she suggested hopefully, drawing the scarf closer to her neck. 'I told her about Christopher, and she was Gabe's girlfriend at the time. What did he ask about specifically?'

Carter walked closer to her, his footsteps echoing in the empty chapel. The sun must have dipped low outside, because the glow from the stained glass windows had disappeared. The room suddenly seemed gloomy; dancing shadows cast by the candles jerked nervously on the white walls.

'How close you two were. Whether or not you talked about finding him.' He stood in front of her, his dark eyes filled with concern. 'Once he asked if you'd ever mentioned looking for him. And where you might go if you did.'

Allie wrapped her arms tight around her torso.

'That's so creepy,' she said, her voice low. 'I don't like it.'

'No,' he said, and the candlelight flickered in his eyes. 'Me neither.'

FIFTEEN.

All that night, Allie went through the paces of normal Cimmeria life. But in her head her thoughts swirled in a tornado of worry. Everything seemed all tangled up and horrible. Carter and Gabe, the spy among them, Nathaniel ... Somehow she had to figure it out. Why had Gabe asked Carter those things? What was he hoping to learn?

The one person she thought would understand the one person who would know what she should do was Rachel. And she couldn't tell her. In fact, she couldn't tell anyone at all.

Except ...

She could tell Isabelle. But if she did that, what would happen? Would Carter get into trouble? She couldn't bear it if she was the reason Isabelle lost faith in Carter she was the closest he came to having a mother on this earth.

Her thoughts tormented her. She couldn't focus on her studies. She couldn't focus on anything.

After dinner, as the other students settled into their normal routine of studying in the library or playing games in the common room as the rain continued to fall outside, she paced the wide hallway near Isabelle's office. Her footsteps were soft and rubbery on the polished oak floor as she walked from the common room to Isabelle's office and back again, over and over.

What he said wasn't that big a deal. We know Gabe was with Nathaniel and we know Nathaniel has a thing about me. So I don't see why it matters so much.

Turning, she paced the other way.

But what if it did matter? Isabelle said she wanted any information about Gabe that might help them understand when he joined with Nathaniel and why.

And again.

'You'll wear a hole in the floor.'

Standing at the foot of the main staircase, Sylvain stood watching her. She had no idea how long he'd been there she couldn't remember the last time she'd looked up.

Even in his school uniform blue sweater and trousers, he managed to look sophisticated. He'd pushed the sleeves up to the elbows, and the sweater looked as if it had been tailored just for him.

As she fumbled for a response he added, 'And then the builders will have to come back with all of their equipment and rebuild it, and everyone will blame you.'

Allie's eyebrow arched. 'Your pessimism ... Is that a French thing?'

'Not pessimism,' he said. 'Pragmatism. It is a French word, you know. Pragmatisme.'

'Isn't pessimism a French word, too?'