Without Mercy (36 page)

Jules was at the girl’s side in an instant. “What’s wrong?” Jules bent down on a knee to touch Maeve on her shoulder. “Maeve?”

Startled, as if she’d been in her own private world, Maeve looked up sharply and pulled back. “Nothing.” A bald-faced lie. She blinked back a fresh onslaught of tears and hiccupped, her eyes filled with despair as they met Jules’s.

“Oh, honey, you can talk to me.”

Maeve was sniffing and hiccuping, blinking like crazy. “I … said … I’m okay.” She scooted away, her right hand under her left sleeve and fidgeting—a motion Jules had noticed during class. “I’ll be all right. Really. Just leave me alone.”

Click, click, click!

“I don’t think so,” Jules said softly as she realized that Maeve was repeatedly snapping a rubber band against her wrist. Her face was flushed beet red, and tears drizzled from her eyes, tracking down her cheeks.

“Maeve … you know you shouldn’t be moving around campus alone, but …” Jules respected the girl’s space, but she wanted to help. “I’m here to help, okay? Is there anything I can do?”

“No!” Maeve was emphatic. She sniffed and scrambled onto her feet, losing hold of her bag.

The contents of her open purse tumbled out, scattering across the floor. She lunged for her purse and the books on her lap, and fell onto the floor, sliding on the shiny tiles. “Oh, crap!” Quickly she began retrieving items, a pink eyeglass case, a package of tissues, her wallet, keys, a plastic tampon case.

“Oh, God,” she whispered, mortified as she scooped a pack of breath mints and a pink knit cap into the purse.
More tears. Black streaks of mascara. A quivering lower lip.

Jules couldn’t let this go on. “I’ll walk you where you need to go.” She tried to help, scraping up a couple of pens and a piece of paper that read
OMEN.
She handed them to Maeve, but the girl was suddenly furious. “Maybe you should talk to your counselor or Dean Burdette.”

“Just leave me alone! I’m fine! It’s not so weird to be upset, is it, not with everything that’s happening here.” Grabbing her wallet and eyeglass case, she sniffed loudly again, then shoved the items into her bag. She wiped the tears from her cheeks, then retrieved her notebook—the cover completely covered by ink doodles of faces, stars, hearts, and swirls of Ethan Slade’s initials—which had landed near a watercooler.

Maeve tucked the notebook under her arm, then swept the pens and note from Jules’s outstretched palm. “I don’t want your help. I don’t need your help.” But there was something in her eyes, a glimmer of self-doubt, a deep-seated sadness.

“I’m serious. I think you should talk to Dr. Williams,” Jules suggested, knowing that Maeve, like everyone else here, was caught in an emotional tidal wave, but she wondered if there was another reason other than her grief for her classmate that caused her complete emotional meltdown. “You know, Maeve, we’re all here to help.”

“You think anyone can help me?” she mocked, her face distorted by her ruined makeup. “Are you out of your mind? There’s nothing a counselor or you or anyone else can do, okay? So just leave me the hell—” She started, then caught herself, blinking and swallowing back her anger. “Please,” Maeve pleaded, holding out one hand, fingers splayed in Jules’s direction. “Just go away.”

“Hey! You okay?” another voice chimed in, and Jules
looked over her shoulder to see Roberto Ortega hurrying down the stairs from the second floor.

“I’m fine!” Maeve sniffed loudly and shook her head.

“You sure?” Roberto’s face was pinched with concern.

“Didn’t I just say so?” Quickly she stuffed the rest of her belongings into her purse, snatched up the remaining scattered books, and bolted outside into the storm. Cold air swept into the education hall, the slap of winter catching Jules off guard as she watched Maeve through the closing glass door. Hair streaming behind her, her gait encumbered by her bags, she ran through the falling snow. Clumsily reaching into her bag, she forced her pink knit cap over her head.

“Girls!” Roberto snorted, shaking his head as the door clicked shut. Then, as if realizing Jules had heard him, he flashed a self-deprecating smile as he checked his watch, frowned, then headed for the far end of the building. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she said, but Roberto, who had picked up his pace, was already past the doors to the science labs and pushing open the exit located closest to the dorms.

