Under a Spell

Chapter Two

My heart was thundering in my ears even before my clock radio started blaring something awful and upbeat. I sat bolt upright, eyes wide open and feeling like I’d stared at the ceiling all night—mostly because I had. Murder, I could handle. I wasn’t especially fond of it, but I was the kind of girl who found corpses and evil like a Kardashian could find paparazzi and Apple Bottoms jeans. But high school chilled me to the bone.

I took a leisurely shower, tossing an entire canister of “Soothing Lavender” bath salts over my head hoping for some Prozac-like relief. It made my head feel like a nicely scented gravel pile, which calmed me enough to allow me to remind myself that I was an adult. That I was no longer that horrible-haired, buck-toothed, scared-of-her-own-shadow girl. I was Sophie Lawson and I kicked supernatural—and the occasion natural but unsavory—ass. I was feeling sassy and confident until I caught a glimpse of the clock and stopped dead.

“Shit!”

I was an adult Sophie Lawson with a heap of wet spaghetti hair boring a damp spot on the back of my blouse, not a speck of makeup on, and exactly eighteen minutes to make it to my first day at Mercy High. I bit my lip, one foot in the bathroom where pretty, pale pink cheeks, under-eye concealer, and sleek, straight hair lay, the other aiming toward the front door and respectable punctuality.

I blew out a sigh, grabbed a morning Fresca and my purse, and decided that my supermodel return to Mercy High School would have to happen another day.

It’s not like there was anyone I was expecting to impress at an all-girls high school, right?

“Whoa, love. You’re out of here like a Tasmanian devil.”

I was chest to chest with Will Sherman, my floppy hair snapping his cheek with a wet smack. He wore his sandy hair just long enough to let a few strands flop over his forehead, making any red-blooded woman willing to sell her soul to push those few strands out of his hazel, gold-flecked eyes. He had the lean, muscular build of a soccer player and an accent that made panties drop, and he lived across the hall from me. Also, he was my Guardian—but not in an “until I’m eighteen” or 50 Shades of Grey kind of way; he simply was the man in charge of defending me against anyone who might seek to gut me, quarter me, burn me alive, or perform any other such unfortunate activity. And for all of this, all I had to do was house a supernatural vessel that held all of the human souls of the world that were stuck in a kind of limbo. It is—or I am—called the Vessel of Souls and it is an artifact that the angelic and evil planes desperately fight over—kind of like a Hatfields-and-McCoys kind of thing that could destroy the world and possibly enslave all humanity. And it was in me. No one is quite sure why, but my guess is some half-naked diaper-wearing cherub thought it would be a hoot to hide the most valuable thing in creation in the spirit of a San Francisco woman who would rather just say a few Hail Marys while eating a donut than spend her life dodging all manor of weaponry—even if it did come with a drool-worthy Guardian.

I jumped back and blinked at Will, then blinked again. “You look fantastic. Like Professor Plum or something.”

Will beamed, opening his arms to show off the crisp pale blue button-down he wore under his tweed jacket, and I took the opportunity to sweep my eyes over the nice way his chinos hung on his hips, the way his blazer did nothing to hide his broad, strong shoulders, the way that button-down clung to his taut, sinewy chest.

“Wait!” He held up a silencing hand. “You haven’t seen the best part.” Will rifled through the battered leather briefcase he was carrying and slid on a pair of heavy, dark-rimmed glasses. With his usually bed-headed muss of sandy brown hair combed back from his forehead, he had a distinctly David Beckham-does-Harvard look, and I wanted to sit down and learn everything he had to tell me.

“Sophie?”

Will was leaning into me, and I felt a blush rush over my cheeks and made a mental note to pray for my overactive imaginary libido to dry up and stop turning me into a puddle of ooze every time Will shot me a grin or a view of one of his pecs.

“No, right, you look terrific. Why?”

“Work. Isn’t this what all the good professors are wearing?”

“You’re working as a professor? That’s funny, because I’m going in to my old high school as a substitute—” I felt all the color drain from my face. “You’re my help.”

Will fell into step beside me. “With all due respect, love, I’m not the help, I’m the Guardian.” He said it as though he was channeling Superman, but I was still flummoxed.

“Sampson is sending you in to keep an eye on me, isn’t he? He doesn’t trust me!”

