Over and over, I jam my finger at the screen, as if pressing harder will make any difference at all. I keep going, don’t even notice the door slide open behind me or Haven’s presence at my back before she speaks:
“What are you doing?”
“I...” I spin around, slowly, to face her. “We need... I need to call an emergency meeting.”
“Yeah,” she says. “We do.” She takes in my face, bites her lip in concern. “This is the last thing you want to hear right now, I know, but—there’ve been three more. Three more deaths, like... like Mila. Like Jaako and Kerr.”
In the vast, arid place where so many of my conflicting feelings have strangled each other’s roots, one last tough weed sprouts up like a vine: I thought I was far past numb, maxed out on feelinganythingafter feeling so many things, so strongly, tonight. I was wrong.
“Call the meeting,” I say, through my teeth. “We’ll have it here, right now.”
I’m shaking, livid. This has tostop.
It should have stopped a long time ago. I could have warned them, and I didn’t.
I didn’t.
Three. More.
I can’t stop shaking.
Our secrecy ends tonight.
54
SEVEN AND COUNTING
“SEVEN,” I SAY, once the others have joined Haven and me in Control. “We’ve lostseven.”
All six of us are here; I look from face to face. Despite our various shades of skin, despite our height or lack of it, despite our each and every difference, in this moment we are all the same: Exhausted. Defeated. Sparks of fire simmer in our eyes, even so.
“This. Must. End.” I can’t meet their eyes for long. There are too many faces I want to trust, too many faces I’ve trusted forever. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe the killer isn’t one of us after all, maybe whoever did it set everything up as one giant distraction so we’d focus our investigation inward. Maybe I’ve been looking in the wrong place all along. I hope I’m wrong. Iwantto be wrong.
But just in case I’m not, I can’t show my hand.
If I’m right, and if I’m the only person close to finding out the truth, what would a killer naturally do to protect themselves?Take out the one person who could shine a spotlight on all of their shadows.
I can’t give my suspicions away.
“Seven is too many,” I say. “Onewas too many.”
“Let ushelpyou, then,” Haven says. “You’ve been taking everything on alone, and you don’thaveto, Lindley. That’s what we’re here for, right? You don’t have to do this alone. Your mother didn’t.”
Your mother didn’t. It stings like salt on raw skin. “This isn’t aboutme. And it certainly isn’t about my mother.”
“I’m just saying, maybe we’d be more effective as a team. Y’know, like we initially decided when we took over? As agroup?”
The thing is, I agree with her. And Iwanthelp, more than anything.
I only wish I knew for sure that I could trust them.
I take a deep breath. “I’m going to tell the station the truth,” I say. “All of it. Everything. They need to know there’s no threat of viral mutation at this point—they need to know there’s akillerwithin our walls. No one else needs to die.” I think of our latest victims: two girls, Nieva Taylor and Emme Davenport, found dead in an alcove with Sailor Salvato, who was slumped over his guitar. “Maybe if they know to be on guard, they’ll be alert and aware. Maybe someone will even catch the killer in the act of trying.” And maybe, I think, the killer won’t try at all if they know so many eyes will be watching out for suspicious behavior.
“You don’t think they’ll panic when they find out?” Zesi says, shaking his dreads away so both eyes are clearly visible.
“They... might?” I say. “But it can’t be any worse than the party earlier, right?” Let’s hope, anyway. “I think that particular risk is worth it.”
“I think we should’ve told them a long time ago,” Heath says. It’s not lost on me how he sayswe. Like the blame doesn’t clearly fall just on my shoulders. Like we’ve been acting as a team, even though I really have been going lone ranger for so much of this, like Haven said.