Bang!
The latches of the far door clicked into place, and once again Jules felt as if she were alone in the tall glass building.

Zipping her coat, she walked outside. From a distance, through a shifting curtain of snow, she watched Maeve catch up to someone standing under the overhang of the breezeway. A boy? Or a man? She couldn’t see his face, catching a glimpse of only jeans and the back of one of the blue jackets issued by the academy.

It was already dark outside, though not yet five in the evening, the dead of winter draping the mountains with early nightfall.

Maeve’s companion wrapped a comforting arm over her
shoulders, then shepherded her toward the path leading past the chapel.

For a second, Jules thought he might be Ethan Slade, the boy she assumed Maeve was crying over.

Or was it someone else who was comforting her?

For half a heartbeat, she thought Maeve’s companion might be Father Jake, but he seemed much too familiar to be the youth minister.

They disappeared into the night, and Jules was left wondering about Maeve Mancuso.

Truth to tell, Jules didn’t know why the girl had been reduced to tears. Her emotional state might have had nothing to do with unrequited love. Perhaps, as she’d claimed, grief over Nona was setting in. In any case, teenaged girls were known to have extreme highs and lows, elated one minute, depressed the next.

Still, Jules was bothered, though she didn’t know how to help Maeve.

She remembered the glimpse of Maeve’s note and thought of the one that had been left for her. Both on lined paper, but in different hands.

HELP ME,
the first had pleaded.
OMEN
was the warning in Maeve’s possession. Had the girl written it, or had she received it?

Jules would probably never know, but those three simple words, written on two scraps of paper, bothered her, and all of Shay’s fears, real or imagined, slid through her brain.

Get over it. So you saw some notes. So Shay thinks there’s some deep, dark conspiracy on campus. Big deal.

As the wind shrieked over the lake, Jules walked toward Stanton House. With each step, she told herself she was letting her imagination run away with her, that Shay was wrong, but as she walked by the chapel, a shudder ripped through her soul.

CHAPTER 31

“D
amn!” Jules couldn’t find her cell phone. Her gloved fingers scrabbled through her purse but came up empty as she turned on the snowy path leading to Stanton House.

She’d planned on phoning Adele Burdette, the headmistress for the girls. According to all the Blue Rock Academy literature she’d skimmed, as a member of the staff, she was supposed to help with emotional or physical trauma as well as report all “incidents” with students, including physical altercations or verbal confrontations or emotional problems.

Maeve Mancuso’s meltdown in the hallway probably qualified, but Jules didn’t want to create a tempest in a teapot. She figured she’d let Dean Burdette know what happened, but downplay it. So, after she got hold of Burdette, Jules planned on calling Analise and her husband. She needed to find out more about the TAs, and she decided a good source of information would be her cousin. Eli had been a TA; he hadn’t revealed much before, but if she confronted him now, she felt sure he would give her more information if there was some kind of secretive cult.

Or laugh in your face.

Since her phone wasn’t in her purse, she checked her book bag. Nothing. Her pockets, too, were empty. “Can’t be,” she said to herself, remembering that she’d had it just before class when she’d talked to Edie.

The phone was definitely missing.

Had she left it in the classroom? She knew she had it there; she’d been talking to Edie.

Oh, great. A killer on campus, and now she didn’t even have a cell phone to call for help. Some example she was setting for these kids.

As Jules turned on her heel and headed back to the education hall, she thought of the information on that phone. The calls that had come in from Shaylee on Nona’s prepaid cell, the menu of numbers that included Shaylee’s old cell phone and Edie’s home and cell. Analise and Eli’s number would show on the recent calls. Though she remembered locking the phone, any techie type would make fast work of unlocking the phone and retrieving all of the data stored inside.

“Damn.”

Her heart began to race, and she had to fight a looming sense of panic. “Don’t go into orbit yet,” she cautioned herself, her breath fogging with the cold. The phone wasn’t really lost or stolen, just misplaced. However, the knot twisting painfully in her stomach reminded her of how much she had at stake.

She flew into the building and ran up the stairs. Her boots rang in the hollow hallway, melting snow dripping onto the tiles. On the second floor, she nearly skidded around a corner, then stopped short when she spied Missy Albright just closing the door to room 212 behind her. Loitering in the empty hallway, as if he was standing guard while waiting for Missy, was Zach Bernsen.

