Tristen slammed the cover shut. “Jekyll tried to recreate the formula to kill Hyde once and for all, only to learn that the original potion contained a tainted salt. The formula could never be repeated. That’s why he could never destroy Hyde. It’s such a brief passage . . .” He gestured to the box. “But it means this is all worthless for me.” He buried his face again, his voice muffled by his hands. “How could I have forgotten that? I suppose I got so excited by the idea that the formula even existed . . . I’m such an idiot. It’s all pointless.”
“No, Tristen,” I said with more conviction than I felt. “We’ll find an answer. We can read the passage again. Maybe you’re wrong—”
“No. I’m correct.” He dropped his hands and fell silent, staring into the distance.
I started to reach out to him again, but he seemed so distant, so isolated, that I let my hand fall to the table.
Yet a few seconds later Tristen turned and reached out to me, grabbing my wrist and squeezing it. “Jill,” he said, and I saw that his brown eyes were gleaming again—almost fevered, like Mom’s had been. “The list of altered salts . . . his last list?”
“Yes?”
“What if . . . What if your father was working on the formula, too?” he suggested. “I thought the old lock on the box gave too easily. What if your mother saw some list he was keeping just before he died . . . ?”
“But why?” I asked, confused. He was grasping at straws. “Why would Dad work with the formula?”
“I’m not sure,” Tristen admitted. His eyes clouded. “Perhaps . . .”
I waited, but he seemed to change his mind about speculating, saying only, “Who knows? But the coincidence is a strange one, isn’t it?
“Yes, but . . .” There was an element of coincidence—tainted salts in the book, my mom’s talk of altered salts—but it was thin at best. “I don’t think you should get too excited,” I cautioned.
“Perhaps.” Tristen absently rubbed my wrist, too hard, because in spite of my warning he was excited. “We need to find that list,” he said. “We need to find that ‘compartment.’” He met my eyes, shaking my arm. “You’ve got to ask your mother if she recalls what she said.”
I shook my head. “No.”
Tristen released my wrist, incredulous. “Jill, this is life or death for me.”
I rubbed the spot he’d clutched, feeling sick to my stomach. “I don’t have to ask, Tristen, because I already know.”
If a list of altered salts existed, I was pretty sure where it was hidden.
Oh, but I didn’t want to go to that terrible place.
Even though it was right in my own backyard.
Chapter 29
Jill
“MOM ALWAYS COMPLAINED about Dad’s messy car,” I said as Tristen pulled the school door shut then replaced the padlock. “He never carried a briefcase, so he just threw loose papers on the seats.” I smiled a little at the memory of my dad’s “filing system,” adding, “Unless it was important. Then he would jam it in the glove compartment ‘for safekeeping.’”
“So you really think this list—”
“If it exists,” I cautioned, “which I doubt.”
“If it exists,” Tristen conceded, leading us across the parking lot and toward the sidewalk, “it might be in the car?”
“Yes.” The night was chilly, and I rubbed my arms, wishing I’d brought a jacket. “But this is such a long shot, Tristen—”
“Are you cold?” he interrupted, looking down at me.
My teeth chattered. “A little.”
“Here.” Before I could object or even grasp what he was doing, he stopped walking and shrugged off an old striped dress shirt that he wore unbuttoned over a T-shirt almost like a jacket and held it out. “Wear this.” Tristen taking control as usual.
“No.” I raised my hands, pushing the offering away. “I can’t take your shirt!”
“Just wear it, Jill.” He sidestepped me and draped it over my shoulders. “Put this on and let’s get moving.”
“Okay . . . thanks,” I agreed. As we started walking again, I put my arms in the sleeves, which dangled past my fingertips. The shirt still held the warmth of Tristen’s body and smelled like the soap I associated with him. Wrapping myself inside, I inhaled, feeling not just warmer but somehow braver, like I’d donned armor or borrowed some of Tristen’s swagger.
Maybe I could do this: face my Dad’s car . . .
“Wouldn’t someone have noticed this list?” Tristen mused aloud as we moved across the parking lot side-by-side. “Surely you’ve used the car since your father died?”
“No, we haven’t,” I said. “We had it cleaned to get rid of the blood on the seats.” I flinched to say that out loud and kept talking to erase the image. “And then Mom parked it in the garage, threw a tarp over it, and never drove it again. It’s like we don’t know what to do with it. I mean, who would even buy it?”
Tristen halted again, seeming taken aback. “Your father was murdered in the car?”
“Yes, I thought you knew. It was all over the news.”
“I seldom watch news,” he said grimly. “Especially not that type. The grief others suffer is not my entertainment. I’ve misery enough of my own to keep me quite diverted.”
We continued walking again in silence, Tristen probably lost in the past, in thoughts of his mom, and me trying to face the future, where the interior of that car waited. It had been detailed, but what if it somehow smelled like blood? Like . . . murder?
We passed under a canopy of trees, both staring at the shadowed pavement when a voice broke the silence of the sleepy street.
“Tristen? Jill? Is that you?”
Chapter 30
Jill
“WELL, WELL, WELL.” Todd Flick laughed, strolling up with Darcy, who had called
