We had left the library, on our way to wherever Nathan was. Rachael seemed surprised to see me leave so early, but she saw Lily and just gave me a knowing grin. I very intentionally did not attempt to draw inferences from that.
I was following Lily, though we walked almost side by side.
Reston College was the kind of campus that clearly cared about looking pretty. There were winding paved pathways leading just about every direction a person could want to go. The area was carefully populated with evergreen trees that couldn’t possibly be native to the region.
I didn’t know the campus beyond where the library was, so I couldn’t even evaluate if she was leading me somewhere that made sense. If this was a trap, which still felt fairly possible, then it wouldn’t be sprung out here in the open.
“So, tell me about Amy,” I said.
Lily tilted her head, putting a finger on her chin as she squinted her eyes in thought. It was an adorably animated gesture. She took a minute before answering.
“Amy was the kind of person who checked her horoscope every day because she’s friends with a lot of people who do. Amy probably never even thought about if she believed in horoscopes.” Lily paused for a moment, before going on. “I know I called her my only real friend- and I meant it, that was true. You know that, obviously. But I don’t think she thought of me as a friend. She was probably just nice to everyone. She was a terrible gossip though, so I have a pretty good idea of her social circle.
“Her best friends were two girls named Madison and Jessie. Both of them hung out in our dorm room a lot. Madison much more than Jessie. Madison didn’t seem to like me very much, but she hid it because Amy did. I’d have guessed Madison and Amy were dating if Madison didn’t talk about her boyfriend so much.
“Jessie was clearly the odd friend out, even though she was Madison’s roommate, but I don’t know if she knew that. She certainly seemed to think they were a trio.”
There was a starling perched on a nearby tree. It had been looking in our direction for a while now, but as we passed, it became obvious it was watching us.
“I see,” I said, mostly as filler while I sorted the information. The most valuable thing I got from it was that Lily was a shockingly insightful person. “You’ve already talked to both of them?”
“Just Jessie. She was the first person I talked to. She pointed me to Peter and said he had been acting weird.” Lily paused, uncertain. “Honestly I don’t really have a plan. Do you think it would be worth talking to her again, letting you lie detector her?”
This girl was a very bizarre mix of extremely competent and clueless. Which did prompt a question.
“Maybe,” I answered evasively. “Why are you doing this? The police normally handle murder investigations.”
Lily had clearly been waiting for me to ask this. She stood up a little straighter and her words took on an almost rehearsed tone.
“I found Amy’s body three days ago. I’d talked to her the night before. I didn’t notice anything unusual about her, but I don’t think I would have. She went to sleep early, said she was feeling sick. The next morning I went to check on her, see if she was feeling any better.” Lily paused, taking a moment to rally herself. “Her door was unlocked and… I couldn’t even tell it was Amy at first, she was… too damaged. And in several pieces. The police-” she said the word disdainfully, “-decided yesterday that it was a wild animal attack. In our third-floor dorm room.”
I couldn’t help but snort. That was so ridiculous I wouldn’t believe it without communication. Maybe she was lied to. What could possibly-
Oh. It was my fault.
When I was six years old, I told the police about Margaret. I’d been punished for… I couldn’t even remember what it was. Considering I was six it was probably stupid. But it was the first time Margaret had used the curse. I was so scared of her afterward that I told the police she was an evil witch who had killed people. They hadn’t believed me, of course, but I’d known that if I said ‘murder’ enough times they’d have to do something. It didn’t help matters when they realized that they were mysteriously incapable of finding where she lived to question her.
Margaret had been forced to act. Accusations of witchcraft showing up anywhere on a police record would bring the Inquisition down on us with the kind of wrath and overwhelming force that only those self-righteous bastards could manage. Honestly, she’d been merciful.
I wasn’t sure how she did it, but the police never bothered us or any witch again. Nowadays, if anything sufficiently weird happened in Reston the police would look at it, shake their heads sadly, and pretend it wasn’t there. It was such a nonissue I’d forgotten it.