Will scratched his head and pulled the downstairs door open for me. “Uh, no, I believe he doesn’t trust whatever wiggy it is that’s running around the high school, disappearing girls and carving them up.” He flashed a quick grin and waggled his car keys. “Shall we take Nigella?”

I nodded dumbly and Will led me to Nigella, a thousand-year-old, half-rusted, half-funky maroon Porsche with Pepto-pink interior that he insisted was a classic.

“We’re a team, you know.”

“Hey, how come you get to be a professor and I’m just a substitute teacher?”

Will sunk the key into the ignition and Nigella coughed to life. “It’s the accent, love. Makes Americans think we’re brilliant. So, what’s on your lesson plan?”

“You have a lesson plan? Where’d you get a lesson plan?”

“I made it.” He paused. “Let me guess—you assumed I was just born your Guardian.”

“No.” Yes.

I was up to speed on Will’s involvement by the time we rolled into the Mercy High staff lot. Alex was up for the job, but having been out of organized education since slates trumped binder paper, both he and Sampson thought Will would be a smoother fit. According to Sampson, Will was there to investigate, to see what else he could turn up, but I couldn’t help but feel that his presence on campus was little more than a babysitter for an investigator that Sampson had no faith in.

All eyes were on me the second Nigella sputtered to a stop. The faculty lot and the student lot were separated only by an elbow-high cyclone fence, a sea of shiny, new-model haves on one side, a mottled bay of slightly dented have-nots on the other.

My heart slammed itself against my rib cage in what felt like a desperate attempt to escape as I snapped Nigella’s door shut, hitched my shoulder bag and my chin, and met Will on the sidewalk. I could already feel the heat pricking at my upper lip and my ears were already buzzing with the whispers I knew were coming: Special Sophie . . . the freak of Nineteenth Street. . . . Look at the freak. Look at the freak. Lookatthefreak.

I reminded myself that I had come a long way, that I was the teacher now, that I was helping to solve a murder and possibly take down a wily coven of supernatural evil. A crime fighter couldn’t be a freak.

I threw my shoulders back, and suddenly I didn’t feel like the blistering center of unwanted attention. There were no whispered hums, no more eyes. . .

Because they were all on Will.

At first Mercy students littered the grand lawn, making their leisurely way toward the main building. But just like that every girl stopped, sucked in a collected breath, and straightened, shoving out best assets—breasts, hips, taut teenage butts—and turning their heads toward Will.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I spat.

Will didn’t need to say a word. The grin he tossed over his shoulder at me was flattered, smug, and dancing on my last nerve.

“You just remember we’re here solving a crime, okay? We’re here to find a missing girl.”

Will interlaced his fingers, outstretched his hands, and cracked his knuckles, the universal sign (in my dictionary) for sleazy old man leering at young girls.

“Fine, man whore. If saving a poor little girl’s life doesn’t get you, just remember that statutory rape laws are strong in San Francisco.”

Will just shook his head as though I had uttered an interesting anecdote about higher education or Pippa Middleton.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

Our exchange—my admonishment, his rebuttal—was interrupted by a trio of schoolgirls in their knife-pleated Mercy skirts, their chests straining against their crisp white shirts and sweaters, the high, round breasts of padded bras and youth. I felt myself snake my arms across my chest and curl into my A-cup.

“Are you the new teacher?” the ringleader asked. She was dead center, smoked-sapphire blue eyes glued to Will, black hair Pantene perfect, heart-shaped face flawless.

“We both are,” I said, trying to break the girl’s Spock-like mind control.

“I’m Fallon,” the girl said. She grinned, blinding me with her blue-white teeth, a perfect line of Chiclets that would never dream of going buck or hanging on to a thread of spinach at a dinner party.

“This is Finleigh and Kayleigh.” Fallon acknowledged each girl with a miniscule shake of the head before squirreling her way in between Will and I and threading her arm through his. “I can show you where the admin building is.”

“That would be lovely, cheers.”

The other two—Finleigh and Kayleigh, equally as uninterested in me as Fallon was—slapped perfectly manicured hands over their mouths and giggled.

“OMG, cute!”

“English. Love!”

I rolled my eyes and followed Will and his entourage to the front doors of Mercy High School. They walked in as though they weren’t walking through the gates of teenage hell, as though the memories of being bullied and harassed just for existing weren’t still fresh enough to make my stomach fold over itself.

