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Daneca doesn’t come to dinner either.
Sam at least is there, flipping through a catalog of masks, barely paying attention to the cooling mound of shepherd’s pie piled on his plate. “So,” he says, “are you going to tell me what this thing with Mina is really about?”
“Nothing to tell. We’re going to save a maiden in distress like old-timey knights. I just wish I knew exactly what distress we were saving her from. The whole thing is fishy.”
“You don’t believe what she said about the pictures?” he asks, pausing on a page with a rubbery werewolf snout that is supposed to be attached with spirit gum.
“I don’t know. All I’m sure of is that she’s lying about something. But maybe it’s nothing important. We all lie, right?”
That makes him snort. “So what’s the plan, Sir Bonehead?”
“Pretty much what I said. We see who shows up to blackmail Mina or who shows up to laugh at how gullible she is.”
I gaze across at where Mina is sitting with her friends, playing with a lock of her wig and drinking a diet soda. Even being nearly sure her hair isn’t real, I wonder at it. It looks real, better than real, rippling down her back in a glossy sheet.
Was she sick? If so, it must have been long enough ago that no one at Wallingford remembers her absence from school, but not so long ago that her hair has grown back. Or I guess it could be something else. Maybe she just likes the convenience of not worrying about styling it in the morning.
I wonder what would make someone want to blackmail a girl like her. Anyone could tell that her family isn’t flush if they just looked. Her watch is nice, but she always wears it. The leather band is worn. And her shoes are black ballet flats. Cute but cheap. It’s not that she can’t afford nice things. She has last year’s cell phone and a two-year-old laptop covered in pink crystals. That’s more than lots of people have. Plus she goes to Wallingford. It’s just that she wouldn’t be the person I’d target if I wanted to grift an easy five large. It has to be a prank.
Unless the blackmailer knows something I don’t.
* * *
After dinner I go back out to the parking lot, but Lila’s car still isn’t there. I consider that maybe she and Daneca are together, since neither of them were at dinner. Maybe Daneca listened to what I said about Barron, no matter what she pretended. Maybe she even started to doubt him. If she ran into Lila, then maybe that’s why Lila hasn’t called me back. Daneca’s house is close by; it would have been a small thing to go there for dinner. I imagine them in Daneca’s kitchen, eating pizza and talking about what jerks those Sharpe boys are. I don’t mind the thought. It is, in fact, a huge relief, compared to all the other possibilities. I have a couple of hours before in-room check and no better ideas, so I decide to drive by Daneca’s house.
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that it’s ironic that Barron, who’s wrong about so many things, is right about me being a stalker.
After parking on her leaf-lined street in Princeton, I walk down the block, past stately brick dwellings, each one with a manicured lawn, sculpted bushes, and a shining door knocker. Each yard is full of fall decorations—dried corn and gourds or planters with stacked pyramids of pumpkins, even the occasional leftover scarecrow.
As I walk up the path to her house, I realize that I figured wrong. Neither car is in the driveway, and I’ve just come this way for nothing.
I turn around and am about to walk away when the front door opens and the porch light flickers on.
“Hello?” Daneca’s mother calls into the darkness. She’s got a gloved hand up, shadowing her eyes. The porch light does the useless thing that porch lights often do, nearly blinding her and rendering me just a shadow.
I walk closer. “It’s me, Mrs. Wasserman. Cassel. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Cassel?” she says, as though she’s still nervous. Maybe more nervous. “Aren’t you supposed to be at school?”
“I was looking for Daneca. We’re seniors, so we can go off campus as long as we’re back on time. But, yeah, I should probably be at Wallingford. I’m going back there right now.” I make a vague gesture in the direction of where I parked.
She’s quiet for a long moment. Then she says, “I think you’d better come inside.”
I walk over the worn marble threshold and step onto the gleaming wooden floors. I smell the remainder of whatever they had for dinner—something with tomato sauce—and hear the television from the living room. Daneca’s father and her not-a-brother, Chris, are sitting on the couches, staring at the screen. Chris turns to glance in my direction as I pass, eyes bright with reflected light.
Mrs. Wasserman beckons me toward the kitchen, and I follow her.
“Do you want something to drink?” she asks, walking to the stove and filling the kettle. It reminds me uncomfortably of my mother in Zacharov’s house.
“I’m okay.”
She points to a chair. “Sit down at least.”
“Thanks,” I say, sitting awkwardly. “Look, I’m really sorry to bother you—”
“Why is it that you thought Daneca would be here instead of at Wallingford?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know where she is. All I want to do is talk to her about her boyfriend. She’s dating my brother. If you met him, you’d understand why I am—”
