Chapter 37
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
We didn’t make up after the fight. The next day, Max shuffled into the library looking like he’d seen better days, dark bags under his eyes, face drained of much of its color. “Hey,” he said, tossing his hat down on the table.
“Hey,” I said.
And that was that. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to breach the topic of our fight.
Okay, maybe it was a little bit of that, but I was also still mad, and I’m sure he was too.
That didn’t change the fact that we still had a job to do.
We wanted to save Dani, and we owed it to her to not let our near constant state of unrest get in the way of it.
So, for now, it was easier to just try and work around our own issues.
I nibbled a blueberry muffin and scrolled through the news headlines, trying to wake up. Wildfires on the West Coast,* the rise and fall of Hollywood’s hottest celebs, and blah blah blah. But it was a header off the sideboard that caught my attention.
HOW DID DEAN MORREN BECOME AMERICA’S BIGGEST TIKTOK STAR?
A little younger than me, Dean Morren had become popular for his video-game content.
He’d gotten into a bit of a firestorm last May over a challenge that landed a kid in the hospital.
Along with the story was a photo of him.
My eyes traveled to the tattoo on his wrist, and I nearly dropped my phone.
It was a tattoo of the same ten-dot triangle, the same symbol I’d seen in Dani’s notebooks, though not inside a circle this time. The triangle stood on its own, a version of the symbol I’d seen over the dormitories across campus.
I looked over at Max, opening my mouth, then closing it. He sighed. “Better tell me whatever it is before you pee your pants.”
“Look at this!” I blurted, thrusting the phone under his nose. “Dean Morren, he’s a TikTokker.” I pointed to the tattoo on his wrist. “It’s the same symbol that I saw in the frat house!”
Max frowned and looked down. “We can’t talk to them again.”
My face fell. “Look, I know everything yesterday was—a lot,” I stumbled.
“That’s not it.” He dug a card out of his pocket and tossed it on the table.
I turned it over in my hands. “LP Lewis Associates, Attorney at Law. So, he really got a lawyer?”
“It’s why Basile”—he spat out the name like a bug—“and I were talking yesterday. A girl said she saw Grant lurking outside House Torlaine the night before the murder. I went to go ask him about it, but the brothers wouldn’t let me in the house. Threw me this fucking card.”
I deflated and put my head on the desk. Yet another roadblock. “They did warn us, I guess.”
He tapped his finger on the card. “It’s not just some local guy, either. That’s a private firm in Boston. The kind that doesn’t come cheap.”
“Could we get the council to intervene?” I sat up, an idea sparking. “Make him talk to us?”
“Not unless you’d like this lawyer to slap the school with a lawsuit. But we can ask Dr. Robetresse.”
I propped my hand on my chin. “Blargh,” I murmured, thinking back on our last meeting with Basile and Grant. “So embarrassing.”
Max opened his phone to send a text, then frowned. “Did you see this? They want us to come to a council meeting. Sent three texts already. Shit, we’d better go.”
When we got to the meeting, Dr. Robetresse was pacing in front of the room. We sat down, and she dove straight in.
“Thank you for all coming on such short notice. Given the nature of the situation, I thought it best you all know immediately.” She took a deep breath and gritted her teeth.
“Another person has been afflicted in the same manner as Danica Stewart. A member of our very own council, Luce Montgomery.”
My chest turned to ice. Everything around me felt like it was moving in slow motion. Before my brain could catch up, Dr. Robetresse was already fielding questions from the rest of the council.
“No, she was found convulsing outside of Maritza’s cottage. As I understand it, she had been ill for some time. An infection of some type. It is possible she was going to Maritza’s for help when it happened.”
“And where is Maritza?” The question was from Dr. Nguyen.
“We’ve set Luce up in the old Biology building.
Maritza is splitting her time between the two of them, trying to treat them both.
Though, obviously, it’s a lot of pressure on Maritza.
We’re contacting medical at Britton Arcane and Maritza’s colleagues in the Marble County medical community, those she trusts to be discreet, to help contain the situation. ”
“There’s something else,” she said, looking around at everyone in turn and pausing. “A strange thing that Maritza is reporting. After Luce was discovered, the effects on Dani’s body seem to have changed.”
“My God,” Dr. Perez said quietly, “how much more can the girl take?” From the sympathetic looks going around the table, it was clear many of them were thinking the same thing.
“Curiously, it seems to have had some stabilizing effect on her. She’s got more energy herself, she’s even able to sit up, from what Maritza tells me.
Though something warns me this is not good news.
” Dr. Robetresse turned to me. “Have you any idea of how to stop this? Or who did it? Anything at all? I don’t think I have to stress how short our timetables are. Not if we’re to save them.”
I stumbled. And now the moment when my failure was on full display for everyone to see, how absolutely out of my depth I was.
I got to look all of them in the face and tell them that I had absolutely nothing to show for the three weeks I’d been here investigating.
No culprit, no specific hex to point to, and no counterspell to undo the damage.
Graduation was mere days away, and then everyone would break for the summer.
Whoever did this would get away. And Dani would …
I didn’t even want to think what would happen to Dani.
“I … We’re looking … that is, we hope to have something soon. ”
I had to face the facts. We had no clue what we were dealing with, and every day we didn’t was putting the entire campus in danger.
Dr. Robetresse’s shoulders deflated, and I saw the faith she once had in me drain out of her. She turned to the rest of the room. “Does anyone else have any ideas? Any at all? Luce was working with Maritza on a salve to aid in the healing of Dani’s skin, but I don’t know if it has been effective.”
I felt so useless, so utterly hopeless, all I could whisper out was that we were doing the best we could. We’re trying, we’re trying—it was all I’d been saying. But now it was quite clear: my best wasn’t good enough.