Last to Die (29 page)

“Yum. No wonder it tastes so good.” She popped the last chunk of sausage in her mouth, just to be contrary. When you’d been shot in the head, it gave you a different perspective on dangers as minor as carcinogens.

Will leaned in close and said softly: “There’s going to be a special meeting, right after breakfast.”

“What meeting?”

“The Jackals. They want you to come, too.”

She focused on Will’s pimply moon face, and a word suddenly sprang into her head:
endomorph
. She’d learned it from their health textbook, a term that was far kinder than what Briana called Will behind his back.
Fatboy. Spotted pig
. Claire and Will had that much in common; so did Teddy. They were the three misfits, the kids who were too weird or fat or nearsighted to ever be invited to the cool kids’ table. So they would make this table their own: the table for outcasts.

“Will you come?” asked Will.

“Why do they want me at their stupid meeting?”

“Because we need to put our heads together and talk about what happened to Dr. Welliver.”

“I’ve already told everyone what happened,” said Claire. “I told the police. I told Dr Isles. I told—”

“He means what
really
happened,” said Teddy.

She frowned at him. Teddy, the ectomorph, another word she’d learned from that health book.
Ecto
as in
ectoplasm
, pale and wispy as a ghost. “Are you saying I didn’t tell the truth?”

“That’s not at all what he meant,” said Will.

“That’s what it sounded like.”

“We’re just wondering—the Jackals are wondering—”

“Are you talking behind my back? You and the club?”

“We’re trying to understand how it happened.”

“Dr. Welliver jumped off the roof and she went splat on the ground. That’s not so hard to understand.”

“But
why
did she do it?” said Will.

“Half the time, I can’t even tell you why I do the things I do,” she said, and rose to her feet.

Will reached across the table and grabbed her hand, to stop her from leaving. “Does it make
any
sense to you, why she’d jump off the roof?”

She stared down at his hand, touching hers. “No,” she admitted.

“That’s why you should come,” he said urgently. “But you can’t talk about it. Julian says it’s only for the Jackals.”

She glanced across the dining hall at the table where glossy-haired Briana sat gossiping with the other cool kids. “Is she going to be there? Is this some kind of practical joke?”

“Claire, it’s
me
asking you,” said Will. “You know you can trust me.”

She looked at Will, and this time she didn’t focus on his pimples or his pale moon face, but his eyes. Those gentle brown eyes with long lashes. She’d never known Will to do or say anything unkind. He was goofy, sometimes annoying, but never hurtful.
Unlike me
. She thought of the times she’d pointedly ignored him or rolled her eyes at something he said, or laughed, along with everyone else, about the monster cannonballs he splashed up jumping into the lake.
Somewhere, a farmer is missing his hog
, the other girls had said, and Claire had not challenged that cruel comment. It shamed her now as she looked into Will’s eyes.

“Where are we meeting?” she asked.

“Bruno will show us the way.”

The path that took them up the hillside behind the school was steep and rocky, a direction that Claire had not yet explored on her midnight rambles. The route was so poorly marked that without
Bruno
Chinn to lead them, she might have gotten lost among the trees. Like Claire, Bruno was thirteen and yet another misfit, but a relentlessly cheerful one who seemed fated to always be the shortest kid in the group. He scampered like a mountain goat up a boulder and cast an impatient glance at his three lagging classmates.

“Does anyone want to race me to the top?” he offered.

Will halted, his face flushed bright pink, his T-shirt plastered to his doughy torso. “I’m dying here, Bruno. Can’t we rest?”

Bruno waved them forward, a grinning little Napoleon leading his charge up the hill. “Don’t be such a lazybones. You need to get in shape like me!”

“Do you want to kill Bruno?” muttered Claire. “Or should I?”

Will wiped the sweat from his face. “Just give me a minute. I’ll be okay,” he gasped. He certainly didn’t look okay as he plodded ahead, panting and wheezing, his enormous shoes slipping and sliding on moss.

“Where are we going?” Claire called out.

Bruno halted and turned to his three classmates. “Before we go any farther, you all have to promise.”

“Promise what?” said Teddy.

