The sound of another police siren travelled in a wave, swelling loudly as the car curved along the pathway and stopped in front of Hopper. I tried not to think about Tony’s death in that very building. I caught sight of Vicken and Rhode standing just to the side of the building. Rhode’s blue eyes locked on mine.
With a casual nod of his head he requested I come down. In a heartbeat, I followed his orders. As if I could ever say no.
‘What happened?’ I asked. There were hundreds of students on the green. People inside the union stood against the circular windows pressing their hands against the glass.
‘I need to get into the art studio,’ a student said to a police officer. She held a portfolio under her arm. ‘My portrait is due tomorrow.’
‘Hopper Building is going to be off limits for a couple of hours,’ the officer said, moving out of the way for a security guard.
‘Did someone else die?’ a student asked.
‘Just go back to your dorm, please,’ the officer ordered.
‘Someone else totally died!’ the student cried. People were already taking out their cell phones.
A third police car pulled on up. Its siren was off, but the blue lights swirled around and around. Vicken pulled on my shirtsleeve and we walked down the side of Hopper, away from the fray.
‘One of the gymnasium windows at the back is open,’ Vicken said with a nod. The back of the building met the bottom of the large hill that led up to the archery plateau.
‘Let’s go,’ Rhode said.
‘Casual,’ Vicken said, always thinking like the soldier he had once been. ‘Slow.’
One by one, we walked around to the back of Hopper. Once we stood together at the gym windows, I said, ‘Odette. It’s got to be. She warned us in the herb shop. She said she’d be back. And I sensed her this morning.’
‘You sensed her?’ Rhode asked.
‘I felt someone watching me. I can only assume it was Odette.’
‘Well, there’s just one way to tell for sure,’ Rhode said. ‘We need evidence. Clues.’
‘Clues,’ I parroted. I ran my hand along the windowsill. The pane was horizontal and at least three feet tall, but narrow. I could easily fit through, but Vicken and Rhode would have to wait for me to open a door to let them in. I reached the handle on the inside, opened the window wider and slid into the gymnasium.
I landed on the floor in the darkened room. I took a few steps and then looked back through the window.
‘Go,’ Rhode whispered.
‘She shouldn’t go alone,’ Vicken said.
‘I’ll be fine,’ I replied, and tiptoed towards the double doors. I pushed them ever so slightly, just enough to peer both ways down the hallway. Once I turned the corner of the first floor, I would be in the administrative section of Hopper building. The headmaster’s office was there along with the admissions. I hurried quietly, finally turning the corner. Voices echoed from the offices.
As a vampire, it is of the utmost importance to remain confident. As the years go by, you gain more and more confidence. It was hard to find that confidence now as a mere human. I hunched over, careful to tiptoe in my heavy boots. I crept towards the voices at the end of the hall. My body wasn’t as agile as it had once been, now my organs were filled with blood that moved. I kept tiptoeing forward and stopped near the office door.
‘She’s dead. We’re absolutely sure?’ Ms Williams’s questioning voice echoed out of the room.
‘I’m afraid so. Been dead for at least a half-hour,’ a voice replied.
‘What do I tell the students?’ Ms Williams asked weakly.
‘Our team is going to have to do a thorough investigation, ma’am. It would be best if you arranged to have Ms Tate’s classes covered and temporarily moved these offices to another building.’
My hand fell away from the wall. I hadn’t realized that I had been clenching my fist.
Ms Tate? My science teacher!
‘I don’t understand,’ Ms Williams said, and her voice cracked. There was a moment of silence and then the sound of someone blowing their nose. Footsteps collected near the door and Ms Williams spoke again, her voice nasal and closer now. ‘Why leave that note with the body? What does it mean?’
‘It’s like a riddle,’ said a voice I did not recognize. ‘It’ll be taken with the rest of the evidence.’
‘What evidence? You said there were no fingerprints.’
‘It looks as if she was murdered just like the other two. Puncture wounds. Depletion of blood. We’ll need to photograph the body and have our forensic team investigate.’
