Mourning Moon (A Guinan Jones Paranormal Mystery #2) (9 page)

I left the kitchen unnoticed
and crawled back into bed. My buzzing cell phone jerked me awake.

"Guinan? What's up, girl?"

I sat up.

"Are you there?"

"Um, yes. I'm here. How are you?"

Tamzen Parker's chirpy voice reverberated in my ear. We hadn't spoken
since July. In the span of a few seconds, images flooded my brain. The two of us at the mall eating bad pizza. Tamzen flipping back her long, dark hair and applying mascara in the passenger-side mirror of my car. Tamzen sneaking a taste of Tessa's gumbo. Tamzen pecking Zeke on the cheek. Tamzen crying and accusing me of treachery.

"
Did I wake you? It's only nine."

"No," lied. "
It's good to hear from you."

"I've been reading that blog," she said, her tone ominous. "The Malcontent?"

I swung my legs to the floor. "How do you know about that?"

"That's partly why I'm calling you," she said. "Somebody sent me a link to
it."

"Who?"

"Somebody named Jason Dean, but it's probably fake. The e-mail address was a bunch of random letters and numbers with a Yahoo! domain."

I'd know that name anywhere. Jason Dean, or JD, was a psychotic character from one of my mother's favorite movies,
Heathers
.

"I wonder why
he or she sent you a link?"

"I
'm a friend of yours," she said, as if that cleared up the matter.

Silence traveled through
the line.
A friend of yours.

"So, your new friends are suspects? Wild, huh?"

"Yeah," I said, running a hand through my hair. "It's crazy."

"And the stu
ff about you reading the body. Is it true? Did you really hear his final thoughts?"

"I did," I said, "b
ut I don't know what they mean."

It felt normal talking to her about
reading a dead body. Tamzen believed I was clairvoyant since we were kids. Never a doubt. Talking to her gave me the assurance I'd craved since I left Ridge Grove, and the distance between us seemed to melt away. We slipped into a familiar pattern of gossip and jokes. I closed my eyes and pretended we were in my car headed to the mall.

"...and Zeke says this time next
year, we won't be..." She stopped abruptly.

The spell broken, I opened my eyes
. "How is he?" I injected a chipper tone into my voice.

She cleared her throat. "Zeke's good. I've been babysitting. Well, not really. I've been helping. I haven't been alone with those little darlings, yet.
"

I've been replaced.
"That's cool," I said.

"Do
you have a new best friend?"

The change of subject didn't surprise me.
"Not really. The two girls in the group, Sinder and Ione...I wouldn't call them my best friends. And I hang with two guys, Embry and—"

"
Embry Sullivan?" she said. "I've seen his picture on the school's web site."

"You have?"

"He won some academic award last year," she said. "He's so hot. No wonder they keep his picture up there."

I wrinkled my nose.
I didn't like thinking of Embry as hot. He seemed more like a relative. Then again, Zeke and I were third cousins.

"What about you?
" I said. "Are you hanging with Amber Benson?"

Tamzen
laughed. "Psychic girl strikes again!"

Not really. On rare occasions when Tamzen and I
had fallen out over something dumb, she and Amber did things together. I guess their connection was more or less permanent now. After we hung up, I stared at the phone.
Zeke's good.
That's all she said, and that's all I needed to know. I couldn't bring myself to ask if they were back together. I didn't want to know.

"Only a half-lie," I said aloud.
I kept brushing tears of my cheeks. Then I fell asleep.

***

"It's just a feeling, okay?" Luke said, twisting the cap off a bottle of protein water.

I gaped at him
, then accidentally knocked over my water. He'd implied that Sinder was absent from school today because she was in jail. "You know something I don't know?" I said, sopping up the water with a pile of napkins.

"
You haven't seen her all day, have you?"

Embry snorted. "Ione isn't here, either.
Is she in jail, too?"

Luke started
on a second sandwich. He and Embry said Detective Czarnecki had questioned them, too. Embry confirmed that she'd visited Ione as well. I texted Sinder twice since I arrived at school, and she hadn't responded.

Embry must have guessed what I was thinking.
"Guinan, he doesn't know what he's talking about."

Luke
chugged from his bottle.

"
How does that stuff taste?" I said.

"Okay, I guess.
I should use a thermal bag next time, because the meat's a little warm."

"Not the sandwich," I said, and pointed at the water.

He shrugged. "It's just water. Tastes like water."

"And you drink it instead of regular water because...
?"

Embry supplied the answer. "Last year's fad."

I looked at Luke, who didn't dispute Embry's comment. The day Desmond died, he was drinking protein water. I was about to mention it when two girls approached the table. Gabby Meyerson and her best friend, Claire Capwell, were a study in contrast. Dark-eyed Gabby's dark hair fell in waves across her shoulders, and gray-eyed Claire's blonde hair gleamed in a sleek ponytail.

"So what's up with Sinder?" Gabby
said to Luke, kissing him on the cheek. "Has she been arrested or what? Did she confess?" She glanced at her fingernails. "Ugh. I really need to get these done."

I gaped at her. The current state of her nails match
ed the rest of her: gorgeous. The death of a student and the rumored arrest of another hadn't shifted her priorities.

Luke's eyes traveled down her body
. When he spoke, he was looking at her face. "Don't know. Don't know. And don't know."

