Daniel left his motorcycle at the market and hitched a ride with me in the Corolla. It rattled and groaned the few blocks to school, as if telling me that it didn’t plan on making it through another winter. Hopefully, Daniel could keep it running for a while longer, considering money was tighter with Mom not working anymore and the extra expense of a housekeeper. I wondered how much longer Dad could afford to keep paying Debbie—let alone even think about buying a new car.
I parked in my usual spot near the parish, and then we started across the school parking lot together. Daniel sipped his coffee and made an appreciative grunt. His face looked gaunter than it had in a while, and his shaggy hair was tussled more than usual. He ate the cinnamon muffin I’d given him in three huge bites, and then cleared his throat.
“He’s got a point,” Daniel said. “What Mr. Day said—it would take someone with a lot of special abilities to pull this off in that short amount of time. A superpowered teen, perhaps?”
I held up my hands. “I’m innocent, I swear. Unless I ransack stores in my sleep …”
Daniel smirked, but it lasted only a second. His face was straight and serious when he said the name I’d been trying to deflect with my humor: “Jude. It makes sense, don’t you think?” Daniel asked. “He was in town last night. He went to Maryanne’s house, and he was probably outside James’s window. It makes complete sense that he’d go to Day’s next.”
“What, like he’s taking a tour of all the places …? Oh.” I stopped right in front of the main doors of the school, suddenly knowing what Daniel was getting at. Maryanne’s house, James’s window, Day’s Market. These were all the places where the wolf had caused him to lose control last year. He’d mauled Maryanne’s frozen body as she lay dead on her porch, then he’d gone through a window at my house and stolen Baby James to make it look like he’d been carried off into the forest, and then he’d left Jessica’s body in the Dumpster behind the market where Daniel worked—all in an effort to frame Daniel as the monster.
“You think the wolf is making him revisit the places of his past crimes? But why? And do you think Jude’s really capable of doing all that damage over at Day’s by himself?”
“Excuse me,” a high-pitched voice yelped from behind us.
I turned slightly and saw my former best friend, April Thomas, standing there. She trembled in that cocker-spaniel way of hers like she did when she was excited or frightened or experiencing pretty much any other emotion. It was one of the things that I’d always liked best about her.
“Excuse me, Grace,” she said again, her voice all shaky.
“Yeah?” I asked, feeling a rush of mixed emotions: resentment that she hadn’t wanted anything to do with me in the last ten months, and joy at hearing her voice actually speaking my name.
April looked at me for a long moment, twisting her finger in one of her springy curls. Her mouth twitched, like she was trying to figure out how to form the words to something important she wanted to say.
But all she finally did was shrug and ask if she could get by me through the door. “Don’t want to be tardy,” she mumbled, and brushed past me when I stepped aside.
I watched her disappear into the throng of students in the main hall until Daniel lightly nudged me through the door.
“You know what worries me the most, Grace?” Daniel asked as we approached our lockers in the senior hall.
“What?” I gave him a quizzical look, still thinking about April. Did she really want to say something to me?
“What you said just a minute ago about Jude not being capable of ransacking Day’s Market by himself … Well, Jude may or may not have been involved in what happened, but whoever did do this couldn’t have been acting alone.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Bombshell
LATER THAT SAME DAY