"I"m sorry," Seth said. "I just don"t want you to get hurt."
I replayed the words I"d spat at him. "I"m sorry I called you jealous," I said. "I"ve got a lot on my mind, and I don"t really have time for lies about Liam."
Rain pounded down on the roof, trailing like tears down the windows surrounding us. Watching the raindrops" jagged paths helped me get over my anger. Just a little.
"Actually, I"ve been meaning to tell you," Seth said, changing the subject, "I figured out the meaning behind this." He lifted his bony b.u.t.t off the seat and dug into his pocket, handing me a crumpled piece of paper.
"I printed it off one of my forums," Seth said, referring to one of the many online chats he partic.i.p.ated in to discuss G.o.d only knew what. "It"s the old Pemberly crest." He was very pleased with himself. "But the S here?" He pointed to the ornate letter. "That should be a P, you know, for Pemberly."
"Oh, right. Thanks," I said, glad our little spat was over but annoyed that Seth was telling me things I already knew about the d.a.m.n crest.
The crest was clearly important, and I"d seen it in enough different places to know that the S wasn"t a typo. Why did Naomi have the words carved into jewelry? Why had Ms. Cole warned me to be careful? And why was part of the crest on all of our invitations? Why, why, why? I felt like a freaking three-year-old.
"Look." I turned toward Seth. "Why don"t you just wait in the car? I"ll be right back. Plus there"s only one umbrella." I needed answers, and if Seth came with me to the heart of Brown, there would only be millions of additional questions.
"Yeah, right. It"s dark. You"re not going on campus alone. What did you forget at the building? Why can"t this wait until tomorrow? And I"m the one with the keys, remember?" Seth jangled his key chain in front of me. I took in the ridiculous, beaded key-chain monstrosity he"d probably made at sleep-away camp.
"Right," I said, s.n.a.t.c.hing it from between his fingers. I threw my hood up and rearranged the bag on my shoulder. "Well, are you coming or not?"
Seth continued to ask different versions of his initial questions approximately one hundred times as we made our way across campus, huddled under the same umbrella. I wondered how long it would take before he gave up.
The campus spread out around us, an entirely different world at night. The trees that seemed magical during the day were foreboding in the dark. Streetlights dotted corners and cast light onto branches and blades of gra.s.s, making them look like shards of broken gla.s.s. A foggy haze hovered over Pemberly Brown Lake and spilled into the gardens.
As we came upon the pathway, a part of me wished that instead of the dim lights situated on each side of the path, huge stadium lights illuminated the entire s.p.a.ce. The rain, the fog, the gardens-it was like something out of a bad horror movie. I tightened my grip around Seth"s thin arm.
He finally gave up on all the questions, and we hurried along the path in silence. Unfortunately, silence really wasn"t the blessing I"d thought it would be. When it"s quiet, you can hear all sorts of other noises. Like rain pounding down on leaves, the sighing of the wind, and whispers from the ghosts I was sure I saw lurking in the dark.
A shadow crossed over the foggy path in front of us. My hand flew to my bag, my fingers curling around the Mace tucked inside.
"Did you see that?" Seth whispered.
"Yeah, it was probably just a deer or something."
"How many deer do you know that stand upright?"
"Ugh, come on." I pulled on the sleeve of Seth"s jacket, guiding him in the direction of the old Brown campus.
As we exited the gardens, the campus opened up, making me feel a little more comfortable. There were fewer places to hide out in the open. The downside was that there were fewer places for us to hide.
Seeing in the pelting rain was difficult, but the familiar outline of the three Brown buildings in a row was unmistakable.
"I don"t think you heard when I asked you before, but what did you leave here?" Make that one hundred and one questions. You had to give him credit for tenacity.
"I actually dropped one of my earrings, and they were my grandma"s. My mom will kill me if I don"t find it."
"Don"t you think you might have been better off looking in the daylight?"
I wanted to ignore him but knew he"d never give up. "There"s no way I"ll be able to sleep tonight if I don"t find them. Plus"-I reached into my bag and pulled out a flashlight-"I brought this."
"Hey, you could have brought that out a little earlier. We could have shined it on the upright deer."
"Don"t get your panties in a bunch-we"re here."
We stood huddled under the tiny umbrella, staring up at the old brick building.
"Well, what"re you waiting for? Let"s get out of the rain." Seth moved forward, and I threw the open umbrella into the corner of the entranceway.
I unlocked the door with Seth"s keys, and as soon as we stepped foot inside, Seth began sneezing uncontrollably.
"Are you sure you don"t want to just wait outside?" I asked, annoyed. If anyone was in the building, they"d have plenty of warning about our arrival, thanks to Seth.
"I"m"-sneeze-"fine"-sneeze-"just"-sneeze-"keep"-sneeze-"going." He sneezed again as if to punctuate his sentence, and I mumbled something about dead weight.
