The Vanishing Stair (Truly Devious #2)(77)

“What do you think,” she said, turning to reveal one eye stunningly made up in a range of oranges, reds, and yellows. “It’s a sunset eye. Does it look like a sunset? I think it may be too orange.”

“I need to talk to you,” Stevie said.

Janelle spun in her direction and paused the video. Stevie shut the door and sat on the floor.

“There’s some stuff I need to tell you about,” she said.

“With David?”

“Yeah. You noticed?”

“You want to be a detective, but you’re the least subtle person I’ve ever met,” Janelle said. “You need to work on that. What’s going on?”

“This is a secret,” Stevie said. “A serious one.”

Janelle’s forehead wrinkled in worry. Her one sunset eye cast an uneasy glance at Stevie. There was a knock, and Nate poked his head in when Janelle called.

“What?” he said. “This is a meeting or something?”

“I need you guys,” Stevie said. “You need to hear this.”

Nate’s eyes had faintly blue shadows under them, matching his faded T-shirt.

“Yeah,” he said, sitting down on the floor and tucking up his knees. “Maybe it’s time we all compared some notes.”

“What have you two not been telling me?” Janelle said, flicking her gaze between them.

“You go,” Nate said. “I can’t start this.”

Stevie took a deep breath and ruffled her hair. It was getting too long. Everything was messy.

“David is Edward King’s son,” she said.

This took Janelle a moment to process, her sunset eye winking and widening.

“David?” she said. “Is the son of . . . the politician? The guy running for president? The one your parents work for? That guy?”

“Yup,” Stevie said. “They don’t get along. I found out the morning after Ellie disappeared. He came on campus.”

“You don’t look surprised,” Janelle said to Nate.

“I found out the other night.”

“It’s not something I could tell people,” Stevie said. “I wanted to. But no one is supposed to know. I guess it could be a security problem.”

“So Edward King really did pay for that security system?” Janelle asked. “That’s not a rumor? I thought Vi was wrong.”

“There’s more,” Stevie said. “He brought me back here. That’s how I got back to school. He convinced my parents. He did it because he thought if I came back David would calm down. Now, there’s this.”

She pulled over Janelle’s computer and opened up Hayes’s channel to play them the video of David’s beating. She had seen it with the sound off. It was worse with the soundtrack, with David goading them on. It was painful to see the blows landing on him, the way he smiled up and said something else that begged for more.

There were sixty thousand views now.

“What in the hell is he doing?” Janelle said. “That boy is not okay.”

Nate turned to Stevie slowly.

“What she said,” he added.

“He paid someone to do that,” Stevie said. “And then he told me he wasn’t coming back.”

“Okay.” Janelle’s tone suggested that she didn’t need to see any more. She pushed herself up from the floor and addressed them both from a standing position. “You know I don’t love him, but you need to tell someone what’s going on. Now.”

“Unless he’s bluffing?” Nate said. “Do you think he’s bluffing? Maybe he’s messing with you?”

“I didn’t get the feeling he was,” Stevie said. “He paid someone to beat him up. He put the video up on Hayes’s page, which he hacked into. That’s deliberate, and weird. He’s doing something, but I can’t figure out what.”

“Destroying our lives,” Nate said.

“It does not matter,” Janelle said. “He paid someone to beat him up. That’s not good. Hayes is dead. Ellie is dead. No one else in this house gets hurt. You tell someone. Tell Pix. Do it now.”

Janelle was right, of course. Telling someone was the right thing to do. What David had just done was deeply disturbing. But in his eye there was something solid. He was doing this to an end. He had been hurt, but not so hurt. And putting it on Hayes’s channel was sending some kind of message, if only she could read it.

Janelle was still right.

“I’ll tell Pix,” Stevie said. “About the punching and that he’s not coming back. Not about his dad. But the next thing that happens is that I’m going to get pulled out of school.”

“You don’t know that,” Janelle said.

“I do,” Stevie replied. “David’s not okay, so the deal is off.”

“We’ll fix that,” Janelle said. “That’s not Edward King’s call. We’ll help you. But now, we tell Pix. And the three of us? No secrets anymore.”

“No secrets,” Stevie said.

“One exciting thing,” Nate said. “This is definitely all worse than writing my book.”





22


STEVIE WAS DREAMING. THE CONTENT OF HER DREAM WAS JUMBLED. She was walking the streets of Burlington, down the same path she had been walking with David, and someone was yelling, “They’re pulling people out of the lake!” So Dream Stevie ran down to the waterfront, to where she first met Fenton, and saw dozens of bodies being pulled from the lake. But they weren’t dead. They flopped like fish on the waterside. All of these flopping human bodies. Someone came up behind Stevie, but she did not turn. She heard a voice whispering to her, a girl’s voice, but she could not make out the words. Something in her told her it was Dottie Epstein, and if she turned, Dottie would disappear. So she kept her eyes on the flopping-fish people on the dock, trying to make out Dottie’s words.