Chapter Thirty-Five #2
I squeeze his hand. “It’s okay. I’ll be right back.”
He glances toward the house and then nods.
—
Maddox didn’t need to worry about me going into the house unaccompanied. I practically need to fight my way through everyone milling about the back hall. They’ve been told to stay inside, but they’re at every window and hanging around the door, and as soon as I come in, they descend on me.
“Isolde’s dead?”
“What happened?”
“What was Isolde doing back here?”
It’s Kai who gently inserts themself between me and the growing mob. “Guys, no, okay? We’ll get answers soon enough.”
“Thank you,” I murmur. And then I give the real reason I came in—and why I came in alone, following a hunch too tentative for me to tell Maddox or Theo. “Has anyone seen Cosmo? The police need to speak to him.”
Kai frowns. “Cosmo?”
“He was outside just before we found Isolde,” I say. “The police have more questions.”
“Ah, okay. I think he went up to his room. I’d message him, but I don’t have his number.”
“I’ll go speak to him. Thank you.”
I start to walk away. Then I see that silver spider’s web on the wall, and it snags and holds my attention.
Why?
I frown at it.
“Lili?” Kai says.
I shake it off, smile for them, and hurry away.
—
Okay, so now comes the big question: Where is Cosmo’s room?
I think hard, and I’m about to guess the second floor when I remember the other day I’d been going into my room to grab books, and Cosmo had been coming up the stairs behind me.
As I’d been opening my door, he’d asked a question about an English essay.
His room must be on the third floor.
But that doesn’t seem right. Maddox, Theo, Allegra, and I all have rooms on the top level, and I’ve casually noticed other names as I travel up and down those halls. None of them were Cosmo’s.
Which only means I didn’t notice his nameplate. Or maybe he’d been coming up to visit a friend.
What friend? I’m not even sure I’ve seen him hanging out with anyone. Everyone seems to like him—I’ve even seen him talking to Maddox—but he also doesn’t seem to feel the need to bond, too engrossed in school to socialize.
A guy who passes under the radar.
Who has the grades to be Optima but doesn’t seem to be trying. The Optimas ultimately choose the winner, but Theo says the Optimas pay attention to who the students want to win. They get reports from the school administration and…
My brain catches on that thought, but again, I don’t know why, and I push past it.
The point is that Cosmo hasn’t actively been winning friends and allies, but he hasn’t made enemies either.
If Cosmo won, everyone would feel as if they’d ultimately benefit because they get along with him just fine and he has no close allies to reward instead.
The perfect stealth candidate.
I’m cresting the stairs, lost in my thoughts, when I hear a noise and idly turn to find myself looking at my own bedroom door.
Someone is in my room.
The door is firmly closed and locked, but when I put my ear to it, I hear the soft tap of shoes on the hardwood inside.
I lift my fingers to the lock. Then I stop. When I enter the code, the latch will undo with an electronic clunk. It’s not loud, but it’ll be heard in the silence.
I think quickly. Then I take out my phone, back down the steps, and find a video of Allegra pontificating.
I play it as I walk up the stairs and then punch in my room code as fast as I can.
When the lock clicks, I ease the door open a crack as I lower the volume on the video, as if Allegra is continuing on to her room.
Putting my ear to the crack, I catch the sound of labored breathing, as if the intruder had scrambled for a hiding spot and is now waiting to be sure all is fine and the person Allegra was lecturing isn’t me, returning to my room.
When I fade the volume to nothing, I swear I hear an exhale. Then the squeak of a shoe. Footsteps tap, moving away. I open the door another crack and peek through to see the back of a T-shirt. Someone stands at my bed, facing the other way. A tall figure with light brown hair.
Cosmo.
What the hell is he doing in my room?
Dumb question. I’m his only remaining competition.
What did I reflect on a few moments ago?
That I thought his room might be up here because he’d recently paused outside my door to ask me a question…
as I was unlocking it, casually punching in the code because, well, it was just Cosmo, right?
Not like I was going to cover the code or wait until he was gone.
My first night here, someone had tried to get into my room, and I’d decided it’d been Natalia or Jayden, probably just trying to spook me. And maybe it had been, but this is another possibility: Cosmo.
Now he’s beside my bed, opening the nightstand drawer. He pauses there, looking down as if surveying the contents for something he can use. Drugs? Sex toys?
Good luck, buddy. I don’t even have a sexy novel in there. I’ve read them but, having been a bit of a late bloomer in that regard, I wasn’t tucking one in my bedside table for private nighttime reading.
He paws through the contents, and I use the noise to creep inside and start coming up behind him as he contemplates the blackmail potential of my foot lotion, ear plugs, and lip balm.
When he does pull something out, it’s a bottle of pills.
The sleeping meds from the doctor after Jayden attacked me.
Cosmo lifts them, as if considering, and I’m right up behind him, barely daring to breathe, when I realize why he’s only using one hand to search, the other lowered at his side.
Lowered at his side and gripping a knife.
A knife with blood on the blade.
Held in a hand with a latex glove from the bio lab.
Cosmo isn’t looking for blackmail material.
He’s looking for a place to hide that knife. To frame me for Isolde’s murder.