“What do you mean?”
“Alex, Sampson getting pissed at you?”
“Yes,” I said, standing. “I’m way more worried about the forces of evil schoolgirls raining down on me.”
Vlad popped around the computer again. “Schoolgirls?”
“Keep working.”
Nina pulled out a chair. “So it’s officially schoolgirls, not witches?”
I nibbled my bottom lip, considering whether or not to share my bathroom experience.
“Will said you got locked in the john,” Vlad murmured.
Nina clapped her hands over her mouth, her small body collapsing in giggles. “Is that true?”
“It was magic! I was
Vlad pursed his lips and crinkled his nose. “Okay, here they are.” He looked up at me, his dark eyes fixed and steady. “You sure you want to do this?”
I looked from Vlad to Nina and back again. “For once I have the opportunity to help on a case in which I am not the deadliest catch. Print, dammit.”
I took the pages out of the printer as it spit them out, stacking them carefully. I divided the two files on the kitchen table, laying the preliminary files I had gotten from Sampson next to them, and topping each side with a photo of one of the girls. My evidence pile looked substantial and Nina came up over my shoulder, nodding, impressed.
“Looks like you have a lot of information.”
“Yes.” I slipped into my room and came back with four years’ worth of yearbooks. “And these, too.” I started to pace. “Now we know that a student may have disappeared my senior year of high school, and that there is a legacy”—I glanced at Nina and Vlad to see if either of them were impressed with my witchly knowledge—“of spell casters. Cathy goes missing last year, Alyssa goes missing this year.” I flipped open the files. “The dates the girls went missing are within days of each other and each feature the number seven.”
I put the kitchen calendar in Nina’s hands. “Look up these two dates. Did anything significant happen on the days the girls went missing?”
I took my seat and opened my sparkly unicorn notebook, ready to write.
“Yes,” Nina said. “Cathy went missing on the seventh, which was a Tuesday, and was officially declared Birds Eye Frozen Foods Day in 1957.”
“I think I remember that,” Vlad said with a nod. “There was a parade.”
I pressed my fingertips to my temples. “How is frozen food significant to this case?”
Nina narrowed her eyes at me. “You asked for significant happenings. Not necessarily significant happenings in view of this case.”
I groaned.
“So I suppose you don’t care that the day Alyssa went missing is National Send a Card to Your Grandparents Day?”
I could feel the itchy buildup that started my left eye twitching.
I snatched the calendar from Nina and pointed to the square in question. “Half moon. That is slightly more significant than frozen vegetables.”
“I was getting to that! You didn’t let me finish!”
“Half moon the day Alyssa went missing, too.” I raised my eyebrows. “Coincidence?”
“You people tend to do crazy things at the full moon,” Vlad said with a cluck of his tongue.
“Us people?”
“Breathers.”
“Right, we do. But witches tend to cast on full moons, too, right?”
Vlad waggled his head as if considering. “Depends on the spell. Incantations, portals, protections, callings —usually done on full-moon nights.”
“What the hell does a half-moon mean?”
Vlad shrugged. Nina looked blank. But I refused to be deterred. I was moving forward. I was taking steps in the right direction. I had my friends—my real friends. I didn’t need Alex or Will.
I scrawled,
I was going to solve this case. And I was, for once, going to do it without putting myself in danger.
ChaCha’s yips broke through my pat-on-the-back revelry as she tore from my bedroom across the living room, her quarter-sized paws scratching the front door.
“What’s up, ChaCha?” I said in the customary high-pitched voice one must adopt when talking to children or pets.
ChaCha allowed me to sweep her up, but she kept her little marble eyes focused on the closed door, growling fiercely, as her tiny paws scratched at the air.
“Guess she needs to go,” I said, shrugging my jacket over my pajamas and grabbing her leash. I opened the door and was mid-step over the threshold when I saw it.
A shoebox. Wrapped simply in brown craft paper and stringy twine, settled up against the threshold.
Fingers of fear crept up my back, touching and chilling each vertebra. My mouth went dry and a whoosh of chilled air seemed to wash over me.
“Are you coming or going?” I heard Nina yell.
I swallowed.
“There’s something out here.”
Chapter Nine
Nina poked her head over my shoulder. This time, her super speed didn’t faze me. “What is it? Who’s it for?”
She crouched down, poked the box. It moved an inch, the motion benign, not setting off a slew of knife- wielding Vessel thieves or rabid witches with skin-carving tendencies.
“It’s probably from Amazon. Open it.”
I frowned. “Amazon boxes have a smile on them.”
And I got the distinct feeling that this box wouldn’t make me smile.
I bent over anyway, picking up the box. It was surprisingly light and ChaCha sniffed at it, her little paw working its way under the twine. I set her down and slipped the twine off myself, the brown craft paper popping open and slipping to my feet.
I thumbed the lid open carefully, squinting my eyes and peeking in.
Then I slammed the lid down hard.
“Jesus Christ, it’s a dead bird!”
Nina was back on the other side of the room, standing on the table, arms flapping like, well, a live bird. “Ew! Ew! Get rid of it!”
While garlic, holy water, and sunlight were the reigning terrors to most vampires, Nina had one more to add to the list: birds. Dead or alive, in any form. They terrified her.
I looked into the box again and my heart started to swell for the poor creature laying silent in the box. And then my heart dropped down like a fist to the gut.
“People only send dead livestock for one reason,” I said, licking my paper-dry lips. “It’s a warning.”
Vlad looked up from his computer, his fingers still hovering over the keys. “About what?”
The little corpse shook in the box as my hands started to tremble. I clamped my eyes shut, thinking back to the horrendous clanging of metal, of porcelain, of the water shooting to the ceiling in the Mercy High bathroom— the words GET OUT scrawled in angry red across the mirror.
“About me getting any closer with this investigation.”
“What now?”
My head snapped up to Will’s door, cracked open, and Will, his eyes narrowed and caked with sleep. He
