CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“THAT WAS SUCH a rush,” I crowed as Aveda and I returned to our room. It was fully night now, and we’d had to come in from the freezing cold. I was still determined to help Pippa, but I wasn’t sure how yet. My rageful instinct was to set Richard on fire, and I was pretty sure that wouldn’t be helpful. “Thanks for supporting me through that.”
“Any time.” She yawned and flopped down on her bed. “You were amazing. But I just realized we sort of got distracted from what we were actually going to talk to them about. I suppose it can wait until tomorrow. God, I am spent.”
“Me too—except I’m also starving,” I said, my stomach letting out a protesting growl. “Maybe I’ll go to Taco Bell again.”
I rummaged around on the nightstand and pulled my wallet free from the stack of books and papers that had accumulated over our past week as college students. Several pages of the donor list fell to the floor and I reached down to pick them up.
“No, Evie, no bending!” Aveda scolded, hopping up from her bed.
“You just watched me climb up a ladder of questionable structural integrity in very high heels so I could throw a plate at the ground, but bending is where you draw the line?” I said, returning the papers to the nightstand. I hesitated on the top sheet, Horatio Morales’s name jumping out at me again. “Huh . . .” I said, tapping my finger against the paper. Something niggled at the back of my brain, something I hadn’t quite thought of before. “Hey, Annie—why do you think Julie Vũ wanted us to track down Victoria? Yes, Victoria was treated horribly by the college, but what would exposing that gain? She still graduated, she still has a happy ending with Jocelyn, and she still gives very generously to the school. What’s the scandal? If anything, it’s way less scandalous than the double death ghost story that’s persisted for decades.”
“True,” Aveda said, taking the paper from me. “Was there something else Julie Vũ wanted us to find, do you think? Here . . .” She shuffled some papers around and handed me a stack. “Why don’t you take a look at the sections I reviewed the other night—as a former Morgan girl, maybe you’ll see something I didn’t.”
I skimmed over the papers, the names and numbers blurring together again. What was I looking for?
In the middle of the third sheet, I finally saw it. It was something I should have seen all along.
“Oh,” I said, the realization slowly seeping into my brain space. “Holy shit.”
“What?” Aveda said, peering over my shoulder.
I stabbed an index finger at the names that had jumped out at me.
Percival and Eloise Carmichael
“So?” Aveda said. “What’s so noteworthy about these people, besides the fact that they have the most pretentious rich white people names possible?”
“Those,” I said, stabbing the paper again, “are Richard’s parents.”
“What?” Aveda squeaked. “I thought his last name was Covington—also pretty pretentious, by the way.”
“He goes by his mother’s maiden name,” I said. “He says it’s some kind of feminist reclaiming, but it’s actually so people don’t know he’s part of the Carmichaels, one of the oldest and wealthiest families in high society San Francisco. He doesn’t want anyone to think he’s gotten to where he is because of his family’s money.”
“Even though that’s totally why he’s gotten to where he is,” Aveda said, glaring at the donor list. “I mean, he’s been teaching here for how long, and according to you isn’t very good at it? And now we find out that his parents are secretly donating large sums of money to the college? Wow, not suspicious at all.”
“Sounds like I need to pay him a little visit after all,” I said, plucking the sheet with Richard’s parents’ names free from the papers and folding it up. “It might be a bit late at night for a consultation about Pippa’s grades, but it’s definitely not too late for this.”
“Is this something you want to handle on your own?” Aveda said, looking at me earnestly. “Since Richard isn’t just any old garden variety d-bag—he’s your d-bag. The one you just finally let out all your rage about. He may be more likely to open up to just you and this could be an important step for your sense of closure around your experience here.”
“Wow,” I said, grinning at her. “That’s so thoughtful and sensitive of you. Look how far you’ve come as a co-heroine trying to have a healthy and fruitful relationship with your fellow co-heroine. I’m impressed.”
“I’m good at a lot of things, Evie,” Aveda said, rolling her eyes. “I just have to set my mind to it. I mean, by the time we’re done here, I’ll probably qualify for a Biology PhD or something.”
“Don’t think that’s how it works, but go you for trying,” I said, laughing a little. “And, yes. I think I would like to handle this on my own.” I straightened my spine and nodded at the paper, feeling that sense of strength and resolve rise in my chest. It was like being on the top rung of the ladder again, getting ready to throw my plate.
“Love it.” Aveda beamed. “And look at you, so much more assertive and confident than when we first started this heroing gig. Maybe you’ll also qualify for a Biology PhD.”
“Definitely sure that’s not how it works,” I said.
I took a deep breath as I prepared to knock on Richard’s cottage door. I’d strategized on the short walk over (which had taken longer than expected because I was still wearing my Sexy Professor outfit, and the heels insisted on sinking into the grass with every other step—definitely not as empowering as the clack against the concrete). I didn’t think whipping out the list, pointing to his parents’ names, and demanding answers was going to do it. He was a master of flipping information on its ear, manipulating the situation in order to make you feel like you were the one doing something wrong. I’d need to butter him up a little, massage his gigantic ego. The mere thought of that sent shudders of revulsion through my entire body, so I had to really prepare myself. To make my well-practiced fake smile even more brilliant than usual.
I took another breath, pasted that smile across my face, and knocked on the door.
Silence. No rustles, no footsteps. I glanced over at the front window, but the blinds were drawn, revealing nothing.
I pulled out my phone to text him, then hesitated, my gaze going back to the window.