“Here goes nothing,” I said, stepping over the threshold.

Spires of hell fire didn’t shoot up through the ultra-waxed linoleum. Scary circus clowns didn’t circle me and point, and nobody stopped to give me a body check or a disdainful once over. Maybe things would be different.

I sniffed.

Maybe not.

It’s amazing how the smell of a high school hallway never changes. The janitors can try, they can swap out the district-issued lemony-fresh cleaning products for summer-rain-scented potpourri, but the underlying stench of scuffed linoleum, spiral notebooks, and teenage angst embeds itself in every loop of nondescript carpeting, in every inch of every number-two pencil, and in every rusted, dented corner of every locker of every high school in the world. Mercy was no different.

The girls deposited Will and me at the administration offices, where we were greeted by Heddy Gaines, school secretary—her little carved wood veneer nameplate placed prominently on her desk.

Heddy looked like every school secretary in every high school teen angst-slash-comedy ever made. She had a beige bouffant that was spun like cotton candy with perfectly rounded bangs that barely licked her forever-surprised red-brown brows. Her face was warm and matronly, as was the lacy Peter Pan collar on her dress, as she shoved a little cut-glass bowl of hard candies toward us. As I took a grape candy—and took her in—there was a tiny niggling at the back of my mind. Did I remember her? Her eyes flitted over mine, then went to Will. She offered us a practiced smile, her orange-red lips pressed tightly together.

“May I help you two?”

I stepped forward. “We’re the new teachers,” I hiss-whispered, and one of Heddy’s eyebrows went up even more than usual.

“Teachers?” she hissed back.

“Heddy, Heddy, I’ve got them.”

The gentleman speaking strode over to us, his tie flopping on his chest. He jutted out a hand. “Principal Lowe,” he said, shaking my hand so heartily I thought it’d snap off at the wrist.

For every inch that Heddy looked stereotypically secretarial, Principal Lowe looked atypically principal. He was tall, eye to eye with Will, with close-cropped salt and pepper hair and pale blue eyes that were kind, but rimmed with clear exhaustion. He was slender enough to make me suck in my gut, and his navy-blue suit—white button-down shirt, sans tie—gave him a cool but approachable edge. I vaguely wondered when Lowe had taken over, wondered if it was directly after the cranky old woman who had been the principal when I’d attended Mercy. Principal Stockman had lived up to her name as if it were an honor. She was built like a fireplug with a shock of fuzzy, blue-grey hair, turned-down eyes and a perma-scowl. Or, maybe the scowl was only for me. I shifted now in Principal Lowe’s visitors’ chairs, remembering the hundred or so times I had sat here, shrinking in Principal Stockman’s shadow as she told me that “girls will be girls” and that if I’d just ignore the mean girls’ comments, they would eventually forget about me and move on.

In my freshman year that had seemed like sound advice. By senior year I knew it was a crock of shit.

“I really appreciate you both coming out here,” Lowe said, his pale eyes moving from my face to Will’s. “And Ms. Lawson, I understand that you are a Mercy High, uh, alumna, is that correct?”

I shook my head quickly, then cleared my throat. “That is correct, sir.”

Lowe and Will both broke out into smiles. “You can call me Edward, Ms. Lawson. You’re not in any trouble here.”

I felt a hot blush warm my cheeks and the smile dropped from Edward’s face.

“Well, not in here. But out there”—his eyes flashed to the halls behind us and he shook his head—“I’m not so sure.”

I suddenly snapped into information-gathering mode and pulled my notebook and pen from my shoulder bag. Every cop seemed to have his own black leather flip-open notebook—Alex kept his in his back pocket—and I knew professionally, I would need my own. I couldn’t exactly find the model the cops used, but found that my Target stand-in with the glittery, big-eyed unicorn on the front cover still got the job done.

“Do you have any additional information you can give us, Edward? Anything at all about either of the missing students or any suspicions about your current class?”

Edward blinked at me blankly and Will put a soft hand on my knee. “What she means is, is there anything we should know before going out there?”

Edward shuffled some papers on his desk before handing one each to Will and me. “You’ll be teaching English Two, Ms. Lawson, and Mr. Sherman—”

“Will, please.”

