A piercing scream reverberated in the cold night air.
My head jerked up and I watched in abject horror as a figure crashed through what little remained of the glass window. Arms windmilled in a desperate attempt to prevent the inevitable, as if that alone might counteract the pull of gravity. The sickening crunch of a body colliding with the cobblestones would haunt my nightmares forever.
That body was supposed to be mine.
That death had been intended for me.
And I wasn’t out of the woods yet.
Chapter 31
Nothing makes people spring into action quite like a murder.
The security guards that were supposed to be protecting all the rich kids at Emptor Academy came barreling toward me, as if that would make a difference. As if that could erase the memory of what I’d just witnessed. As if they could whitewash the bloodstains and make everything as good as new. Pretend the darkness no longer existed.
I didn’t know what to tell them.
Hey guys. Took you long enough. I’m doubled over and vomiting from relief, actually. Okay, and nausea. And pain. And adrenaline. P.S. If anyone touches me, I might puke on them. Fun fact.
I was too busy trying not to retch on my sneakers to say much of anything. I could hear them demanding backup before calling the NYPD to report a possible homicide. The words washed over me without sinking in. My body felt completely disconnected from the scene taking shape around me. The authoritative demands, the random snatches of conversation, the awkward attempts at sympathy from the security guard who’d been stuck with the unenviable job of watching me hurl; all of it sounded like a long-distance phone call with terrible reception.
I clutched the ripped denim of my jeans as my empty stomach heaved again.
Something inside me had broken. I didn’t know what, exactly, but it was gone. Smashed to bits. Some frozen part of me kept repeating, All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Emmy together again.
Just like there was no fixing the tangle of broken limbs on the lawn.
I couldn’t even bring myself to provide a positive identification of the corpse. The security guard at my side kept asking me if I knew what happened. If I could answer their questions. If I could tell them precisely what I’d witnessed.
Except the only thing that terrified me more than looking into Ms. Pierce’s lifeless eyes would be to discover that it hadn’t been her. That my teacher had added yet another person to her body count because I hadn’t been skilled enough to stop her.
Hadn’t been smart enough. Brave enough. Strong enough.
A slow whistle cut off my security guard midquestion. “Somebody did a number on this lady, Joel,” said another security guard who was standing over the corpse.
My knees crumbled and I collapsed onto the lawn. Pain flared brightly, then dimmed as wet blades of grass tickled my face and the world turned sideways. My Starbucks killer was dead. My Potential Hostile. My criminal law teacher.
She couldn’t hurt me now.
That probably should have come as a relief, but it didn’t. My blind panic refused to subside. I felt no comfort in her death. No sense of resolution. No closure. It didn’t even the score or set anything to rights. There was no fixing the damage that she’d already done. Her death wouldn’t bring Frederick St. James back. It wouldn’t unravel the knot of terror in the pit of my stomach.
It wouldn’t wipe the slate clean.
Just as there was nothing that could fix that jagged, broken part of me.
The guard hovering over me tried to inch closer to his partner. “You sure it wasn’t self inflicted?”
“She didn’t punch herself in the face, Joel!”
My shoulders shook uncontrollably, blades of grass poking at my cheeks like the tines of a hairbrush. I didn’t want any more information. Didn’t want to imagine bruises beneath the pallor of death on Ms. Pierce’s delicate heart-shaped face. Didn’t want to see limbs jutting out at unnatural angles. Her solemn words from that lecture in her classroom haunted me.
There is always fallout.
Nothing that involved Frederick St. James would ever come for free. Not admission to Emptor Academy and definitely not the Slate. Even my life came with a price tag attached to it. Saving me, killing me, there was a steep price to pay for both acts. I didn’t know what the going rate of a vigilante rescue would cost me, what strings might come attached, if I’d ever be called upon to return the favor. Only one thing in the midst of all this turmoil seemed undeniable: I owed a stranger my life.
Given the way people around me kept turning up dead, I didn’t want my friends to be anywhere near me when they called in my debt.
