Deception (20 page)

21

On Monday, two girls I didn’t know cornered me in the hall outside Trig and congratulated me.

“Thanks,” I said. “Um. For what?”

“You’re going to Homecoming with”
—
synchronized squeals
—
“Coby Anders!”

How did they know already? Coby kept a pretty low profile, and
—
I saw Harry down the hall, a crooked grin on his face. I smiled at the girls and nodded, and flipped him the finger when they weren’t looking. His laughter floated down the hallway toward us.

I glared at him, then slipped into the classroom and sat beside Coby.

“I might have to beat up Harry,” I told him.

“Well, watch his elbows
—
they’re sharp like javelins.”

Mr. Sakolsky called the class to order, but I barely paid attention, my thoughts stuck in a constant loop of Bennett and Coby, ghosts and wraiths.

I managed to get all the practice problems right anyway.

You’re getting smarter,
the man in the brown suit
—
Edmund, as he kept reminding me
—
said. He’d materialized halfway through class.

I’m seventeen years old, I think my intelligence level is already well established. You should see my PSATs.

Then why are you so easily achieving perfect scores in math?

I looked at him.
Why are you unable to change clothes?

He flicked an imaginary piece of lint off his lapel.
Why would I want to? And you haven’t answered my question.

Because I don’t know,
I said.
How smart does that make me?

I believe it’s the school,
he mused.

An exceptional private education?

He snorted.
You’re not the first ghostkeeper student I’ve seen. Something about this school, the Beyond being closer at hand … they all changed. Smarter, stronger, more focused than before.

I straightened in my chair. That’d be killer. Maybe I’d get into Berkeley after all. I’d already moved all the way across country
—
my parents could no longer balk at across the Bay. I frowned. That is, if I ever saw them again.

Coby tossed a note onto my desk.

A note!?
Edmund tsked.
Believe me,
he
is not getting any smarter. He can’t afford to be passing notes.

Oh, go away,
I said, and fluttered my hands to compel him to leave.

You may be getting stronger, but you’re not getting any nicer,
Edmund said before fading.

I inwardly sighed, because I agreed with him. Then I checked that Sakolsky wasn’t looking and unfolded the note.

Pay attention. I’m not going to have to help you with your homework again, am I?

I answered:

Ha! Text me tonight and I’ll give
you
the answers.

I tossed the note back and noticed a few girls looking between me and Coby. Probably imagining romantic liaisons. Let them dream
—
maybe Coby and I wouldn’t last past Homecoming, but at least I had him through Trig.

I couldn’t face the cafeteria at lunchtime, so I ate my chicken sandwich in the computer lab. I needed to work on my research project for Western Civ. One of the benefits of a superexpensive private school is access to state-of-the-art databases. I removed my necklace, and scanned the amulet. Kinda blurry. I scanned the image a few more times, then did a graphics search.

Ten thousand crappy matches, including a Victorian brooch on eBay with a pearl border, a glassy green jade bamboo charm, and a jade filigree Edwardian ring. None of which looked anything like my mother’s pendant.

After half an hour, my eyes blurred. I narrowed the search and kept scrolling. Forget the design, I’d just focus on the history of jade trading.

I started to close the search window when I saw it. The exact design.

Seventeen hits of the image on some true-crime Web site. I clicked before I realized what the pictures showed. The crime scene of a murder.

A mutilated woman. Shapes carved into her skin
—
shapes that echoed the design of the jade amulet. And branded into the floor beside her body, an exact match to my mother’s necklace.

I read the page in blank horror. The woman, name withheld, was killed at home. In San Francisco, only a mile from my house.

“Oh God.” I covered my mouth with my hand.

The Curlicue Killer. Not an urban myth, a brutal murder.

I felt a sickening sense of foreboding in the pit of my stomach. What was my mother doing with the symbol found burned into the floor of a ritualistic murder?

I needed to learn more about the amulet. But who could I trust?

After two more classes, I stumbled outside to head home, and remembered Periwinkle Antiques on Charles Street in Boston. The same day I’d found that death mask, I’d found the paperwork about Max’s internship. And anyone who knew Max would help his little sister, right?

Well, maybe. Still, I didn’t have a better idea.

Except how was I going to get to Boston? Echo Point was fifteen miles north with no T service. I stopped just outside the front gates, wondering about calling a cab, when Sara approached.

“You look lost,” she said.

“You have no idea.”

She laughed. “Your name is Emma. You live in a museum. Do you need directions?”

“Let’s go shopping,” I said.

She peered at me. “If you’re teasing, I hate you.”

“No, no. I’m serious. I need to steal your style.”

Her eyes lit up. “When? Saturday?”

“What are you doing right now?” I asked. “Let’s go to Boston.”

“Yay!” She dragged me to her BMW, which she unlocked with a satisfyingly expensive noise. “Where do you want to start?”

“Charles Street?” I suggested.

“Oh. I was thinking Neiman Marcus.”

“Well, I need to make one stop there,” I said. “Say hi to a friend of the family. If you don’t mind.”

“No, that’s cool.” She steered the car through the village toward the highway. “But you have to spill
—
where’d you and Coby go after the party?”

I bit my lip. This is exactly why I’d been avoiding her all day. “Didn’t you ask Coby?”