‘You make it sound like a gothic horror movie, officer.’
‘We get these from time to time. Some psycho who has watched Dracula one too many times.’
The footsteps echoed again. Oh no. They were going to come out of the office. I looked across the hall. A door. I ran, opened the door and jumped inside a tiny janitorial closet. I sank to the floor, pressing my back against the cement wall and drawing my knees to my chest. I held my breath, my heart thudding in my ears.
‘Ms Williams, we’re going to need you to keep this area off limits. We’ll mark it off with police tape and have it manned overnight.’
‘And she really drove herself on to campus? Bleeding?’ Ms Williams pressed.
‘There’s blood all over the car but we don’t know the specifics yet, ma’am.’
I had to see the body to be sure. I hoped they wouldn’t take it away just yet.
The voices trailed off as the group of people walked down the hall and out of the building. I kept my arm tucked close to me, to avoid a precariously positioned broom and bucket. I cracked open the door, just barely, and peered back into the hallway. One officer had been left on guard inside the office, I presumed, to guard the body. I would have to sneak into the room through the connecting door from a neighbouring office.
The officer stood, legs slightly apart, hands held behind his back. I just needed him to look away for a few moments. Be distracted by something, anything. I waited. As the moments ticked by, I knew Rhode and Vicken would become impatient and come looking for me.
Oh just look away, you idiot.
A girl screamed from outside and the officer spun to look out of the window. Perfect! Her scream trailed away into laughter just as I crawled out of the janitor’s closet. I had to leave the door open behind me. I scrambled across the hallway and into the office next door. I stood up, waited a moment and pressed my back against the connecting door. I tried to breathe quietly, and waited to see if the officer heard me. Unlike Odette, I would leave fingerprints so, again, I kept my hands close to my sides. I knew how to be quiet. If I applied pressure to the whole foot instead of the ball of my foot, I would make less noise. I had to go in. I had to see if it was Odette who’d killed Ms Tate.
I took off my boot and removed my sock. I used it to twist the doorknob as quietly as I could. I placed my boot back on and, on my hands and knees, crawled into the room. The officer stood in the office, but near the hallway.
I would never fear the dead. Never. It was Ms Tate’s heels I saw first. She was on the floor, on her side. She had driven back to campus and died here, in this office.
A vampire’s bite mark will ooze for hours, even after a person is dead. As I knelt beside the body, I could sense it was cold without needing to touch it. Body heat emanates from a live body. This body was still, hard. And there they were, two puncture wounds in her neck, still thickly oozing, following the depletion of the vampire’s bite. The last of Ms Tate’s blood. It would stop soon. The thicker the blood, the longer it had been oozing from the victim.
Her eyes were closed; someone must have closed them. There, on the floor next to the body, was a small piece of white paper. The note Ms Williams had mentioned.
In curly old-fashioned handwriting, it read:
Like the lick of a flame, death can be quick.
Or drawn with a knife slowly.
Endlessly.
Over
skin.
I gulped away a scream. At the bottom of the note was one more line.
You know what I want.
*
‘It sounds like a little poem!’ Vicken said. ‘How lovely. You know – if you enjoy threatening poems about murder and death.’
‘She’s doing it on purpose,’ Rhode said.
‘Of course she is. It’s exactly what I would have done. It’s sick.’
‘One by one, she’ll take out anyone that she knows is close to you, Lenah,’ Rhode said. ‘She must have been watching for days now,’ he explained.
I paced back and forth at the gymnasium window.
‘The second line of the poem is threatening more deaths. Prolonged torture. She’ll never quit,’ Rhode said.
Vicken crossed his arms over his chest. ‘So what do we do? We can’t give her the ritual.’
‘Of course not,’ I replied. ‘Think of the consequences.’ I had seen the consequences in my dream with Suleen.
‘We have to join the rest of the school. Ms Williams has called an assembly in the union,’ Rhode said.