My throat burned as I struggled to pull myself together. To brace myself for all the questions the security guards were obviously dying to ask. I could think of half a dozen just off the top of my head.
What were you doing outside the library?
How were you hurt?
Did you see who killed Ms. Pierce?
What do you mean you don’t know?! Who are you covering for? Or was it you? Do you understand the seriousness of this situation, young lady?
I was trembling, bruised, and too shell-shocked to cry but the cops would show no pity. As far as Detective Luke O’Brian would be concerned I was now implicated in not one but two homicide investigations. I wasn’t going to be greeted with any high-fives or back pats in the homicide department for setting a brand-new record in my age bracket. Just a longer stay of residency in the same cold interrogation room.
I was still on my own.
My eyes slid shut. Pain continued throbbing in my head, until it felt like it might crack open. I never wanted to move. Refused to imagine standing on my own two feet when it felt so nice sprawling out on the manicured lawn. I heard approaching footsteps and flicked my eyes open only long enough to identify the security guard vest. I didn’t know how many minutes I’d spent slumped motionlessly on the grass.
I didn’t much care.
“Emmy?” An enormous hand reached for my shoulder. I jerked away from the touch like a feral street cat. “Easy there, kid. You’re going to be okay. Your friends are on their way.”
My empty laugh emerged as a hoarse rasp. It had already started. There would be no stopping the flood of You’re-going-to-be-fines and the It’s-all-over-nows. Except you couldn’t box up this kind of ugliness and neatly tuck it away forever.
I couldn’t pretend the dead body fifteen feet away from me didn’t exist. She did. Ms. Pierce was every bit as real, as undeniable, as the dried blood splattered across my fingers.
“Look at me, Emmy.” The voice was gruff, commanding. I instinctively glanced up into Force’s concerned brown eyes, bracing myself for another empty platitude.
“I’m here, kid.”
A cold trickle of disappointment dripped through me. Force was no better than the rest of them. No better than the men in uniform who would take my statement in a matter of minutes. When the world really went to shit, Force could only offer the same meaningless words of encouragement that everyone else shelled out.
He bent down until his face was right next to mine. I jolted again, terrified by a new weight slipping into the pocket of my sweatshirt dragging it down. An electric burst of panic and pain nearly made me curl into the fetal position.
This couldn’t be happening. Not again. Not when owning the Slate had left me marked for murder. Not when I was so completely unequipped to deal with homicidal maniacs and danger and rich kids who toyed with me for their own amusement. My painfully dry eyes scanned Force’s face, catching a hint of warmth in his dark brown eyes when he nodded. Coming from him the subtle gesture was enormous. My fingers trembled as they fumbled inside my sweatshirt and brushed against the tablet I’d failed to protect only a few minutes earlier. The one I hadn't once considered when I’d decided to run for my life in a blind panic. My heart thudded to a stop as the full implication of that finally sank in.
Force had commi
tted murder.
For me.
“Like I said, I’m here for you, kid.” Force’s voice was low—calm and steady—but it didn’t reassure me.
“Y-you . . . you . . . you.” My frozen lips refused to shape any other words. “You.”
“Me.” Force smiled tightly, as if he wanted to share a raunchy joke in the middle of a funeral. “You might not want to mention it to your friend. I already scare her. I have your answer now.”
I stared at him blankly, unable to follow the strange conversation shift.
“In the car. I said I’d get back to you.”
Right. I’d asked him about fear. That felt like a lifetime ago, back before I’d nearly plummeted through a window to my death. Back when I naively thought I’d already experienced the most terrifying event of my life. I barely managed a nod.
“Fear can paralyze a person, but it’s got nothing on relief. That’ll knock you flat.” He gave me a final lingering once-over, evaluating every visible cut and scrape, before nodding, straightening, and walking toward the two security guards.
As if committing murder was all in a day’s work for him.
“Emmy!” Audrey sprinted toward me as I struggled to pry myself off the lawn. “Are you okay?” She didn’t give me a chance to answer before wrapping her arms around my waist. “Sebastian got a text that something happened and—please tell me you’re okay.”