And maybe the police were right to ignore this one. A body torn to pieces overnight in a dorm sounded pretty supernatural. I could think of a dozen things that could do that.
A wild monster probably wouldn’t have left Lily alive. No, a better point was that a wild monster wouldn’t be stupid enough to hunt in Margaret’s domain. Anything that reckless would die long before it got to Reston. Witchcraft then.
Lily looked back at me and I realized I’d stopped walking. We were in a cross-section, between what looked like dorms and maybe a student building.
“Are you ok?” she said. “Or is this one of the things I can’t ask?”
“I have weak lungs,” I said, which technically was not a lie. If she drew the wrong conclusion about why I stopped, that was fine. I was breathing heavily anyway. “Give me a minute.”
Lily nodded, pointing to a nearby bench.
“It’d probably be easier to sit down somewhere. Do you need me to help you make it there?”
Images of that flashed through my mind, and a traitorous little voice said that actually wouldn’t it be great to throw away my pride just this once? But I brushed it off.
“I’m not a cripple,” I insisted. It was undercut somewhat by having to stop for a breath in the middle of my sentence. Still, I walked myself to the bench, dropping unceremoniously onto the middle. I shifted my backpack into my lap.
“I’m sorry,” she said quickly. She sat down next to me, close enough for our shoulders to brush against each other. “I didn’t mean to- never mind.”
I hadn’t realized how much I needed the break until I sat down. We’d only been walking for about ten minutes. Was it getting worse?
It could just be a bad day. The degree of weakness in my lungs fluctuated, for some reason. But I couldn’t help but feel like I was having more bad days than I used to.
Taking a second to breathe also made me realize I was jumping to conclusions about Amy. How many locked-room murder mysteries had I read? None of those ever turned out to be magic.
It would be very bad if it was magic, though. A proper witch wouldn’t be this sloppy, killing so blatantly without permission. Which left hedge witches, fools who had stumbled upon one of the rare books of real magic.
“So…” Lily began. I thought our break was over, but instead, she asked, “What’s your major? Can I ask that? I’m a freshman in business, which I know is kinda boring. It’s really just a major to say I have one.”
Was Lily just the kind of person who talked to fill a silence? Or did she actually want to get to know me?
“I’m not a student,” I said. “I just use their library sometimes. It’s one of the best in the country for the right subjects.”
“The girl at the desk seemed to know you pretty well,” Lily pointed out. “You must be there a lot more than ‘sometimes.’”
I mentally bumped her rating from insightful to very insightful. But that was a double-edged sword.
“I’m there as much as I can be,” I said. Her eyes widened and I knew she’d caught the implication.
“Ah,” she said. Because really, what more was there to say?
Another bird was watching us now. Or maybe it was the same starling and it had followed us.
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
After a minute, I decided to spare Lily the discomfort I could see building.
“Come on, I can keep going now.”
Lily looked at me even more awkwardly.
“We uh, do need to wait actually. He won’t be out of that class-” she pointed to the building I’d mistaken for a student center, “-for another 30 minutes or so.”
Well, that somewhat ruined my chivalrous gesture.
“Do you know each other?” I asked. Felicity would break the tension with some teasing, which was worth a try. “Or do you make a habit of memorizing students’ schedules?”
“No, I don’t,” she said, laughing a little. I did not like how much better that laugh made me feel. It was her first lie, and what an interesting one it was. “We share the class. I don’t have to go since…”
“How long did they give you?”
That clearly wasn’t what she’d expected me to ask.
“Oh, um it’s not like high school where I need a note. Technically I’d need to talk to each of my professors to work out exactly how long of a grace period I’d get. But attendance isn’t a very big part of the grade anyway.”
I nodded. I had a much better picture of how high schools worked, based on what stories I’d read in the library. I asked a few more questions about college life, more to have something to talk with her about than an actual interest. I wouldn’t get much use out of a college degree.
Once Lily recognized the pattern of my questions she was more than happy to do most of the talking. She was great at it, answering some follow-up questions before I could even ask them. A person shouldn’t be able to project this much enthusiasm about picking electives, but she managed it.