“Will, thank you. You’ll be teaching American History.”

I let out a yip that was half nerves, half amusement. “He’s teaching American History?” I jerked a thumb toward Will. “He’s English.”

“With all due respect, love, we English have a pretty good working knowledge of what’s happened here in the States. We did own you and all.”

Edward cleared his throat and we both snapped back to attention, caught bickering in the principal’s office.

“You’ll each be teaching four classes a day with two free prep periods. You don’t start until after lunch today. The lessons are already prepared for you and left in each of your rooms. You have free rein of the building for your investigation.” Lowe pulled two keys from his top desk drawer and handed one to each of us. “But of course, you’ll keep your true intentions for being here from the student body. The girls were quite stirred up when the uniformed men were on campus. I don’t know what kind of CSI-type havoc they’d wreak if they knew two undercover FBI investigators were here as well.”

Lowe grinned and I smiled back, impressed. FBI investigators, huh? I made a mental note to thank Sampson for giving us a decent cover; the last time I went to investigate some supernatural bumps at a house in the Marina, Sampson told the lady I was an exterminator and I wound up with a tetanus shot and a vague certainty that her demon spider had laid a dozen eggs in my left nostril.

Lowe shrugged, his slim shoulders hugging his ears. “I wish I could give you some more information, some direction about the girls or the administration. Everyone here is like a family. I can’t imagine . . .”

“So, I believe our—FBI boss, Pete Sampson—told you what we’re investigating?”

“Of course.” Lowe nodded. “The possibility of a coven.”

“Yes.” I nodded back, flipping over my notebook in a bid to look uber FBI-like. “Do you know which students are a part of it?”

Edward swung his head and stiffened. “If there even is a coven. All the girls have been pretty tight lipped about their clubs and activities off campus. But I’ve heard the murmurs in the halls.”

“We met three girls earlier. Kayleigh—”

“Finleigh and Fallon,” Lowe finished. “They’re like the three Musketeers.”

“Yes. Are they—is Fallon perhaps part of the murmuring? She seems sort of . . .” I let my words trail off, hopeful that Edward would get the message without me having to say that the pubescent bombshell seemed a bit witchy.

“Fallon? No. She’s a star student here. Very friendly and helpful. Heads up the blood drive every year.”

I shifted in my seat. Nina was in charge of the blood drive at the office, but it was less a good-citizen thing, more of a lunch-truck thing.

I instinctively didn’t trust Fallon. And I swore to myself it had nothing to do with her perfect curves or the lascivious way she rolled her tongue over her bottom lip while hanging on Will’s every accented word.

“Fallon helps out a lot of students—especially new ones. High school can be pretty intimidating—especially here.”

Didn’t I know it.

Lowe turned us out into the hallway and my heart was thudding. Our footsteps echoed through the deserted corridor and I couldn’t help thinking about the green mile, a prisoner walking toward their death.

“Brings back a lot of memories, huh?” Will said. “Bet you were rollicking around here with your pigtails and your high-heeled shoes.”

I felt my upper lip curl. “I was going to high school, not a fantasy porn shoot. And my memories weren’t all good. I’m pretty sure if there’s witchcraft around here, it’s going to be right out in the open.”

“Why would you think that?”

I got a flash of my fifteen-year-old self, dwarfed by a backpack and a headgear, being Ping-Ponged between the popular girls as I tried to make my way to my locker.

“Just a gut thought.”

I pulled the file Sampson had given me from my shoulder bag as we walked the hall in silence.

“Here,” I whispered. “This is Cathy Ledwith’s class schedule. These two are Alyssa Rand’s from the last two years. Anything significant?”

“Yes. Absolutely. American teens are sadly behind in math. Look at this—juniors. Geometry One. A shame.”

I glared at Will, but kept the fact that Geometry One and I had shared more than a few tearful years together a secret. “No. I meant any crossover classes or teachers.”

He scanned the sheets. “They both took art with Mr. Fieldheart in 6B. Both third period last year, Alyssa second period this year. Both took Honors English in their junior year, both with the teacher you’re replacing.”

“Okay, okay, that gives us something to go on.” Will handed me back the pages. “What, exactly, does it give us to go on?”

“I haven’t figured that out yet. Let’s go upstairs and check out room 6B.”