Guilt drenched her words and I knew that she was a heartbeat away from blaming herself for letting me stumble blindly into danger.
“Never better,” I croaked. “I still owe you a coffee.”
She laughed, her slight frame quivering as she clung to me. “You don’t owe me anything.”
“Love you, Aud.” An unwanted tear snaked its way down my cheek, stinging against my fresh cuts and scrapes. “Always.”
It wasn’t much, but I couldn’t seem to manage anything more. My lower lip continued trembling as I caught glimpses of my new classmates gasping, whispering, exchanging horror-stricken stares of shock. I thought I heard muffled sobs clinging to the air, but I wasn’t sure. Everything kept blurring before snapping into hyperfocus. Kayla’s shimmery top sparkled in the dim light of dawn as she hovered near the sidelines, clearly unwilling to interrupt this moment with my best friend.
“I love you, too,” Audrey’s voice cracked. “Scare me like that again and I’ll kill you myself.”
I faked a weak smile. “I’m h-h-harder to kill than you might think.”
She laughed without humor and continued holding me. I didn’t know how much time passed. Didn’t much care that I was dead weight in her arms. Couldn’t bring myself to pull away from the one person I trusted here not to be secretly planning my murder.
A slight hush spread across the crowd, and I lifted my chin from Audrey’s shoulder in time to watch President Gilcrest muscle his way forward. He didn’t appear surprised to find the body of an employee sprawled in a bloody heap on the grass.
“What has happened here tonight is a great loss for our community,” President Gilcrest announced gravely. “Rachel Pierce was a valued member of our Emptor Academy family and her absence will be deeply felt. A grief counselor will be here tomorrow to talk with anyone who wants an appointment. In the meantime, please return to your rooms.” He turned his attention on me, only to frown when he caught sight of Audrey. “You’re not a student here.”
Audrey didn’t look remotely cowed. “Nope. Best friend. Tech genius. It really depends on who you ask. I’m here to pack up Emmy’s stuff and take her home.”
“The police will be here shortly. In the meantime, why don’t you—”
“Take care of my best friend?” Audrey suggested, resting one hand gently on the small of my back for support. “Great idea. We’ll be collecting Emmy’s stuff.”
Then Audrey helped me stumble away, without giving him a chance to object.
Chapter 32
Audrey and Kayla both banned me from packing when I tossed a shimmery gold lamé top into my suitcase.
It was probably the right call. I didn’t know what was hers and what was mine, and I didn’t particularly care what I took with me. All that mattered was getting away from Emptor Academy alive.
Too bad I couldn’t leave without talking to the police officers that were on their way.
“Emmy? Emmy?”
I blinked at Audrey and shook my head slightly. Whatever she’d just said to me, I hadn’t caught a word of it.
“Why don’t you go clean up?” She escorted me into the nearby communal bathroom, pointedly tugging open the curtain of my shower and then closing it behind me. I shrugged out of my clothes as she rambled on about her math homework in an obvious ploy to distract me from replaying the events of the last hour. Except everything she said flowed right over me in a rush of white noise, like a yoga soundtrack set for “babbling brook” or “low ocean swells.”
Hot water beat down on my face, but I couldn’t get warm.
My fingers shook uncontrollably. It took three attempts for me to successfully shove my sopping wet bangs out of my face, and then the adrenaline deserted me. My legs crumpled and I found myself sitting numbly on the shower floor, staring at the red smear that mingled with two strands of some other girl’s hair before it swirled down the drain. A cleaning crew would arrive within a matter of hours to scrub every inch of the place.
They would ensure it returned to its pristine condition.
I wished they could scrub my soul clean in the process.
My teeth chattered so hard that I nipped the tip of my tongue and whimpered in pain.
“Are you okay in there, Em?” The curtain rustled as Audrey peeked her head inside. My body was curled into a ball, my forehead pressed against my knees as my teeth clacked together as if they were attempting a complicated tap dance routine. Audrey sucked in a horrified breath. “Stay there, okay? Stay right there!”
