The Nightmare Affair (13 page)

“This is about Rosemary, isn’t it?”

“How’d you guess?”

“It was either that or homework for a criminology class. Only Arkwell doesn’t offer any.” He brushed hair out of his face. I wished he wouldn’t do that. I liked the way it hung in his eyes. “Are you trying to figure out who killed her?”

“Trying being the operative word. I’m not having much success.” I said. Here was a guy smart enough for MIT, and here was me playing cops and robbers.

“Would it help if I told you the police have a suspect?”

“Really? I’ve been keeping an eye on the news but I haven’t heard anything.”

Paul leaned forward, resting his arms on the desk. “Well, it’s not like magickind are big on the virtues of freedom of the press.”

“No kidding. So who is it?”

He grinned mischievously, and I was momentarily stunned by how attractive he was. His high, prominent cheekbones looked almost exotic combined with his crooked nose and blond hair. Sexy combination. “Now, hang on a minute. This is top-secret information. I could get in trouble for telling you.”

It took me a second to realize he was joking. I leaned into him, lowering my voice to conspiratorial level. “I promise I won’t tell anybody. Cross my heart.”

Paul shook his head. “Not good enough. You’ve got to give me something in equal trade.”

“Like what?”

He seemed to consider the question seriously. “How about a date?” He grinned again, only there was something a bit shy and insecure about it.

My stomach flipped over, but I managed a smile. “Hmmm … well, that’s a pretty high price, but I guess I can do it.”

He winked. “You won’t regret it. How about next Saturday?”

“Okay.” I ripped off a piece of paper from the time line, jotted down my cell and dorm numbers, and handed it over. “Now spill,” I said, anxious to move on. I was afraid if we didn’t, he might admit he’d been joking after all. Or he might remember that he was a Kirkwood, and I was the daughter of Moira Nimue-Everhart.

Paul slid the paper into the front pocket of his jeans, and said, “Mr. Culpepper.”

I chuckled. “You’re kidding, right? Blaming the maintenance man—I mean you might as well say the butler did it.”

“You know he’s a Metus demon?”

I rolled my eyes. “That’s my point. He’s too easy a scapegoat. Just because Metus demons get their power by feeding off others’ fears doesn’t make him the killer.” I knew I was being a bit defensive, but I couldn’t help it. Most darkkinds got a bad rap because of the parasitic way their magic worked. I might be a halfkind, but my magic came from my darkkind side.

“Yes,” said Paul, “except there’s the small matter of Culpepper lying about his alibi.”

I raised my eyebrows. “I thought he was fixing a problem in Flint Hall?”

“He was. Except the Flint students have him leaving around midnight, and he didn’t report finding Rosemary’s body until after one. Claims he stopped by the maintenance garage to drop off some tools, but nobody believes it would’ve taken him that long, and it’s way out of the way. So what was he up to?”

“Good question.” I chewed on the inside of my cheek, thinking it over. Was it possible the
F
in Rosemary’s diary referred to Culpepper? I wondered what his first name was. Only, I couldn’t imagine him being the secret lover. Culpepper had to be at least thirty or older. He wasn’t necessarily bad-looking when he kept the demonish parts of his anatomy hidden behind a glamour, but he’d never struck me as attractive. Still, he did work for the school, making it a good bet he’d been on campus this summer. And attraction was subjective. Maybe Rosemary had a thing for scary-looking older dudes.

“Not only that,” Paul continued, waving a hand through the air, “but the coroner put her time of death somewhere in that time frame.”

“Hang on. How do you know so much about it?”

“My uncle’s a magistrate. All of the Magi are getting updated on it. I pay attention.”

“Oh. Right.” Maybe I should reconsider going out with him. Magistrate was one rank beneath consul—too much potential for my life to become a
West Side Story
parody. Then again, how often was I going to get a chance to date a guy who was both good-looking
and
smart? Not to mention, extremely easy to talk to. I was surprised at how relaxed I felt around him. It had been awhile since any boy had shown an interest in me. Thoughts of Eli tried to force their way into my brain, but I pushed them out.

Paul said, “And did you know Culpepper was a sniper in the Marines?”

“You mean like United States military?”

“Uh-huh.”

