Mr. Mercer cocked his head at her. “That probably has something to do with it.” The waitress came over and poured him a cup of coffee, and he added milk and sugar before taking a sip. “Is it my imagination, or have you grown up a lot in the past few months?”
Emma wished yet again that she could tell her grandfather the truth. He deserved to know. Maybe he would be able to help her figure out what to do next, to find Sutton’s killer and lay her spirit to rest.
But every time she had almost convinced herself to tell him, she thought about the threatening messages she’d received. The killer was obviously still watching her. The killer could be here right now, in this very restaurant. Her eyes flicked around, studying the waiters, the people walking outside in the parking lot or waiting in line at the smoothie counter next door. She shivered. Who knew what Sutton’s murderer would do if she told Mr. Mercer? She couldn’t risk her grandfather’s safety.
Mr. Mercer looked sideways out the window, too. “I’m glad Becky found you,” he said. “I know she didn’t want to leave things like they were the other night at the hospital.” He sighed. “Part of me thinks I should have sent her back there, but she seemed so much healthier last night. She said she needed to get out of here, so I gave her some money and made her promise to call me soon. I know from experience it’s no good trying to force her into treatment. She has to want to take care of herself.”
Emma nodded. “She told me she was sorry. I guess I just don’t understand why she feels like she has to leave. Can’t she stay here and try again? We could help her, Dad. Our family is worth fighting for.”
He turned his serious eyes back to meet hers. “Oh, Sutton, of course we are. Of course you are. And in her own way, Becky has tried harder than the rest of us can ever fully appreciate. Even if you don’t believe anything else about her, believe that.”
“I know. I do,” Emma promised.
Mr. Mercer opened his mouth, but before he could speak, the waitress appeared at their table to take their order. Emma fumbled at the menu, trying to decide what she wanted. She felt hungry enough to eat a half dozen pancakes, but she finally settled on a vegetable omelet with a side of bacon. Mr. Mercer ordered the eggs Benedict, his favorite, then turned back to Emma and dropped his voice.
“Sutton, honey, did your mother say anything else to you last night?”
Emma’s heart picked up speed. “Like what?”
He frowned down at his hands, then shook his head. “I don’t know. She insinuated some very strange things to me, and I don’t know what to believe. Time will tell, I guess.” He stirred his coffee, his eyes looking somewhere far away.
Emma wondered what, exactly, Becky had hinted at. That there was a lost twin in Las Vegas? Another daughter in California? Something else entirely? She waited for him to say more, but he’d gone quiet and pensive, sipping from his mug.
My sister was still in so much danger—and along with her, all the other people I loved. I was glad that Becky had been cleared. But Emma needed to keep investigating the night that I died. The case was getting colder by the minute. We didn’t even know where my body was, and we had no new evidence, no leads. All we had was my murderer, watching Emma’s every move.
“Where do you think she’ll go this time?” Emma asked softly.
A sad smile turned the corners of Mr. Mercer’s mouth up. “I don’t know if she even knows. She told me she’d let me know when she landed somewhere. I hope she does. As difficult as things can be with her, I miss her when she disappears.”
Emma nodded. She understood the feeling more than she could tell him.
“I’m glad that you’ve had Ethan through all of this,” Mr. Mercer said, and Emma looked up in surprise. “He seems like a nice young man. Maybe you should invite him to dinner tonight? Your mom is cooking her special enchiladas.”
Emma smiled. “That sounds like a great idea.”
The waiter arrived with plates of steaming food. Emma dug into the melted goat cheese center of her omelet. She glanced out the window once more. A cluster of pigeons pecked at invisible crumbs on the sidewalk. Beyond the parking lot the university campus sprawled, the red tile of the roofs bright in the morning sunshine.
By now Becky could be anywhere—on her way to California, Las Vegas, or somewhere new, somewhere she could make a fresh start. Emma pictured Becky driving through the desert, greeting the sunrise with tired eyes. Drinking a cup of truck-stop coffee and tuning the radio until she found a station that played loud, happy music. Becky’s life had been full of mistakes and bad decisions; it seemed naïve to hope she’d suddenly change, so Emma settled for hoping that Becky would survive. As long as she did, as long as she was alive, there was always a chance to keep growing up. There was always a chance for them to be a family again someday.
34
KISS THE GIRL
By the time Mr. Mercer dropped Emma off at school, news of the séance prank had already made the rounds. Word traveled fast at Hollier, especially when the topic was the Lying Game girls. Some boys from the football team tried to high-five Emma in the hallway. Kids she recognized from Charlotte’s party hooted about her “insane weekend.”
She didn’t catch sight of Celeste until third period German. Frau Fenstermacher’s classroom was decorated with declension charts and pictures of German and Austrian landmarks. A panorama shot of Neuschwanstein hung next to the chalkboard, a black-and-white shot of the Brandenburg Gate over the radiator. The Frau sat at her desk, grading a stack of papers while the students settled into their seats.
