Authors: Melissa Marr
“Kissing you?”
“Today.” She gestures toward the living room where, presumably, the kiss happened. The doorway is still empty, but the source of her frustration is somewhere in the house. She shoves her plate away and lowers her head to the table before saying, “I have lousy taste in boys.”
She looks past me then, and I follow her gaze to see Nate.
“I’m going upstairs,” Eva announces.
At that, she presses her lips together and holds out a hand for her crutches.
“I could carry you,” he starts.
“No.”
Mutely, Nate hands her crutches to her.
When Eva and I reach her room, she sits on her bed, and after I put her crutches on the floor, I sit next to her.
“I don’t want to fight with him,” she whispers.
For a moment, she’s so tense that I can actually see her muscles clench. Then, she shakes her head and says, “Will you hand me my laptop?”
She pulls up her notes, and she lets me read her thoughts on the flowers and on her death visions. It’s creepy to read about my death and about Nate’s death alongside details about people who
actually
died. She has a few details about the killer though, and it’s the first time I’ve hoped she really can see deaths.
We start to try to figure who the killer’s next victims will be, but I don’t know any logical way to narrow in on who’s the most vulnerable. “What do the three of you have in common?”
“We’re all girls who are finishing our junior year at Jessup,” Eva says. “That leaves a lot of possible victims though.”
“You and Amy both dated Robert,” I add.
“Micki didn’t. Neither did Nate.” She frowns. “Or you. You were both future victims.”
“If Nate is really a victim, the girl part of the similarity is out too,” I point out reluctantly.
She grows quiet for a moment, but then, she shakes her head. “Right. So what do we know?”
“That the killer sent
you
a message. I hate to say it, but the one thing everyone has in common is
you
. Somehow everyone is tied to you.”
“Micki and I weren’t close, though. With you, Nate, and Amy, I see a connection there, but Micki doesn’t fit.” Eva lets out a small noise of frustration. “If it’s girls, Nate doesn’t fit. If it’s people who . . . get around, you and Micki don’t fit.”
“Maybe not here, but before I moved here . . .” I leave the words unsaid, but Eva knows about my stupid choices in Philadelphia. “Maybe someone knows that?”
“Micki was a virgin. So that pattern doesn’t fit.”
“Maybe it’s not a pattern,” I suggest. “Maybe it’s what they ‘mean’ to you . . . or something entirely different.”
We look at the notes again. There’s not a lot of information, but we do arrive at a few possible thoughts: the killer is trying to say something about love, fidelity, rebirth, and pride; the killer is tying this to juniors at our school, so has some connection to our class; and he—or she—is focusing on Eva. It’s nauseating that someone can be so twisted as to think that murder has anything to do with love. The fidelity part is a little more interesting considering what we now know about Robert’s lack of faithfulness.
“So did he kill Amy because Robert slept with her?” Eva wonders aloud. “It’s not
her
fault that he was dating me. If it’s about being faithful, shouldn’t Robert be a target?”
“Maybe?”
Eva and I exchange a look, and she says, “I need to see him then. I need to see how he dies.”
“Micki wasn’t unfaithful to anyone. Neither were you.”
“Nate doesn’t date, so that’s not it there either,” she muses.
After a few more minutes, we are forced to admit that these facts aren’t enough to figure out who the future victims are. There are around two hundred people in our grade, so if we look only at the girls, we have maybe a hundred or so potential victims. That’s a lot of people. If we narrow it down to people who are faithful or have pride issues, that’s . . . impossible to figure out.
“They might not all be girls if your visions are real, but they
are
all people you spend time with. That’s the only thing in common between the victims and me and Nate, too. It seems pretty simple, but it’s all we have.”
“So I need to start looking at my friends’ deaths,” she says softly. “If I’m all that everyone has in common, we need to start looking at their deaths to see who the next victim is.”
We decide to start with the people most likely to visit her. Rather than text them all, she simply sends a message to Piper, who was to visit soon anyhow. “Bored and trapped in the house. Invite the usuals to come over for lunch.”
A few moments later, she reads Piper’s reply: “On it.”
