It makes no difference that Frederick said no one can hear us—I scream at the top of my lungs.
I scream until my lungs ache and my veins fill to bursting and my face is as hot as a furnace. I scream until I have no breath left and I can’t scream anymore.
But no one comes.
“Done?” Frederick saunters in front of the desk, one shiny alligator shoe in front of the other. “As promised, no one can hear you. See, I’m not much of a liar, Indigo. That’s something you’ll learn about me. I may kill people for fun, but lying? That’s something I’m strictly against.”
Here I am, literally struggling to breathe, while Paige just stares ahead like an extra from Night of the Living Dead, completely oblivious that she’s seconds away from death herself.
I dart a glance at the door again.
“Locked.” Frederick leans against the desk and picks his teeth with a dirty fingernail. “Go ahead and try if you like.”
I do like. The chair tips back as I jump up and bolt for the door. There are scuffling noises behind me.
“Just let her get it out of her system,” Frederick says.
I wrench the knob from left to right.
No, no, no, how can it be locked from the inside? I pound on the door with both fists, rattling the wood in its frame. I can see Mrs. Malone’s silhouette on the other side of the window, can actually hear her muffled small talk with Mrs. Fields, but they can’t hear me. It’s as if I don’t exist. I let out an anguished groan and lean my forehead against the cool glass.
“Ready to start talking?” Frederick asks.
I whimper into the door.
“You’re wasting my time, Indigo. Have a seat and we can start negotiations.” A thump behind me indicates he has righted the tipped-over chair.
I don’t see any other option, so I turn around. Frederick gives a nod of encouragement, his hand gripping the back of the chair. I stumble over somehow and slump back into it.
“Good girl,” he says, patting me on the head. “Now tell me about the Bible.”
I close my eyes and press my lips together to stop them from trembling, tasting the salt of fresh tears.
A shadow darkens the room. I open my eyes to find Frederick standing in front me, straightened to his full height. Slowly, he unbuttons his suit jacket. I don’t take my eyes from him as he shrugs out of his jacket, revealing a crisp white button-down worn under one of those gun holsters that look like suspenders. My pulse races erratically. Frederick looks around for somewhere to put his jacket, before resting it on Paige’s lap. When he faces me again, he seems to notice the focus of my attention.
“You don’t know this about me,” he says, walking slowly in front of my chair like a wolf stalking its prey. “But I’m something of a film buff. Isn’t that right, Leo?”
Leo grunts.
“I usually stick to the classics, but there are a few modern films that I really enjoy. Take Reservoir Dogs, for example.” He gestures to his apparatus, as if that explains why he’s wearing it.
“Oh, come on,” he says. “You’ve never seen Reservoir Dogs? Quentin Tarantino?” He clucks his tongue in admonishment, wagging a long finger at my nose. “You kids have no taste these days. Now, if you’d seen Reservoir Dogs, you’d know that it contains one of the best torture scenes in American cinema.”
I’m suddenly so nauseated I could puke.
“Yes,” Frederick continues. “Mr. Blonde cuts off this guy’s ear and douses him with gasoline. Can you imagine? Sonofabitch would sting. But that’s not even the best part. See, the best part comes before he cuts the ear off. Mr. Blonde dances around the garage, to that Stealers Wheel song—Leo, what’s that song called?”
“ ‘Stuck in the Middle with You,’ ” Leo says in a bored tone, as if this is a performance he’s played a part in many times before.
“Ah, that’s right,” Frederick says, a smile spreading across his face. “Great song. So, as I was saying, this Mr. Blonde character, he dances around the garage to ‘Stuck in the Middle with You,’ holding this straight razor. All the while this guy’s bound to a chair and gagged. And Mr. Blonde wears a holster just like this one.” He laughs self-deprecatingly, running a finger under the straps. “Kitschy, I know, but I like it.”
Leo heaves a sigh.
Frederick starts pacing again, only to stop suddenly and face me. “Hey, I know! We can reenact the scene!” A huge smile lights up his face. He looks at his hand, and a straight blade appears there, the metal glinting in the harsh light of the office. “And look, I just happen to have props!”
“Okay!” I blurt out. “I’m ready to talk.”
“Ahhh”—Frederick looks at Leo—“she’s changed her mind!”
They both raise their hands, palms up, making mock-shocked faces at each other.
I pretend they haven’t rattled me and push my shoulders back. “Promise me that if I tell you the truth, you’ll let us go.”
Frederick laughs. “Or I could just read your mind and kill you both anyway. Why should I make any promises? I’ve never been a promise-making kind of man, Indigo. And this goes back to my aversion to lying. I make a promise and I might have to break it. Then what am I but a dirty old liar? You see the problem, right?”