The beam of the flashlight created a path of light for us to follow, and I flicked it from wall to wall hoping to find whatever I was supposed to be looking for. I continued to walk forward slowly, pearls b.u.mping my chest with each step. Something caught my eye, so I bent to take a closer look. At first I thought it was a thumbtack, but after I peered closer, I saw that it was a small pin bearing the lion and key, Brown"s old crest. I wondered how long the pin had been there. Could this possibly be Grace"s big clue?
"I think this is it. Right?" I whispered and lifted my head as if I expected Grace to answer.
"Kate!" Seth yelled. I practically jumped out of my skin and said a silent prayer that Seth hadn"t heard me talking to myself.
"Jesus, Seth. This better be good."
He was kneeling in front of the brick staircase and holding a piece of paper.
"Check it out."
I bent next to Seth and shined the flashlight on the paper. It was an invitation identical to the invitation Cameron had sent me with Grace"s name on it and the invitation Naomi had pulled from her glove compartment. But this invitation was a little different.
Not only was the piece of crest in the upper left-hand corner, but this invitation was addressed to me.
Chapter 31.
Last Fall I"m going to be sick." I grabbed my stomach and begged my dad to pull the car to the side of the road. As soon as we stopped rolling, I jumped out and vomited into the gra.s.s below. My body heaved with such force that I fell to my knees, pieces of gravel cutting into the thin skin. My mom rubbed my back and held my hair, saying nothing. She didn"t tell me everything was going to be okay; she didn"t tell me not to worry. She couldn"t.
As soon as I"d finished, I climbed back into the car and pushed the Send b.u.t.ton on my phone again. Instead of holding the phone to my ear, I watched the call timer tick through the seconds. I knew that when I got to thirty-one, I"d hear Grace"s cheerful voice explaining that she was away from her phone and couldn"t pick up.
As the phone rang, I stared at Grace"s face on the screen. We had programmed pictures into our phones that popped up whenever we called each other. Grace was sticking her tongue out at me.
Twenty-nine. Thirty. Thirty-one "Hi, this is Grace. I"d love to talk, but I can"t. I"ll call you back!"
I wanted to believe her-that she"d call me back-but a part of me knew she never would. I left another message, each one more desperate than the last, and went through the entire sequence over and over and over.
As soon as we pulled into the garage, I rushed upstairs to my bathroom to get sick again. I thought maybe it had to do with the smell of smoke on my body and in my hair, so I took a shower, violently scouring my scalp and body with soap. I scrubbed and scrubbed, taking a break only to call Grace, beads of water rolling down my arm and onto the screen of my phone.
Twenty-nine. Thirty. Thirty-one.
Twenty-nine. Thirty. Thirty-one.
Twenty-nine. Thirty. Thirty-one.
I must have fallen asleep with the phone in my hand, because in the morning, when I woke up, it was gone.
"Where is it?" I sat up in bed and screamed at the top of my lungs, searching the s.p.a.ce around me wildly. "I need it!" I stumbled out of bed and into the hallway, falling into a heap at the top of the stairs. "I need it!" I cried now, pulling my legs into my chest, my body jerking with each sob.
"Shh," my mom whispered as she walked up the stairs. It was early in the morning, but she still wore the same clothes as the night before. I wondered if she"d ever gone to sleep. "Oh, Kate." My hair stuck to my tears, and she pushed it back from my face and sat next to me. Pulling me into her lap, she held me in her arms and rocked me back and forth like I was a baby instead of a teenager.
I looked up at her through bloodshot eyes and said the words I feared the most.
"She"s gone, isn"t she?"
"Oh, sweetie. They found a body...in the bas.e.m.e.nt. They"re not saying who it is yet, so we need to pray."
But I didn"t have to pray. I already knew. It was Grace. She was gone.
Chapter 32.
Present Day We huddled under the green glow of an Applebee"s lamp, our heads nearly touching. Seth held the invitation, his brow furrowed.
"I don"t understand. What were you being invited to that night? And if you were invited, why weren"t you there when the fire broke out?" Seth pointed at the flowery calligraphy on the invitation. We had placed the three invitations-Grace"s, Naomi"s, and now mine-together, the pictures forming three-quarters of the crest.
"And the Pemberly crest?" he asked picking up the crumpled page of Cameron"s drawing. "It matches this?" Seth pointed to the incomplete crest and looked at me, confused. "And where"s the last invitation? Who does it belong to?"
I had a choice to make. I could continue to play dumb and risk Seth"s incessant questions and inevitable involvement, or I could tell him everything and get it over with. As scared as I was to break my promise to Grace, I needed help. Besides, he already knew way too much.
The upside to putting it all out there was the sheer volume of random information Seth housed in his brain. He was incredibly resourceful-if he didn"t know the answer he almost always knew where to find it. And it would be kind of nice to have a sidekick.
"Let me start at the beginning," I whispered, feeling an invisible weight slide off my shoulders the second I began.
By the time I"d finished, the waitress had come by our table at least five times, annoyed that the bill book remained empty, and my story had been interrupted three times by Seth"s cell phone. His mom wanted to know if we were having a good time.
