Chapter Thirty-Five
THIRTY-FIVE
By the time I round the carriage house, Allegra is in the woods, but I can still see her white shirt. She’s moving fast. The phone ceased ringing a minute ago, before I was close enough to identify the tone.
Allegra stops so short that I race over, certain something’s wrong. But she’s just standing there, looking left and right. Then, with a little noise, somewhere between a gasp and a whimper, she darts to the left.
I wheel and see what she does. A figure, crumpled on the ground, red hair spilling over the undergrowth.
“Isolde,” I whisper, and I run to her.
Allegra’s already there, crouching, her hands to Isolde’s shoulders. Isolde’s on her stomach, hair spread around her, arms and legs akimbo, as if she’d been running and fallen.
“Isolde?” Allegra says.
Allegra turns her over gently. I race in front of Isolde and drop to my knees, brushing hair from Isolde’s face and—
Her skin is cold, and I jerk away, startled. She’s on her back now, and her eyes are open, wide and staring. Blood covers the front of her T-shirt.
“Isolde?” I whisper, hand to her cheek even as I know it’s pointless.
“Liliana?” It’s Allegra, barely getting the word out as she heaves breath. “Is she—? She’s—?”
I check for a pulse. Yes, those open eyes and cold skin tell me Isolde is dead, but I need to be sure. Her T-shirt is ripped, and I push it up to see the bandages covering her wound are gone, and it’s been bleeding, but my hands go to her heart, as if it could still be beating.
“Liliana!”
It’s Maddox, his voice booming from the yard.
“Here!” I call.
He appears at a lope, Theo right behind him. Maddox sees Isolde first and stops so suddenly he stumbles.
“Oh my god,” Theo breathes. “Is she—?”
“Get help,” I say. “Someone. Anyone.”
Theo races off. Maddox walks forward, his gaze fixed on Isolde.
“She’s…she’s dead,” I say.
“You need to go,” Maddox says, pulling me to my feet.
“What?”
“Your hands. Blood. You can’t be found with her. Go. Now.”
He grabs my shoulder, but I yank away.
“She’s long dead,” I say. “Cold. No one’s going to think I—”
“I don’t care. I won’t take that chance.” He propels me to my feet and starts pushing me.
“Maddox, stop.” That’s Allegra, snapping from her shock.
“You don’t understand,” he says, wheeling on her.
“I do understand. You’re afraid Liliana will be framed for this. Like Theo was framed for the attack on Isolde in the alley.”
“Maddox, please,” I say, twisting from his grip, turning to see his eyes, wide and panicked. “No one’s framing me for this. I have a little blood on me, but Isolde obviously died last night, when I was with you.”
“I’m the one who found her,” Allegra says. “Not Liliana. Cosmo saw us leave the house. It’s fine.” Her gaze drops to Isolde, and she squeezes her eyes shut and sways. “No, it’s not fine. Not fine at all.” She drops beside Isolde again and brushes back her hair.
I lean into Maddox, careful not to touch him with my bloodied hands, but he pulls me into a hug.
“Sorry,” he says, his breath still ragged. “You’re right. I panicked.”
I hug him. A phone rings, making us all jump. I turn and see it on the ground, screen facing up, Polly’s avatar face on it, bouncing, pigtails swinging. We all stare at the phone, that familiar ringtone playing its cheerful tune as Polly calls to wish Isolde a good morning.
I fall against Maddox and start to cry.
—
Theo brings Ms. Dimitriou and two of the security guards. We’re shooed off then, told not to go far but to wait for the police. We all do that in stunned silence. The police arrive along with an ambulance, even though Isolde is past needing one.
We talk to the police. I barely process any of that.
There’s not much to say. Allegra and I circled the house talking about school.
As we left the house, we saw Cosmo on the deck and we spoke briefly, but he was gone when we came around.
We heard a ringtone. Allegra recognized it as Isolde’s, which made her think Isolde had snuck out of the hospital.
I wait for them to ask the last time I heard from Isolde.
I think of the video, of her crying and apologizing.
Thankfully no one asks. If they eventually do, I’ll need to call in Cecilia.
I know that always seems like the move of the guilty—summoning a lawyer—but she’s also my guardian. Legally, she should be present.
And I’m not sure it matters anyway. If they search Isolde’s phone, they’re going to see the videos she sent.
This is the last thing I want to be worrying about.
Isolde is dead.
Isolde, who sent me a video just last night, crying and apologizing, and I should have gone to see her right away, and—
“The hospital wouldn’t have let you in,” Theo murmurs, as if reading my mind.