“That you won’t reveal this location. It’s
our
place, and the last thing we want is that grumpy old Mr. Roman telling us it’s off limits.”

Claire snorted. “You think he doesn’t already know?”

“Just promise. Raise your right hands.”

With a sigh, Claire raised her hand. So did Will and Teddy. “We promise,” they said simultaneously.

“All right, then.” Bruno turned and pushed aside a clump of bushes. “Welcome to the Jackals’ Den.”

Claire was the first to step into the clearing. Seeing stone steps, slippery with moss, she realized this was no natural opening in the trees, but something man-made. Something very old. She mounted the steps to a circular terrace built of weathered granite, and
entered
a ring of thirteen giant boulders, where her classmates Lester Grimmett and Arthur Toombs now sat. Nearby, in the shadow of trees, was a stone cottage, its roof green with moss, the shutters closed, its secrets locked away.

Teddy moved to the center of the ring and slowly turned to survey the thirteen boulders. “What is this place?” he asked in wonder.

“I tried to look it up in the school library,” said Arthur. “I think Mr. Magnus built this when he built the castle, but I can’t find a reference to it anywhere.”

“How did
you
find this place?”

“We didn’t. Jack Jackman did, years ago. He claimed it for the Jackals, and it’s been ours ever since. The stone house there, it was all falling down when Jackman first saw it. He and the first Jackals fixed it up, put on the roof and shutters. When it gets cold, we meet in there.”

“Who’d put a house way up here in the middle of the woods?”

“It’s kind of strange, isn’t it? Like these thirteen boulders. Why
thirteen
?” Arthur’s voice dropped. “Maybe Mr. Magnus had a cult or something.”

Claire looked down at where clumps of grass had pushed through the cracks between the stones. In time saplings and eventually trees would do their part to camouflage this foundation, to lift and separate and shatter the granite. Already the years had wrought their damage. But on this summer morning, with the haze hanging in the distance, it seemed to her that this place was timeless, that it had always been this way.

“I think this is way older than the castle,” she said. “I think it’s been here a really long time.”

She walked to the edge of the terrace. Through a gap in the trees, she looked down into the valley. There was the Evensong School with its many chimneys and turrets, and beyond it the dark waters of the lake. From here, she thought, I can see the whole world. Two canoes being paddled across the lake, sketching wakes
on
the water. Students on horseback, moving dots on the pin scratch of a trail. Standing here, with the wind in her face, she felt all-seeing and omnipotent. Queen of the universe.

The sound of a barking dog told her that Julian was approaching. She turned to see him stride up the steps to the stone terrace, Bear at his heels as always. “You all made it,” he said, and looked at Claire. “You took the pledge?”

“We promised not to talk about this place, if that’s what you mean,” she said. “It’s not like you’re some secret order. Why do we have to meet up here?”

“So we can feel free to say exactly what we think. No one else can hear us. And what’s said here, stays here.” Julian looked around at the circle of students, now seven of them in all. A fine collection they were, thought Claire. Bruno, the cheerful little mountain goat. Arthur, who tapped everything five times before he used it. Lester, whose nightmares sometimes ended in screams that woke everyone in the dorm. Claire was the only girl in the group, and even among these oddballs she felt conspicuous.

“Something strange is happening,” Julian said. “They’re not telling us the truth about Dr. Welliver.”

“What do you mean, the truth?” asked Teddy.

“I’m not convinced she killed herself.”

“I saw her do it,” Claire said.

“That may not be what actually happened.”

Claire bristled. “Are you calling me a liar?”

“I saw Maura bag up Dr. Welliver’s sugar bowl and send it to the crime lab. And the night after she came back from watching the autopsy, she had a long meeting with some of the teachers. They’re worried, Claire. I think they’re even scared.”

“What’s this got to do with the three of us?” asked Will. “Why did you ask us to be here?”

“Because,” said Julian, turning to look at Will, “you three are somehow at the center of this. I heard Maura talking on the phone with Detective Rizzoli, and your names all came up. Ward. Clock.
Yablonski
.” He looked from Will to Teddy to Claire. “What do you three have in common?”

