Peachville High Demons 01: Beautiful Demons (8 page)

That last bit she read directly from my file. She paused and flipped through several more pages, then looked up, her eyes meeting mine for the first time. She had caramel-colored eyes that were almost hypnotic. I wanted to look away, but I couldn't.

“You've had a long string of foster homes ever since then, is that correct?”

I nodded. I had lost count, there were so many. It wasn't an easy thing to think about.

“And why do you think that is, Miss Madison?”

I forced my gaze away from hers and she stood up. She paced the room, waiting for an answer to her question. I wasn't sure how to answer her.

“Why do you think that fifteen different foster homes in the Atlanta area had such a problem with you that they refused to house you any longer? According to your file, you never stayed in one place longer than six months. Why?” She raised her voice and moved to stand very close to me.

I leaned my elbows on the desk in front of me and rested my head in my hands. How was I supposed to answer a question like that? Admit that I was a freak? “I thought you guys brought me here to talk about Tori,” I said.

“We will talk about whatever I tell you we're going to talk about,” the woman said, placing her hands on the table and leaning so close to my face I could smell the cinnamon in her gum. “Tell me why you were kicked out of your latest foster home in Atlanta.”

I ground my teeth together and turned my head away. It was one thing to talk to Mrs. Meeks about these things. I had known her since I was eight years old. Since the fire. But this woman? She hadn't so much as told me her name or who she worked for.

“Fine, you want to know who I am?” she said. “My name is Sheriff Daneka Hollingsworth.”

My face flushed. How had she known I was wondering about her name? I swallowed. “I don't want to talk about it.”

“This isn't about what you want,” she said. “Now talk.”

The look in her eyes scared me. It was like she could see through me. Into me.

“We didn't get along.”

“Be more specific.”

“I was only there for a couple of weeks,” I started. “They fought all the time. And when they would fight, the lady, Pat, she would always come into our room and take it out on us.”

“Who else was there with you?”

“A couple of younger kids. Joy and Ashley. They were in sixth grade. We all shared a room with bunk beds.”

“So what happened the night you got kicked out?”

A beat of sweat formed on my lip and I swiped it away. “I don't know. Nothing. They didn't want me there anymore.”

I wondered how much the file in the Sheriff's hands said about me. I didn't want to tell her anything about my past, but I had the feeling she wasn't going to give me a choice.

“Don't lie to me or you'll be sorry.”

I hugged my arms close to my body, then spoke. “They'd had a really bad fight earlier at dinner, so I was expecting her to come after us as usual. Well, just before bedtime, Pat comes into our room yelling about how the house is a mess and it's all our fault. How we don't appreciate what she's doing for us. The younger girls were already dressed and in bed, but Pat grabbed Joy by the hair and pulled her from the bed.”

“How did that make you feel?”

“Angry,” I said. “Helpless. I got down from the top bunk and told her to stop picking on the younger girls. She shoved Joy to the side and came at me like she was going to hit me. I guess I just freaked out.”

“What happened?” The sheriff came back around to her chair and sat across from me. Her eyes were locked on my face.

“I don't know.” I was so afraid to tell her the truth.

“Tell me,” she said. “Something happened that night that you couldn't control. Tell me what it was.”

I took a deep breath. “It was like anger was boiling inside of me. Like it had a life of its own, in a way. I felt all of that anger sort of focus in on her and everything else in the room went blurry. Before I knew it, some of the things on the side table...” I couldn't go on. How could I explain what happened that night? She'd think I was crazy and lock me up for sure. I wasn't even sure why I'd told her this much, but I couldn't seem to help myself.

“They rose up from the desk?” she asked, her voice excited. “Like they were flying around the room, right?”

I stared back at her, heart racing in my chest. I thought of Mrs. Meeks words to me that night. “No, that's insane,” I said. “Things don't fly around the room on their own.”

“I told you not to lie to me. The lamp on the desk.” She narrowed her eyes at me, then tilted her head slightly. “You hit her with it.”

“No,” I said. “I didn't do it on purpose. You don't understand-”

“Oh I understand. You were angry. And when you get angry, you move things with your mind, don't you Harper? You're different from other people, aren't you?”

