Natalie could feel the blood thundering in her ears as she left the lake behind and took a right onto Crenshaw Road, which led to the quiet neighborhood where her sister lived. She pulled into the driveway and parked behind Grace’s Mini Cooper.
Once Grace and Ellie were gathered in the living room, Natalie took out the semiburnt pages she’d rescued from the fire pit and unfolded them on the coffee table, pressing them flat. “I found these today.”
“What are they?” Grace leaned forward.
“Ellie,” Natalie said. “Why don’t you explain to your mother?”
Ellie shrank from them both. Her pale blue T-shirt read COLLEGE-BOUND.
“What’s going on?” The strain showed on Grace’s face. “What is this?”
“Ellie and Justin Fowler exchanged a couple of letters, Grace. These partially burnt pages are all from Justin to Ellie.”
“My God, Ellie? Is this true?” Grace picked up one of the pages and read a few lines. Then she sat back with her mouth open, utterly blown away.
Ellie studied her mother with trepidation, a light sweat coating her upper lip.
“Why on earth would you do such a thing?” Grace asked, looking more fragile than Natalie had ever seen her.
“Mom, please…”
“You wrote letters to him in prison?”
Ellie glanced at the stationery and cringed. “It was for a school report.”
“A report? Is this some kind of joke?”
“I didn’t think he’d write me back,” she protested weakly.
Grace turned to Natalie. “Where’d you get these? Why are they burnt?”
“India, Berkley, and Sadie lit them on fire,” Natalie explained.
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Some sort of ritual. They were chanting.”
“Ellie, how did your friends get these letters?” Grace demanded. “They’re addressed to you. I don’t understand. I’ve tried my whole life to keep you safe. How could you do something like this without telling me?”
“Mom, please. It’s no big deal.”
“No big deal?” she repeated angrily.
Ellie’s face grew ashen.
“Grace, can I talk to her?” Natalie asked.
“Go ahead,” Grace said, tears glistening in her eyes.
Natalie gave her niece her undivided attention. “Ellie, tell me what happened.”
The girl took a moment to catch her breath. “I was curious,” she confessed, “about how Aunt Willow died. I mean, Mom already explained it to me, but I wanted to find out for myself. So I looked him up online and read everything I could about the trial, and it’s pretty awful. But then I found a few articles about him being locked up in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, and so—”
“Oh God.” Grace dropped the letter on the coffee table.
“Mom, there’s proof on his lawyer’s blog … proof of his innocence and police corruption. You should read it sometime. At least there should be another trial, but the DA refuses to consider it. Anyway, I told India about it, and she said I should write to him. I didn’t think he’d write back, but he did. So I wrote to him again. But after the third time, I freaked out a little, and so I stopped.”
“When was this?” Natalie asked.
“Last October. But Justin kept sending me letters. I had to check the mailbox every day after school before Mom got home.” Ellie glanced at her mother and blushed. “Mom, I’m really sorry.”
“How many times did he write to you?” Natalie asked.
“Eight or nine.”
“And what did you do with his letters?”
“I gave them to India,” she admitted.
“Why?”
“Because … she said they were powerful.”
“Powerful?” Grace gasped. “He stabbed your aunt Willow twenty-seven times. My God, don’t you dare feel sympathy for that bastard. Nobody’s going to weep for Justin Fowler when he’s gone. I mean … how could this happen? I didn’t raise you to act this way.”
“At least it’s out in the open,” Natalie said quietly, trying to keep everyone calm.
After a choked-up moment, Grace said, “Excuse me. I’ll be right back.” She went upstairs. The door to the master bedroom thumped shut.
Once they were alone together, Natalie asked Ellie, “You told me you quit the coven right after Ms. Buckner died. Why did you quit at that moment?”
Ellie was looking stunned, dazed—but she sounded relieved to be unburdening herself. “Being a witch was fun for a while, but then…” Tears spilled down her cheeks. “After Ms. Buckner died, it stopped being fun anymore. Besides, I didn’t think anything bad was going to happen to her … otherwise I never would’ve done it.”
“Done what?”
Ellie whispered, “Put a death spell on her.”
“A death spell?” Natalie repeated, stunned to hear these words coming from her niece’s mouth. “Are you talking about the poppet doll?”
She nodded. “We all made it together. India, Berkley, Sadie, and me.”
“And you buried it in Daisy’s backyard? When?”
“About six months ago. We snuck over there when nobody was home.”
“Why?” Natalie asked, struggling to understand.
“Because we wanted to curse her. We all hated her,” Ellie admitted.
“Hated Daisy? Why?”
Ellie took a sharp breath, eyes shiny with innocence. “Because Mr. Hathaway was in love with her. And India said we should do something about it.”
Natalie’s heart pulsed with a dull ache. She was losing altitude fast. “So you put a death curse on Ms. Buckner because you were jealous of her?”
The girl’s face crumpled with remorse. “It’s not like we expected anything to happen. We only wished she was dead. And we definitely didn’t kill her, Aunt Natalie, I promise. We felt horrible about it when we heard the news.”
“And you did this because you had a crush on Mr. Hathaway?”
She took a swipe at her tears and nodded glumly. “We loved him.”
