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“How long do you think we have?” I asked.
“An hour—Evan and Ian said they could hold McCoy at the school until at least four. Should be plenty.”
“Are you sure you can get in?” Tucker asked.
Miles scoffed. “Have some faith, Beaumont. I got into your house, didn’t I?”
Tucker rolled his eyes. “Fine then. Lead on.”
The two of them started down the sidewalk. But as soon as I took a step, a flash of red behind the driver’s seat in Tucker’s SUV caught my eye. I looked back, wondering if it was some sort of hallucination, and then realized—I knew that shade of red.
“Hold on.”
The two of them stopped as I marched back to the SUV and threw open the back door. Charlie crouched in between the seats, curled so tightly I hadn’t seen her there on the drive over. She stared at me, eyes wide and frightened. The black king was in one curled fist, shiny with spit and dented with teeth marks.
“Charlie!”
“Sorry!” she whined. “I thought you were going to your school and I wanted to see it! You never take me anywhere with you!”
I tugged on my hair. “Seriously? Ugh—I can’t take you home now.”
“Let me come with you!” She tried to jump out of the car. I shoved her back into the SUV. I didn’t want her walking around in the middle of the crappy side of Lakeview Trail.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“Stay here. Are you listening to me? Do not leave this car.” I fixed her with my most searing gaze. “Do. Not. Leave. This. Spot. Got it?”
She nodded, but still tried to get a better look outside. I got the feeling that she hadn’t actually heard a word I’d said.
“What is it?” Miles called.
I pointed a warning finger at Charlie and slammed the door closed. She sat back in the seat and crossed her arms, pouting.
“Charlie hitched a ride,” I said. “I never even saw her get in. I told her to stay put while we’re in there.”
Miles and Tucker glanced at each other, but said nothing.
We walked up to McCoy’s front door. I did my perimeter check, glancing back at the SUV to make sure Charlie didn’t sneak out. Miles went straight for a ledge created by the edge of the porch roof. He felt around for a second, then pulled down a key.
“How’d you know that was there?” Tucker asked.
Miles shrugged. “He probably has them all over the place.” He kicked the welcome mat aside, and there was another key underneath. “See?” He kicked the mat back in place, then unlocked the door and pulled it open.
Inside, the smell of mustiness coated everything like a thick layer of bad cologne. Tucker sneezed. Miles closed the door behind us.
“It looks so . . . normal.” Tucker said.
We passed a staircase and went into a dining room lined with cabinets.
“Maybe for a retired octogenarian,” I said. Antique furniture filled every available inch of space, some of it broken and some of it in usable condition. I thought I saw a WWII gas mask wedged between a broken scale and a worn cookie tin, but I grabbed Miles’s hand and told myself that it wasn’t really there.
We scoured the entire lower level of the house, from the dining room to a narrow, dirty kitchen to a living room with the ugliest orange shag carpet I’d ever seen in my life. For half a second I was tempted to leave McCoy a handwritten note expressing my profound and sincere astonishment that he had the balls to keep such a carpet in his home.
Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, except for the gas mask and a few magnets shaped like swastikas on the refrigerator.
“I haven’t seen anything,” I said.
“No.” Tucker shrugged. “But there’s still upstairs.”
I turned toward the staircase again and saw a flash of red.
“Charlie!” I hissed, darting after her. I knew I shouldn’t have trusted her to stay in that car. She was too much like me to stay put. She froze halfway up the stairs, looking back.
“I told you to stay in the car!” I said.
“But I want to help!” she cried, stomping her foot.
“Get down here right now.”
“No!”
“Charlemagne!”
“You sound like Mom!” She charged the rest of the way up the stairs. I ran after her. Miles and Tucker were right behind me. I shouldered open the door Charlie had gone through.
And then I froze.
“Look at all the dresses,” Charlie crooned.
The room was a museum exhibit. Dresses—prom, homecoming, cocktail, formal, even wedding—were displayed on mannequins. The mannequins all wore blond wigs. Plastered on the walls behind them were pictures upon pictures upon pictures, all of one person: Scarlet.
My stomach lurched. These could be my walls.
There was a large wooden desk on the far side of the room, strewn with papers and more pictures in frames. A pair of silver heels sat on the corner.
“What the actual fuck.” Tucker walked in, then Miles a moment later.
I put an arm around Charlie and moved her behind me as Tucker, Miles, and I moved to search through the papers on the desk. There were all sorts of things—bills, official- looking documents from school, taxes that hadn’t been filed yet, a half-completed crossword puzzle.
“This is all just junk,” Tucker grumbled, picking up a stack of blank printer paper. It didn’t even look like McCoy had a computer, much less a printer.
“Keep looking,” I said. “There’s got to be something. . . .” I grabbed the corner of a photograph and slid it out of the mess, careful not to dislodge anything else.
It was a picture of Celia and an older, dark-haired man with an arm around her shoulders. Both of them were smiling. Celia’s father, maybe? The man’s eyes had been burned out, the edges of his face crinkled and red.
But why would McCoy burn Celia’s father’s eyes out? Why would he burn anyone’s eyes out? How could anyone go this far down the rabbit hole without realizing they needed help?
And more importantly, what would he do if he found us here, looking through his things?
I stuffed the picture back where I’d found it, grabbed Miles and Tucker, and pushed them both toward the door. We needed to get out of here, now. “We’re not going to find anything else. Let’s go.” Eyes peeked out of the dark space under the desk. “Charlie! Come on!”
No one asked any questions. Miles pulled the key from his pocket and locked the front door behind us.
