Shadow Hills (30 page)

I couldn’t see anything from my viewpoint that would positively identify him. Then again, if I could see him better, he would probably be able to see me, too.

“I can’t believe we have this place all to ourselves now. No more waiting. Sneaking around,” the man murmured as he bent to kiss her neck.

They turned slightly, and I could see enough of the woman to confirm it was Mrs. Carr. Her hair was down in soft waves, framing her face instead of drawn back in its usual tight bun, but it was her.

Her eyes were closed, her head thrown back, as the man slowly unbuttoned her dull tan blouse, revealing a sexy maroon lace bra. Mrs. Carr was nothing like what she appeared to be. All of a sudden she snapped her head back up. I retreated a step. Had she heard me breathing or something? She
was
a BV like Zach.

“Did you lock the back door behind you?” she asked sharply.

“Why should I? No one else lives here anymore.”

“Unfortunately, that isn’t true. Brody still does.” Mrs. Carr sighed. “My late husband never picked up the transfer petition
forms so we could start the process. He always had a soft spot for that delinquent—who knows why. But if I do anything about it now, it will draw unwanted attention. I’ll have to wait for at least a few months before transferring him.”

Transferring him?
The Carrs had been trying to get rid of Brody? Of course, it didn’t sound like Mr. Carr had actually wanted to.

“So he could be here right now?” The man backed up a few steps, putting space between them. As if that would fool anyone—Mrs. Carr still had her bra exposed.

“He left for lunch about an hour ago. I think he’s still there.” She glanced around as if she was going to find Brody standing in the hall with them. I shrank back farther behind the door.

“God, Pam. Are you
trying
to get caught? I thought you agreed that we need to be careful.”

“Oh, you mean I should be careful like you—dropping jewelry on the bedroom floor for Robert to find?” She snorted.

“That was an accident. It’s not my fault you were too distracted to notice it before he did. Well, I guess the distraction might have been partially my fault.” He looped his arm around her waist and pulled her close to him again.

“It’s always your fault.” Her remark was followed by a low giggle. Then they started down the hall—straight at me, it sounded like. I tensed, without a clue about what I would do or say if they came in here. But then the footsteps started up the stairs.

They took forever getting up the stairs, pausing several times, presumably to kiss some more. I was about ready to
scream at them to get on with it when I heard a door closing on the second floor.

Now was my chance to make a run for it. I removed my shoes, then scampered across the hallway and out the front door, shutting it softly behind me. Mrs. Carr obviously hadn’t locked it when she came in either, despite her scolding tone with the mystery man.

I ran back to Kresky Hall, too scared even to think about sticking around to see if Mrs. Carr’s boyfriend ever came out of the house. Pamela’s harsh comments kept playing in my head. She had been trying to get rid of Brody after everything he had already gone through. It was heartless. Mr. Carr had been Brody’s only ally, and now Mr. Carr was dead.

Maybe he had stood up for Brody one too many times. Maybe he paid for it with his life.

The next morning was Mr. Carr’s memorial, and though it was uncharacteristically sunny outside the chapel, the mood inside was dark and unsettling. A lot of the day students sat in the back pews with their parents. Mr. Carr had grown up in Shadow Hills, so he’d had a lot of friends outside the teaching staff, and many of them had come to pay their respects here since his funeral was to be family only. I wondered if Brody would be allowed to attend. I turned my head slightly, trying to get a glimpse of him without full-on staring.

Brody was sitting with Zach’s family, looking very normal in comparison to their collective attractiveness. Zach’s mother was especially beautiful, with hair somewhere between pale gold and silver. Her beauty was icy, though, with precisely arched eyebrows and a perfectly defined jawline. Her rigid posture did nothing to soften her appearance, and I could tell from her body language toward Zach that she was still pissed at him.

When Zach called me last night, he told me that he couldn’t come by to see me because his mom was mad at him and wouldn’t let him have the car. Apparently, he and Brody had
skated for a lot longer than Zach—and certainly his mom—had intended. I’d wanted to tell him about Mrs. Carr’s affair and everything I had found out, but I’d barely gotten to talk to him on the phone. And now I’d have to wait until after school to show him the folder. I couldn’t exactly recount my trip to the Carrs’ house with Brody around.

