I spun around in my chair, startled, eyes darting to check the clock. It was nearly two in the morning. I’d completely lost track of time.
“I’m just finishing an assignment,” I said, facing him—but trying to slip the bloodstained list beneath a chemistry reference, which was, thank god, open before me, too: the Inorganic Materials Chemistry Desk Reference, in which I’d been seeking information on all types of salts. “Senior year, you know?” I added, trying to sound casual. “I’m quite buried, between running and classes.”
Dad drew closer, stepping into the puddle of light cast by my desk lamp. “Is this anything that I can help with? I’ve a few academic degrees under my belt, you know.”
“No, thank you.” I managed a smile, even as I tried to position my arm over the list, a good portion of which stuck out from beneath the book. “This is chemistry,” I added, joking, “my strong suit.”
“Now, Tristen,” Dad said, sitting on the edge of my desk, “I’m not ignorant of chemistry. You wouldn’t call your father ignorant, would you?”
“No, sir, never,” I agreed, regretting my attempt at humor.
“Let’s see . . .” Dad reached out and ran his finger across the open pages of the reference book, his hand just inches from the list, and sweat began to trickle down my back. He gave me a quizzical look. “I thought you’re studying organic chemistry this year.”
“Yes . . .”
“But you’re using an inorganic reference?”
“Just looking something up.” I shrugged. But the blood was pounding in my ears.
Dad knew that I was lying to him. Although the light glinted off his silver-rimmed spectacles, I could see by the curve of his mouth that he was laughing inside.
Oh, hell.
“Well, if I can help, just call down the hall.” He rose and moved toward the door and away from the hidden list.
Had he seen it?
“I’ll do so,” I promised. Leave, just leave . . .
But Dad wasn’t quite finished with me. “Tristen?” he noted, pausing in the doorway. “You’re not working late because you’re distracted from your studies by something other than running, are you?”
“No, sir. I am quite focused,” I promised, tensing again. Did Dad somehow know about my late-night forays into the school? My extracurricular project?
But, no, my father wasn’t talking about that type of diversion. “I just thought perhaps there might be a young lady,” he said. “After all, you’ve never lacked for girlfriends—until lately.”
“No,” I said, and for the first time since he’d entered the room, I heard my casual façade crack. “No one,” I repeated with deliberate calm. “I’m too busy right now.”
“Oh.” My father sounded almost disappointed. “Given your eagerness to help her mother, I thought perhaps you fancied the Jekel girl.”
My mouth tasted curiously metallic as I said, “Jill? No. She’s just a friend.”
Dad frowned. “That’s too bad, Tristen. Because Mrs. Jekel, although fragile right now, shows flashes of sweetness and charm.” He rested one hand on the doorknob, that queer smile flitting across his lips again. “And you know what they say. Like mother, like daughter.” He laughed. “And of course, like father, like son.”
With that, Dad left me, closing the door without even saying good night.
My hands shook almost as badly as Jill’s had done as she’d handed me the list, which I now folded and hid inside a Hemingway novel that I’d been assigned to read junior year. Then I shrugged off my jeans, shut off the light, and lay down on my bed.
Sleep proved elusive, though.
Like mother, like daughter. Like father, like son.
Had Jill suspected back in the garage what I had believed with near certainty the moment I’d laid eyes on the “last, bloody list” of “altered salts”? Had it even crossed her mind that my father had, in all probability, killed hers—or at the very least been involved, somehow? That perhaps it really was no accident, Jekel meeting Hyde in the heart of Pennsylvania?
I felt sure that Dad had come here not just to teach but to confer with Dr. Jekel. I wasn’t sure why, or how, they’d come together, but the coincidence was too great to be ignored. There must have been some sort of collaboration. A partnership that had gone terribly wrong at some point . . .
My father—who was he now? Who—what—did I live with?
I closed my eyes, willing myself to sleep, needing to escape my thoughts, which of course pursued me even in slumber, and I woke up less than two hours later, thrashing in the throes of the nightmare.
She was so close to turning, revealing her face—although I’d already guessed her identity.
Becca Wright. But why did I want to kill her?
That night by the river had meant nothing to me—nor to her. Becca wasn’t faceless just in the dream. Although I saw her nearly every day, she barely registered with me. She was a blur of self-consciously styled hair, slave-to-fashion clothes, and bright eyes that managed to be dim at the very same time. Why was this thing inside of me obsessed with slaying such an innocuous girl?
“Oh, god,” I groaned aloud.
I was close to a solution. I could feel it. But I was close to destruction, too.
Something had happened again with Todd Flick, outside the school. There were moments that I didn’t recall, and I’d come back to myself to find Jill’s hand in mine.
I sat up in bed and ground my palms against my eyes, sick, frustrated, and confused. Because of all the things that disturbed me that night, the one that bothered me most was the lie I’d told my father when he’d asked me if there was anyone special in my life.
Oh, Jill . . .
Twice I’d stood close to her in the shadow cast by her murdered father, and the second time I’d wanted desperately to kiss her. Perhaps it was my own slide toward total corruption, but sometime over the course of the last few weeks, the innocence that I’d once found amusing had become touching, and then compelling, and then I’d recognized in it