She wrinkled her nose. “He won’t say. He didn’t even tell Harry. Except about Homecoming. God, he’s so perfect it makes me sick.”

“It does kind of make him hard to live up to,” I said.

“He’s just completely nice with that freak of nature beautiful face. And his body …” She gave a little shiver. “If he was an ass, girls would still lust after him, but he’s not, you know?” She sighed. “He’s always there for you. I mean, you can trust him, right?”

She fell silent, looking slightly embarrassed.

“Were you ever … you’re not into him, are you?”

She drove in silence for a moment. “Always,” she admitted. “Since the day I met him.”

“
Sara!
Why didn’t you tell me? You know I’d never have gone out with him!”

“Yeah, because
I
love Coby, he should never date.”

“But you helped me dress up!”

She cocked her head. “He likes you, and I want him to be happy. You can’t help it, can you? Who you like. And you can’t force them to like you back.”

“No, you can’t,” I said, thinking of Bennett. “But how can he not like you?
Look
at you!”

“He loves me,” she said, her voice wavering slightly, “like a sister.”

“Oh, Sara.”

She shook herself. “Stop. I’m a walking pity party. I don’t want sympathy. I want
gossip
.”

So I told her we’d just gone to the Point, and onto the beach, where we found my insanely jealous guardian stalking me. I didn’t tell her about the kiss in the car. Then we traded boyfriend stories
—
hers were far more numerous than mine
—
until we got into Boston.

“What about Harry?” I asked. They seemed to get along great, better even than her and Coby. I wondered if she liked him, too.

“He’s not a bad kisser,” she said.

“You’ve kissed him?!”

“Once or twice. All that caffeine makes me kind of … you know.”

“Oh my God, you’re a coffee slut!” I teased her.

She giggled. “We’re here. What’s the address?”

I took in the neighborhood around us. We drove down a narrow lane with cute shops on either side. I didn’t want Sara to tag along, but I wasn’t sure how to tell her to just let me out.

“Why don’t we meet back here in half an hour?” I said. “You don’t want to get stuck listening to my great-aunt talking about her bowels.”

That did the trick. I waved good-bye to Sara, and headed down the sidewalk, looking for Periwinkle Antiques. In two minutes, I stopped outside a little hole-in-the-wall shop, not nearly so grand as my parents’. It was closed.

No, not just closed. Out of business. With a For Lease sign in the window.

I put my hand against the glass and peered inside. Empty. I ran my fingers over the window, sensing the faint remnant of some ghostly presence.

My spine began to tingle and I turned to find a woman suddenly beside me. She was a tall blonde, dressed in an original Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress from the seventies, with an incredibly large collar and ridiculously loud pattern. She wore brown suede platform sandals, and I tried not to shudder at her suntan panty hose.

Poor Mr. Periwinkle,
she said.

What happened?
I asked.
Is he dead?

Very much so.

I need to talk to him. Maybe I can summon him.

I should think not!
she said.
You ghostkeepers cannot return.

He was a ghostkeeper?!

Until the day he died. Murdered, right there—in the middle of his shop.

Murdered? Who killed him?

A ripple passed through her, and she shook her head.

I can compel you to tell me.

Please don’t,
she said, trembling with fear.
Please.

I swallowed.
Did you ever meet his intern, Max? Max Vaile?

Oh, yes—he was here that night.
Despite being a ghost, she managed to pale.
Poor Mr. Periwinkle. So much pain. Such a long time dying.

Who killed him?

She shook her head.
There’s a spare key to the side door inside the frog in the alley.

I reached within myself to gather the force to compel her, but she looked at me with such terror, I couldn’t continue. Still trembling, she started fading away. But before she disappeared entirely, her lips formed a word:
Neos
.

That word again. What did it mean?

Fine. I’d try the side door.

Around the building, a narrow arch extended over a tidy brick-lined alleyway. I passed a bank of electric meters and a fire escape, and next to a stack of recycle bins found a little ceramic frog. In its mouth was a key.

“Great.”

I slipped the key in the lock and went inside the shop, a little surprised there was no alarm. It looked just as empty from the inside. Three rooms with nothing in them. The showroom had built-in cabinets with empty shelves and a looming chandelier and burnished hardwood floor.

Was I supposed to conduct some arcane ghostkeeping rite to find an answer? The air smelled of old wood and dust
—
and I felt a shiver of dread.

Not a tingle, like a ghost. Just a sudden premonition.

I crossed the room, searching the floorboards. Then stopped suddenly, goose bumps on my arms.

The symbol from the jade amulet was branded into the floor. I clutched my chest.
My
mother’s jade amulet. There were a dozen stains splattered around it
—
bloodstains, from designs carved in flesh.

I felt myself pulled to the floor. I reached toward the branded wood and ran my fingers around the rough, charred edges and
whoosh—

Pain. Mr. Periwinkle’s memories. His agony and terror, and a hellish place beyond pain and fear, a place of hopelessness and torment. And beyond that, worse. Something had been torn from Mr. Periwinkle, but what? His soul?

The agony turned unendurable, and—

I tore my fingers from the brand, my harsh breath echoing in the empty storefront. And I remembered another empty storefront, from ten years ago, and fear broke over me like a wave.

I fled.

I slammed into the passenger seat of Sara’s car, trembling.