I gnawed my fingernails. Sitting bundled on my couch in a fluffy blanket had seemed like a good idea when I left the Independence building, but now I felt like a big, fat, target. I was probably safe at home, though. The killer had targeted people at the mall rather than out in the world, which pretty strongly suggested Donald was behind it all. The mall was his turf, his territory, and we were all in danger when we crossed his threshold.
If only the Spellcasters spells were real, and we could raise Wes from the dead for a minute or two to question him, like they do on all those TV shows where people, well, raise the dead so they can question them. But I didn’t have any supernatural solutions. I was just a gamer with a stunning knowledge of how to green a building. I wasn’t a private eye or a superhero or even a spunky heroine with more pluck than sense. My life would have been a lot more interesting if I had been one of those things.
The phone rang, and I shrieked. More horrified at the sound of my own voice than the thought of a phone stalker, I put a hand over my mouth as I picked up the receiver to muffle my own panting breath.
“Hello?” I said. I wondered if the caller could hear my heart pounding.
It was Bay.
“Hey. We heard about what happened—are you okay?”
“Yeah.” I filled her in, describing the scene and my consequent worries.
“That’s crazy.” She sounded distracted, like she was eating or typing or both.
“What are you doing?” I asked, hurt. She should be worried about my safety or rushing to my side or something. I felt a little neglected by all of my people. Jordan was MIA, my parents were at home, Hector was off doing Hector things. And here I was, all alone, falling to pieces with no one to put me back together again.
“Just looking at those photos you took earlier.”
“Oh, right.” That mollified me a little. “Are they useful?”
“Maybe. The photos definitely show that Donald’s having money troubles, and he and Meghan are up to something. But what’s weird is what I saw that you didn’t get a chance to look at before Meghan came in—there was an email from Meghan to Donald saying that the plan was off.”
“What? Are you sure?”
“Yeah. It was really vague, and really short, but it just said that Meghan didn’t think it would work well right now, and they both needed to focus on other things.”
“Was there a reply from Donald?”
“I didn’t see one—it was sent today.”
“Why didn’t we see it in Donald’s email?”
“I have no idea. Maybe he deleted it. We didn’t check his trash file.”
“Deleting wouldn’t accomplish much, anyway. You’re always telling me that.”
“Yeah, but Donald wouldn’t know that. Maybe this whole fire thing this afternoon was to cover it up or to scare Meghan back into line.”
I sucked in my breath. “Oh man, I bet you’re right.”
I could hear Bay typing furiously. “Too bad I don’t have a photo.”
“Meghan’s computer was destroyed.”
“Donald’s wasn’t, though.” The typing stopped, and I could practically feel the heat of Bay’s laser focus on me. “We should tell Jordan. I was thinking—”
My doorbell rang. “Oh, hang on, Bay, there’s someone at the door.”
“Be careful!” Her voice cracked. “Stay on the phone with me.”
“You think I’m in danger here?” I stood, letting my blanket fall to the floor.
“Donald knows we were in Meghan’s office! You might be.”
“I think I could take Donald,” I scoffed. For good measure, though, I stopped by my fireplace on the way to the front door and grabbed one of the pokers. I hoisted it in one hand and tucked the phone between my ear and shoulder. “I have a poker.”
“Cold iron, that’s good.”
“What, in case it’s a ghost?” If she was joking, she couldn’t be that worried. But she was alert now, no longer dividing her attention between me and her computer.
“Well, it never hurts to be extra prepared.”
“Right.” I laughed, but the merriment felt forced. “I’m not sure my poker qualifies, though.”
“What?”
“Yeah, apparently these days ‘cold iron’ is something special,” I said. I kept my voice light as I padded up the hallway in my socks. My house was old and not well insulated. Whoever was outside would hear me before I saw them. They would know, at least, that I wasn’t afraid. “Even a lot of iron pots aren’t made of true iron. I doubt my hardware store fireplace tools would meet ghost-destroying standards.”
“I don’t think it’ll matter if it’s a person and not a ghost.”
I tilted my head as I approached the front door. I couldn’t see anyone through the rippled glass of the windows, but it was dark outside. I pressed my eye to the peephole. The door was cold, chilled by the outside air, and the rim of the peephole was foggy. I saw no one.
“There’s no one there.”
“Those damn kids again?” Bay asked, her tone light, but I could tell she was worried.
“Maybe.”
I unlocked the door and opened it slowly. I peered out through the cracked opening, poker in hand, before I pulled the door open the rest of the way. “No one here,” I told Bay. There was a manila envelope on the “Speak, friend, and enter,” doormat, though. I stooped to pick it up. “Someone left an envelope.”
“That can’t be good.”
“No.” I stepped back in from the cold, shut the door, and locked it. With Bay still listening over the phone, I slid my finger under the edge of the envelope and ripped it open. I peered in before I stuck in my hand and saw a few thick squares of paper. “Photographs.” I took them out—they were digital photos, printed off someone’s computer.
They were photos of me.
One of me sitting on the curb, waiting for the paramedics. I was looking up at one of them, seen in profile in the picture, but my features were scratched bare, leaving a white place on the photo. I sucked in my breath.