I’m not sure who all will be around, but I suspect that Piper will just send a group message to some combination of their core group: Laurel, Jess, CeCe, Bailey, Madison, Robert, Reid, Grayson, Carter, and Jamie. To be sure that Robert comes, Eva sends another text to him.
Quietly, Eva tells me, “The idea of having most of them in the house with Nate makes me want to cringe, but I need to start looking for more clues.”
“You
do
know Nate slept with Jess . . . and possibly with Piper.”
“I know what he’s done the past two years, Grace,” she says. “It didn’t cure my crush when he was doing it, and it’s not curing it now.”
At the sound of a throat being cleared, Eva glances at her doorway. Nate stands in the hall awkwardly, hands shoved in his pockets and lips pressed together as if he’s disapproving of something—quite possibly the words he just overheard.
Eva tilts her head, her chin jutting out as if she’s about to challenge him. “Did you need something?”
He shakes his head. “I’m not going to even try to answer that one, Eva.”
He stays outside of her room, like there’s a line he can’t cross, and I have the overwhelming urge to yank him inside, run out, and close the door on them. He needs to get past whatever this is, but I’m not so heartless as to put Eva in that situation—at least not today.
“The social elite are stopping by,” I tell him.
“What?” He looks from Eva to me and back at her. “What did you do?”
“Texted Piper and Robert.” She folds her arms over her chest. “I’m investigating. All the victims are tied to me, so I’ll look and see if we can figure out who’s next.”
“You let her do this?” He glares at me.
“Check the attitude, Bouchet.” I stand and step between them. “Crazy killer is obsessing on her. What do you think she’s going to do? Sit around and wait for him to kill another girl?”
Nate folds his arms over his chest and says, “If the victims are all tied to you, don’t you think the
killer
might be too?”
“They’re my friends, Nate. They might be jerks sometimes, but no more so than you.”
He doesn’t look convinced, but I’m with Eva on this one. I don’t know what a killer is supposed to look like, but I’m having a hard time picturing anyone I know as a murderer. They’re potential victims, though, and I really hope that Eva
can
see deaths because I don’t want anyone else to die for real.
Judge
I
KNOW HE’S THERE
, close to her, touching her like she’s his. She’s not. She’s always been mine—and she always will be.
Her mother hired him, invited him into her home, and I am confused by it. I don’t understand why she picked
him
. Why didn’t Mrs. Tilling place an ad? Why didn’t she ask Eva’s friends? I could have been there every day. She’d see how life should be then. She’d understand my love for her, my need for her. I could touch the cuts on her skin, marks that no one else has put on her, like symbols of our connection. If I study them, I wonder what they’ll say. What messages are written on her skin for me to read?
The Lord is mysterious, and I don’t even begin to understand his ways. When the glass carved her face, I didn’t think to wipe away the blood to find the messages that the Lord might have left there. He carved the commandments in stone tablets. He spoke through a burning bush. Perhaps, Eva’s skin is the parchment on which he wrote our own private commandments.
I can’t let Nathaniel Bouchet taint her. I can’t let him study the messages the Lord has left for me on Eva’s skin. The more I think about him being alone with her, the angrier I become. I’d hoped that she’d be only mine by now, but she hasn’t come to me or called me. I was very clear. I sent her the flowers, the cicada, the words etched into Amy’s skin.
And that was all after I
gave up
Amy. I sacrificed her. I left so many clear messages for Eva, and yet . . . here I am without her. I don’t understand. I lower my head to my hands and listen for instructions. I don’t know whether Eva is testing me or not. I don’t know what to do.
I flip through the pages of my photo albums. One of these girls will be the next choice. I study them, look at their faces as they were captured, and I wait for inspiration. I need this next message to be the one that makes Eva come to me.
