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I stop the thought and speak again, just as calmly. “Call 911, and then I will explain—”
“It happened when Nicola—Janica—was in high school,” Shania cuts in. “Back when she knew Anton.”
“Holy shit, are we really doing this? There is a murdered—”
Cirillo blocks me as Shania keeps talking.
“Nicola and her two friends were holding séances in the forest,”she says. “Something went wrong. Anton was there—Nicola admitted he and his friends staged a haunting. Then one of the girls ended up like this.”
She waves at Brodie, and I can gnash my teeth at this sudden betrayal, but she’s in shock, and all she can think is that this dead boy has been killed like my friend from twenty-two years ago.
I’ve been wondering whether my husband had something to do with that, so I can’t really blame Shania for wondering whether I’m responsible for this. She barely knows me.
The problem is that acorpsejust fell from the furnace, the badly mutilated corpse of a missing young man, and the very obvious next step is to call the police. But that’s me, thinking logically even in my shock. Now thelogicalthing for me to do is to answer their questions so we can make that phone call.
“Yes, we held two séances,” I say. “Anton and his friends staged a haunting at the first, acting as if we’d conjured the ghost of a young man who killed his girlfriend. Patrice thought she was possessed by that young man.”
Shania tries to jump in, but now I’m the one speaking overher.“Patrice insisted on a second séance to fix it. At the time, I didn’t know the boys faked the haunting. I didn’t know what happened. But I thought if it was all in Patrice’s head, we only needed to convince her we’d fixed it. Instead, Heather ended up…” I look at Brodie’s body and can’t get the words out.
Shania says, “Then Nicola claimed she stumbled over a blood-covered Patrice lying in wait, with a knife in her hand. Patrice chased her out of the forest.”
“No,” I say. “I found Patrice lyingbesidea knife. She had blood on her. When she started to get up, I ran. The police came. Patrice was arrested and…” I swallow. “She was remanded to a mental institution.”
“While you got to walk away, change your name, and lead a happy new life with the guy who started it all,” Shania says. “The guy who made Patrice think she was possessed.”
The venom in her voice startles me.
I say, quietly, “I hope that’s not what happened. It really was just a prank—”
“Boys being boys.”
“I never said that.” I keep my voice level. “I’m not defending what they did.”
“What about what you did?” Shania says.
My shoulders tighten as guilt rolls over me. “If you mean changing my name, I was young and convinced that everyone knew who I was after the news stories. If you mean the séances, yes, obviously I regret not doing more to stop Patrice and Heather.”
“I mean this.” Shania jabs a finger at Brodie. “We found him exactly the way you found Heather and Patrice. Sliced open with a bloody hunting knife in his hand.”
I don’t say that’s not how I found either Heather or Patrice. She’s conflating the two because she’s freaked out, and she’s drawing parallels because thereareparallels.
I don’t know what’s going on. I can’t wrap my brain around it. Maybe that’s why my mind keeps screaming at me to call the police.
Call the police. Let them deal with it. Get out of this house.Now!
I didn’t kill Brodie. I cannot imagine Jin or Shania or Cirillo killed Brodie. But there is something in this house, something that knows me as Janica, and I don’t know if it’s Anton or Roddy or Anton possessed by Roddy—
Stop. Focus.
Call the police. Let them deal with it. Get the fuck out of this house.
“You think I had something to do with this.” My voice is flat as I push any hint of outrage from it. “Okay. That’s for the police to decide. I’m not trying to escape. I’m not even insisting on being the one who makes that call. I will sit over there.” I point. “I will wait for the police to arrive after one of you calls them.”
That’s reasonable, right? It’s the most fucking reasonable thing anyone could possibly say when accused of having sliced open a young man whose body lies a few feet away.
In fact, it’s probably too reasonable, even for me, which means I’m in shock. But the point is that I’m not running for the door. I’m not insisting on using my own phone, so I could escape while I’m upstairs getting it. I’m not insisting on making that call, so I could fake it. And I’m not asking how the hell anyone could think I’d do something like this.
I might be shaking inside. I might be freaking out and trying so damn hard not to panic, but outwardly I am calm and I am reasonable.