What?

For a split second, they both appeared startled; then matching grins quickly slid into place. Just like clockwork. “Hi!” Missy said brightly. She held up her calculator as Jules approached. “I’m sorry, but I lost my stupid calculator. It must’ve fallen out of my purse when I was in your class.”

“Is that right?” Jules couldn’t keep the disbelief from her voice. “You know, I didn’t see it when I was straightening up the room.”
And now I’m missing my phone.

“I know, I know.” Missy rolled her eyes in a silly-me-I’m such-a-goose expression. “When I started looking around the classroom, Zach came up here and found me. I’d left it in the science lab when he and I were doing calculations for a chemistry experiment.” She stretched her mouth and lifted her shoulders in an exaggerated shrug while starting to walk toward the elevators with Zach. “I’m really sorry.”

“Wait a sec. While you were in there,” Jules said, motioning toward the door to her classroom and not letting the girl escape so easily, “did you happen to see my cell phone?”

Missy’s face collapsed into an expression of confusion. “Nuh-uh,” she said, shaking her head and keeping her gaze locked with Jules’s. “But I wasn’t looking for it.”

“I just thought you might have come across it while searching.”

“Sorry.” Again she lifted her shoulders as if that said it all. Other than calling the girl an out-and-out liar or stripping Missy of her bag and searching it, Jules was out of options. As for Zach, he seemed almost bored with the exchange.

“Then it must still be in the classroom,” Jules said as the two students retreated for the bank of elevators.

She opened the door to her room, and it appeared just as she’d left it, the desks rearranged into a semicircle, all the surfaces clean.

Jules searched for ten minutes, opening drawers, looking in the closet, eyeing the floor, but she came up empty-handed. Her cell phone wasn’t anywhere to be found. Had Missy taken it? Someone else in the classroom? Or had Jules lost it during the time she’d spent dealing with Maeve?

She realized that a cell phone was like gold to these kids; most of them would jump on the chance to swipe it, either for personal use or for trade. The reasons didn’t necessarily have to be nefarious.

And yet…

Once again she turned off the lights, but this time, before she actually stepped into the hallway, she detoured to the window and looked across the campus, where snow glittering under the security lamps offered a peaceful vista.

Warm lamplight glowing from the chapel added to the appearance of serenity.
All an illusion,
she told herself.

If she didn’t believe it, all she had to do was ask Nona Vickers’s father.

She spied Missy and Zach as they walked rapidly from the education building toward the chapel. Zach’s arm was slung over Missy’s shoulders, as if he were shepherding the tall girl.

Just as they reached the arched doors, Missy dared to look over her shoulder. Her face turned upward, her gaze centered on the very spot where Jules stood in the darkness.

She froze, wondering if the girl could see her.

Don’t make more of it than it is,
the voice of reason nagged at her, but she felt a whisper of fear just the same.

With a word from Zach, Missy slipped through the door of the chapel, and Jules was left with the disturbing notion that despite all the accolades about Blue Rock Academy, Shaylee might be right. It could very well be the school of the damned.

If so, Jules was going to find out.

Tonight.

*  *  *

Trent caught Jules as she was leaving the education hall. Head bent against the wind, apparently lost in thought, she was walking quickly in the direction of Stanton House. “Hey, Ms. Farentino,” he called, just in case anyone saw him flagging her down. “Wait up!”

“What?” She looked up quickly, startled as she slowed in the light of a tall lamppost. Snow swirled around her, catching on the wisps of hair that had come free of the hood of her long coat.

It could have been a trick of light, but for a fraction of a heartbeat, the corners of her mouth lifted a bit, as if the sight of him was a welcome distraction. “I want to talk to you about one of our students,” he said, and resisted grabbing the crook of her elbow.

“Which one?” she asked as he reached her.

“Andrew Prescott,” he said, his voice lowered as they walked along the path. “I just got the word a couple of hours ago—he didn’t make it. Lynch will be making an announcement a little later.”

Jules paled under the lamplight, her gray eyes darkening with sadness. “Another one,” she whispered. “Dear God, I was hoping he’d recover.”