Claire's
gaze was fixed on Luke. I rolled my eyes and leaned my elbows on the table. I itched to ask him what he'd told Czarnecki, only not in front of these two, who seemed in no hurry to leave. I tuned out their conversation and texted Sinder again. If the detective had gone to her house, had she seen Sinder's altar? Had she suspected one of the bottles contained oil that ended up killing Desmond?

I heard a voice in my ear so low, I couldn't make out the words. I shivered and
quickly turned around.

"What
's wrong with you?" I heard Luke say.

I
faced him and rubbed my forehead. "I..." They all watched me without speaking. "Just thinking." Luke narrowed his eyes. I inclined my head in Gabby's and Claire's direction.

"Listen, Meyerson," he said. "Meet me in the hall in a few
minutes, okay?"

I kept my eyes on the table, in case she'd seen my slight head movement. When
they were gone, Luke leaned forward.

"Spill it."

"I was just thinking....have either of you seen that altar Sinder keeps in her closet?"

Luke shook his head.
But Embry nodded. "Well, I haven't seen it, but Ione has. She told me about it."

"When did she see it?" I said.

He glanced at Luke before speaking. "Sometime during the summer. Ione tried to play nice with her, tried to be her friend, you know? It didn't work."

I frowned. "Why would she bother?"

He balled his napkin and sat back. "Desmond's doing. He wanted us all to put the past behind us. Make an effort."

"What about this altar?" Luke said.
"Some witch thing?"

"She had these bottles of oil on it," I said. "And one
was almond oil."

"Almond oil?" Luke said. "They make oil out of that?"

Embry snickered. "They make oil out of a lot of things. It's just a matter of extracting..." He stopped speaking when he saw the look on Luke's face. "Anyway, Guinan, I think your point is Desmond might have ingested some of it?"

I didn't want to admit that was exactly my point. But there was a flaw. "My grandfather explained that almonds and peanuts are part of different
plant families."

"That's right," Embry said. "
But there are always exceptions. There are cases of people being allergic to both peanuts and almonds."

I pressed my back against the chair.
"Is that why they're focusing on Sinder?"

"We don't know that they are," Embry said. "That's just Luke's—"

"Maybe she lied about something," Luke said. "We all lie about stuff, but if she lied about her movements or..." He trailed off.

"
Or what?" I said.

"How far she'd go t
o get Desmond to like her," he said. "Love...no, more like obsession, can make you say or do crazy things."

Obsession. I wondered if Desmond was obsessed with getting Ione back. That could mean Sinder—or Embry—was just as obsessed to prevent it. I still couldn't fathom why someone
, a
teenager
, would resort to the extreme act of murder. And was it just a coincidence that both Ione and Sinder were not at school? I looked at Embry. "Is Ione okay?"

He
shrugged. "I haven't spoken to her yet. I'm dropping by after school."

"Mind if I come with you?"

He rose from the table and slung his bag over his shoulder. "Why would you want to do that?"

"
To see how she's doing, if she needs anything, " I said. It was sort of true.

He snorted. "Yeah, sure. I guess. Meet
me in the parking lot after school."

I checked my phone. Sinder hadn't responded.
I called my mother and told her not to pick me up. She sounded pleased when I'd mentioned Embry.

"Now that's more like
it," she said. "Smart. Good family."

As opposed to the "bad" Hicks family.

After school, I headed to the parking lot. Luke cut me off.

"Why are
you really going to see Hamilton?"

I met his gaze. His unrestrained excitement made my own heart quicken. My cheeks grew hot.

"You're blushing," he said. "What are you up to, Nancy Drew?" I gave a half-shrug. "That's one of the things I like about you, Jones. You're sneaky, but you're not good at hiding it."

"I'm not trying to." I spotted Embry at his car. "Gotta go."

"Call me later," Luke said. "Let's share information."

***

Ione had opened the door wearing a robe. Embry and I followed her upstairs. In her room, she climbed back into bed, sank against the pillows, and pulled the comforter to her chest. She held a wad of tissues. Her eyes were red and puffy. She hadn't seemed surprised to see me. Embry must have warned her I was coming. He leaned down to kiss her.

"I don't want you to
catch the flu," she said to him. Her eyes darted to me. I faced away from them.

"I don't care," he said.

I studied Ione's room. It would have fulfilled a little girl's fantasy. She had a full-sized brass bed in pastel pink and pale yellow. A large dollhouse rested on a table near the window seat, whose cushion was covered with a pale blue pattern. White curtains with frilly ends adorned the windows, and the walls were painted a pale yellow.

"You like the color?
" Ione said.

I turned and smiled.

"It has that effect on people the first time they see it."

I
made a mental note to paint my own room pale yellow. "I won't stay long. I'll get right to the point."

She widened her eyes
. A look passed between her and Embry. "No BS," she said. "I like that."

Embry avoided eye contact
with me. He'd read through my obvious ploy.

"What did you tell the detective about Sinder?
"

Ione tossed the
tissue into a small wastepaper basket beside the bed. "That she's a strange girl. It's common knowledge, anyway."

"Just because she's strange doesn't mean she's—"

"Not a murderer?" Ione said. "I certainly didn't accuse her of that."

"But do you think you might have said something that led the detective to
focus on her? Suspicious behavior? An overheard comment?"