“All of you? You all wanted Daisy to die?”
Her voice wobbled. “She was fucking him.”
Natalie drew back. “How do you know?”
“Everybody knows. The whole school knows. You could tell by the way he looked at her. The way he talked to her.” Fresh tears scaled down Ellie’s cheeks, and she brushed them away.
Natalie couldn’t square the circle. She felt a throbbing pain inside her head. “Ellie, promise me you didn’t have anything to do with her death. Tell me the absolute truth.”
“I would never do anything like that,” Ellie protested.
“What about India?”
She burst into tears. She collapsed on the arm of the chair and sobbed.
Natalie was overcome with pity. She moved closer to her niece and rested her hand on the girl’s trembling shoulder. “Shh. Everything’s going to be all right. Please stop crying.” She waited for the sobbing to subside, terribly conflicted. Afraid for Ellie, but at the same time relieved. Maybe now the truth could come out. Maybe now the case could be solved. But her niece couldn’t possibly be involved. Could she?
Ellie regained her composure and gazed at Natalie through a glaze of anguish. “India threatened to put a hex on me if I didn’t write to Justin. She said she’d ruin my life.”
“Why?” Natalie asked.
Grace was standing at the bottom of the stairs, holding her leather bag and looking at her daughter. “India threatened you?”
Ellie hunkered into herself, curling up in the wide embrace of the armchair.
“Why did India threaten you?” Natalie pressed. “Why were Justin’s letters so important to her?”
“I don’t know,” Ellie insisted. “But she made me do it.”
Natalie suspected that all four girls, including Ellie, had wanted to see what would happen if she wrote to Justin Fowler in prison. She figured her niece was attempting to push the blame away from herself.
Grace sat down on the sofa and turned to Natalie with agonized eyes. “How can this be?”
“Ellie, do you know who killed Ms. Buckner?” Natalie asked, pressing the point.
“They’re all saying Riley did it,” she answered flatly.
“What about India? Could she or Berkley have had anything to do with it?”
“No.” She recoiled. “None of us had anything to do with it.”
“Are you sure?”
Doubt creased her brow. “Sadie and I were really sad after it happened. We were both shaking. We couldn’t help thinking … maybe those curses worked? Sadie and I felt terrible about it, but India and Berkley … they were cracking jokes. Almost as if they were glad she was dead. That’s why I quit the coven.”
“The day after Ms. Buckner died? Last Thursday?”
“I couldn’t deal with it.”
“Do you think Riley killed her? Do you think he might’ve done it for India?”
“I don’t know.” She blinked as if she hadn’t thought of that before.
“What’s so appealing about him? Mr. Hathaway?”
Ellie brightened a little. “He’s different from most of our teachers. He doesn’t lecture you for fifty boring minutes. He says, ‘Forget the notes. Eyes and ears, people.’” She warmed to her topic. “Once, he put up a Nerf basketball hoop in the back of class, and we shot baskets while reciting poetry. It was fun. He makes things exciting. He cares about us.”
“Tell me where you were last Wednesday,” Natalie said.
“Over at Berkley’s.”
“Doing what exactly? Tell me everything.”
Ellie glanced warily at her mother.
“Could you give us a second, Grace?” Natalie asked.
Grace bit her lower lip, trying to contain her fear. She got up from the sofa, red-faced, and went into the kitchen.
Once she was gone, Ellie admitted softly, “Riley dropped by.”
“He dropped by, and then what?” Natalie coaxed. “What did he do?”
“I don’t know. I had to leave, because of the deathiversary. But Riley came over around four thirty, and I left a little before five. I rode my bike home.”
“What happened between four thirty and five?”
She wiped her nose with the back of her hand and said, “We just talked.”
“Was Riley part of the coven?”
“No.” She shook her head. “Girls only.”
“But he’s into witchcraft?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes India would let the boys hang out with us. But other times, she didn’t want them around. She changes her mind a lot. Once, she put a curse on Riley because he sold her a bag with too many twigs. She said it was karma.”
“So then, India does buy her drugs from him?”
Ellie cringed. “She doesn’t do hard drugs.”
“Weed? A couple of joints?”
“Ellie, don’t tell me you smoke pot,” Grace said, stepping into the living room.
“Mom, no,” Ellie pleaded, emotionally fragile. “I never hold the smoke in my lungs. Same with drinking, like I told you.”
“Okay, that’s enough, sweetie.” Grace went over to her and put a hand on her daughter’s arm. “Stop talking.”
“Why?” Ellie asked. “What’s wrong?”
“Natalie, I’m sorry,” Grace said. “You have to go.”
“But, Mom…”
“Don’t say another word, Ellie. Go upstairs. Now.”
Ellie gave her aunt a hesitant look before hurrying up the stairs.
“Sorry, Natalie,” Grace said, escorting her to the door. “But I can’t let you continue to grill her like this.”
“Grace, think about it. I’m trying to find out who killed your best friend.”
“I know, but you have to understand. My daughter needs me right now,” she said. “I won’t always be able to protect her from all the bad things in the world, but I can protect her now. Right now, when she’s the most vulnerable. Good night,” she said, closing the door in Natalie’s face.