Another death would bring the school one step closer to closing. They would surely have to if there were any more deaths. The only place we could go was Hathersage, and that would mean leaving Lovers Bay.
We walked around to the front of the building, passing by Ms Tate’s car. A scene-of-crime officer was taking photographs of it. Security officers were already leading students towards the union, to the assembly. Tracy and Claudia walked together at the front of a mass of students.
‘Here’s something,’ Vicken said, stopping near the car. ‘Ms Tate wasn’t killed on campus. You said –’ he looked at me – ‘that she drove back here. She drove herself, bleeding. She got away.’
‘Or was set loose,’ Rhode replied.
‘Either way, the power of the ritual is still working. Odette can’t come on to campus. Not yet,’ Vicken said.
‘This way, please,’ a security officer said, and we walked into the union and into pure mayhem.
CHAPTER 11
‘I repeat, this accident occurred off campus. Off campus. There is no connection between Ms Tate’s accident and the safety of your school. Now, let me continue . . .’
There was uproar again, but Ms Williams yelled into the microphone, ‘Silence! Now, only seniors are to be allowed off-campus privileges at this time and must sign in and out. If you go off campus, you must go in groups of at least two. Ms Tate’s accident was off campus, so it appears to be unrelated to Wickham or the other unfortunate accidents. Regardless, we must insist on a buddy system no matter where you go. Wickham continues to be the safest environment for our students.’
The union exploded in voices and questions.
‘Why did she drive back on to campus?’ someone yelled.
‘Please, please . . . I don’t know.’ Ms Williams put up her palms and the room quietened. The canteen serving windows were closed due to the emergency meeting. Metal grates and empty counters surrounded us. ‘Lovers Bay, Massachusetts, has never before seen this level of violence, and I am sure this will be the final incident.’
‘If it was an accident, why do we have to walk in twos?’ someone called from the crowd, and the union erupted in jeers and questions again.
‘I want some answers!’ a sophomore girl cried, and broke into tears.
‘Quiet!’ Ms Williams yelled into the microphone. Some people put their hands over their ears. ‘A buddy system is best for student safety on or off any campus, and Wickham is no different.’
As I looked around, I finally spotted Justin. He sat with the lacrosse team across the room. ‘This school remains the safest place for all of you,’ Ms Williams exclaimed.
‘Guess not!’ someone called from the audience.
‘I understand some of you would like to go home and we cannot stop you. As we will be assuring your families, Ms Tate’s car accident off campus was surely that – an accident.’
‘She’s lying,’ I whispered to Vicken.
‘Everyone in this room can sense that,’ Vicken replied. ‘The disbelief is actually overwhelming.’
‘What else?’ Rhode asked.
‘Well, they can tell she’s upset. Most of them are angry. They know something connects these incidents. Their trust has been broken.’
‘Wouldn’t you feel the same?’ Rhode whispered.
The assembly ended with most of the students staying in the union to talk about Ms Tate. Some people were crying, some were asking what they should do about their homework. Some wanted to know who would teach science.
I couldn’t cry.
I didn’t want to cry. I had seen the mark of death.
I sat there waiting to feel something, some sorrow. But all I could muster up was anger. Anger and rage at myself. At Odette. At Rhode and the memories between us that I didn’t understand.
‘Lenah!’
My head shot up. I looked at Rhode. ‘What?’
He motioned to Claudia and Tracy who stood above me. Clearly they had been trying to get my attention.
‘How are you?’ Claudia asked.
I shrugged. ‘All right, I suppose.’
I scooted over for them to sit down next to me, but Claudia sat next to Vicken and I wondered if she did it on purpose. I smelt something sweet from her, like vanilla. ‘You smell nice,’ I said. ‘I know that scent.’
‘It’s Kate’s old perfume.’
I immediately focused on the Formica tabletop. ‘Oh,’ was all I could say.
‘Weren’t you sort of close to Ms Tate?’ asked Tracy. She raised an eyebrow and I realized she was talking to me.