We climbed the stairs and peered into classroom 6B, where a ring of girls sitting at easels turned to glare at us and no one adamantly jumped up and tried to turn us into toads.

“So much for your walk-around-and-stare-at-things plan.”

“I have other plans.”

“And they are . . . ?”

Saved by the bell.

Break time at Mercy High was a flurry of plaid skirts and high-pitched chatter, everyone stuffed shoulder to shoulder in the lunchroom as the weather outside rolled from an almost-blue to a definite, angry-looking gray.

Will branched off on his own and I paced the cafeteria aisle, infinitely glad that I could cross my arms in front of my chest rather than have to balance a tray while working to keep my eyes locked forward, away from the bullies of my youth. I kept my head slightly cocked, hoping to hear incriminating words pop from the multitude of conversations about clothes, nails, and this week’s pop star du jour, but conversations faded the closer I got, only to start up again as I passed. At the back of the cafeteria, I spotted a girl, sitting at a table full of students who had left an empty ring around her, a solid indicator that she was alone.

“Hey there,” I said with a wave.

The girl’s eyebrows appeared over the top of a book and then her dark eyes, small, darting. She pressed a fuzzy strand of deep brown hair behind one ear.

“Can I help you?”

I cleared my throat and reminded myself that I was the adult there, so my first instinct to fall all over myself and hide my head in my turtleneck sweater was not a good one.

“My name is Soph—Miss—Ms. Lawson. I’m going to be substituting here for a little while. Are you waiting for someone?”

The girl’s eyes swept over the ring of empty seats. “No.” She went back to reading.

“Mind if I sit?”

“It’s social suicide.”

I batted the air. “Been there, done that. So . . .”

“So.”

“You are?”

The girl sucked in a deep breath and laid her book down flat. She narrowed her eyes at me and shrunk her hands into the sleeves of her sweater. “Are you really a teacher?”

My heart started to thud and I surreptitiously looked around for Will, then attempted to send him a telepathic Abort! Abort! message. I had been undercover all of two hours and was already found out.

“Look, I’m not on drugs, all right? If you’re the sober companion or whatever, you’re at the wrong table.”

Relief crashed over me. “Sober companion? Me? No. No, I really am a—a teacher. Substitute. Totally. Here to teach. Things.”

The girl blinked at me, her dark eyes sizing me up, taking me in, and finally spitting me out. “Miranda.”

I blinked back. “Miranda?”

“I’m Miranda. Why are you sitting here?”

“Oh, well, I—” I picked at a dried lump of something with my thumbnail. “I just saw you sitting here and—”

“No,” Miranda groaned. “Why are you here in the cafeteria? Most teachers don’t interact with us unless it’s on the lesson plan.”

“Oh.” I straightened. “I guess I don’t really have anything in common with most of the other teachers.”

Miranda looked at me and nodded, her expression blank. She went back to her book.

“So, other than reading, what else is there to do around here?”

She lowered her book a few inches and cocked a brow, not quite understanding. “The usual, I guess. Basketball, soccer, clubs.”

I pounced. “Clubs! What about the clubs?”

Miranda slid a bookmark into her book and eyed me. “Regular clubs. French club, Spanish club.”

“Oh,” I said, nodding. Miranda rattled off a few more of the basics—astronomy club, a branch of Amnesty International, Lock and Key Club.

“Are there any others?” I asked. “Like, maybe not sanctioned by the school?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

I thought fast. “When I was in school, there were all the regular ones, too, but then sometimes some girls would start their own clubs—like stoners or—” I licked my lips, pausing. “Band.”

Miranda sat back, a reproachful look on her face. “You read the paper, huh? You want to know if there’s a coven here—if we’re all a bunch of crazy-assed teenage witches, killing the prom queen.”

I was taken aback by the cutting judgment in Miranda’s reply, but did my best to chuckle it off nonchalantly. “Well, no. I wouldn’t think that you’d kill—I mean, no, but yeah, of course I read the paper. But the coven? I don’t believe that. Not for a second. There were always girls in my grade who wore torn black fishnets and Doc Martens with their uniforms. A little black eyeliner and everyone thought they were witches.”

Miranda didn’t say anything and I felt pinned under her gaze. Finally, I relented and dropped my voice. “Do you know anything about any covens on campus?”