Maybe it would be a better use of my time if I just . . . looked around while he wasn’t home? Then I wouldn’t have to worry about maintaining my fake smile and massaging his ego. Granted, I might not find anything and he might be totally innocent of anything other than being a self-involved asshole whose parents had bought him a prestigious job that he was actually pretty bad at.
But why not try?
I tried the door; it was locked.
Well, I was already breaking in—might as well be obvious about it. I could always say I’d been worried that he was in danger or something.
I channeled all my rage at Richard into my fire, igniting a flame in my hand. Most satisfying flame ever. Then I burned the doorknob off and let myself inside.
“Richard?” I called out, testing to see if he was home and just otherwise disposed.
Silence.
I shut the door behind me and scanned the living room. Empty, stained teacups and papers in the midst of being graded littered the coffee table in front of the squashy sofa. My gaze couldn’t help but go to that closed door next to the bathroom, the one Aveda had joked about being his Bluebeard’s chamber situation. It seemed to call to me now, hinting at all kinds of hidden mysteries.
I crossed the room and tried the handle—also locked. So it looked like I was going to have to extra break in. I called up my flame again, burned the doorknob off, and reveled in how weirdly good it felt to destroy Richard’s property.
I entered the mystery room and was immediately plunged into complete darkness.
What the . . .
I blinked a few times, but the blackness remained. I couldn’t see anything. I felt along the wall, my fingertips brushing something that felt like a light switch. I flicked it on, flooding the room in way-too-bright light. My eyes snapped shut instinctively.
I opened them very slowly. There were two windows on the right-hand wall, both of them covered with heavy blackout curtains. A massive king-size bed took up most of the room—interesting, this room hadn’t been Richard’s bedroom when we’d been together. I guessed he liked to move stuff around in his cottage, keep things fresh. I noticed he still had his opulent velvet bedding, though.
I stepped into the room tentatively, like I was expecting Richard to jump out from behind the curtains. Save for the industrial strength window coverings, it looked excessively normal. His bed was made, his pillows were fluffed, and the nightstand held only a single book and a half-full glass of water. So why had the door been locked? What was he so afraid of people seeing?
I stepped in a little further, turned around . . . and that’s when I saw it.
On the wall facing the bed, I’d been expecting to find, I don’t know, a TV? A bookshelf? A soothing watercolor painting?
Instead . . . well, there was no other way of putting it.
It was a massive shrine to me.
Photos of me, mostly clipped from articles about my superheroing career, my wedding, and my status as a local celebrity, were affixed to the wall in a massive, sprawling collage. A fresh-looking print-out of Maisy’s blog post about my pregnancy was plastered right in the middle. Some of the articles were marked up with Richard’s scribbly writing, questions and observations scrawled in the margins. A long table was set in front of this serial killer-esque art piece, a small collection of candles on top of it.
“Holy. Fucking. Hell,” I murmured, crossing the room to inspect things more closely.
I zeroed in on a photo of Nate and me at our wedding, flushed and happy, him pulling me close to whisper something in my ear. I ran my fingertips over my smiling face, trying to wrap my brain around what, exactly, I was looking at.
My gaze wandered down to the candles and I shook my head, unable to make sense of it. My body felt like it was going into some kind of shock where I couldn’t even process the most basic of information. The room felt airless, stuffy. I was suddenly hyper-aware of every single dust mote floating through the air. Next to the candles was a tiny collection of detritus—a stretched-out ponytail holder, a rusted necklace with a little heart charm, and a clump of what looked like dark brown hair . . .
Oh, shit. The ponytail holder looked like one I’d left at Richard’s place right before we broke up. The necklace was something he’d tried to give me that had not been my taste at all. And the hair . . . Was that my hair?! That he’d saved all these years?
I shuddered, revulsion coursing through my bloodstream.
What had he been doing? Was this really some kind of fucked-up tribute to our relationship? To me?
I’d been so certain that Richard had barely thought of me over the last decade, that I’d been completely disposable to him. But apparently he’d been thinking about me a lot.
I backed away from the makeshift shrine, feeling like I was floating outside my body. The air in the room felt stuffier by the second, pressing down on me from all angles and making me feel like I was moving through molasses. I was so wrapped up in trying to make sense of it all, I backed right into the nightstand, bumping Richard’s water glass. It knocked over and spilled all over the book, soaking its pages.
“Agh . . . fuck!” I spat out, whipping around and attempting to mop up some of the water with the bottom of my silk blouse. I picked up the book and tried to shake the water off of it. All this accomplished was splattering water around, sprinkling Richard’s velvet duvet. Then, just as I was about to set the book on the wet nightstand, a sheaf of paper slipped free and scattered all over the floor.
“What the . . .” I set the book on the bed and knelt down to pick the papers up. They were thin and wispy, practically worn through in certain parts, and covered in a cacophony of different handwritings. And they all had jagged edges, as if they’d been ripped out of a book . . .
My grip tightened on the papers as shock jolted through my system. I was looking at the chunk of pages that had been torn out of the big red book I’d taken from the Quiet Room. Had Richard stolen the pages? Had he had them this whole time?
My eyes went from the pages to the Evie shrine and back again.
I needed to get out of here. I needed to find Richard. And I needed to either burn him down or get him to tell me what the fuck he was doing with stolen pages, way too many photos of me, and a lock of my freaking hair.
Or maybe I’d do both. We’d just have to see.