The memorial was poignant. Even the speech Mrs. Carr gave at the end of the service seemed heartfelt. If I hadn’t seen her making out with some other man about two minutes after her husband had died, she might have had more credibility.

After my last class of the day let out, I headed back to my dorm room, intent on studying the file I’d gotten from Mr. Carr’s office. But once I’d pulled it from the hiding spot under my mattress and placed it on my desk, I couldn’t bring myself to open it. Even though I wanted to know what my vision had been leading me to, I was also really afraid of what I might find. And the idea of seeing the picture of that man again … I shivered. I knew it was irrational; it wasn’t like the guy was going to reach out of a photo and strangle me, but I couldn’t deny that he terrified me to my very core. That picture was the main reason I’d hidden the file the moment I’d gotten home yesterday and hadn’t looked at it since. Until now.

I so don’t want to do this by myself
.

I reached into my purse to get my phone, and it started ringing. Zach.

“Hey, I was about to call you.”

“Great minds think alike.” I could hear the smile in his voice. “I was wondering if you wanted to hang out. Corinne’s at one of her club meetings for the next hour.”

“Yeah. Why don’t you come over to my dorm? I have something I kind of wanted to run by you, anyway.”

“Cool. I’ll see you in a few.”

As I waited for Zach, I tried to decide what it was that I was actually going to say to him. How was I going to explain having this file? Seeing Mrs. Carr and the mystery man?

I was almost certain now that Mr. Carr had been killed, but I was having trouble getting all the facts straight. I needed an outside opinion; I needed Zach. But if I wanted his help, I would have to tell him everything that had happened—my visions, the breaking and entering, all the stuff about the Banished. Everything.

It was a huge risk; Zach could easily decide that I was insane. Keeping quiet was the safest option, since most people would probably have me committed if I told them the things I’d been doing. But I wasn’t dealing with most people. This was Zach.

As if on cue, I heard a knock on my door.

“Hey.” I motioned for Zach to come in, then closed the door behind him.

Zach wrapped his arms around me, and I hugged him back even harder. I could feel his heartbeat reverberating through me, and I stood on my tiptoes to meet his soft lips. The kiss warmed my entire body, giving me strength.

“There’s some stuff I have to tell you, but I don’t want you to freak out.” The words came out in a rush.

“That certainly sounds ominous.” Zach tucked a lock of hair behind my ear.

“I know you think Mr. Carr’s death was a natural one—”

“Not again.” Zach sighed. “I spent five hours yesterday listening to Brody’s reasons why
he
thinks Mr. Carr was killed.”

“He agrees with me?” I felt slightly vindicated.

“Yes, and I have to admit you both have some good points, but …” Zach let his sentence hang there unfinished.

“But what? Why don’t you believe us?”

“It’s not that I don’t believe you—I guess, I don’t want to think that there’s a BV out there killing people. Besides, there’s no real proof that Mr. Carr was murdered—those handprints could have been his own.”

“They could have, but will you at least hear me out?” I sat on my bed, and Zach sank into the desk chair across from me.

“Okay. Go for it.” He leaned back, crossing his legs at the ankles.

“I think Mrs. Carr might have had something to do with her husband’s death. I saw them fighting at the school dance not long before I found … him.” I couldn’t bring myself to say “the body” out loud.

“Lots of couples fight.” Zach shrugged. “My parents fight at least once a week. It doesn’t mean they’re going to kill each other.”

“But I saw Mrs. Carr kissing another man yesterday, at the very house where she and her husband had lived together. Does that sound like a grief-stricken widow to you?”

“Wait. What?” Zach sat up straighter. “Who was she kissing? And why would you be in the Carrs’ house?”

“First: I don’t know who she was kissing. Second …” I paused, unsure how to admit to breaking into his friend’s home. I knew where that confession would lead.

“Go on.” A note of unease was creeping into Zach’s voice.

“I kind of let myself into the Carrs’ house yesterday afternoon.”

He stared at me. “Why on earth would you do that?”