Suddenly I can’t breathe. Because I just know that I’m not making it out of this office alive. I’m going to die. I’m going to have my ear cut off and be doused with gasoline and I’m going to die. I’ll never eat another bowl of Cocoa Puffs, never cheer the Renegades on to a Friday-night win, never watch reruns of Fringe with Mom on a Sunday night, never feel Devon’s lips brush against mine, never—
“Leo?” Frederick says. “Kill them.”
“No!” I rush to stand in front of Paige. “The book really is a family heirloom—that part is true. But it’s not a regular Bible.” The words tumble out on top of each other in my hurry to stop him. “It’s a witchcraft bible.”
Frederick’s lip twitches, but he is otherwise stock-still.
“It’s just a bunch of stuff written in Latin,” I continue, taking an instinctive step backward. “I don’t even know what it means.”
Frederick waves a hand toward Paige and me in a “go ahead” gesture.
I whip my head back and forth, looking between the two men, dread and fear competing for priority in my body. “You promised. Y-you said.”
“I promised nothing,” Frederick says. “Nonetheless, I don’t think I’ll kill you just yet. Leo, can I get a hand?”
Leo rises.
I back up farther, and my heels run into Paige’s chair. “What are you doing?”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Leo says, taking purposefully slow strides toward me. “I won’t erase all your memories. Just a day or so’s worth. No big deal.” A grin pulls up one side of his lips, the other frozen with scar tissue. He stops abruptly in front of me and points a crooked finger directly between my eyes, focusing a stare down the straight line of his raised arm. That’s when I notice that his eyes are black. Not dark brown, but black. My heart skips a beat.
“You’re scared now,” Leo says. “But just think, in a few minutes you won’t remember this whole mess. Not the dead body you saw in the street, not Frederick and me. Hell, not even what went on in this office.” He winks, and a chill shudders through me.
Frederick starts for the door. “Make it quick. I haven’t got all day.”
I shield my face, tracking the sound of Frederick’s footsteps across the room. The door opens, and a rush of noises—the hum of the paper copier, the squeak of rubber soles on linoleum, the distant chatter of students—penetrates the quiet office. “Mrs. Malone, my partner is just wrapping things up with the girls—”
The door clicks shut, and the room is quiet again. And then everything goes white.
I blink my eyes and find myself sitting in a wooden chair across from a big mahogany desk. Sunlight slants in through half-cracked venetian blinds. Framed pictures of generic-looking blond children and a nameplate reading MRS. MALONE are on the desk, and the air is scented with middle-aged woman perfume.
All signs point to me being in the principal’s office, yet I have no clue why I’m here. Or how I got here. Or why Paige is sitting next to me.
My heart races. Suddenly the hours of Internet research I conducted six years ago after the backyard hole-digging incident when Mom’s Bible went missing come crashing back into my mind. From what I remember, most crazy diseases run in families. And what is happening now most definitely qualifies as crazy.
“Indie?” Paige says, leaning across to look at me, her forehead creased with concern.
A swoosh of air announces Mrs. Malone’s entrance.
“Hello, girls. Sorry to keep you waiting.” Mrs. Malone strides behind her desk, eyes peeled back in the permanently surprised expression she wears from too much Botox. She adjusts her pencil skirt before sitting in the big leather chair. She flips through a file. Pushes back the perfectly curled, dyed-red hair that frames her face. Taps the eraser end of a pencil on her desk.
“Did we do something wrong?” Paige prompts nervously.
“Wrong?” Mrs. Malone repeats, flipping through the file again.
My cell phone buzzes loudly in my purse. Dammit, I forgot to put it on silent. Mrs. Malone cuts me a disapproving glare and launches into an agonizingly boring fifteen-minute lecture on cell-phone use in school. When she finally excuses us just in time for the end-of-lunch bell to ring, I’m so relieved to get out of there that I don’t piece together that she never did tell us why we were called to her office in the first place until I’m halfway down the hall. Like I would question her anyway, no matter how strange the whole affair. When you escape from the principal’s office, you don’t question your luck.
I decide I’m being paranoid, and wipe the entire unpleasant incident from my memory. It didn’t happen. There.
Between my mental instability, getting my books from my locker, and a quick make-out sesh with Devon by the water fountain, I forget all about the missed call in Mrs. Malone’s office until I’m deep in another agonizingly boring lecture in history class. I sneak a peek at the caller ID under my desk. Mom. I stow my phone away. She didn’t call back, so it must not have been important.