Two girls sat on either side of Celeste. Emma couldn’t think of their real names—the German aliases they’d given themselves were Klara and Gretl. Klara had a tiger-striped Mulberry purse on her desk, and Gretl wore a black motorcycle jacket and skintight leggings. The first girl moaned like a ghost, waggling her fingers at Celeste, while the other giggled shrilly. For her part, Celeste sat silently, staring forward, determined to ignore them. She wore a tie-dyed baby-doll dress and her usual armory of silver jewelry, but her hair had come out of its customary braids. It fell long and somewhat flat around her shoulders, as if she’d been deflated.
Emma slammed her books down on the desk next to Gretl. They all jumped, and Celeste turned quickly away.
“Hey, Sutton. Nice one this weekend,” Gretl congratulated her.
“Yeah, well, I’m pretty sure Celeste learned her lesson,” Emma snapped. “So why don’t you leave her alone?”
The grin quickly faded. Gretl made a face. “Oh, come off it, Sutton. What’s with the high horse? You’re the one who pranked her.”
“Sure. And now the prank’s over, so let it go. It’s bad enough you’re wearing those knockoff Jimmy Choos. Don’t think you can get away with knocking off my genius pranks, too.” Emma tossed her hair over her shoulder and looked at both girls with maximum Sutton attitude. After a moment, they shrank back into their chairs.
The bell rang. Frau Fenstermacher paced the front of the classroom, occasionally slapping a wooden pointer against her palm for emphasis as she led them through their conjugation exercises. Emma felt Celeste’s eyes dart toward her during class, but she kept her eyes on her own textbook. “Kennen,” she said, when the teacher asked her the verb “to know.” “Ich kenne, du kennst, er kennt, wir kennen, sie kennen.” I know, you know, he knows, we know, they know.
WHERE ARE YOU? Emma texted Ethan under the desk. He was supposed to be in German, and wasn’t one to skip class.
HOME SICK, he answered.
OH NO! MY PARENTS WANTED TO HAVE YOU OVER FOR DINNER ☹ WE’LL DO IT ANOTHER TIME!
ARE YOU KIDDING? FOR YOU, I’LL DEFINITELY BE BETTER, he answered.
“Sehr gut!” exclaimed Frau Fenstermacher, and Emma quickly slid her phone back into her bag. The frau still watched Emma with suspicion after she answered a question correctly—as if waiting for the teufelkind to reemerge, the demon child everyone knew Sutton Mercer to be. But when she handed back their graded quizzes, Emma’s had a silver star stuck to the top of the page, and an exclamation point scrawled after the “100%!”
When class was finally over, Emma shoved her textbook and her pencil bag into her messenger bag. Celeste was waiting for her near the door.
The girl’s face seemed less luminous than usual, her eyes tired and red. “You didn’t have to do that,” she said, gesturing back toward the seat Gretl had occupied. “But thanks.”
Emma opened her mouth to speak, but Celeste held up her hand. “Listen, I’m sorry if I was being weird about the aura stuff. I promise you I won’t ever say this again. But I just want you to know that I wasn’t pretending.” Her voice wasn’t its usual breathy tenor, but low and intense. “I really do get feelings about these things, and I can’t shake the sense that you’re in real danger. I only hope I’m wrong.”
A chill raced across Emma’s scalp. Of course Celeste was right—but it wasn’t like her weird prescience was telling Emma anything she didn’t already know. She’d been in danger since stepping off the bus in Tucson. Maybe Celeste did have some kind of supernatural instinct, but unless it could lead her to her sister’s killer, it was no good to her.
Just then Garrett appeared in the doorway and threw an arm protectively over Celeste’s shoulder. “I can’t believe what you did, Sutton,” he said. The way he emphasized her twin’s name sent a shiver down Emma’s spine, almost like he knew it didn’t really belong to her. “Watch your back.”
Emma’s phone vibrated in her purse. She glanced at the screen; it was Nisha. She hit IGNORE—but not before Garrett saw the screen, too.
“So you and Nisha are best friends now, huh?” Garrett laughed once, a harsh, angry sort of laugh. “Well, I guess you do have one thing in common—me.”
“Come on, Garrett,” Celeste interrupted, pulling his sleeve and shooting Emma an apologetic glance over her shoulder.
Emma stood there in confusion. Then she shook her head and turned out of the classroom. And walked smack into Thayer Vega.
She grabbed his arm to steady herself. She hadn’t seen him since the party, since the kiss that had lasted too long. Her lips burned at the memory.
Thayer was looking a bit worse for wear. His eye was bruised and shiny, and his lip was split down the middle where Ethan had punched him. “Oh my God,” Emma whispered. She reached up toward his cheek to touch it, but he recoiled from her hand. She winced. She deserved that. “Thayer, I’m so sorry.”
He shrugged. “You’ve got Calc next, right? I’ll walk you.”
They moved through the hallways together in silence, a trail of whispers in their wake. “Are those two back together?” one girl asked another, loud enough for Emma to hear. Emma just kept her eyes straight ahead. Let them think she was some kind of man-eating bitch if they wanted. She had bigger things to worry about, a murder to solve. The people who really mattered knew the truth about her.