Under a Spell uda-5 Page 9

  And then came the sound. A bristling howl—primitive, inhuman—and deafening. I clapped my hands over my ears, trying to press the brain-numbing sound out, but it only got louder. I hunched down into myself as each stall door barreled open on its own accord, the metal slabs clanking against each other. The toilets were next—one, two, three—exploding pistols of water straight up toward the ceiling. A chilling blue light swirled with the water and I pushed myself up, steadying against a sink as water swirled around my ankles.

  I gaped. The mirror was smeared with angry slashes of red, the words GET OUT scrawled across the mirror, hacking through my reflection. I was screaming and crying, tears and snot rolling over my chin, throwing my weight against the bathroom door when a heavy force pushed against me. My legs were matchsticks and I crumpled back to the horrible pebbled tile and Will looked down at me.

  “Soph?”

  In an instant the bathroom was bright and dry. The mirrors reflected the unscathed Pepto-pink stall doors and the only sound was the slight hum of the overhead lights and my own thrumming heart.

  I could see that Will was geared to say something smart, but the second he saw me, he crouched down at my feet and pulled me to him, one hand on my shoulder, the other cradling my cheek. He thumbed a tear from the end of my nose. “What happened?”

  I looked over both shoulders, expecting singing birds or a giant neon sign blaring CRAZY PANTS with an arrow pointing to me.

  “There was, and then—” I sniffled. “Something happened in here, Will!”

  Will stepped around me, poking his head in each stall, doing a quick check. He turned to me and shrugged, his expression surprisingly sympathetic.

  “I—I don’t know what to say,” Will said.

  I pushed myself up and used the heel of my hand to wipe away the tears, then scanned the room myself from the safety of the doorway.

  “Lights were blinking, and then they went out and there was—” I paused while Will studied me. I couldn’t tell if he was listening hard or considering whether or not my family history of nuttiness and pure evil had seeped into my brain. “There!” I pointed to the ceiling, cocking my head. “There, you hear that, right?”

  The ominous squeak-squeak-squeak sounded again. I grabbed Will by both lapels. “Tell me you hear that!”

  Will slid his arms around my waist and carefully led me into the hall. His eyes were intense. “Yes, I heard that, too.”

  Part of me felt like collapsing in relief in his arms. The other part of me wanted to climb the length of his body and bury myself in his neck while we ran from imminent danger.

  “What is it?” I whispered.

  The triple squeak stopped, but my heart continued to hammer.

  “Wait,” Will hissed. “Listen.”

  Something heavy hit something hard. I could hear goo, something—blood?—sloshing and I started to heave. “That’s a body. That’s a body hitting the ground if I ever heard it.”

  Will took his hands off me and turned carefully. “Go back into your classroom and lock the door. Don’t come out until I tell you to.”

  I clung to his back, wrapping my arms around him and burying my forehead in the cleft between his shoulder blades. “No. No, no, no, no, no. I can’t lose you, too. I won’t sit by and watch you die.”

  He looked over his shoulder. “Thanks for your vote of confidence.”

  “There it is again!” I gripped fistfuls of Will’s shirt and moved with him, my eyes clenched shut.

  “This would go a lot more smoothly if you would let go of me.”

  “I can’t.” My muscles had seized up, my full body molded into the shape of ardent terror. “If I survive, I’m going to be in this position forever.”

  “Lucky me. Would you just—” He wedged his hand between my front and his back and I was forced to move a quarter inch. “I thought you were supposed to be some great crime-fighting asset. Weren’t you learning to be tough or something?”

  That’s right! “That’s right!” Adrenaline shot through my entire body and I imagined myself giving whatever terror awaited us the ass-kicking of a lifetime. I’d stake a vamp with the number-two pencil in Will’s shirt pocket. I would stop a zombie with a head-removing scissor kick.

  Squeak-squeak-squeak.

  My bladder felt heavy, but I was ready.

  Finally, I felt Will’s body loosen slightly. He pulled my hands from his shirt. “This one’s yours.”

