Last to Die r-10 Page 7

It was the bitch Briana again, she thought. Briana, who whispered retard whenever Claire passed by, who’d laughed hysterically in class when Claire tripped over some strategically placed foot. Claire had retaliated by sneaking a handful of slimy earthworms into Briana’s bed. Oh, the shrieks had been worth it!

  Claire yanked the note off the door, went back into her room for a pen, and scrawled: Better check your sheets. On her way down the hall, she slapped the note on Briana’s dorm room door and kept walking, past rooms where other classmates slept. On the stairway, her shadow flitted along the wall like a twin spirit spiraling down beside her. She stepped out the front door and walked out into the moonlight.

  The night was strangely warm and the wind smelled like dry grass, as if it had blown in from a great distance, bringing with it the scent of prairies and deserts and places she would never go. She drew in a deep breath and for the first time all day, she felt free. Free of classes, of teachers watching her, of Briana’s taunts.

  She moved down the stone steps, sure of her footing in the bright moonlight. The lake lay ahead, where rippling water sparkled like sequins, calling to her. She started pulling up her T-shirt, eager to glide into that silky water.

  “You’re out again,” a voice said.

  Claire spun around to see the figure separate itself from the shadow of the trees. A figure she instantly recognized by the chunky silhouette. Will Yablonski moved into the moonlight, where she saw his chubby-cheeked face. She wondered if he knew that Briana whispered great white whale behind his back. That much Will and I have in common, she thought. We’re the uncool kids.

  “What are you doing out here?” she said.

  “I was looking through my telescope. But the moon’s come up now, so I packed up the scope for the night.” He pointed toward the lake. “That’s a really good spot over there, by the water. Just right for searching the sky.”

  “What are you looking for?”

  “A comet.”

  “Did you see it?”

  “No, I mean a new comet. One that’s never been reported. Amateurs find new ones all the time. There’s this guy named Don Machholz who found eleven of them, and he’s just an amateur like me. If I find one, I get to name it. Like Comet Kohoutek. Or Halley or Shoemaker-Levy.”

  “What would you call yours?”

  “Comet Neil Yablonski.”

  She laughed. “Like that has a ring to it.”

  “I don’t think it sounds so bad,” he said quietly. “It’s in memory of my dad.”

  She heard the sorrow in his voice and wished she hadn’t laughed. “Yeah, I guess that’d be pretty neat. Giving it your dad’s name,” she said. Even if Comet Yablonski did sound stupid.

  “I saw you a few nights ago,” he said. “What do you do out here?”

  “I can’t sleep.” She turned to look at the water and imagined swimming across lakes, across oceans. Dark water didn’t scare her; it made her feel alive, like a mermaid returning home. “I hardly sleep. Ever since …”

  “Do you get nightmares, too?” he asked.

  “I just don’t sleep. It’s because my brain’s all messed up.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I have this scar here, on my head, where the doctors sawed open my skull. They dug out pieces of the bullet and it damaged things inside. So I don’t sleep.”

  “People have to sleep or they die. How can you go without it?”

  “I just don’t sleep as much as everyone else. A few hours, that’s all.” She took a breath of the summer-scented wind. “Anyway, I like the nighttime. I like how quiet it is. How there are animals that you don’t see during the day, like owls and skunks. Sometimes I go walking in the woods, and I see their eyes.”

  “Do you remember me, Claire?”

  The question, asked so softly, made her turn to him in puzzlement. “I see you every day in class, Will.”

  “No, I mean do you remember me from somewhere else? Before we came to Evensong?”

  “I didn’t know you before.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She stared at him in the moonlight. Saw a big head with a moonlike face. That was the thing about Will, he was big all over, from his head to his enormous feet. Big and soft, like a marshmallow. “What are you talking about?”

  “When I first got here, when I saw you in the dining hall, I had this weird feeling. Like I met you before.”

  “I was living in Ithaca. Where were you?”

  “In New Hampshire. With my aunt and uncle.”

  “I’ve never been to New Hampshire.”