“No, but that’s not surprising. A lot of magickind enlist.” The Magi Senate encouraged enlistment, especially to demonkind. It was an easy way for some of them to fulfill their magical needs without doing anything illegal. No doubt that had been the reason Culpepper had signed up.

Paul leaned back, folding his arms across his chest. “Well, yeah, but my point is he’s sort of a trained killer.”

“Maybe when he was fighting ordinaries. But Rosemary was magickind. How could he have done it?”

Paul shrugged. “I don’t know. But somebody did. The Will or no.”

“True.” I glanced down at the suspect graph, reading the column names for at least the hundredth time. I looked back at Paul. “So have the cops found anything on him?”

“Not yet. They searched his house and office but came back with nothing.”

I rolled the pen between my fingers, my thoughts churning. “Hey, you wouldn’t happen to know anything about Keeper spells, would you?”

“What’s that?”

Well, it had been worth a shot. “Never mind.” I wrote “Culpepper” in the Name column beneath F, then put a check mark under Opportunity. I set the pen down, feeling a thrill of both excitement and trepidation at my progress. Maybe I had a knack for this detective business after all.

Then again, maybe not.

9

Stakeout

Tailing somebody was a lot trickier in real life than in TV shows and movies. What with classes, homework, and a regular dream-feeding schedule, I could only spy on Mr. Culpepper in short bursts. Monday, I spotted him on the way to some repair job on campus and followed along behind him, hoping to catch him doing something suspicious. Just what exactly, I had no idea, but I figured I would instinctively recognize this suspicious behavior when I saw it. The next day, I walked by his office in the maintenance garage and saw him sitting behind the desk writing in the leather-bound notebook he’d been carrying the day before. Wednesday, I didn’t find him at all. Thursday, he was in the office writing again.

The notebook interested me. Why carry it around everywhere? It wasn’t like he could use it to fix a leaky faucet. But if Culpepper was involved in a secret love affair with a student, he might have chronicled it in a diary, too. And his first name was Faustus.

Finding out wasn’t too hard. The school’s directory listed the first and last name of all the faculty and staff, and I amused myself for nearly twenty minutes looking up the names of my teachers. Some of them were pretty funny, like Wilhelmina Norton and Ignatius Fritz, even Arturo Ankil.

I knew I needed to get a peek at that notebook, but didn’t have a clue how to do it. By Thursday night I came to the conclusion that I needed to devote a whole day to following him. I was tempted to ditch Friday’s classes, but Selene reasoned me out of it.

“Not worth the risk,” she said when I mentioned it during dinner.

“You don’t know that. If he
is
the killer, it’s totally worth it.”

Selene shook her head. “There haven’t been any signs about Culpepper in Eli’s dreams, right?”

“Well, no. Just more football playing, ice fishing, and Katarina.” I made a face.

“Then it’s definitely not worth it. I get you want to find the guy. I do, too, but those dreams are your best shot. And way less risky.”

“What risk? Worst-case scenario, I get caught ditching and end up in detention.”

“I dunno, Dusty.” Selene shuddered. “Culpepper gives me the creeps. People say he’s crazy. What if he hurts you?”

“How? He’s magickind. I’m magickind. Never the two shall meet.”

“Tell that to Rosemary.”

Ouch. Maybe I should have been spending as much time trying to figure out
how
she was murdered as why.

I let the subject drop as I caught sight of Lance holding up a piece of paper in my direction from across the room. Written across it in big black letters was
Dusty 1, Lance 2
. I sighed, catching the warning at once. A whole week had gone by without him retaliating, and I’d half-hoped he would be happy keeping things equal between us. But apparently he had another prank in the works.

“Better watch your back.” Selene obviously had come to the same conclusion.

I glanced at her, startled by her dark tone. “You don’t think he’d do anything really bad, do you?”

She took a drink from her water goblet, considering the question. “Depends on your definition of bad. I mean, he wouldn’t do anything to hurt you physically. He’s too much of a coward for that. But he’s not particularly concerned about hurting people emotionally.”

“I guess you would know?” I said, making the statement a question. Selene might be my best friend, but she was also the most private person I knew. She’d much rather talk about my troubles than hers. I’d never learned the real reason why she’d ditched the in crowd, although I’d gathered it had a lot to do with Lance.