“No. I’m pretty sure you’re safe—no one’s going to turn you into a goat.” She stacked her books and slid a hand under them, then stood up. “I’ve got to get to class.”

Miranda left me sitting alone at the lunch table, feeling just as stupid as ever.

“Well, love, ready for this?” Will sunk into Miranda’s abandoned seat.

“Ready for what? We’ve checked out half the school and asked around and”—I made an O with my fingers and eyed Will through it—“zero.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“You found something?”

Will laced his fingers behind his head. “The geezer in the office agreed to lend me some yearbooks. I thought I would do a little research, see what I could scratch up.”

“The geezer?”

“The old bird.”

I frowned. “Heddy’s not a geezer. She’s . . . seasoned.”

Will shrugged and produced a bag of Skittles, picking out the orange ones.

I leaned forward. “So, did you find anything?”

I prayed Will would whip out last year’s yearbook, open to the photograph of last year’s coven, complete with names and addresses, so I could skirt Mercy High and leave these hallowed halls back in my nightmares where they belonged.

“Not yet. She’s getting them together for me.” Will cocked his head and the bell rang. He grinned and downed his whole bag of Skittles while my stomach dropped into my groin and threatened to expel everything I’d eaten in the last twenty years.

“Looks like we got some classes to teach. You okay? You’re looking kind of green.”

I just nodded, somehow certain that opening my mouth would lead to a spew of vomit or one of those blood-curdling banshee yells. Who ever thought it was a good idea to let me teach people?

My heart thundered in my ears as I stood up and followed Will. I closed my eyes and thought of Nina, of her glistening eyes as she danced around and told me these girls were lucky to have me. I was the adult.

“I’m the adult here,” I whispered under my breath.

“What’s that, love?”

“Uh, I’m just, uh, thinking about the case.”

Will stopped and turned to me, the back of his hand softly brushing over my cheek. His eyes held a sympathetic softness that I had never seen and my body started to melt into him. “Don’t be nervous, love. The girls are going to go crazy for you.” His voice dropped; it seemed slightly choked. “How could they not?”

He gave me a half smile, and when his soft palm left my cheek I was acutely aware of what wasn’t there.

Will left me in the hall with my traitorous body piqued, every synapse and nerve on high would-you-make-a-goddamn-decision-already alert. Which is why I nearly choked on my tongue—and launched my big-girl briefcase through the window—when I walked into my classroom and was met by thirteen pairs of made-up eyes, some curious, some scathingly judgmental, most bored.

I got through my first class without throwing up or making a complete fool of myself. I think I may have even passed as a semi-decent substitute teacher. The lunch bell rang at the same time Will knocked on my door frame.

“So,” he said, jamming his hands in his pockets. “Did you get through your morning classes okay, Ms. Lawson?”

The way Will’s lips curved over my name sent an inappropriate bolt of lightning right through me. “It was fine,” I stammered. “You?”

“Fine.” We stood there in an awkward beat of silence.

“We should finish our tour of the school, see if we can find anything.”

“Aha. This side of the school is the evil side. Cauldron in the gymnasium. Flying monkeys in the lockers.” He grinned, produced an apple from somewhere, and took a huge bite.

I couldn’t figure out whether I wanted to smack him or lick the tiny dribble of apple juice from his lip.

“Come on.”

We made the rounds, poking in empty classrooms and nonchalantly trying to overhear student conversations, ears piqued for anything suspicious, anything that sounded remotely like a teenage girl firmly entrenched in the dark arts. We learned that someone named Carlie was a slut, that no one used Facebook anymore, and that the boys from St. Ignatius were so sex-starved, they would buy you anything if you showed them the top of your boobs.

“I don’t know,” I said to Will. “I kind of think this might be a dead end. We should be out looking for Alyssa, not playing around here.”

Will may have answered me, but I couldn’t be certain because all sound was drowned out by the screeching wail of the fire alarm.

“Drill?” I yelled.

“Don’t think so,” Will said, shoving by me. “It’s outside.”

Heavy plumes of smoke were choking the clear glass windows.

“It’s coming from the faculty lot,” Will said, breaking into a run.

“I’m coming with you.”

Will looked over his shoulder. “It’s just a fire, love.”

“Could be supernatural. Could be a hellfire.”

“Just come on!”