“What is it?” Bay asked.
I didn’t answer. I flipped to the next photo. Me, in my driveway. I was getting out of my car at home, bags in hand. My clothes were soggy—earlier that evening, just an hour or two ago. My heart pounded against my ribs. I heard a clang and jumped, but I realized that it was the poker from the fireplace—I’d dropped it. I flipped to the third photo. It was of my bedroom window. The blinds were closed, but I could see my silhouette behind them, a dark patch in the golden light.
This one had writing on it: MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS, BITCH.
I realized Bay was calling my name, over and over again, but I could barely hear her over my rushing pulse. The photos shook in my hand, and I dropped them on the floor. They scattered over the cheerful, polished wood, one of them skidding into the kitchen, another toward the living room. My hands felt frozen, and my stomach heaved.
“I’m here,” I said to Bay. “I’m alright.”
“What was it?”
“Photos,” I said. “Photos of me.”
“Okay,” Bay said. “I’m leaving right now.” I heard noise, like her keys, Allison speaking in the background. “I want you to hang up and call 911 right now. Then get your cell phone and call me back. Allison will call Jordan, and we’ll be there in ten minutes.”
I nodded, though I knew she couldn’t see me. I could feel my knees shaking. “Okay,” I stammered. “Okay.”
It took me two tries to disconnect, my fingers were trembling so violently, and when I finally did, I dropped the phone before I could dial again.
The doorbell rang, and I screamed.
“Autumn?” a voice called.
A female voice.
I put a hand to my chest. “Who’s there?” I shouted. I bent, groping for the poker again, and picked it up with my still-shaking hands. I held it across my body like a fencer and took a step.
“It’s—i
t’s Meghan. Meghan Kountz. I need your help.”
I staggered to the doorway. My vision had gone black around the edges, and I honestly thought I might faint. I pressed my hands against the door, leaning on it, and peeked out the peephole again. It was Meghan. She wore a bandage around her head and no makeup. Her hair was in a messy ponytail, and her jacket didn’t match her pants. She looked like a crazy person.
“Please—” she said. “Open the door. I think someone’s trying to kill me.”
I laughed, my voice high and hysterical. “You do—there were photos, on my doorstep.”
“What?”
“Is there anyone else out there?”
She glanced over her shoulder, nervous. “No, no one I can see. Should there be?”
“No.” I opened the door and took a step back, the poker still brandished before me. “Come in, but show me your hands.”
“Are you serious?” She took a hesitant step across the threshold. When she peered around the door, her eyes widened. “What’s going on?”
“Show me your hands.” I gestured with the poker, feeling a little ridiculous. She complied, holding both hands up to shoulder height. Her designer bag dangled from one elbow. “Drop the bag.”
“Okay.” She lowered it to the ground, then slid it a few inches away with her foot. “Is that better? Can I lower my hands?”
I bent, the poker still raised, and took her purse. I looked through it quickly, though I had no idea what I would do if I found, say, a gun or a bloody knife in it. There was nothing but a tablet and her keys and a lot of makeup. I closed it and handed it back to her. “Yes. Here.”
We stared at each other in my dim hallway. I still had my poker, and she held her purse stiffly in front of her body. “What happened to you?” she asked.
I pointed the poker at the photos on the floor. “Someone sent me pictures of myself with the faces scratched off. I’ve been getting Spell—er, game cards with the faces scratched off for days now, but someone brought the photos to my house tonight.” I looked her up and down. “What happened to you?”
“Someone attacked me from behind in my own store and then lit off a bunch of smoke bombs to destroy evidence.”
I nodded. “Fair enough. Come on.” I waved a hand and led the way back to my living room, stopping to pick up the phone from where I had dropped it. I left the photos on the floor—I didn’t want to see them again, and when Jordan got here, I assumed she would want to take them as evidence.
Meghan perched on my couch, looking incredibly out of place. Her designer purse sat on the floor beside my polished tree stump end table. She glanced around, taking in my wall of DVDs, the anime poster, and the framed cross-stitched profanity sampler over the fireplace. I could see her absorbing it all in Sherlock-style, evaluating me as represented by my possessions, mapping my life and my place in the world. I didn’t like it, and I didn’t like her, but she looked so pitiful that I didn’t have the heart to kick her out.
“Why did you come here?”
“I know you’ve been—uh—investigating what happened. I know you don’t believe that your friends killed that boy. And I know you know bad stuff has kept happening, even after those two were arrested.”
“Yeah. So?”
“So . . . I think there’s more going on here than the police realize.” She bit her lip, a vulnerable gesture that probably made men like Craig go weak in the knees. “I don’t think it was just about their little game.”
“Did you and Donald work together to fix the grant competition?” I asked bluntly.
“What? No!” Meghan’s eyes were wide. “Of course not!”
“I saw the emails between you—that’s why I broke into your office. And his. I know you were working on something together.”