“Yes,” Selene said, surprising me with that admission. I pressed her for more, but she refused to elaborate.

Still, I took her advice, and was extra cautious the rest of the night and all through breakfast the next morning. But Lance didn’t strike until psionics class. Distracted by Mr. Ankil asking me how the snatch-and-smack practice was going, I failed to check my seat before sitting down. A huge fart sound erupted from beneath my butt, followed by a smell so realistic it might as well have been the real thing. I leaped up, red-faced. I looked down at my seat and watched in horror as a whoopee cushion, one bewitched with an invisibility glamour, came into view.

Humiliation was too inadequate a word for what I felt as a couple of people laughed and even more snickered. I noticed Eli wasn’t laughing, though. He stood up and came over to me. He picked up the whoopee cushion and tossed it in the wastebasket, the action effortless.

“You all right?” he said, touching my shoulder. His hand was impossibly warm through my shirt. I shivered, the sensation far more pleasurable than it should be, considering how mortified I was.

With a feeble shrug, I brushed him off. “I’m fine.”

Later, it was my lingering humiliation, and the prospect of seeing Lance’s triumphant expression again, that prompted me to ditch gym class and tail after Mr. Culpepper. Or so I told myself.

I spotted Culpepper walking across the Commons, looking suspicious. He usually shuffled along with a slight hitch to his step as if he had an old injury, but today he moved quickly, looking over his shoulder as if he expected something to attack him any moment.

I kept a fair distance between us as I trailed after him, staying hidden behind trees and buildings. After a while, he made a right down the path around Jupiter Hall, and my certainty that he was up to something increased. If he’d been heading for the maintenance garage, he would’ve turned left at Jupiter. But the faculty and staff town houses were this way—maybe he was going home.

Culpepper didn’t continue down the path toward the faculty housing, but made a left at the Lady of the Lake statue. A couple of turns later, we arrived at one of the side entrances into Coleville cemetery. I hid behind a building, and poked my head around to watch him. I wondered whether this was some kind of sociopathic behavior. Maybe he was returning to the scene of the crime to gloat over it. He didn’t have any work reason to be in there. There wasn’t a single mechanical thing in the entire place that might need fixing. Electricity was forbidden in the cemetery because of the animation effect—nobody wanted a bunch of corpses and skeletons milling around the gardens.

I followed after him, finding easy cover behind the trees, mausoleums, and statues. I had no idea how large Coleville was in terms of acreage, but Culpepper traveled so far into it the place began to feel as vast as Yellowstone Park. We were well off the main paths, but Culpepper moved with a certainty that suggested he came this way often.

Finally, he slowed down, and I ducked behind a headstone, crouching low and peering carefully around the side. I could just see Culpepper in the distance, standing in front of the door of a small, ancient-looking mausoleum. Whatever name used to be engraved above the doorway had long since faded. The edges on the building were chipped and crumbling in places. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the thing were haunted, but Selene had assured me time and again that ghosts weren’t very common. That was a good thing, because real ghosts were supposed to be far scarier and more dangerous than those reality TV shows made them seem.

Culpepper stood there a moment, and I heard the sound of keys jangling. A second later, the door swung open, and he disappeared inside.

What the—?

I struggled to recall everything I knew about Metus demons and their power. Was it possible Culpepper was some kind of necromancer? Necromancy had been banned by the Black Magic Purge, but given what I knew about Keeper spells, I didn’t think that meant a whole lot. Only, I was sure Metus fed off the fears of living victims, not dead ones. So what business did he have inside a crypt?

I had no way to tell from outside, so I sat down to wait for him to emerge. The minutes turned into an hour, then two. Eventually, I got bored enough to risk coming out of hiding. I spent some time practicing the snatch-and-smack on a nearby statue using twigs and branches of various sizes. By the time the sun hung low on the horizon, filling the cemetery with shadows, I was getting pretty good at it.

I was also getting tired. Not to mention hungry and cold. Culpepper had to come out soon. He
had
to. The mausoleum couldn’t have been more than ten feet long and five feet wide. There was only so much a person could do in an area so small.