Claire looked at her two companions and shrugged. “We’re weird?”

Bruno let out one of his annoying giggles. “Like
that
wasn’t the obvious answer.”

“There’s also their files,” said Arthur.

“What about our files?” asked Claire.

“The day Dr. Welliver died, I was her one o’clock appointment. When I walked into her office, I saw she had three files open on her desk, like she’d been reading them. Your file, Claire. And Will’s and Teddy’s.”

Julian said, “That night, after she killed herself, those three files were still on her desk. Something about
you three
caught her attention.”

Claire looked around at the expectant faces. “You already know why. It’s because of our families.” She turned to Will. “Tell them how your parents died.”

Will looked down at his feet, those enormous feet in their enormous sneakers. “They said it was just an accident. A plane crash. But I found out later …”

“It wasn’t an accident,” said Julian.

Will shook his head. “It was a bomb.”

“Teddy,” said Claire. “Tell them what you told me. About your family.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Teddy whispered.

She looked at the other students. “They were murdered, like Will’s parents. Like mine. That’s what you all wanted to hear, isn’t it?
That’s
what we have in common.”

“Tell them the rest of it, Claire,” said Julian. “What happened to your foster families.”

Everyone’s eyes turned back to Claire.

She said, “You
know
what happened. Why are you doing this? Because it’s fun to screw around with the weird kids’ heads?”

“I’m just trying to understand what’s happening here. To you, and to the school.” Julian looked at the other Jackals. “We talk about being investigators someday, and how we’ll make a difference in the world. We spend all our time learning about blood types and blowflies, but it’s all just theoretical. Now we have a
real
investigation going on around us, right here. And
these three
are at the center of it.”

“Why don’t you just ask Dr. Isles?” said Will.

“She says she can’t talk about it.” He added on a faintly resentful note, “Not to me, anyway.”

“So you’re going to run your own investigation? A bunch of kids?” Claire laughed.

“Why can’t we?” Julian moved toward her, so close she had to look up to meet his eyes. “Don’t you wonder about it, Claire? You, too, Will and Teddy? Who wants you dead? Why do they want it so badly that they’d
twice
try to kill you?”

“It’s like that creepy movie
Final Destination
,” Bruno said, far too cheerfully. “About those kids who are supposed to die in a plane crash, but they escape. And Death keeps coming after them.”

“This is not a movie, Bruno,” said Julian. “We’re not talking about the supernatural. Real people are doing this, and for a reason. We need to figure out why.”

Claire gave a dismissive laugh. “Listen to you! You think you can figure out what the police can’t? You’re just a bunch of kids with your microscopes and chemistry sets. So tell me, Julian, how are you going to fit all this amazing police work in between classes?”

“I’m going to start by asking
you
. You’re the one this is happening to, Claire. You must have some idea what connects the three of you.”

She looked at Will and Teddy. The endomorph and the ectomorph. “Well, we sure aren’t related, ’cause we don’t look anything like each other.”

“And we were all living in different places,” said Will. “My mom and dad were killed in Maryland.”

“Mine were killed in London,” said Claire.
Where I almost died, too
.

“Teddy?” asked Julian.

“I told you, I don’t want to talk about it,” he said.

“This could be important,” said Julian. “Don’t you want answers? Don’t you want to know why they died?”

“I
know
why they died! Because we were on a boat. On my dad’s
stupid
boat in the middle of nowhere. If we hadn’t been on it, if we’d just stayed home …”

“Tell them, Teddy,” Claire prompted gently. “Tell them what happened on the boat.”

For a long time Teddy didn’t say a thing. He stood with head drooping as he stared down at the stones. When at last he did speak, it was so quietly they could barely hear him.

“There were people with guns,” he whispered. “I heard screaming. My mother. And my sisters. And I couldn’t help them. All I could do was …” He shook his head. “I hate the water. I never want to be in a boat again.”

Claire went to Teddy and wrapped her arms around him. Felt his heart fluttering like a bird’s against his frail chest. “It’s not your fault,” she murmured. “You couldn’t save them.”

“I lived. And they didn’t.”