“If Janet is eliminated, he’ll let me be one of his Underlings,” Ellie said, her eyes gleaming in the blue light reflecting off her laptop screen in the dark.
Charlie and Sienna stood behind Ellie, staring at the screen.
Looking at the computer screen showing Shadow Man’s eerie mansion, Charlie wasn’t sure the sleepover was a good idea. Not if this is what they were going to do all night.
“Look at his new message,” Ellie said in a whisper.
The message stood at the bottom of the screen blinking, as if waiting for Ellie to respond.
“Eliminate her tonight.”
“Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.” Ellie jumped out of her desk chair and spun around her room like a dervish, pulling at her long hair as if she were distraught, but her voice was filled with excitement and she couldn’t stop the grin that kept spreading across her face.
She stopped and grabbed Sienna’s shoulders, leaning in toward her face until they were only inches away. “If I do this, he’ll make me an Underling.” She enunciated each word, infusing it with drama. “An Underling. Do you know what that means?”
Sienna looked baffled and tried to shoot a glance at Charlie but Ellie jerked her back. “It means I can leave this dump and go live in his mansion. That’s what it means. They play Minecraft all day. There are no rules. No school. Nothing. He’s like the best uncle ever.”
Charlie couldn’t sit back any longer. She touched Ellie’s elbow. Ellie jumped as if she’d been shocked. “Ellie, you can’t kill someone. Not really. It’s just a make-believe world. He doesn’t really mean it. He’s not even real.”
Ellie backed up, eyes wide, as if Charlie had slapped her. Then her eyes narrowed and her mouth grew small. “You are just jealous, Charlie Dawson.” She turned her back and sat down at the desk again, typing wildly. “You wish he would write to you like he writes to me.”
Charlie and Sienna exchanged glances. But when Charlie rolled her eyes, Sienna looked down at her sneakers and then cleared her throat and in a small voice said, “He sent her something. In the mail.”
“What?” There were so many things wrong with what Sienna just said, Charlie didn’t even know where to start. “You gave him your address? He sent something? What?”
In the dark computer monitor screen, Charlie saw Ellie’s face reflected. For a second, it seemed wavy and distorted in rage, but when Ellie tossed her hair and turned, her lips formed a tight smile. “It was supposed to be a secret,” She shot a glare at Sienna who swallowed and looked away. “But I guess you need proof to believe he exists.”
Deep in her closet, buried under clothes and shoes and old stuffed animals, Ellie brought out a small pink tote bag and pulled out a yellow padded envelope from inside. She cleared a space on her bed and patted each side of her for Sienna and Charlie to sit.
Charlie shook her head, but Sienna sat obediently.
From where she stood, Charlie could see the address in block letters:
Ellie Hatton
23 Skyline Drive
Sanctuary, CA 95969
Ellie flipped the envelope before Charlie saw any more of the front.
Slowly, Ellie slid her fingers along the edge of the envelope to open it and stuck her entire hand in. Charlie could see Ellie’s fingers close around something inside the envelope. Ellie closed her eyes for a second, feeling whatever it was she held in her hand and then withdrew it millimeter by millimeter. At first, Charlie didn’t know what it was. Something dark and shiny in Ellie’s fist. But then Ellie pushed a button and a gleaming blade sprung from the metal.
Sienna gasped and scooted away. All the moisture was sucked from Charlie’s mouth. She reached for her backpack and took out her inhaler, taking a few puffs.
“Why do you have to use that? It’s just a knife,” Ellie scoffed.
“He sent you that?”
Ellie nodded with a triumphant smile. Waving the knife, she laughed. “You can’t say a word, Charlie. Now that you know about it—” she glared at Sienna. “We have to make a blood pact not to say anything. He could go to jail for sending me this, you know.”
“Aren’t you worried your dad or Janet’s going to find it?” Sienna asked. “What if she was cleaning your room or something and saw it?”
Ellie tossed her head and laughed. “I don’t normally keep it in my closet, silly. I have a secret hiding place nobody knows about where I keep it.”
Sienna’s eyes grew wide. “Where? Can you at least tell me?”
“No.” Ellie rolled her eyes. “If I told you, then it wouldn’t be a secret place, would it?”