I was starting to like this girl.
----------------------------------------
I had missed having someone to talk to. So much that I nearly lost track of time.
“How long until that class ends?”
Lily looked at her phone and then got up suddenly. I felt a chill in the air.
“Shit. Five minutes ago,” she said. “Let’s hope he’s slow.”
I got up much less gracefully than she had managed. I followed her brisk pace as she explained what we really should’ve been talking about all along.
“So, Nathan. He’s dating Madison, I’m pretty sure. He and I kinda know each other. We had a bi-weekly gaming group for a few months over the summer, which was the only time we really interacted. We haven’t talked since I got kicked out of the group.”
“What happened?” I asked. It was hard to imagine happening to someone this charismatic, but backstabbing was an inevitability when enough people were involved.
“I broke up with the GM,” she said sheepishly. “We’re still friends-ish, but it’s the worse side of ‘ish’.”
As we walked into the building I made a mental note to figure out what a GM was.
It was more obviously a building for classes on the inside. It broke into a maze of concrete corridors with classrooms and the occasional lecture hall. I had no choice but to trust Lily to guide me through. I could at least retrace the route to the door we’d come in, probably.
I noted some of the fliers on the wall as we passed. Various clubs and student events, mostly. How much of it would the cult have their hands in? Thoughts of that led me to Felicity, so I tried to avoid it.
We finally stopped at a classroom on the second floor. Lily looked around for a minute, before stepping back outside. A few class members reacted to her presence, murmuring among themselves.
“He’s already gone,” she said glumly. “I don’t know the rest of his schedule. The next class is in four days, because of the weekend.”
“Do you know where his dorm is?” I asked. Earlier, she’d said that a lot of people go back there between classes.
She shook her head. “But I might know someone who does.” She pulled out her phone and started texting someone, pausing to move out of the doorway when someone needed to leave the classroom.
I leaned against the wall next to her. Lily didn’t hide her phone from me, so I looked enough to read a name before looking away. Jason. I didn’t want to look like I was snooping, which I probably was. I settled on watching the crowd moving through the hall, communication idly pinging me that one of the words I could half-hear was a lie.
Lily seemed to know a lot of people, for someone who had called Amy her only friend here. If she was as friendly to everyone as she was to me, I could see why. What had made Amy special then?
Several people in the crowd were staring at Lily and me, some more subtly than others. It wasn’t a position I was used to being in. I started to say something to Lily, to suggest we wait somewhere else when one of the onlookers approached us.
“Lily? What are- I mean how are you doing?” The girl seemed about our age, with light blond hair she wore down and an adorable gray sweater. Naturally, she was also very pretty, because today was just going to be like that.
Lily looked up from her phone, where she had been typing. She was having quite the back-and-forth with Jason. I had no idea how she typed as fast as she did, but she was clearly experienced.
“Madison.” From the way Lily’s tone dropped, it seemed the animosity between the two ran both ways. “I’m doing ok. I was actually looking for you this morning, I wanted to see how you were doing. I know you and Amy were close.”
Madison started to say something before looking over at me. Her expression shifted in a way I couldn’t read. Lily glanced over at me, seeming to remember I was there.
“Oh, yes. Madison, this is Claire. Claire, Madison.” If Madison noticed the careful exclusion of a phrase like ‘my friend’ she didn’t react.
“It’s nice to meet you, Claire.” She turned back to Lily, her expression full of exaggerated concern.
“Have you seen Nathan?” Lily cut off whatever Madison was about to ask next. “I know he has this class.”
There was a pause before Madison responded curtly.
“I don’t know where he is.”
Lily glanced at me and I gave a slight nod. Madison did notice that interaction, raising an eyebrow, but seemed to decide not to comment.
Madison reached out and put a hand on Lily’s shoulder, which Lily flinched away from.