  He stepped aside and I imagined myself jumping into my most Buffy-esque fighting stance before doing some sort of dive roll into a helicopter kick that would disable my attacker.

  In actuality, I was crunched myself into a chair pose and held my fisted hands close to my sides, protecting my breasts. The smell of fear, adrenaline and fate hung in the air.

  And it smelled like bleu cheese.

  “Steve?”

  Steve, the Underworld Detection Agency’s resident troll and three-foot-tall stalker, grinned at me, baring all three of his snaggled yellow teeth.

  “What the hell are you doing here? You almost got your ass kicked!”

  “By him?” Steve motioned toward Will, who was doubled over, holding his gut, doing that silent, tears-down-the-face kind of laugh.

  I wanted to slap him.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Sophie needs Steve. Sophie is in danger, and Steve would never leave his Sophie in danger.” He looked disdainfully at Will. “A true gentleman would never leave his woman in danger.”

  “I’m not your woman. And why do you have a bucket? Why—” Knowing—sickening, overwhelming knowing—crashed over me. “You’re wearing a uniform. A janitor’s uniform.”

  “Steve is undercover. Steve knows that’s the best way to protect his woman.”

  Will stopped laughing and gasping for air long enough to say, “Does he always refer to himself in the third?”

  “Steve does,” said Steve.

  “Okay, okay, wait. Both of you—wait. Steve?”

  “Steve is filling in for the janitor on vacation.” He looked at his bucket and frowned. “Steve doesn’t like his job very much.” He flapped nonexistent eyelashes. “But anything for my Sophie.”

  “Did you just start today?”

  Steve nodded.

  “So when you said Soph—I—was in danger, it was just general. You don’t have any pertinent information, do you?”

  A slip of Steve’s forked black tongue washed across his bottom lip. “Steve always has pertinent information.”

  Will straightened. “Share it, mate.”

  Steve shot him a blood-curdling glare. “Steve only shares with his woman.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose, hoping that would stop my new, suddenly pounding headache and the fact that my left eye was starting that twitching thing again. “Okay, Steve, what information do you have?”

  He grabbed the wooden handle of the mop he had been slapping across the linoleum and pointed to the second floor with it. “Toilet’s clogged.”

  I gaped. My eye twitched. “That’s your pertinent information?”

  “Steve fixed the clog.”

  Will blew out an annoyed sigh. “Fabulous. You’ve exorcised the crap out of the toilet.” He clapped. “Brilliant job, mate.”

  “Steve, we don’t have time for this. Will and I need to—”

  “Doesn’t Sophie want to know what clogged the toilet?”

  I felt myself blanch. “Not especially.”

  He poked his mop into his bucket and laboriously fished out a sopping wet sweater. “Not even if it was this?”

  I took a step closer. “Is that a sweater?”

  Will took a step closer. “From here?”

  Steve flicked the sweater end of the mop in Will’s direction. “For Sophie’s eyes only.”

  “Fine, Steve. It is a Mercy sweater,” I told Will over my shoulder. “Where did you get this?”

  “Steve feels like he’s sharing a lot of information.”

  “Of course. Wh
at do you want, Steve?”

  Steve puckered up. “Little kiss?”

  “Not if you pulled Jesus himself out of the toilet.”

  Steve narrowed his eyes and started to sink the sweater again.

  “Wait! Wait! I’ve got something even better. A kiss is so fast. It just comes and goes—”

  “Not when Steve kisses.”

  I let that roll off me and kept going. “This is way better.” I fished a tube of lip balm out of my pocket and held it in the palm of my hand. Steve poked his head forward, then tentatively came around his bucket, pulling my hand just under his nose.

  “Lipstick?”

  “Better.” I uncapped the balm and spread it across my lips. “Lip balm. I use it everyday. All the time. If you take this, it’s like your lips will be touching my lips all the time.”

  Steve cocked his head.