I hung my head down. How did she know all this? I waited for her to say I was some kind of witch who deserved to be punished. A freak who belonged in an institution.

“That night, your anger was focused on Pat Sanders. That's why the lamp hit her. You might not have known you were doing it, but it was you that hit her with that lamp, Harper.”

I looked away. “I...”

“Sometimes, it's fire, isn't it?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Yes. Just like with Heath and Jill Madison when you were eight years old. When you let your anger get out of control, you start fires and burn people.”

“No,” I said again, louder. “That's not what happened.”

“And that's what happened with Tori Fairchild on Friday night, isn't it?”

My eyes widened. “You think I killed Tori? I would never do something like that.”

“You just told me you hit a woman in the head with a lamp when you were angry with her,” she said. She slammed her hands down on the desk and I jumped back, frightened. “And you killed your adoptive father when you were eight.”

“No, I told you I didn't mean to do it.”

“Then maybe you didn't mean to do this either.” She flipped three pictures over and slid them toward me. “Maybe Tori just made you angry. She was burned alive, Harper. Cooked from the inside.”

The pictures were gruesome. Tori's body was burned and bloody. I brought my hand to my mouth and looked away, shutting my eyes tight. “Oh, God.”

“Look at these pictures, Harper. Look at what you did!”

“I didn't do that,” I said. I felt like I was going to throw up. How could someone think I was capable of such a horrible thing? The images of Tori's blackened skin were horrifying.

The Sheriff came around to my side of the table and stood behind me. She placed her hands on my head and forced my face straight down toward where the pictures lay spread on the table. In my ear, she said, “Then why was she holding your necklace in her hand?”

No One Ever Believed

My stomach clenched as I forced myself to look at the pictures of Tori's body. I kept my eyes focused on the part of one picture that showed her hands up close. My eyes widened as I saw what Sheriff Hollingsworth was talking about. My mother's sapphire necklace was tangled around Tori's limp right hand.

I couldn't speak. Where would she have gotten the necklace? It was possible she picked it up at the field that night, but why? She didn't seem like the type of person who would pick up a random necklace off the ground and keep it with her. None of this made sense. My mind spun.

I pushed the pictures away from me. I didn't want to look at them any more.

“Here's what I think happened,” Sheriff Hollingsworth said, sitting half on top of the desk in front of me. “You're a troubled girl who lets things get out of control when she's angry. You move to Shadowford against your will and on your first day of school, you have a run-in with the most popular girl in the sophomore class. She humiliates you in front of the entire school.”

I listened in horror. This woman actually believed I was capable of murder. I wanted to stop her. To tell her to shut up. But I couldn't speak. My lips were pressed tight together, and my legs were trembling slightly.

This can't be happening.

“You follow her back to her house on Friday night after the game. Lure her into the woods where you get into another argument. Things get heated and you lose control. You burn her, but Tori fights back and manages to pull your necklace from your neck. Scared, you run off, leaving her there in the woods to die.”

“No,” I said. My voice came out weak and dry. “I wouldn't do something like that.”

“But you did have an argument with Tori Fairchild?”

“In the lunchroom that day, yes. But I didn't follow her on Friday night,” I said. “And you're wrong about the necklace. I lost it at the game on Friday. Ask Ella Mae or any of the other girls. I went back to look for it after the game, but I couldn't find it.”

“So you admit that the necklace Tori has clutched in her hands is yours?”

Shit. Am I messing up here?
I felt trapped.

“Are you allowed to question me without a lawyer? Or at least legal guardian. I'm still a minor,” I said, throwing my chin up and folding my arms across my chest. I was trying to seem tough, but think I ended up looking more like a scared kid.

“Where do you think you are? Atlanta?” The sheriff laughed and it sent chills down my spine. “I can do whatever I want with you and no one will ever believe I did anything wrong. You don't exactly have a track record for telling the truth and being a good girl.”

I clutched the sleeve of my shirt into a tight fist, trying not to panic. She was right, though. No one would believe me. No one ever believed me.

