Bethany Phillips. It took my muddled mind a few minutes to realize that Bethany must be
Beth’s
full name. Beth Phillips had been raising the dead! Beth
had
been on my list of suspects, but still . . . the news was shocking.
Sweet Beth with her Barbie-blond hair, the girl who had been voted Best Personality both her sophomore and junior years and who had the intelligence of a sea slug had dipped her hands in the dark arts. Not only dipped them, submerged them. She had to have been practicing for years to be able to work so many complicated rituals in such a short time.
“She’s in custody down at the Little Rock headquarters’ containment center,” Elder Thomas continued. “She’ll be given a hearing, but the evidence against her is sufficiently damning. I have no doubt she’ll be found guilty by any jury the High Council assembles. Her parents will no doubt be grieved to learn she’s disappeared, but in a situation like this, there is little we can do.”
I shivered at the reminder that Settlers aren’t all sweetness and light and being there for dear, departed souls. SA had been dispensing its own brand of justice to those found guilty of practicing zombie voodoo for thousands of years. If you were using black magic and got on the wrong side of SA, you just disappeared. Forever.
“When Barker got to the graves of the corpses that had attacked you, Beth was still there, Megan. She had bites all over her body and . . . ” Mom trailed off, then swallowed hard.
“And there were dolls that looked just like you all over the graveyard,” Dad finished for her. “Thirty of them.”
“Thirty,” I whispered. I knew there had seemed like a lot of RCs in the woods, but
thirty
? That was insane.
“But how did she raise that many corpses in such a short time? Wouldn’t she have to be working with someone? I mean, Monica Parsons was there too, and she’s been acting really—”
“Megan!” Mom gasped, her eyes going round with shock. She exchanged a quick look with Elder Thomas, who was staring at me as if I’d sprouted a second head. A really ugly, crazy-talking second head. “You’re accusing a fellow Settler of black magic. Do you understand how serious that is?”
“I know, Mom, but please hear me out. She was at the cornfield the other night when Beth wasn’t, and she had this big bandage on her arm and—”
“I assure you, Monica is innocent of any wrongdoing,” Elder Thomas said. “After her history, we were suspicious as well, but a thorough investigation revealed she had neither the time nor the opportunity to stage something of this magnitude.”
“Her history?” I asked, even though I knew I was pushing it. Elder Thomas had been strangely tolerant of my questions so far, but my luck had to run out sometime.
She paused, taking a deep breath and folding her hands in her lap. “The business with Miss Parsons was a long time ago, when she wasn’t much more than a child. She was reprimanded and learned her lesson. Now she’s on her way to being one of our most promising young Settlers.”
Promising young Settlers. Right. But she became promising
after
she’d been reprimanded for working black magic. I knew it! I
knew
she was the first Settler to go the way of the wicked. “But what if she hasn’t learned her lesson? I know Monica could work the spell; she—”
“The matter is closed, Megan.” Elder Thomas pressed her thin lips together, making it clear I had exhausted her limited patience. “Bethany Phillips is to blame and will be punished accordingly.”
“But she couldn’t have known I was going to be at the bonfire,” I said, trying to sound reasonable instead of whiny. “And from the time she saw me at the Carlisle farm to the time I was attacked was only like . . . five minutes, maybe less. Could she have raised that many zombies that fast all by herself?”
“The location of your attack was immaterial. It was simply good luck that you wandered so close to the cemetery where Bethany was raising the corpses, thus giving Barker the opportunity to track the Reanimated Corpses back to their graves and capture her.”
Good luck?
Good luck
that I almost died? Elder Thomas was so making her way onto my least-favorite-people list. “So the zombies would have come for me at home if I hadn’t snuck out. But Barker would have been there to help stop them,” I said, wondering how Barker had managed all those zombies by himself. “Enforcement must know some tricks we normal Settlers don’t, I guess?”
Elder Thomas smiled at Mom. “Didn’t I tell you she was a natural for Enforcement? A curious mind and a great talent. All she lacks is training and discipline.”
And the will to be a creepy Enforcement person,
I added silently. If I never ended up in another life-or-death situation, it would be too soon. Enforcement was
not
in my future if I had anything to say about it.
“Bethany has already confessed her plan to kill you, so you don’t have to worry about any further attacks.” Elder Thomas stood, making space for the nurse who came into the room. “She was deeply in love with a boy who was paying you attention and wished to remove you so that she and the boy could reconcile.”
I wrinkled my brow at Elder Thomas but couldn’t say anything, as the young, friendly-looking Settler nurse placed a thermometer under my tongue and then started checking my bandages. Josh hadn’t even seemed interested in me the past week—not since I allegedly started going out with Ethan. But then, maybe he’d heard about our “breakup” and had said something that spurred Beth’s attack tonight.
Maybe she’d been making dolls since the news of my split with Ethan broke at tryouts that afternoon. That would have given her time to get thirty assembled. She couldn’t have known I was going to be at the bonfire, but like Elder Thomas said, it was just a case of being in the right place at the right time. Or the wrong place, if you weren’t into risking your life to catch a psychopath.
I was safe, I realized as the nurse removed the thermometer and announced me in near perfect health.
It was hard to believe. My mind was still freaked out and on guard, which made me keep asking questions, even though it looked like Elder Thomas might be about to leave my room without issuing any punishment.