  “That’s awfully sexy. If the little man here doesn’t want it—” Will went to reach for my hand, but Steve rolled up on his tiptoes, yanked the balm from my hand, and squirreled backward with it tucked against his chest. He glared at Will. “Steve’s woman.” He uncapped the lip balm, rubbed it across his lips. I looked away as his eyes rolled backward and a little moan of pleasure emanated from his thin black lips.

  “Where’d you get the sweater, Steve?”

  “Someone tried to flush it down the toilet in the bathroom upstairs.” He rolled the balm over his bottom lip and closed his eyes. “Sweet kisses.”

  “The upstairs bathroom? When?”

  “Sweet, sweet, Sophie kisses.”

  “When, Steve?”

  He cracked open one eye. “After lunch. Took Steve a while to get it out. Not because Steve is weak.” His eyes flashed open, panicked. “Because water is strong.”

  “Which toilet?”

  “Huh?” Will asked.

  “Which toilet was that stuffed in?”

  Another swipe of the lip balm. Another ecstatic roll of his eyes. “Second from the wall. Next to the handicap.”

  I dug through my purse and yanked out a travel bag, covering my hand, plucking out the sweater and dropping the sodden thing into it. “Thanks, Steve. You’re the best! Let’s go, Will.”

  Once we were clear of Steve and the high school, Will turned to me. “So you traded some ChapStick for a toilet-soaked sweater? That’s—that’s horrific, love.”

  “No—I mean, yes, it’s gross—but I was there, Will. I was there when this sweater was flushed.”

  Will looked mildly impressed.

  “I was in the upstairs bathroom and someone came in. She was crying, but it sounded like she was angry. She screamed a little bit and then went into the stall next to me and I heard her throw this”—I pointed to the bag holding the sweater—“in.”

  “You heard it or you saw it?”

  “I heard it because she—well, she didn’t know I was there in the bathroom. But I know I heard it. She wasn’t going to the bathroom because her feet were facing the wrong way and it didn’t sound like someone going to the bathroom. And she was wearing sneakers and socks! I heard something hit the water and then she flushed. And I thought it flushed for a while, but then I didn’t really think about it.”

  Will’s impressed look went to one of slight disgust. “I think this is the most disgusting clue we’ve ever found.”

  “Well, we have to look at the sweater. We have to find out who it belonged to.”

  Will grimaced. “You didn’t recognize the flusher by the shoes?”

  I brightened. “Well, I can certainly narrow it down that way. I know it was a student. Who was wearing white socks and sneakers.”

  “Excellent. That cuts out approximately six people. Well done, love. Now take a look at the sweater.”

  “I’m not going to look at the sweater. You look at the sweater. I already told you the information. So technically, it’s your turn to do something.”

  “You happened to be taking a pee when someone walked in and may or may not have tried to flush a sweater. It’s really your investigation. You started it.” He gestured toward the bag. “You should finish it.”

  I chewed my bottom lip. “Okay, how’s this? We’ll let it dry out a little bit while we go to Cathy’s and then we can both figure out what to do with it.”

  Will didn’t look convinced, but he agreed anyway, and started the car.

  Chapter Six

  The closer we got to Cathy’s house, the further my heart dropped toward my gut. I couldn’t get her mother’s voice out of my head—the slow, sad way she spoke, the overwhelming sense of hopelessness even when I told her that Will and I were looking at her daughter’s case with new eyes.

  “I think this is it,” Will said, jutting his chin toward the tract home in front of us that looked like every other tract home in the neighborhood. I swallowed hard, looking at the two front windows that seemed to stare back at me, two black eyes accusing, burning into my soul.

  “Do you really think we should be doing this?” I asked.

  Will swung his head toward me. “You told me you talked to the girl’s mum. You told me she was okay with it.”

  “I did and she is, but”—I massaged my palm with my thumb and stared out at the house—“I feel bad now.”

  “Isn’t this the proper way to ‘work a case,’ as you say?”

  “Yeah, but I just feel so—like we’re taking advantage of Mrs. Ledwith. She sounded so sad on the phone and now we might be using her daughter’s death to bring another girl home?” I shook my head. “It just doesn’t seem fair.”