“Okay.” I took a deep breath. “I guess I should really begin at the beginning.”

“Sounds like a good idea.”

I told Zach everything, starting with getting the Devenish brochure that was mailed to Athena and ending with stealing the folder from Mr. Carr’s office. I even showed him the green dream journal and the mark on my hip. Zach was shocked by many of the things I had done since I got here, and skeptical about the idea that my dreams were prophetic, but he didn’t seem to be mad at me. In fact, the only thing that really seemed to piss him off was that Trent had stolen that letter and then tried to blackmail me about the library break-in.

“You certainly didn’t learn anything from the ‘curiosity killed the cat’ fable,” Zach teased when I had finished my confession.

I relaxed. “I may be a bit impulsive.”

“You’re a bit impulsive like Corinne is a bit controlling.” Zach laughed. “Okay, hand over that folder.”

He glanced at the first page, and the smile fell from his face.
Zach flipped to the next and his expression grew serious. There were pictures of the Banished on this one. Most of the photos were old, probably taken in the 1960s when the group was banned, but a few were more recent.
From the 1980s if clothing was any indication. The other BVs had obviously kept tabs on them for years
.

His
picture was one of the older-looking ones. He was the hardest, coldest man I had ever seen. His face was as brutal and intense as it had been in my vision, his stare unrelenting. It was as if he were actually looking at me. He reminded me of Charles Manson.

“This isn’t okay anymore, Phe.” Zach was shaking his head slowly.

“Do you know who that is?” My chest was clenching tighter, even though I willed myself to take deep breaths.

“Damon Gates. He’s a legend in the Shadow Hills community. The boogeyman meant to scare BV kids into staying on the straight and narrow.” Zach grasped my hand harshly. I could feel his fear for me, traveling cold as ice through my veins. “If you were …” He dropped my hand and stood. “Corinne was right. I never should’ve let this happen.” He began to pace around my little room. “I should have stayed away. I knew it at the time, but I couldn’t—”

I was suddenly afraid Zach was about to leave me. I jumped up and grabbed his arm.

“This is about me, okay? Not you.” The effort of keeping my volume low made my words tremble. “You didn’t make me
have visions; you don’t have anything to do with this mark on my hip; you knew nothing about Sarah and the book and all that.
I
am connected to this town, and I have to figure out what that means.” I paused. I was scared to say the words that ached inside of me. I was afraid of being vulnerable, weak. But if Zach left … “I need your help to do that. You can’t just go.” My voice cracked, and Zach’s expression immediately softened.

He wrapped his arms around me. “Of course, I’ll help you. I’d do anything for you.” Zach took my chin, tilting my face up. “But you’ve got to promise to be more careful. You can’t go off trying to track down the Banished. These people were kicked out of Shadow Hills because they were seriously dangerous. They had no regard for anything except themselves and what they wanted. I don’t remember exactly what they each did, but I learned enough from my grandma to know they were evil.”

“Can I see that for a second?” I took the papers from Zach and scanned the Brevis Vita Canon of Ethics. The government jargon was wordy, but it basically said that the BVs were prohibited from using their powers to cause harm and from revealing confidential information to those outside the BV community. Zach had told me they were serious about staying under the radar, but I hadn’t realized until now
how
huge it was that Zach had trusted me with their secrets. I found the page that listed the crimes of the individuals banished. I held it out so we could both see it.

It had details about Damon Gates, his family and friends, and the crimes the Council suspected them of committing
—use of powers for illegal purposes or personal gain, memory tampering
,
impairment of free will, human magnetic field depletion, manipulation of sensory perception
.

“What do all these mean?” I asked.

“I guess if I don’t tell you, you’re just going to go break in somewhere else.” It was a halfhearted attempt at a joke, but I figured Zach knew it was also probably true. “Back in the sixties the group was infiltrating large corporations and brokerage firms. Then they’d pool their information and exert their influence to get very rich.”

“But what about the things Damon Gates was doing?” The list was extensive.

“He was into some very shady stuff. He liked to get into people’s minds and control what they thought, felt—what they remembered.”

“You mean BVs really can change people’s memories?” Corinne’s threat at the dance seemed even more menacing now.