Carefully, I touch each face, waiting to feel something, hoping for clarity. Beside me, on the dresser beside my bed, Eva watches from a picture frame my grandmother gave me. It’s one of those heavy Waterford crystal ones. She likes those. She told me that someday I could use it for my wedding picture, but for now, it holds a picture of my bride-to-be. I keep it in a drawer when I’m not home, but every day, I open the drawer, take the picture out from between the pairs of folded and pressed boxers, and position it so I can see Eva while I study. She inspires me. Sometimes, I confess to her when we are alone in the dark. I tell her the things I’ve done that shame me, and I know that in her own bed she is forgiving me. When she meets my eyes and smiles as she passes me in the halls of our school, I know she has forgiven me.
And I forgive her.
I forgive every time she lets someone else too near her; I forgive her weakness for not coming to me after the first time I knew she loved me too. I forgive everything. I always have.
Bouchet, though, is not something I can forgive. I saw her face when she offered herself to him at Piper’s party. Like a virgin to an altar, she walked up to him, and he cast her away. I thought it meant that he knew that she was not for him. Now, though, he stands at her side like a lover or a servant. He doesn’t have the right to be either one. I can accept Grace walking at Eva’s side. She is no threat to me. She could even be a part of our new life. He cannot.
He’s trying to break the seventh commandment, and he
is
breaking the tenth. The Bible is clear that “Thou shalt not commit adultery” and “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife.” Eva might not be my wife in law, but in my soul she is. It is my duty and my right to protect her.
Eva
I
LOOK AROUND THE
room at the people who’ve come. Aside from Grace and Nate, Piper, Laurel, Jess, CeCe, Madison, and Bailey are all here. According to Piper, the guys—Robert, Reid, Grayson, and Jamie—are on their way. Carter can’t come. They’re my closest friends and classmates, people I’ve known since elementary school, and I’ve invited them here so I can see them die. If I had a better plan, I’d try it, but this is the only idea I have.
I still feel frightened and guilty for what I’m about to do.
“Piper?” I call her nearer. I might as well start with the girl who’s been closest to me for the longest. Grace is my best friend, but Piper has been in my life as a confidante forever.
She smiles as she walks toward me. “What’s up?”
“I’m still a little unsteady. Can you help me up?”
I hold out my hand, and she reaches hers out automatically. Getting her to touch me is easy.
He’s straddling me. He grabs my arm and jerks it down, pinning it under his knee
.
He stares at his own hand. “You tore my glove.”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper
.
He reaches out for something. I look at the gloved hand as it grabs a bright red bottle that’s rolled across the rug. In a moment, the bottle is at my lips
.
“Here,” he says. “Take a sip.”
I stare up at him, but my mouth doesn’t open. I try to stare at his face, his clothes, to see anything that will help. His face is a blur
.
“There’s blood in your mouth, Piper. I’m going to give you some water.” He opens the bottle with his teeth, biting it and tugging up. “Open your mouth.”
“Please, let me go. I’m sorry. I don’t want to die.”
He puts the bottle in my mouth. “Swallow.”
The water streams in so fast that it’s choking me, and I know it’s not just water. He wouldn’t force me to drink if it was just water. I’m being drugged
.
“In a few minutes, we’re going to get up and go to the car, so we can give Eva her message,” he explains. “I’ll help you out to the car so you don’t fall.”
“Please! I’ll do . . . anything. Whatever you want. Please?”
He shakes his head. “I just need you to help me with a message.”
“Eva!” Nate is pulling my hand from Piper’s, rescuing me from being inside her death.
The rug . . . that’s the rug in the foyer of her house. The killer is in her house. She is murdered in her own home.
Piper, the real Piper who is in
my
house, stares at me with an expression somewhere between discomfort and intrigue. She rubs the hand I just released as if I held it too tightly, but she says nothing. Then her gaze darts to Nate as he puts an arm around my waist.
“Something you forgot to tell me?” Piper says in a low voice. She arches a brow and looks pointedly at Nate’s arm.
I shake my head. I don’t even know how to speak right now. I want to believe that everything’s okay. It’s not.
I realize belatedly that everyone in the room is watching us, and I don’t know what to say. Piper is going to be a victim. Judge—whoever he is—is going to kill her.
“You should sit back down,” Nate orders. “Chair or sofa?”
“Sofa.” I glance at Piper and answer the question she’d ask if we were alone. “I’m not sleeping with him. We are friends though.”