Ryan watched Sofia go. What was going on? It looked like she’d been eating out of the garbage can. But of course that couldn’t be — his own stomach was still churning after only a glance at the roiling mass of maggots squirming like something in the last throes of death. And the stink—
He shuddered just at the memory of it.
He must have been mistaken — she couldn’t have done what he thought she’d been doing. It must have been the way the light hit her. But telling himself he must have been wrong wasn’t calming his own stomach at all, so he turned his mind away from what he’d seen to what he’d heard.
Father Sebastian had wanted to see Melody.
On a Saturday? Why?
Ryan walked slowly away from the little alcove where the garbage barrels were kept, through the narrow alleyway to the street beyond. When he came to the sidewalk, he paused, gazing unseeingly at the row of bowfront houses across Louisburg Square, his mind filled instead with the memory of Tuesday night, when Father Sebastian had wanted to see Sofia for making out with Darren Bender.
She had to be carried to the infirmary that night, and she’d been…He searched his mind for the right word, and only one came to him.
Sofia had been just plain weird ever since.
He crossed the street and went into the square, and sat on a bench in the deepening dark as the streetlamps cast strange shadows all around him.
Could the same thing that happened to Sofia have happened to Melody, too?
With a bad feeling in his gut, Ryan got up, left the square and crossed the street back to St. Isaac’s. He threaded his way through the narrow alley, then headed toward the building whose second floor was occupied by the infirmary.
He didn’t see a single person on his way; the whole campus seemed to be deserted.
Once again — just as on the night he and Melody had gone looking for Sofia — the infirmary door was locked. He cupped his hands around his eyes and tried to peer through the frosted glass in the door, but all he saw was a faint light, way in the back.
Had there been a light when he and Melody were looking for Sofia?
No, because Sofia hadn’t been taken there yet.
But now someone was inside, and something inside him was telling him it was Melody Hunt.
He jerked at the door handle, praying maybe he’d been mistaken and that it wasn’t locked at all, but it wouldn’t budge.
The back way!
But even the thought of the maze of dark tunnels beneath the school brought the taste of fear to his mouth.
But Melody was in the infirmary, he knew it in his bones, and if anybody was going to help her before the same thing happened to her that had happened to Sofia Capelli, it was going to have to be him.
He turned away from the locked door and started back the way he’d come.
Would he even be able to find the door to the underground tunnels that Melody had showed him a few nights ago?
And if he could, would he find the courage to go down into the darkness below?
He didn’t know, but at least he had to try.
CHAPTER 42
THE MOMENT TERI MCINTYRE opened the front door of her house, she knew that something was wrong. She stopped at the threshold so suddenly that Tom bumped into her from behind.
“What’s—” he began, but Teri silenced him with a gesture.
“Something’s not right,” she whispered. “Someone’s been here.”
Tom pushed past her into the living room, turning on lights, but nothing looked amiss. “I think you’re just upset about Ryan.”
Teri shook her head, not moving from the front door, certain that whatever had happened had nothing at all to do with Ryan’s going back to St. Isaac’s instead of coming home.
This was something else. Something in the house was different. It was as if there was a change in the air, or the smell, or just the feeling of the place. That was it — it just didn’t
“Oh, boy,” Tom called from the kitchen. “We’d better call the police.”
Terry’s blood suddenly ran cold. “What is it? What did you find?”
“Someone’s broken in.”
Teri picked up the cordless phone on the way to the kitchen and punched in 911. “What if they’re still here?” she whispered, rolling her eyes toward the floor above.
Before she could stop him, Tom had taken the baseball bat she’d started keeping in the hall closet after Bill had died, and started up the stairs. “What if there’s more than one of them?” she called after him, then shifted her attention to the 911 operator, suddenly blanking on her own address. And not just the number — she couldn’t even remember the street.
“It’s all right,” the operator assured her. “All that information comes up on my screen even before I’ve answered. I’ll send a couple of cars over right away.”
“Well, whoever it was, they’re gone now,” Tom said as he came back down the stairs. “Looks like they took your jewelry, and maybe some other stuff.”
Teri’s hands trembled as she passed the information on to the 911 operator, then clicked the phone off. Suddenly her knees began to buckle and she leaned on the kitchen counter. “I think I need to sit down,” she said as a wave of nausea suddenly rose in her stomach.
Tom guided her into one of the kitchen chairs and she gazed mutely at the broken pane in the kitchen door. Then her eyes shifted to the shattered glass on the floor. One thought kept running through her mind:
“You look like you could use a drink,” Tom said.
Finally her eyes left the hole in the window and the broken glass on the floor and she shook her head. “No,” she said as the threat of nausea passed and her fear began giving way to anger. “At least not right now — certainly not until the police have been here.”
“Maybe we’d better go upstairs to see what’s missing,” Tom suggested. “We should be able to tell the police everything that’s gone. Or at least everything you can see right away.”
The words echoed in her mind. Someone had come into
Nothing seemed disturbed. Nothing at all.
Tom moved the fireplace poker from where it always leaned against the brick wall and set it in its stand.
Teri folded the afghan and draped it over the arm of the sofa. The house looked neat.
With Tom following close behind, she slowly mounted the stairs. He had turned on every light in every room, and opened all the closet doors.