“Are you sure you’re ok? No one would blame you if you needed more time. I know you’re the one who-”
“Really, I’m fine,” Lily said. She had clearly been asked that far too many times by now. I decided to jump in.
“I’ve heard a bit about Amy from Lily, but she said you knew her even better. Can you tell me about her? I never got the chance to meet her.”
Madison looked fairly uncomfortable. “I think Lily could tell you more. Sorry, if Lily’s fine then I should go.” She gestured apologetically and just as quickly as she arrived, Madison turned on her heel and left. Lily looked like she was about to follow for a moment, but decided against it.
“Well,” Lily turned back to her phone but still talked to me. “Did she lie about anything before you scared her off?”
I winced. Maybe that had been too forward. I ran back through the conversation for a minute before responding.
“A few, but none of them were useful. It wasn’t nice to meet me, she did think at least someone would blame you if you needed more time, and she didn’t think you’d be able to tell me more than her.”
Lily didn’t seem surprised. Her cheeks were flushed, I noticed. Had she moved closer to me at some point during the conversation?
“Figures she’d lie through her teeth.”
“She didn’t lie any more than normal,” I said. I didn’t particularly care about Madison, but it felt unfair to her somehow. “You don’t have to make a conscious choice every time you lie, that’s just for the big things. Most people don’t even realize when they’ve told a small lie.”
I couldn’t remember a time before I lost my ability to lie, but that was Felicity’s explanation for why people lied so much. Margaret just said people were inherently dishonest.
Lily seemed about to say something else before she saw another message on her phone. She nearly threw it down after she read it.
“I give up!” she said with clear frustration. “I cannot seem to convince Jason to tell me where Nathan’s dorm room is. So I asked for his phone number and he won’t give me that either! I don’t know if he thinks I’m trying to hook up with Nathan or murder him or what.”
The crowd had thinned considerably by now, but what was left was looking at us again.
I considered how to phrase my request and decided to go for blunt honesty.
“I don’t like how many people are watching us here. We should go somewhere else.”
Lily looked around and then back to me apologetically. She closed her phone, putting it back in her pocket before she answered.
“Yeah let’s find somewhere- just follow me.”
She led me out through a different route. We still came out of the same door, so I wasn’t sure she’d meant to. She led us to the same bench we had been at previously, though she didn’t sit down. I didn’t sit either, since she clearly had something she wanted to say.
“Well,” Lily began. She had her hands behind her back, presumably wringing nervously. “I’m not sure what to do now. I don’t want to just sit on my hands for four whole days. But I got the lead with Nathan kinda through dumb luck. We could go try to find Jessie again, but I really don’t think she was lying to me.”
I took a moment to think. The bird was blue this time and on a different tree. But it was always watching.
“Can we go to your dorm?” I asked. Lily blinked. “I want to see where you found the body. It seems easier to look at it than to have you describe it to me, which is why I didn’t ask you to earlier, but if you aren’t comfortable with that…”
I wasn’t remotely confident in my ability to play Sherlock, but I could cut down my list of magical murder methods a lot based on the room’s layout. It was still pretty unlikely, but I was starting to hope for it oddly enough.
Lily seemed to relax herself by force of will as I spoke, evidently not as distant from Amy’s death as she claimed.
“Ok, that makes sense. Um, but I don’t think we’re allowed back there yet. The police closed the area off, I’m in one of the overflow housing dorms right now.” Her eyes lit up, brilliant gold shining as she made the most captivating smile I’d ever seen. “But I’d bet you a lot that they don’t have anyone watching it. The dorm locks are easy to pick.”
Holy shit. I was suddenly extremely out of breath again.
Lily was clearly waiting for me to respond in some way, so through herculean effort I rallied myself.
“Let’s go check,” I managed to say. I even sounded mostly normal. “Just give me one second.”
I closed my eyes before she responded. I had been letting my persona slip, not expecting to need to reinforce it. I was already falling apart. I followed the threads, trimming them even more aggressively than usual. In the end, I was left with an orderly form.
There, much better. I opened my eyes.
“Let’s go break into a crime scene.”