Clutching the knife, Ellie came closer to Charlie. “We have to make a blood pact not to tell.”
Charlie didn’t want to but she backed up a few steps and tried to act casual as she turned away pretending to look at a poster of the movie, “I Know What You Did Last Summer.” The poster didn’t show anything scary—just teenage faces in shadows looking scared—but even seeing the poster freaked Charlie out.
“How did you get it before your mom … stepmom … and dad? What if they got to the mail before you?”
Charlie waited for Ellie’s answer.
For a split second, Ellie’s eyes grew hard, but then she gave that same tight little smile.
“He made sure it would get here during the week when I have school and am home first. He told me that.”
Sienna, tired of not being the center of her friends’ attentions, spoke loudly. “Are you going to kill her tonight then?”
Charlie looked in disbelief at her friend. Sienna was buying into this crap now, too.
Ellie bounced over to where Sienna sat on the bed. “I don’t know.” She breathed heavily. “I think so. I mean, I don’t know. I told him I would.”
“How are you going to do it?” Sienna said her eyes gleaming in a way Charlie had never seen.
“My dad has poker tonight with the mayor and police chief so I could go in while she’s sleeping and stab her and then say someone broke into the house.”
“What about us?” Charlie said. She couldn’t hide the astonishment from her voice.
“That’s what I’m not sure about,” Ellie said her face flushed. She fingered one of her candles, tilting them so the flames flickered and the wax swirled inside the glass holder. “I thought we could brainstorm a way that could explain why the killer left the three of us alone. Also, maybe we could start a fire to hide the evidence and say we had to run out of the house because of the fire.”
“Let’s Google it,” Sienna said.
Ellie and Sienna huddled in front of the computer screen, Googling things like “intruder” and “how to kill someone with a knife” and “covering up a murder.”
Charlie sat on the bed watching. Sienna obviously had bought into this crazy stuff, but Charlie couldn’t let them think it was normal or okay. But she knew she was drawing a line. It would be so easy to not say anything and go along with Ellie. That’s what Sienna was doing. But that’s what Sienna had done ever since Ellie moved to town.
“It says here ‘If the knife has a razor edge and is good quality it can easily cut flesh and shred muscle and even sever bone if you practice slashing,” Ellie said. “It could kill someone right away if they didn’t get medical help.” Ellie pretended to practice slashing with the knife closed. Charlie drew back in horror.
But it was Sienna’s girlish voice reading from the page, that did it: “It says through the back into the kidney and lungs, but how would you know where the kidney is and if it goes through the lungs or not? This seems too hard. If she doesn’t die right away, what then?”
Hearing her best friend from first grade say those words was too much. Charlie reached down and scooped up her backpack.
“I gotta go.”
Ellie jumped up so fast that the orange plastic chair she was sitting on overturned. Within two seconds, she had pressed Charlie up against the bedroom door. “You can’t go.” Ellie’s eyes were glazed, her pupils massive. Her breath smelled like Cheetos. “You’re part of this now.”
Charlie tried to speak, but a thick wad of something was stuck in her throat, preventing the words from coming and making her swallow madly to shove it back down.
“Put your bag down.” Ellie sounded like a stranger. A tiny bit of spray from her mouth hit Charlie’s cheek. Charlie wanted to wipe it off, but Ellie had her arms pinned against the door.
The two girls stared at one another. Charlie’s body began to shake. Finally, the gleam left Ellie’s eyes and her face grew slack. She looked bored. The glimmer in her eyes was gone leaving them looking lifeless.
“Fine. We were just joking anyway, weren’t we Sienna?”
Over Ellie’s shoulder, Charlie watched as Sienna’s head wobbled. “Um, yeah. Just a joke.” Her voice shook.
Ellie backed away. “Come on. Let’s join games on Minecraft.”
As Ellie plopped in her beanbag chair and picked up her iPad, Charlie was tempted. For a second, she wanted to throw her bag down, flop on the bed, munch chips, and play Minecraft with her two best friends. She wanted to forget everything that had just happened. But she couldn’t. Without saying a word, she turned the doorknob and slipped out without looking back.