The Sheriff pulled out a yellow sticky note and placed it on the table. It was the secretary's note from this morning with my name and a description of the necklace. “It's alright, you don't have to answer that question anyway. We know the necklace is yours. We have witnesses that saw you wearing it. Mrs. King for one. Agnes, your friend at Shadowford. And there's a notebook in your bedroom with a drawing of a woman wearing it. Your mother, I'm guessing.”

“You've been going through my things?” I felt betrayed. Helpless.

“Tell me what really happened on Friday night,” she said.

I knew I had to tell her about sneaking out and seeing Tori with the boy on the field, but someone knocked on the door before I had the chance.

“Sheriff?” Ellis poked his head just inside the door.

A flash of anger crossed the Sheriff's face. “What?”

“The mayor wants to see you real quick. She says it's important.”

Sheriff Hollingsworth's eyes widened. She straightened her jacket and walked to the open door. Almost as an afterthought, she turned back to me. “Don't move.”

The door closed behind her and I let out a huge breath. Hot tears threatened my eyes, and I slouched down low in my chair. If they charged me with Tori's murder, they would send me someplace much worse than juvenile detention. I shuddered.

I looked up as the door opened once more. An Asian woman smiled at me from the doorway. She had the most beautiful straight black hair that fell below her shoulders, and her eyes were like black glass. “Harper, I'm Mayor Chen.”

Lark's mother. I remembered Agnes telling me she was the mayor's daughter. I had wrongly assumed the mayor was a man.

“I just have a couple of questions for you, if that's okay?” Her voice was soft and smooth. Comforting.

I nodded, relaxing slightly.

“Where did you get the sapphire pendant?”

“It was my mother's,” I said.

“But you were adopted, correct?”

I nodded. “As a baby. But my adoptive parents, they gave me the necklace when I turned eight. That's when they first told me that I was adopted. They said my mother's only request was that they made sure I got that necklace.”

Mayor Chen seemed to think this over for a moment, then turned back to me. “Do you know anything else about your real mother?”

Why was she asking me about my mother? And the necklace? What did any of this have to do with Tori's death? I shook my head slightly. “I don't know much,” I said.

“But you've seen her before?”

“Not really. I mean, I accidentally saw a picture of her that my adoptive parents kept in a file in their desk.”

“And that's how you knew to draw that picture we found in your notebook? Of her wearing the necklace?”

I nodded again.

“Do you have any idea how Tori Fairchild would have gotten hold of your necklace?”

“No, that's what I was trying to tell the sheriff. I lost that necklace Friday night at the game. I always wear it, everyday. But when I was getting in the van to come home that night, it was gone. It had to have fallen off somewhere at the stadium. Anyone could have picked it up.”

Mayor Chen's eyes locked onto mine, and I searched them, hoping to see some sign that she believed me. On the table, the folder fluttered closed. Mayor Chen hadn't even moved her hand. I stared down at the closed folder, then back up at her ebony eyes.

“Miss Madison, thank you for your cooperation today,” she said. “You are free to go.”

Is That You?

Ellis drove me home in his squad car. This time, I got to ride up front.

“How you hangin' in there?” he asked. “Seems like they kinda gave you a rough time in there.”

I sank deeper in my seat. “I guess I'm alright.” I didn't really want to talk about it with this guy.

“They can be kind of rough on me too,” he said.

I figured he was just trying to make me feel better, but when I looked over at him, I could see honesty in his face. The older man had been kind of mean to him when he dropped those pencils. Maybe he knew what it felt like to never have anyone take you seriously.

“What's with the sheriff?” I asked.

“What do ya mean?”

“Small town like this. I guess I wasn't expecting a pretty petite lady to be the boss around here. It was sorta unexpected.”

“Oh,” he said with a shrug. “I guess I never really thought about it that much. Sheriff Hollingsworth might be small, but she's tough. Real tough. And smart too.”

“It's just that in the movies and stuff, you always see towns like this with old white guys in charge. The good ol' boys. But here, I don't know. This town is very... progressive. Black lady sheriff. Asian woman mayor. Lots of minority women in charge. All very beautiful.” I don't know why I was talking to Ellis about these things. It was more that I was just working out my own questions and he just happened to be there. But now that I did take a moment to think about it, having all these women in power did seem a little unusual.