“Um, Elder Thomas, did Beth say if she was the one who called me Wednesday night, the one who created those clones?”
“She may have called you, but the council was right about the clones,” Mom said, the look she shot me making it clear I should shut up while I was still ahead. “Your power interacted negatively with the murder victim’s, that’s all. It’s something you’ll need to work on so it won’t happen again. SA is looking into a good tutor—probably someone like Barker, who has experience manifesting at a higher-than-average capacity.”
“But then what about Monica’s attack? Why was she being chased by an RC if she wasn’t Beth’s target?” I asked before Elder Thomas could leave.
“It seems Monica was also in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Elder Thomas said, finally looking less than amused by my “curious mind.” “She was foolish to respond to a prank call without contacting SA first.”
“So did Beth call her too? I don’t understand.” I bit my lip as Elder Thomas sighed.
“The investigation is ongoing, Megan, but be assured you are safe. Beth is in custody, and Barker will be working with the rest of his team to make absolutely certain you aren’t a danger to yourself or anyone else while you learn to control your power.”
Oh no. Barker and
his team
? That meant I was still on the babysitting list. The big-time babysitting list.
“Barker reported eleven burned corpses in the woods, Megan.” Elder Thomas smiled, but her smile wasn’t comforting. It was actually kind of creepy and almost greedy looking, like she stood to cash in on the corpses or something totally weird. “That means your power is even greater than we assumed. This is a very exciting time for you and for Carol. We mean to take very good care of you from here on out.”
“I guess that means no going anywhere without a bodyguard, huh?” I asked Mom as soon as Elder Thomas left the room.
“You can go to school and back, and that’s it. And we’re going to be relocated to the compound down by the river for at least a few weeks.”
“What? Why?”
“Because you’ve shown you can’t be trusted to follow the rules, Megan,” Mom said, sounding irritated despite the fact that she was back on my bed, holding on to my hand like she’d never let me go. “There hasn’t been a teenager with your level of power in about seventy years. This is something for the Settler history books. It could mean a lot more funding for Carol’s Settlers’ Affairs division and Arkansas in general.”
So I hadn’t been imagining the greedy look. What a jerk Elder Thomas was. She was so not my favorite Elder anymore.
“But,” Mom continued, “it’s not so great if you make the Elders here look like idiots by nearly getting yourself killed. So we’re all going to the compound for a while, until you’ve proven you can handle yourself and your power. Even Daddy’s going to have to go.”
“I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else but with you two,” Dad said.
“Even if they don’t let you go to work?” Mom asked. “Once we’re in, there’s no going in and out. It would draw too much attention. I had to fight to convince them that Megan has to go to school.”
“What? That’s complete—” Dad then proceeded to cuss colorfully about Settlers’ Affairs, the Elders, and the undead in general, until the nurse popped her head in the door again.
“Um, Miss Berry, you’ve got a visitor. Since he’s not family I figured I would ask first.”
“Who is it?” Mom asked, obviously ready to take complete control of my life as punishment for the sin of my sneaking out.
“Ethan Daniel. He’s with Protocol, I believe.”
My mind flashed on an image of Ethan and Monica in front of the fire. It still hurt to think about it, even after the much greater hurt of nearly getting myself killed. “I don’t want to see him.”
“It could have something to do with the investigation, Megan,” Mom said, not sounding as mad at me as she had a moment before.
Somehow, she knew. Knew that I had a crush on Ethan and had been sneaking out to see him and that he totally thought I was a pathetic little kid. And she pitied me for it. For the first time since waking up in a hospital bed, I didn’t want to cry—I wanted to scream.
I hated Ethan. For treating me like crap and for making people feel sorry for me. I
hated
people feeling sorry for me more than almost anything.
“I don’t care. He’s unprofessional. If it has to do with the investigation, ask them to send another Protocol officer. If not, you can tell him I’m not seeing anyone but family.” I tried to sound as haughty and disinterested as possible.
Pretty hard to pull off while horizontal and wearing a gown that flapped open in the back and no underwear. Where the hell was my underwear? I wanted it. Now. I was ready to get out of here and away from all things zombie-related. I wanted to go home.
But I couldn’t go home, I realized with a sinking feeling in my gut. And neither could Mom or Dad. We were basically being held as prisoner by Settlers’ Affairs and destined to be sent to “the compound”—a creepy place down by the Arkansas River that I’d never even wanted to visit, let alone reside at. And all this because I had been a gigantic idiot over a stupid, useless boy.
The person raising RCs had been caught, yet my life was still in the toilet.
But even I didn’t realize the true lousiness of my lot until I was preparing to head to school a few hours later.
“Um, there are no dance clothes in here,” I said to Mom, digging through the clothes Barker had brought me from home. “Tryouts are right after school.”
“Megan, what part of ‘to school and back and that’s it’ don’t you understand? You won’t be going to tryouts,” Mom said, her nose buried in the cup of coffee she was nursing in the corner chair.
“What?” Not going to tryouts! This couldn’t be happening. “But what about Jess? We’ve been working for ages, and our fourth routine won’t look right if I’m not there to dance with her and—”
“There are consequences to every action, hon. I’m sorry.” And then she stood and walked out of the room. Probably on the way to get more coffee.