“Oh. Well—I guess I might as well tell you.” She relaxed, clasping and unclasping her hands in her lap. “That was something else. We were working together on plans to convert the top floor of the building into a banquet hall—we were going to remodel it, and I was going to start working for him as an events coordinator to rent it out for parties and dances and conventions and things. He needs money, you know, and that would help to boost the building’s income. The remodels from the grant would help to boost it, but the banquet hall was a separate project. We kept it quiet, though, because we weren’t sure how it would affect my chances for the grant otherwise.”
I sat back, stunned. “So—asking me to drop out, that wasn’t because I was screwing up your plans?”
She rolled her eyes. “Well, yes, it was, but not in the way you’ve obviously been thinking. If you had to install solar panels and change the wiring and all that stuff, it would slow down our plans for the banquet hall.”
“But Donald was interested in my plans—he wanted to save money on his utilities.”
“He thought maybe we could do what you wanted to do as part of our remodel for the top floor. We could make it more efficient at the same time.”
“Then the grant coming to me would have made it easier for you two, because you would have had extra money—”
“Not necessarily, because the expenditures for the grant money have to be tracked carefully, and it might have meant not getting to—”
I held up a hand. “Okay, this is so not the point.”
She stopped, a funny look on her face. “You’re right.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m sorry your customer died.”
I stared at her.
She shifted in her seat. “Really. He was so young. And even though I complained about them, they never hurt my business or anything. They were a well-behaved group of kids.”
“So why did you report them?” I asked. “Paige said you heard them arguing—it must have been your evidence that made the police suspect them.”
“I did hear them arguing. I couldn’t not tell the police that.” She sounded miffed that I would even suggest she might consider hiding evidence, and I almost laughed. We couldn’t help but argue, Meghan and me, but we weren’t all that dissimilar. She told the truth, and so did I.
And we’d both been disappointed.
“I’m, uh, sorry I thought you killed Wes,” I said.
Her eyes bulged. “You thought it was me? How could I have possibly killed him?”
“Well, I thought Donald helped you.”
“Oh.” She choked and put a hand to her lips as if to contain something more.
“What?” I said.
“It might have been Donald. But—” Her eyes filled with tears.
“What?” I said again, louder.
She looked at me, and the tears spilled down her cheeks. “I think it was Craig.”
19
“ARE YOU SERIOUS?” I said. “How could it have been Craig? And why?”
“I don’t know!” Meghan sobbed. She completely broke down, her hands over her face, her body shaking with the force of her tears. Her sobs clawed out from deep in her throat, raw and hoarse, and her face went bright red with the fury of it. I started to feel like a jerk, just sitting there staring at her like a deadbeat den mother, so I grabbed the box of tissues from the end table and moved to sit beside her on the couch.
I patted her knee. “There, there.”
She looked up at me, and I held the box of tissues out. She took one, still sobbing. “Thank you.”
After a few more minutes of wheezing tears and awkward reassurances, she started to pull herself together. “I’m sorry,” she gasped. “I just hadn’t said it out loud, yet, and I still don’t want to believe it’s true.”
I tried again. “Why do you think it might be true?”
She shrugged and dissolved into tears once more. “Well, he—” she hiccupped and had to start over. “He was there that night. And then—he’s been hiding things. And I know he’s been talking to Donald a lot, threatening him. He’s had secret meetings for months, but there have been more recently. And I—” she stopped, s
obbing again. “I think the porch paint was blood.”
I had to interrupt at that one. “Um . . . what?”
“The tin of porch paint—I think it was blood!”
“He has a jar of blood?” I said stupidly.
“Uh-huh.” She nodded and snuffled into her soggy tissue.
“I think I need more information.”
“And today—when I was attacked—he came in. I wasn’t unconscious, not really, and I saw him—he saw me on the floor and then moved one of the smoke bombs, put it on the desk. After that, the sprinklers came on, so my desk was soaked, and he came over to me and—”
She melted into insensibility, sobbing and saying random words. From what little she had told me, it seemed possible—while I couldn’t explain the jar of blood, unless it was stage blood, it sounded like Meghan thought Craig had been behind all of the vandalism and attacks. My mind reeled as I adapted to this suggestion. I couldn’t begin to guess why Craig would do any of it, never mind why he would do so much damage to Meghan’s store, but he had to have been pulling the strings. This would mean he attacked her and then came to find me as an alibi.
It was cold blooded, and I felt sick, thinking about how he’d just stood there in the stairwell, letting me poke his shoulder, while Meghan was bleeding on the floor of her office. If she was right, which was still difficult to believe, I was lucky he hadn’t just pitched me down the stairs and fled the scene. The cops would have blamed, well, someone—it wouldn’t have been my problem at that point—and he would have ridden off into the sunset.
But why orchestrate almost a week of violence and silly vandalism? Why kill an innocent boy—for what? A twenty-five-thousand-dollar grant that had nothing to do with Craig himself? No, we still didn’t have the whole story.
I wanted to believe Meghan had solved it, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to believe her over my old friend. Craig was—had always been—on my side, while Meghan had been my personal troll for nearly two decades.
“Why did you and Craig fight the night Wes died?” I asked.
“Because he never supported my plans with Donald to put a banquet hall on the fifth floor. He said it would split my focus.” She broke down again in an ugly-cry born of days of fear and trauma.
No Saving Throw Page 17