‘Not really,’ I said, and considered last year. I wasn’t close with Ms Tate, though she was the first adult I had spent any time with since my parents. And that was 592 years before.
‘She’s the third person to die,’ Claudia said.
‘What? Are we keeping count?’ Tracy asked, taking a sip of soda.
‘Maybe we should,’ Claudia replied.
‘Coincidence,’ Rhode said, and stood up and walked off. Tracy followed him with her eyes all the way to the union door until he was out of sight.
‘You’re not saying much,’ Claudia said to Vicken.
‘I don’t worry about much,’ Vicken replied.
Claudia exhaled heavily. She shook her head. ‘I don’t want to see Ms Tate when they . . .’ Her voice trailed off and she shivered. ‘When they take her out of the building.’
‘Me neither,’ I said, remembering the sight of her lifeless body and the heels of her shoes.
‘Want to go off campus with us?’ Tracy asked. She got up from the table and smoothed out the front of her blue shirt. I admired the colour against her skin.
‘Now?’ I asked.
‘Yeah, now,’ Claudia replied earnestly. ‘I want to go somewhere where there’s a lot of people. The movies or something.’
Bad idea. Dark.
‘Or maybe for a drive?’ Tracy suggested.
Claudia stood up too and crossed her arms over her chest. ‘I can’t believe you’re being so calm about this,’ she said to Vicken.
Vicken stood up from the table.
‘What should I do, blondie?’ He threw his hands in the air and pretended to run around. ‘Scream?’ He dropped his hands by his side, then stuck a cigarette in his mouth. ‘Death happens to all of us. Some just get it earlier than others.’ He walked out of the union leaving the smell of his cigarette wafting behind him.
‘Lenah,’ said Justin, joining us. He immediately took my hand. I exhaled into the familiar cotton of his shirt and hugged him tightly. I lingered in his embrace for a moment, allowing his strength to overwhelm me.
‘Want to come with us?’ Claudia asked Justin. ‘For a drive. Get off campus.’
Justin frowned. ‘I can’t. Coach wants to have a meeting with the team.’
I pulled away and he met my eyes. I could sense the question in his mind. Because Claudia and Tracy were here
he couldn’t ask me what I knew he wanted to. Was Odette behind this?
A group of cheerleaders passed by. They held their arms linked over each other’s shoulders and held hands. One of them, in the middle, was wailing.
Claudia tugged on my shirtsleeve. ‘Let’s get out of here. I can’t handle this,’ she said.
‘Be careful,’ said Justin, and kissed me quickly.
‘I’ll be all right,’ I said. ‘I’ve got the light of day.’
I knew Rhode wouldn’t like the idea of my leaving campus after Ms Tate’s murder, but going out to a public place seemed safe. Even if we were just going for a drive, we’d be in Claudia’s car, and I could suggest somewhere people would be if they wanted to stop.
‘I just need my wallet,’ I said, and we walked back to Seeker.
As I walked up the stairs with the girls, it occurred to me they had never been in my room before. Not even during the previous year when Tony was still alive. Tracy was directly behind me. She stood so close I heard her breathing.
‘I’ll be right out,’ I said.
‘We can’t come inside?’ Tracy asked. ‘You’re Super-Secret Girl or something, Lenah.’
Right. Should have thought of that.
‘Of course you can come in,’ I said.
I stood at the door unlocking it; the rosemary and lavender dangled in their usual spot.
‘Cute,’ Claudia said, and lightly grazed the flowers with her fingertips. ‘Dried flowers. I always dry out my corsages or a flower whenever I get a bouquet.’
I opened the door and the girls stepped inside. They oohed and ahhed over the longsword, my furnishings and all the space I had. It was Tracy who lifted a finger to touch the sword.
‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you,’ I said. ‘It’s remarkably sharp.’
‘Why do you have a sword?’ she asked.
‘Passed down through my family,’ I replied. We really do have to get out of here, I thought.