  He moved closer, so close that his big head eclipsed the rising moonlight. “And I used to live in Maryland. Two years ago, when my mom and dad were alive. Does that mean anything to you?”

  She shook her head. “I wouldn’t remember. I even have trouble remembering my own mom and dad. What their voices were like. Or how they laughed or smelled.”

  “That’s really sad. That you don’t remember them.”

  “I have photo albums, but I hardly look at them. It’s like seeing pictures of strangers.”

  His touch startled her, and she flinched. She did not like people touching her. Not since she’d awakened in that London hospital, where a touch usually meant another needle prick, another person inflicting pain, however well intentioned. “Evensong’s supposed to be our family now,” he said.

  “Yeah.” She snorted. “That’s what Dr. Welliver keeps saying. That we’re all one big happy family.”

  “It’s nice to believe that, don’t you think? That we’ll all look out for each other?”

  “Sure. And I believe in the Tooth Fairy. People don’t look out for each other. They only look out for themselves.”

  A beam of light flickered through the trees. She whirled around, spotted the approaching car, and instantly darted toward the nearest bush. Will followed her, moving like a noisy moose with his giant feet. He dropped down beside her.

  “Who’s arriving at this time of night?” he whispered.

  A dark sedan rolled to a stop in the courtyard, and a man stepped out, tall and lean as a panther. He paused beside his car and scanned the night, as though searching the darkness for what no one else could see. For one frantic instant Claire thought he was looking directly at her, and she ducked lower behind the bush, trying to hide from his all-seeing eyes.

  The school’s front door swung open, throwing light onto the courtyard, and Headmaster Gottfried Baum stood in the doorway. “Anthony!” Baum called out. “Thank you for coming so quickly.”

  “These are disturbing developments.”

  “So it seems. Come, come. Your room’s ready, and there’s a meal waiting for you.”

  “I ate on the plane. We should get straight to the matter at hand.”

  “Of course. Dr. Welliver’s been monitoring the situation in Boston. She’s ready to intercede if necessary.”

  The front door swung shut. Claire rose to her feet, wondering who this strange visitor was. And why Headmaster Baum had sounded so nervous. “I’m going to check out his car,” she said.

  “Claire, no,” whispered Will.

  But she was already moving toward the sedan. The hood was still warm from the drive, the waxed surface gleaming under moonlight. She moved around the vehicle, her hand caressing the surface. She knew it was a Mercedes because of the hood ornament. Black, sleek, expensive. A rich man’s car.

  Locked, of course.

  “Who is he?” said Will. He’d finally found the courage to emerge from the bush and he now stood beside her.

  She looked up at the west wing, where a silhouette briefly appeared in a lit window. Then the curtains abruptly slid shut, cutting off her view.

  “We know his name is Anthony.”

  NINE

  MAURA DID NOT SLEEP SOUNDLY THAT NIGHT.

  Perhaps it was the unfamiliar bed; perhaps it was the stillness of the place, a silence so deep that it seemed the night itself was holding its breath, waiting. When she awakened for the th
ird time, the moon had risen and was shining directly in her window. She’d left the curtains open for fresh air, but now she climbed out of bed to close them against the glare. Pausing at the window, she looked down at the garden below. It was aglow in moonlight, the stone statues as luminous as ghosts.

  Did one of them just move?

  She stood clutching the drape, staring at statues that stood like chess pieces among the clipped hedges. Across that spectral landscape moved a slender figure with long silver-bright hair and limbs as graceful as a nymph’s. It was a girl, walking in the garden.

  In the hallway outside her door, footsteps creaked past. She heard men’s voices.

  “… We’re not sure whether the threat is real or imagined, but Dr. Welliver seems convinced.”

  “The police seem to have the situation in hand. All we can do is wait and see.”

  I know that voice. Maura pulled on a bathrobe and opened her door. “Anthony,” she called out.