I couldn’t have moved even if I’d wanted to disobey her. My trembling legs wouldn’t support me anymore, they had officially gone on strike, leaving me huddled on the floor.
I’d finally reached a standstill.
Actually, it was more of a sitstill. I dimly wondered if this was what Force had meant about relief having the power to flatten me. If he’d somehow known that I would end up paralyzed on the bathroom floor, unable to feel warmth even as scalding water pounded down on my head and steam filled my lungs.
Force had predicted my personal meltdown so easily, I wondered if he saw the same weakness inside of me that Ms. Pierce—Rachel—had spotted. I hadn’t known her name until President Gilcrest had said it aloud, and part of me wished I’d never heard it. Rachel was the sort of name that belonged to a girl who enjoyed sleepovers and horseback riding and dealt with the occasional flare-up of acne. Rachels were supposed to have close friends, maybe a soft spot for truly excellent croissants, and a penchant for bizarre baby names.
They weren’t supposed to become vicious killers.
Rachel Pierce would have mocked the tears sliding down my pale cheeks. I had no trouble imagining her derisive sneer, her voice as flat and cold as the tiles at my back.
You can’t expect to cry your way through life, Emmy. It doesn’t work. At some point those sad little puppy eyes of yours won’t be cute. And when that goes, you’ll have nothing left.
A scream bubbled up in the back of my throat, but emerged as nothing more than a garbled moan. Audrey must have heard it though, because she yanked back the curtain, shut off the water, and hastily wrapped my body in a familiar neon orange comforter. The shivers, the teeth chattering, the trembling, none of it stopped, but Audrey didn’t ask if I was okay. She didn’t say a word. She simply lifted wet strands of hair off my neck and guided me out of the shower. Then she settled against my side, fingers laced with mine, on the tile floor of the bathroom.
Somebody religious might be able to convince themselves that the snapping of my teacher’s bones, the death-rattle of Frederick St. James, every gut-wrenching, nau
sea-inducing moment of the past few days had happened so that I could fully appreciate this silence with Audrey. That it had all been part of some grand higher purpose. Except Rachel Pierce’s death didn’t make me want to become a better, kinder, more generous human being.
I was a cold, hollow husk of the girl I’d once been.
“Emmy?” Kayla’s disembodied voice echoed from the bathroom door. “The police are here. They have some questions for you.”
“Tell them that she’ll be there in a minute.” Audrey brushed a water-logged lump of hair away from my left eye. “I’ll grab you some clean clothes, Em. You stay right here. You don’t have to say a word to them, okay?”
I nodded, unsure what I could confess without making everything worse.
Sure, Ms. Pierce had killed Frederick St. James, but someone else had hired her to do it. Probably the same someone who wanted me dead.
There was no subtle way to mention any of that during a police interrogation.
Audrey returned with an armful of clothes, including my comfiest jeans, the same ones that she’d repeatedly insisted I needed to throw out. It was a total pity gesture. Maybe if another homicidal crazy person took a swing at me, she’d stop critiquing my sweatshirt with the obvious tear along the left cuff.
If not for the endless throbbing pain and crippling panic, it might almost be worth it.
“Do you need help getting dressed?” Audrey asked, setting the fresh set of clothes haphazardly next to the damp pile that had gotten splashed by the hot spray.
“Got it,” I mumbled. I crawled over to the heap, wrapped in my soaked comforter like an ancient Egyptian who couldn’t afford high quality mummification. My clumsy fingers needed four tries to fasten my bra, attempting buttons of any kind would have been beyond me. Luckily I could yank the jeans up my legs without unbuckling, unsnapping, or unzipping. The challenge was usually in keeping them perched on my hips, not in putting them on. The worn denim clung to my shower damp skin, despite the additional weight of the Slate that I removed from my dirty, blood-smeared sweatshirt. I knew I was being reckless with the Slate. That I wasn't even pretending to guard it. But I still felt too numb to care. Too deadened inside to touch that damn sweatshirt even a millisecond before absolutely necessary.
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