The Next Killing. Rebecca Drake
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rugged, different than the ones they’d found at the crime scene.
“People like us?” Stephanie prompted.
“Nonconformists. Me, Morgan, Beau Steuben. People who dare to ask questions about what these stupid rituals have to do with real life.”
“What about Wiccan rituals? Were they stupid?” Oz asked.
The girl frowned at him. “Not to Morgan.”
“Who’s Beau Steuben?”
She shrugged. “Just this boy in town. He and Morgan went to school together when they were like five or something.”
“Did you and Beau participate in any rituals with her?”
Heather shook her head. Stephanie studied her face closely, looking for a flicker of eyes or tilt of the head that could indicate lying. The girl was stolid, impassive.
“No. I told you—I don’t do rituals.”
“What about Beau?”
“How would I know?” She looked offended. “Do I look like his keeper?”
“Where were you two nights ago, Ms. Lester?”
She rolled her eyes. “My room. Where else would I be? There’s nowhere else to go.”
Stephanie suppressed a sigh and glanced down at the list of names. Next.
They wouldn’t call her name; there was no reason. She passed by the library several times throughout the day just for the pleasure of catching a glimpse of the two detectives and their futile questioning.
Once the male detective came out to the hall to get a drink at the fountain and passed right by her. He was a large, lumbering man who gave her a goofy grin, pulling at his ugly pale blue tie as if it were choking his beefy neck.
He hardly looked competent enough to catch anyone. It was almost tempting to play with them, but she resisted the urge. Better to wait and watch and see what developed.
Later in the day she passed again and saw the female detective talking on a cell phone in the hall. She wore cheap shoes. They looked like they were hurting her feet. Her trousers were good quality but they needed to be pressed. She was young and attractive and her eyes were sharp.
They flicked over her while saying into the phone, “Nothing so far. I don’t think we’re going to get much.” She resisted the urge to return the detective’s gaze, walking down the hall at her same leisurely pace. Nothing, she thought. They had nothing and they would have nothing. She would use the detective’s words when she told the others. It was the good news they needed. She hadn’t doubted, but the others didn’t have her strength or her gifts.
She had to lead them in all things. A minor irritant, this self-doubt. She’d never experienced such a disability herself. They looked to her as bleating sheep to a calm shepherd. And she would lead them, just like she always had.
The police would look, but they wouldn’t find. She’d learned long ago that she could count on her own careful planning and the general principle that no one ever spotted anything hiding in plain sight.
Chapter Seven
Nicole Morel had been assigned as a roommate a quiet, plump girl who had the incongruously exciting name of Destiny. She’d gazed solemnly at Nicole behind owlish glasses upon her arrival and announced that since Nicole had gotten first pick of the beds, it was her choice as to which of the identical desks each would call their own. Nicole wasn’t surprised when Destiny picked the one with the better view out the window.
They moved quietly around each other in the room, careful of personal space, careful not to touch each other’s things. Nicole was nervous and wondered if Destiny felt the same. Would she have been happier rooming with another African American and not some half-French newcomer?
They set out their personal belongings quietly, both of them eyeing each other’s things but with none of the chatter that Nicole heard coming from the other rooms.
Destiny put a series of framed photos on her dresser, all of them featuring her and a series of smiling people who had the same round faces and inquisitive eyes.
Nicole had two photos. The first was an aerial shot.
“What city is that?” Destiny had asked, moving closer to look at it. “Where did you take it?”
“Paris. From the Eiffel Tower.”
The other photo was in a silver frame. Back home, her old home, its place had been on her bedside table. She found it wrapped in a sweater in her trunk. Her mother must have packed it because Nicole had left it behind.
There she was at ten, her smile so wide that the braces were visible on her teeth even though the picture had been taken from a distance. She was clutching her father’s hand on one side and Paul’s on the other. Her mother had her arm around Paul’s shoulder. Smile everybody, smile.
They were standing by a fountain in Italy whose name she’d forgotten. Something famous. Something educational, Paul complained, and they didn’t want to be educated on their holiday. Only he’d only said it to rile their mother and she’d laughed with him in the end. He’d always made her laugh.
“Is that your family?” Destiny had asked, her voice a jarring interruption.
“Yes.” She placed the photo on the dresser next to the other picture. She put her clothes neatly away in the drawers and left her trunk in the hall to be taken down for storage.
Destiny was still unpacking. Nicole lay down on the bed, but from there she could see the photo. She got up and switched its place with the shot of Paris and stood back, assessing.
“Paul wouldn’t want you to be this way.” Her mother had said that to her so many times, but couldn’t seem to take the advice herself. Her face had been so white and drawn. Not that her father had been any better since Paul’s death; there had been circles under both her parents’ eyes. They’d slept no better than she did, but the family meeting had focused on her.
They’d asked her to sit with them in the living room and she was painfully aware of Paul’s empty chair. They’d mentioned her falling grades, her truancy, her seeming lack of interest in everything she used to care about.
“You’ve given up ballet, riding, even going out with your friends,” her mother said, ticking them off on her fingers.
How could she bear to explain to them that when she went to the ballet studio she saw Celeste, Paul’s girlfriend? She didn’t want to remind them of this and it hurt too much to reveal that most of her friends had really been Paul’s. It was Paul everyone gravitated toward. He’d been so funny and full of life. She’d been included as his little sister, but once he was gone they were, too.
As for riding, it was easier to give up competing than to see the worry come back into her mother’s eyes and feel her fear that she would lose another child.
“We are going back to the United States,” her father had announced, stepping over her mother’s concern, declaring his solution for whatever problem was at hand just as he always had.
“This isn’t the time, Laurent!” Her mother hissed, her eyes flashing their annoyance. For a moment her father looked confused, but then his jaw hardened.
“We can’t stay here now,” he said, “there are too many ghosts here.”
Were there other ghosts, Nicole wondered, or did he just mean Paul? Her grandmother had lived with them briefly, before she’d passed away. A sweet woman who was always pressing coins or foil-wrapped chocolates into their hands. They’d had the wake for her in Paris, too, but it had been different. Sighs and mournful faces, of course, but there had been laughter, too. Not like Paul’s wake.
She’d taken the photo and angled it so that it couldn’t be seen from the bed or from the desk. She would have put it in the drawer but her