  Will wrapped his big hand around my elbow and squeezed gently. His eyes were soft, a lick of hair blowing over his forehead. “A girl dead, another one missing—none of this is fair, love. But if Cathy’s death could help another family to not go through the same grief, don’t you think her mother would want that?”

  I shivered; the idea of death and kids had once been so blissfully foreign to me. I liked it that way. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  I followed Will up the walk, still trying to assuage the guilt that welled in my chest. This was Cathy’s house. Cathy had walked up this path everyday. Had her mother stood out here and waited the day Cathy didn’t come home?

  I was overwhelmed with a paralyzing grief. My stomach went heavy.

  “You okay, love?”

  I swallowed hard and took Will’s arm when he offered it. I let him lead me to the porch. Cardboard boxes were stacked just to the left of the house’s double doors. I squared my shoulders and rang the bell while Will peeked in the top box. “Kitchen stuff. Looks like someone is moving.”

  Julia Ledwith pulled open the door and offered Will and me a close-lipped smile. “You must be the investigators.”

  Will looked at me, slight question in his eyes, but went with it.

  “You’re Mrs. Ledwith?” he asked.

  She opened the door wider and ushered us in, pulling on the neck of her faded Stanford University sweatshirt. “Actually, it’s Ms. Foley, now, but you can call me Julia. Can I get you both something to drink?” Without waiting for an answer, she turned and left us standing in the foyer.

  I did a quick scan of the entryway and dining room before us. Both were nearly bare and scrubbed clean, each with its own stack of carefully labeled cardboard boxes in the center.

  Julia came back with two glasses, handed us each one, and looked around as though she had just noticed her surroundings.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “The place is a mess. I’m moving, so . . .” Both her words and her eyes trailed off, her eyes scanning the walls, our clothes, looking anywhere except directly at Will or me. “We can sit in the kitchen.”

  A thick fog of uncomfortable silence set over us as we sat at the kitchen table. I sipped at my lemonade and wished that I were anywhere else on the planet, Will took in his surroundings, and Julia stared into her cup.

  “Nice place here,” Will said. “Had you been here long?”

  “Sixteen years,” Julia said without looking up. �
��It’s too big now without Cathy. And Peter and I”—her shoulders slumped—“we’re divorcing.”

  I shot Will a murderous look when Julia’s voice cracked.

  “I’m sorry,” I said soothingly. “I’m sorry we have to be here and bring all this up again.”

  “You’re not bringing anything up. It’s not like ‘it’ has gone anywhere.” She laughed, but there was no humor in it. “Do you want to know about the day she went missing?”

  I was taken back at the abruptness of Julia’s question. This woman who moved slowly, looked about questioningly, suddenly sounded like she was asking us if we wanted to see her Avon catalog. The lemonade I had been sipping burned at the pit of my stomach. “Yes. Please.”

  Julia cleared her throat and set down her glass. “There was nothing special about that day. Not a single thing. Cathy got up, got dressed, came downstairs. She probably poured herself a bowl of cereal and we probably glared at each other across the table as she ate it.”

  “You two had problems?” Will asked.

  “What mom and her teenage daughter don’t? It was nothing really terrible—I would ask her to do things and she would tell me I was ruining her life.” Julia smiled, her eyes becoming glassy. “I drove her to school, she got out of the car and—and”—she looked down at her hands, sniffling—“that was the last time I saw her.”

  “Again, Ms. Foley—”

  “Julia, please.”

  “Julia, I’m sorry,” I said, licking my lips. “I am sorry to have to—”

  Julia waved her hand. “The cops have been over this a hundred times, but if anything helps save—save another little girl . . .”

  “Did Cathy have any problems at school?”

  “Her grades were exceptional.”

  I edged forward. “Was Cathy in any clubs on campus?”

  Julia’s smile was genuine. “What club was that girl not in? She cheered, she sang, she was president of the French club—she even did animal rescue on the weekends. Ran bake sales and things at school to pay adoption fees. When it came to extracurricular activities, there was nothing she didn’t do. She was interested in so many things.”