"Hello, Kara, I'm glad that you could make it here today to speak with me again," Officer Marshall says as she smiles at me from across the interrogation room table.

Did I have a choice, is what I want to say. But instead, I smile back and nod.

"I just hope that I can set the record straight."

"And how do you suppose that you'll do that?" she inquires as she leans forward in her chair.

Her hair is done up in a tidy bun that is pinned on the back of her head and her makeup is immaculate and scarce, making her look all the more like a concerned third party in this investigation. There's a sudden knock at the door and I feel a sense of déjà vu from the last time, though instead of a man in gloves, it's a younger woman in business casual who nervously pokes her head into the room.

"Did you want coffee?" the woman asks Officer Marshall.

I feel like the question is orchestrated, a way to get me to calm down and loosen up, and if I were guilty, maybe slip up when the attention is turned back to me.

"Sure," Officer Marshall says as she waves her hand dismissively before she looks to me, "did you want anything?"

"Um..."

I pause as I think about the fact that I had skipped breakfast after Ms. Laroche had knocked on my dorm room door as soon as I woke up this morning. She had been there to let me know that Officer Marshall had wanted to talk to me again and that there was a taxi arranged to take me down to the station. I had dressed immediately and rushed downstairs, needing to make myself look as innocent as possible by making it to the interview on time rather than linger and be late.

As if on cue at the mention of coffee, my stomach makes a low growling noise and Officer Marshall offers me a timid smile.

"Perhaps a donut too?" she suggests.

"Yes, please," I murmur and she nods as she gets up and steps out of the room and shuts the door softly behind her.

Although I'm still on edge, this interview feels different, I don't feel like the spotlight is on me and that they're maybe beginning to think that I'm innocent. Though I'm not going to let down my guard anytime soon, especially since I had snuck into the morgue and I'm afraid that Officer Marshall may somehow know.

I suppress a shiver as I remember Finn's scream, the second and perhaps last time that I'll ever hear him make a sound.

Hopefully it's the last time I hear him scream.

The door clicks open again and Officer Marshall steps inside, a cardboard carrying container for coffee cups balanced in one hand and a small box of donuts in the other. She sets both items on the table and opens the box to reveal four donuts inside. I nervously select a chocolate one with sprinkles and grab a napkin from inside the box and place it next to me before Officer Marshall pushes a coffee cup in my direction.

"We don't believe that you're responsible for Finn's murder," she says calmly and I can't help the fact that I go limp with relief.

"Okay, so why am I here?" I inquire as I nibble on the edge of my donut, not wanting to smear chocolate on my face.

"Paperwork, I need a second interview to make sure that I got every detail," she says as she taps the folder that has been sitting on the table since I first got here.

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I take a sip of my coffee, the warmth of the liquid bleeding through the container of the cup and warming my palms as she clicks a pen and opens the folder to reveal a few documents that look like the ones from before.

"When did you leave your dorm?" she asks.

"Eleven-fifty maybe."

"Did anyone see you leave?"

"No," I shake my head, "I tried to keep quiet because it was late, but my friends knew that I would be leaving around that time because I had been invited to meet with the Coven of Midnight at midnight the day before."

"Okay," she scribbles down a few notes, "and who are these friends?"

"Tessa Graves and Astrid Hallewell, we share a room together."

"I'll have to interview them later. Where did you go from your dorm room?"

"To the gymnasium."

"You went straight there?"

"Yes."

"Nowhere else?"

"No," I shake my head, "I went right to the gym."

"I see, did you see anyone else before you went to the gym? Maybe you saw Finn taking a walk?"

"No, it was just me."

"Alright, and who was at this coven meeting?" she flips over one of her papers and begins to write on the back of it.

"Eleanora Hallewell."

"And was it just her?"

"No, there were others-."

"But they were cloaked, I remember now."

I sit back in my seat as I turn her words over in my head. I had never told her about there being other people at the meeting. She must see the confusion on my face when she looks up at me next because she smiles.

"I was a member of the coven, I know how their rituals go," she tells me and I relax.

"Okay, but Eleanora was the only person I could identify at the meeting."

"Got it, I'll speak with her soon too," she clicks her pen thoughtfully a few times as she tilts her head. "When did you leave the meeting?"

"I'm not sure, maybe fifteen minutes later."

"Okay, and did you see anyone then?"

I shake my head, "No, I came outside and..."

My stomach turns and I set my coffee down, suddenly sickened by the taste and smell. Officer Marshall watches me, her eyes narrowing like she's examining my reaction of my own memories. She doesn't say anything, instead, she patiently waits for me to speak again.

"I heard Finn scream," I finally say and it feels like venom on my tongue, bitter and acrid.

"Did he say anything?"

I think back to what he had said while we were in the morgue, though I can't change the story now without her getting suspicious of me.

"It was just a scream, he didn't say anything," I say slowly, feeling every painful syllable as they roll off my tongue.

"And you followed the scream and found him?"

"Yes."

"You didn't think about calling for help?"

It would almost seem like an accusation, but I can't fully remember what happened after I found his body so I don't know if I did.

"I don't know, I found him and then...it all blurs together," I tell her and it's the honest truth, one moment, I was crouching over Finn's body, the next, I was in the headmaster's office.

The fact that I can't remember feels like a betrayal of my own body and mind.

"I see, shock can do that sometimes, it's understandable," Officer Marshall assures me and I feel a trickle of relief.

"I wish I could have done more," I admit and the words are past my lips before I can stop them.

"The mind does strange things at times," she says softly, "traumatic things get pushed down so we can process them later when the body deems itself far enough away from the immediate danger, you've done nothing wrong."

"I wish I could have helped him."

"We all do," she says solemnly as she looks down at her papers and nods, "well Kara, I believe that we're done here, the only question I have is who actually did it then."

****

When I'm dropped back off at the school, I head to my dorm room only to find it empty of Tessa and Astrid. A whiteboard that Tessa has hung up on the back of the door has a note scrawled across it in black Expo marker.

Went to the mall with Astrid and Luke, be back at 8.

I can't help but smile as I shake my head and walk over to my dresser and pull out my laptop.

I sit on my bed and push the power button to turn it on, the screen lighting up as it hums to life. I lean against the wall and wait for it to give me the login screen as I type in my password and click on the shortcut for Forever Expedition. The startup logo, a running fox, sprints in the center of my screen as it loads before it finally gives me the start screen for the game, a notification for a message flickering in the corner.

I click on the message, opening it to read it only to pull my hands away as I feel like I've been burned by the keys. I stare at the message, which is from an anonymous messenger and I don't quite believe the words as I read them several times over.

Turn yourself in or more will suffer, if you say anything to the police, more will die.