  Anthony Sansone turned to face her. Dressed in black, standing beside the much shorter Gottfried Baum, Sansone seemed a towering, almost sinister figure in that dimly lit hallway. She noticed his wrinkled clothes, the fatigue in his eyes, and understood that his journey here had been a long one.

  “I’m sorry if we woke you, Maura,” he said.

  “I had no idea you were coming to the school.”

  “Just a few issues to deal with.” He smiled, a wary smile that did not reach his eyes. She sensed a troubling tension in that hallway. She saw it in Gottfried Baum’s face, and in the cool distance with which Sansone now regarded her. He’d never been an openly warm man, and there had been times when she’d wondered if he even disliked her. Tonight that reserve was more impenetrable than ever.

  “I need to talk to you,” she said. “It’s about Julian.”

  “Of course. In the morning, maybe? I won’t be leaving until the afternoon.”

  “You’re here for such a short time?”

  He gave an apologetic shrug. “I wish I could stay longer. But you can always discuss any concerns with Gottfried here.”

  “Do you have concerns, Dr. Isles?” said Gottfried.

  “Yes, I do. About why Julian’s here. Evensong isn’t just any boarding school, is it?”

  She saw a glance pass between the men.

  “That subject would be better left for tomorrow,” Sansone said.

  “I do need to talk about this. Before you vanish again.”

  “We will, I promise.” He gave a brisk nod. “Good night, Maura.”

  She closed her door, troubled by his remoteness. The last time they had spoken was only two months ago, when he had stopped at her house to drop off Julian for a visit. They’d lingered on the porch, smiling at each other, and he’d seemed reluctant to leave. Or did I imagine it? Have I ever been wise about men?

  Her track record was certainly dismal enough. For the last two years she’d been trapped in an affair with a man she could never have, an affair she’d known would end badly, yet she’d been as helpless as a junkie to resist it. That’s what falling in love really amounted to, your brain on drugs. Adrenaline and dopamine, oxytocin and serotonin. Chemical insanity, celebrated by poets.

  This time, I swear I’ll be wiser.

  She went back to the window to shut the curtains and block the moonlight, said to be yet another source of insanity so praised by those same witless poets. Only as she reached for the drapes did she remember the figure that she’d spotted earlier. Staring down at the garden, she saw statues in a silvery landscape of shadows and moonlight. Nothing moved.

  The girl was gone.

  OR HAD SHE EVER been there? Maura wondered the next morning when she looked out that same window and saw a gardener crouched below, wielding hedge clippers. A rooster crowed, loudly and lustily, proclaiming his authority. It seemed a perfectly normal morning, the sun shining, the cock crowing again and again. But last night, under moonlight, how unearthly everything had seemed.

  Someone knocked on her door. It was Lily Saul, who greeted her with a cheerful “Good morning! We’re meeting in the curiosities room, if you’d like to join us.”

  “Which meeting is this?”

  “To address your concerns about Evensong. Anthony said you had questions, and we’re ready to answer them.” She gestured toward the staircase. “It’s downstairs, across from the library. There’ll be coffee waiting for us.”

  Maura found far more than just coffee waiting for her when she walked into the curiosities room. Lining the walls were glass cabinets filled with artifacts: carved figurines and ancient stone tools, arrowheads and animal bones. The yellowed labels told her this was an old collection, perhaps owned by Cyril Magnus himself. At any other time she would have lingered over these treasures, but the five people already seated at the massive oak table demanded her attention.

  Sansone rose from his chair and said, “Good morning, Maura. You already know Gottfried Baum, our headmaster. Next to him is Ms. Duplessis, who teaches literature. Our botany professor, David Pasquantonio. And this is Dr. Anna Welliver, our school psychologist.” He gestured to the smiling, big-boned woman to his right. In her early sixties, with silver hair springing out in a cheerfully undisciplined mane, Dr. Welliver looked like an aging hippie in her high-necked granny dress.

  “Please, Dr. Isles,” said Gottfried, pointing to the coffee carafe and the tray of croissants and jams. “Help yourself.”