We’re on the deck now, the two of us sitting on the steps. Maddox paces in front of us, fingers tapping his phone. Polly took Allegra inside, and I want to be with them, but I can’t move from this spot.
Theo’s arm goes around my waist as he shifts closer, one leg against mine. “Lil?”
“I still could have tried going to her. I never even considered it. I—”
“No one would have let you in at that hour.”
I look at him. “She came here. She snuck out in the middle of the night and came to Westdale.”
“Because she was high on pain meds.”
“That doesn’t change the fact she came. She couldn’t wait to talk to us, and when we didn’t show up—”
“She said tomorrow, Lil.”
Fresh tears well. “But she came last night. She came, and someone…someone…” I can’t finish that sentence.
“We don’t know that.”
I see Ms. Dimitriou making her away across the backyard. One guard follows and puts out a hand as if to steady the principal.
Theo and I scramble off the steps so Ms. Dimitriou can get past, but she stops before us, wobbling.
“I’m so sorry,” she says. “I know she was a good friend. To you both.”
“What happened?” I whisper.
Ms. Dimitriou glances over her shoulder. “The paramedics think her injury reopened. Or maybe it was worse than the doctors thought?”
She shakes her head and keeps looking in the direction of Isolde’s body. “I don’t know why she came back. Allegra said something about a video, that Isolde seemed high on the pain meds? Maybe Isolde was confused?”
She takes a deep breath and lays a hand on my shoulder. “There won’t be any classes today, obviously. I’m going to notify Ms. Khan and Cecilia. You and Allegra found the body, and since you’re both under eighteen, I need to tell your guardians.”
“I’ll tell Cecilia.”
A wan smile. “You can if you like, dear, but I’ll still call myself. It’s only right. I’m also going to summon all the students and staff to tell them what’s happened, before rumors fly. You can skip that meeting, obviously.”
“Thank you.”
—
We’re sitting on the grass in the backyard. It’s the five of us—Allegra, Polly, Theo, Maddox, and me. No one else is outside; either they’ve been told to give us space or they realize that’s the right thing to do.
Theo’s beside me, his hand holding mine.
Maddox is physically present but mentally far away, and I’m not going to intrude.
Allegra is still in a state of shock, and the only time she’s roused from it was when I asked if she wanted to be alone, and she startled, looking at me with something like fear.
I’ve never seen Allegra like this, and I keep waiting for her to snap back to normal Allegra, horrified that she’s sitting on grass, ordering us to get inside, telling us there are things to be done. But she just sits there, cross-legged in her yoga pants, her eyes red behind her glasses.
We’ve updated Polly, who alternates between checking on Allegra and whispering with Theo.
I know we should talk about Obsidian, about how they could be connected to the Janus Society and what happened to Annette and maybe even what Isolde was talking about in that video.
But it seems wrong to accuse her family of something when she just died.
It can wait.
Allegra looks at me. “Do you think she died of her injuries?”
“I…” I take a deep breath. “I need to hear what the coroner says.”
“It must have been,” Theo says. “There was just the one wound, and it was open and bleeding profusely, given all the blood on her shirt.”
When I hesitate, Maddox peers at me. “You think someone stabbed her in the same spot. Was her shirt damaged? I didn’t get a good look.”
“It was ripped,” I say. “The tear didn’t look like a knife slash, but it could have been torn more to cover that up.” I rub my arms. “Or I’ve just read too many mystery novels.”
“She sent that video,” Maddox murmurs, his voice low. “She admitted the alley attack was a setup. She was probably coming to tell you everything.”
“And someone stopped her,” Polly says.
As I nod, my gaze snags on something. The back deck is empty, but there’s a single coffee mug on a table, no one having cleared it away yet.
Cosmo’s mug.
I remember when we walked past, the mug had been half empty, and no steam was rising from it, despite the cool morning air. How long had he been out here?
We’d taken Cosmo on that trip to Savannah because he asked. And because Polly had noticed shy glances between him and Isolde. Glances suggesting a romantic interest, though the two had barely spoken on the trip.
Cosmo. Who is the same height as Theo.
Cosmo. Who had been the one person who didn’t support Theo with the police, when Isolde accused Theo of attacking her.
Cosmo. Who spoke briefly to the police and then retreated, calm and dry-eyed, as if he’d been questioned in the death of a stranger and not a girl he just said he wanted to visit in the hospital.
Cosmo. Who is so apathetic about the Optima race that everyone keeps forgetting he’s even a contender.
Cosmo. Who made a point of saying he’d like to go see Isolde later, so no one could ever suspect him of knowing she was dead.
“I need to use the washroom,” I say.
Maddox starts to rise with me.
“Uh, she doesn’t need help with that,” Allegra says.