When Will wasn’t guarding me and my amazing ability to seek out people who wanted me dead, he was a bona fide San Francisco fireman. I could have left him to it—probably should have—but I was half expecting a dragon to be on the other end of that huffing fire.

Heddy and Principal Lowe met us at the bottom of the stairs, Heddy thrusting a fire extinguisher into Will’s hands.

“We’ve made an announcement to the ladies that they’re to sit tight. The fire is out there, at the Dumpster. There’s no danger of it reaching the school.”

Will and Lowe went running toward the door and I followed behind them, panting like a puppy.

Note to self: focus on cardio this month.

The Dumpsters sat between the back lawn and the faculty parking lot. I briefly considered rolling my car up against the flaming Dumpster, using it as a fire wall, and, once it was heroically charred, claiming the insurance money. But alas, I was too much of a good girl and Will already had the fire extinguisher aimed, huge white clouds choking out the black ones snaking from the box.

Within minutes the whole thing was extinguished. A cheer went up from the girls pressed against the window; they hugged and shot thankful googly eyes at Will as though he had saved a bus full of puppies rather than a Dumpster full of now-charred cafeteria waste.

“Any idea on the cause of the fire?” Principal Lowe wanted to know.

Will handed him the expelled extinguisher and hiked up on the edge of the Dumpster, looking inside. “I won’t be able to really get in there until the smoke clears and everything cools off.”

“Okay, okay. I’m going to tell the girls that everything is fine. Will, I’ll take charge of your class for the rest of the hour, and Sophie, Heddy can look in on yours.”

I waited until Principal Lowe disappeared through the front of the school before tugging Will’s shirtsleeve. “So?”

“So what?”

“Does anything about the fire look suspicious?”

“Other than the fact that garbage rarely bursts into flame on its own? No, not really, though I won’t be able to tell until the heat dies down.”

I sighed. “We don’t have that kind of time! Here.” I snapped a branch from one of the trees lining grass. “Use this.”

“As what? A bippity-boppity?” Will bobbed the twig wand style.

“God! Do I have to do everything?”

I snatched the twig out of his hands and threw my weight against the rim of the Dumpster, the toes of my dress shoes thunking and squeaking on the dirty metal. “Can you at least give me a hand?”

Will gave me a good hard yank and I situated myself next to him on the side of the Dumpster. With my twig held fishing-pole style and our legs dangling into the Dumpster, we would have made a lovely—though twisted—Norman Rockwell painting.

I leaned slightly forward, stretching out one leg. “It’s not hot anymore.” I poked my stick into the blackened rubble and fished out the remains of something that had once been white. I pulled it closer to me, then delicately touched it with my index finger.

“Oh, see, not hot at all.”

“That’s brilliant, love.” He snatched my catch from the end of the stick, gave it a cursory look, then tossed it back in the box. “You’ve found a sock. Notify the queen.”

“Shut up, Will. We need to see what it was that started the fire. If there are witches here, they must be lighting candles. Maybe they tossed one in the trash.”

Will cocked a brow, lips pressed together. “No one is dim enough to throw away a lit candle.”

I craned my head, scanning the debris.

“You might want to watch yourself, love. It’s a bit moist out here—”

Will may have finished his sentence. I wasn’t sure, because I was face-first in yesterday’s cafeteria lunch, my ears, I was fairly certain, clogged with some sort of maggot-type brain eating insect.

“Ugh! Oh, God!” I kicked and dog paddled my way through a mass of spaghetti, then found my footing on a garbage bag filled with something hard.

“Find any clues?” Will’s grin was smug.

I grabbed a handful of spaghetti and tossed it at him.

He dodged it. “Now that’s just mean!” He leaned down and offered me a hand. “Come on, out with you. There’s nothing in there but garbage. Probably some of the tough birds were out here smoking.”

I tried to move toward him, but something was wrapped around my right foot. “I’m stuck on something.”

“It’s probably a Salisbury steak or something. Shake it off.”

“I can’t. It’s stuck. It’s got me.”

A little niggle of panic shot through me as I unsuccessfully tried to free my foot. My heartbeat sped up. I truly never considered my demise could be at the behest of a three-day-old hunk of cafeteria meat.

Will hopped into the Dumpster with me, though he landed on a spaghetti-free, solid-looking bag across from me. “Take my hand and I’ll pull you free.”

