Chapter 33
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
I woke to the last rays of the sunset out my window, and Max sitting at the edge of my bed, eating. Naturally.
“Scone?” he asked, and I covered my head with a pillow. I could smell the sickly sweetness of it from here, something with cinnamon. A little like those scented brooms in the stores at the beginning of fall. My stomach heaved dangerously.
“No,” I groaned, pressing the fabric into my nose.
“What happened last night? I tried calling.”
“I sort of, um, passed out. On the bathroom floor.”
“Gross,” he said, miming shivers. “I bet that bathroom is disgusting. What’d you get for all that acting?”
I shook my head, grimacing. “Nothing.”
“Nothing?” he said, picking a crumb off his T-shirt and dropping it in his mouth. “That must have been the performance of a lifetime. Why’d you get so drunk?”
“Wait, no.” The note from the room upstairs. “Hand me my bag.”
I dug my hands into my purse, but though everything else was present—phone, keys, chapstick, hairbrush—the slip of paper I’d found in the room wasn’t.
“Shit. It must have fallen out when I was at the party, or …”
Or maybe I was too drunk and it had never made it into my bag in the first place. I was getting really sick of not being able to trust my own head.
“I got nothing.” I slumped down farther into the bed.
“Nothing but a headache,” he said, nodding to the way I rubbed my temples. My stomach twisted. Maybe it was just a hangover after all.
“I peeked into one of the brother’s rooms, but it wasn’t all that groundbreaking. Normal guy stuff.” What had the note said? Something I couldn’t make sense of, even if I had remembered. Probably just gibberish. Maybe a spell he’d been trying.
“Get a look at Grant’s things?”
I shook my head. “When I saw him, he was terrified that someone might have seen him fall asleep. It was weird. Like he was being punished or something.”
“What, like sleep deprivation?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I just get the feeling that this is bigger than Grant alone.”
Max chewed his lip. “Hmm. What about Basile?”
“His office door was locked. Though I think you’re right. Things were definitely off. Basile is hiding something. It may not be big, it may not have anything to do with Dani or Maya, but it’s certainly something he doesn’t want me knowing about.”
He beamed. “I’ll try my best not to gloat.”
I leaned back on my pillow. “Now what?”
“Well, lucky for you, while you were busy getting wrecked, I did find something.”
“What? You were there?”
Max smiled and pulled up a picture on his phone. “You think I was going to leave you alone with those creeps? I figured if I was at least there, I could hear if you screamed, maybe. Or if you called, I’d be close by.”
Was that a blush creeping up his cheeks?
“I snuck around the back of the property after the party and took these. Guess those guys we questioned in the hall were right. Phi Kat is into some weird shit, Cella. I don’t think you should go back there alone.”
The picture was of the empty field a little way from the back of the house. The picture also showed the faded white boards of the house. On the ground were bits of ash and wood—and the charred remains of what looked like bones.
“Please tell me those are not human.”
“They look to be cattle. Rib, maybe. Too big to be human.”
“What are they doing burning cattle bones?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
“There was a bonfire at the party …”, I said slowly, then my stomach twisted. “You don’t think they were burning it then?”
Max grimaced. “We should tell the council.”
“Tell them what, exactly? That we found some burned cattle bones at an old cattle ranch? They’ll laugh in our faces. We can’t even prove this is from the party. It could’ve been out there for ages.”
“It’s still suspicious.”
“Definitely,” I agreed, “but it’s not enough.”
Max nodded, rubbing his palms together. A conspiratorial glint came into his eye.
“Okay. We lie low; we don’t confront them just yet.
We gather information, we watch them. If they’re up to something, they’ll slip.
Basile might have his ship shut up tight, but the rest of them are bound to trip up sooner or later. And we’ll be there when they do.”
“And in the meantime?” I said.
“We wait, and you sleep off what I expect is bound to be one nasty hangover. And potentially some rare incurable disease or staph infection from what I suspect is a truly gnarly bathroom—”
I threw a pillow at him.
FROM THE JOURNAL OF DANICA STEWART
MARCH 30TH [TWO DAYS BEFORE THE MURDER]
—the pages hold the truth—
—and the truth will set you* free—
*your soul