  As Maura took a seat beside Headmaster Baum, Lily placed a steaming cup of coffee in front of her. The croissants looked buttery and tempting, but Maura took only a sip of coffee and focused on Sansone, who faced her from the far end of the table.

  “You have questions about our school and our students,” he said. “These are the people who have the answers.” He nodded to his associates around the table. “Please, let’s hear your concerns, Maura.”

  His uncharacteristic formality unsettled her; so did this setting, surrounded by oddities in cabinets, and by people she scarcely knew.

  She answered him with equal formality. “I don’t believe Evensong is the right school for Julian.”

  Gottfried raised an eyebrow in surprise. “Has he told you he’s unhappy, Dr. Isles?”

  “No.”

  “Do you think he’s unhappy?”

  She paused. “No.”

  “Then what is the nature of your concern?”

  “Julian has been telling me about his classmates. He says that a number of them have lost family members to violence. Is this true?”

  Gottfried nodded. “For many of our students.”

  “Many? Or most?”

  He gave a conciliatory shrug. “Most.”

  “So this is a school for victims.”

  “Oh dear, not victims,” Dr. Welliver said. “We like to think of them as survivors. They come to us with special needs. And we know exactly how to help them.”

  “Is that why you’re here, Dr. Welliver? To address their emotional needs?”

  Dr. Welliver gave her an indulgent smile. “Most schools have counselors.”

  “But they don’t keep therapists on staff.”

  “True.” The psychologist looked around the table at her colleagues. “We’re proud to say we’re unique that way.”

  “Unique because you specialize in traumatized children.” She looked around the table. “In fact, you recruit them.”

  “Maura,” said Sansone, “child protective agencies around the country send children to us because we offer what other schools can’t. A sense of safety. A sense of order.”

  “And a sense of purpose? Is that what you’re really trying to instill?” She looked around the table at the six faces watching her. “You’re all members of the Mephisto Society. Aren’t you?”

  “Maybe we could try to stay on topic?” suggested Dr. Welliver. “And focus on what we do here at Evensong.”

  “I am talking about Evensong. About how you’re using this school to recruit soldiers for your organization’s paranoid mission.
”

  “Paranoid?” Dr. Welliver gave a surprised laugh. “That’s hardly a diagnosis I’d make of anyone in this room.”

  “The Mephisto Society believes that evil is real. You believe that humanity itself is under attack, and your mission is to defend it.”

  “Is that what you think we’re doing here? Training demon hunters?” Welliver shook her head in amusement. “Trust me, our role is hardly metaphysical. We help children recover from violence and tragedy. We give them structure, safety, and a superb education. We prepare them for university or whatever their goals may be. You visited Professor Pasquantonio’s class yesterday. You saw how engaged the students are, even with a subject like botany.”

  “He was showing them poisonous plants.”

  “And that’s precisely why they were interested,” said Pasquantonio.

  “Because the subtext was murder? Which plants can be used to kill?”

  “That’s your interpretation. Others would call it a class on safety. How to recognize and avoid what could harm them.”

  “What else do you teach here? Ballistics? Blood splatters?”

  Pasquantonio shrugged. “Neither would be out of place in a physics class. What is your objection?”

  “My objection is that you’re using these children to advance your own agenda.”

  “Against violence? Against the evils that men do to one another?” Pasquantonio snorted. “You make it sound like we’re pushing drugs or training gangsters.”

  “We’re helping them heal, Dr. Isles,” Lily said. “We know what it’s like to be crime victims. We help them find purpose in their pain. Just as we do.”

  We know what it’s like. Yes, Lily Saul would know; she’d lost her family to murder. And Sansone had lost his father to murder as well.

  Maura looked at the six faces and felt a chilling sense of comprehension. “You’ve all lost someone,” she said.

  Gottfried gave a mournful nod. “My wife,” he said. “A robbery in Berlin.”

  “My sister,” said Ms. Duplessis. “Raped and strangled in Detroit.”

  “My husband,” Dr. Welliver said softly, her head bowed. “Kidnapped and murdered in Buenos Aires.”