“What if it’s some kind of animal? What if it eats my leg?”

He clamped down on my wrist. “I’m willing to risk that.”

I gritted my teeth while he yanked; my foot came free and so did I, barreling into Will’s chest and laying us both out on a black garbage bag, ash raining down around us like snowflakes.

“Still have your foot?”

I yanked my leg up and examined it. “It wasn’t Salisbury steak,” I said, yanking the cloth wrapped around my foot. “It was this.”

Will pulled us both to standing and climbed out of the Dumpster. I followed him.

“And what exactly is that?”

“It’s fabric. Or the remains of fabric.” I turned the charred remains in my hands. “Here’s a zipper. Oh, and a tag.”

Something broke inside of me.

I felt my whole face blanch, felt my chest tighten as my heart seized up. I gripped the fabric, holding it so hard that my nails bored into my palms.

“It’s—it was—a skirt. From a uniform. A uniform from here.” I licked my impossibly dry lips. “Will, someone was trying to burn this uniform.”

Will blinked at me, then disappeared back into the Dumpster.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m looking for whatever else remains of that uniform.” He paused his mad shuffle through the trash, but didn’t look at me. “Or whoever owns it.”

I gently laid the remains of the once grey tweed skirt aside, touching the fabric gently as though showing this inanimate object a moment of tenderness could soften the blow for its owner.

“Find anything yet?” I asked, once I got back in the Dumpster.

“No. I don’t know if that’s bad or good.” He stepped back. “This is where the fire was centered. See that?”

He pointed to a blackened circle, then toed the small mountain of grey-white ash in its center.

“I was here when I found the skirt,” I said, using my hands to dig through the spaghetti. The stench was overwhelming—burnt plastic and garbage—but I was so focused on finding the rest of the charred uniform—and hopefully not the girl who had worn it—that I didn’t care.

“Wait.” My hand closed around something soft and I pulled. A stretch of fabric that used to be white slid through the debris. I winced. “It’s a blouse. Part of it.”

Will leaned in. “It’s not burned.”

“No. It’s torn.” I rubbed my finger across the sodden, frayed edge of the shirt and pulled back when something sliced across my flesh. “Ow!”

“Something get you?” He took my hand in his and rubbed the tucked tail of his shirt over my thumb. “You’re bleeding. That’s not good.”

“What got me?”

Will took the fabric scrap from my hand, then produced a small, filthy pin attached at what looked to be the shirt’s collar. He rubbed the muck from the pin and I could see that it was made of a cheap gold fashioned into a tiny lock with a key inside.

I took the fabric and examined the pin. “It’s a Lock and Key pin. It’s a club on campus. Every member gets one of them.”

I laid the piece of fabric on the end of the Dumpster, smoothing it out and shining up the pin. It glinted in the sunlight and my heart ached. Lock and Key was a club you had to be admitted into— only students with the best grades and community service records were allowed and it looked great on Ivy League applications. When I was at Mercy, Lock and Key was basically a country club for the already perfect, a tiny golden promise to keep the classes pure.

“What’s this?” Will yanked something then stood upright, offering it to me. My heart thudded.

“It’s a girl’s shoe.”

His face was sallow, his eyes glassy and rimmed with red. “You found a sock earlier.”

Tears pricked behind my eyes, but I wouldn’t let them fall. “Keep searching.”

We worked in frenzied silence, tearing open bags and tossing aside contents, and when there was nothing left to go through, we climbed over the side of the Dumpster one last time. I laid the shoe next to the remains of the skirt and blouse.

“Well, there was no body in there, so I suppose that’s good.”

“And we don’t even know who this skirt belonged to. It could be anyone. We should still report it to the police, though. Call Alex?”

“Sure,” I said, trying my best to convince myself. “But the whole thing could be nothing at all. Just common . . . uniform . . . burning.”

Will’s eyes flashed. I appreciated him not trying to rush me to the obvious.

“I mean, this shoe could be—” I stopped, biting off my words, keeping them back with my gritted teeth. Though the sole was melted completely on one side, it was untouched on the other. Untouched by fire, at least.

“Alyssa,” I whispered. I fingered the name drawn in fat letters and decorated with ballpoint ink stars and hearts. “Someone was trying to get rid of evidence.”