"So...now what?" When Seth asked the question, I almost wanted to leap across the table and kiss him. It felt that good to have someone in on my secret. Someone who cared.
"I honestly don"t know. Naomi"s at tennis camp and Cameron ran away, and they"re the only two people who know about the invitations who might be able to help."
Without saying a word, Seth picked up his phone and connected a call.
"Mom? I think we"re gonna catch a movie," he said. "Yeah, a late one. I know it"s a school night, but I did all my homework...I"m almost sixteen and a half." Seth paused and held the phone away from his ear, and I heard his mom"s voice screaming into the air. "Okay, I"ll call you when it"s over." Seth snapped his phone shut and beamed at me.
"A movie? Are you kidding?..."
But Seth didn"t let me finish. "So you think they"ve found Cameron yet?" he asked.
I smiled, understanding then, and stood up from the table. "Worth a shot."
a a a As we pulled down Cameron"s street, I honestly wasn"t sure what to expect. There was a good chance that Cameron was already back. Students quietly left Pemberly Brown all the time, and based on his history, I couldn"t imagine that the Thompsons would have been in any rush to put him back in school.
But when Seth carefully parked the minivan a few houses down from Cameron"s, I barely registered the fact that his driveway was empty aside from a nondescript sedan. Instead my eyes locked on the house next to his. It wasn"t one of the insane mansions that lined most of the streets in the area, just a modest colonial. It looked dark, almost vacant, but I knew better. Grace"s parents were holed up inside somewhere, along with most of my childhood memories. I tried to hide the grief that overcame me, but Seth noticed. Of course.
"Are you all right?" he asked, looking down at his hands. "If you"re cold, you can borrow my jacket." We both knew he was talking about so much more than being cold.
I shook my head, and he gave me a second more to swallow back the enormous lump I felt growing bigger in my throat the longer I stared at Grace"s house. I pulled my eyes away and breathed deeply, switching gears.
"So exactly what is the plan?" Coming here had seemed like a good idea when Seth had suggested it at Applebee"s, but now I wasn"t so sure. I mean, we couldn"t just ring the doorbell and ask the Thompsons if Cameron had given them any information about Grace"s death and how it might connect to our headmaster"s brother, who may or may not have been a rapist.
Luckily, lights were still on downstairs, and in spite of the rain, most of the windows were cracked an inch. The chances that we"d actually find anything were fairly slim, but I figured it couldn"t hurt to take a look around Cameron"s yard and maybe peek into the windows to see if there were any signs that Cameron had come back home.
"Come on. I"ve got an idea." Seth opened the car door and stepped into the wet street. I yanked the hood of my sweatshirt up over my ponytail, relieved to relinquish the lead.
Please be back. Please be back. Please be back. I chanted the mantra in my head the entire way through Cameron"s soggy yard. For extra luck, I touched Grace"s pearls, a reminder of the importance of our mission.
"Okay, let"s just walk around the house. We"ll look in the windows and see if he"s home," Seth said.
"And if he"s there?" I asked.
"I don"t know. We try to talk to him, right? This could be our only chance." I hung on to the words "we" and "our." They had never sounded more beautiful. Even if they had been said by Seth, who simultaneously pulled a small plastic bag of pickles out of his pocket and began munching.
He must have seen the look of disgust on my face, because between bites he said, "What? I can"t help it. I get hungry when I"m nervous-low blood sugar."
I shook my head and grabbed his arm. "Come on. It"s now or never." We started toward the side of the house. When we reached the low side windows, we saw a dark dining room but no sign of Cameron.
I motioned for Seth to be quiet as we crept along the perimeter of the Thompsons" home. As we approached the backyard, light reflected off the wet gra.s.s from the kitchen windows. They were placed higher on the house, so we were both able to stand undetected as long as we hugged the brick exterior.
"Seth," I whispered, "I hear someone." Seth ducked down and pulled me with him.
"Yes, I"m here. They still haven"t found him." The voice from inside the house was m.u.f.fled but still audible.
Well, I guess that was that. No Cameron. But the voice sounded eerily familiar, and I was almost positive it wasn"t Cameron"s dad. We heard the sc.r.a.ping of a chair and a soft thud as someone sat down.
"Who is it?" Seth whispered, his hot pickle breath rolling over my cheek. I shushed him and wrinkled my nose at the same time.
"No, I don"t think they know anything, but we can"t be too careful." The voice paused. "No, that won"t be necessary. At least I don"t think it will be. As far as I can tell, he didn"t leave the evidence behind." The speaker lowered his voice, and I struggled to make out the words. "...Family...anything...sisterhood exposing...he"s coming. I have to go."
A brief pause was followed by the sound of a chair sc.r.a.ping against the floor again. I looked over at Seth. His eyes were wide. Whoever this guy was, he clearly was worried about the evidence Cameron had gathered about Grace"s death. The evidence that now belonged to me.