Murder of crows, p.12
Murder of Crows, page 12
“You’re lucky he didn’t kill you, Tig,” Wyn said. “Thank god for that.”
“At least there’s one piece of good news,” Ella chimed in.
I scoffed. “And what’s that?”
“If he was planning to kill your abuela, he wouldn’t have bothered taking her with him.”
Ella’s good news wasn’t as reassuring as she thought. That also meant that the intruder must need something from Abuela—something he thought only she could tell him. I raised my hand to Abuela’s pendant, now hanging around my neck, and rubbed it softly. I had to figure out what she knew before her kidnapper ran out of patience and decided to find the treasure some other way.
“Do you think it was Judah?” Max said seriously.
“No.” I sighed. “He wouldn’t have had time to beat me home after we left his house. I guess he could have been stalling us to give whoever it was time to search my house, but … I don’t think he had anything to do with this.
“The guy who broke in was a pro. I managed to get a few hits in, but he barely made a sound even when the blows landed. And he was so methodical. He didn’t even hesitate to …” I raised my hand to the side of my head unconsciously.
Max folded his arms. “That’s just great! So we have two psychopaths in town willing to beat up teenage girls,” he said with a growl.
“Do we think whoever attacked Tig and kidnapped Abuela is the same person who killed Mr. Wyatt? Or are there two separate groups after the spyglass?” Wyn asked, absentmindedly picking the sprinkles off a donut.
“The timeline is way too close for all these incidents not to be unconnected,” I said. “My guess is that it’s all one person—or a group of people working together. They tried to get the spyglass from Mr. Wyatt, but he wouldn’t give it up, so they killed him. And they’ve been escalating ever since, trying to find it.
“They were probably at the funeral, too,” I added. “They could have heard me and Abuela arguing and figured out that we knew about The Hunt. If I had only kept my mouth shut, maybe Abuela would be home safe right now.”
I slammed my fist against the table, and Wyn threw an arm around my shoulders. “Stop it, Tig. You can’t blame yourself. For all you know, whoever did this could have been someone who was involved in The Hunt originally.”
“Yeah,” Ella chimed in. “Didn’t Noel tell you there were four of them working together? Kind of suspicious that there’s only two of them left …”
My head shot up. “You’re right. Noel said they split up the artifacts needed to find the treasure among themselves. Mr. Wyatt had the spyglass, and our killer got his hands on that, thanks to me. And Mr. Green is supposed to have the original map drawn by the creators of The Hunt.”
For some reason, I wasn’t ready to tell my friends my theory about Abuela’s necklace—not yet.
“So we need to talk to Mr. Green,” Max said.
Ella perked up. “Makes sense. I mean, he is the one who dragged you into all this in the first place.”
“Exactly. Either he’s involved in this and he was gathering up the missing pieces … or whoever’s behind this is going to be after him next.”
“It’s not like we have anything to lose,” Wyn said.
I started scooting toward the outside of the booth, but Wyn put a hand on my arm to stop me.
“We don’t have to go this second, though. I know you’re worried about your abuela—we all are”—Wyn barreled on, anticipating my objections—“but you’re not going to be able to help her like this. You need to rest. We can regroup in a few hours.”
I looked across the booth at Max and Ella, who were giving me identical looks of concern.
“Fine,” I sighed, recognizing defeat. “I’ll crash for a couple hours. But then we’re going to talk to Mr. Green.”
* * *
Going to sleep in a big empty house while my abuela was out there somewhere in danger was the worst thing I could think of. Luckily, Wyn agreed to come home with me. If only to make sure I actually got some sleep and didn’t just pace around worrying until it was time for us to meet up again.
The closer we got to my house, the more my heart began to race. Wyn took my keys from my trembling hands and unlocked the door. (Not that it mattered with the doorframe busted. But a habit is a habit.)
It was like a role reversal of the night Wyn had been injured. She led me to my room (closing the door to Abuela’s room wordlessly as we passed) and swept everything from my bed save the blankets. The last thing I felt before succumbing to sleep was Wyn’s hand running gently through my hair.
By the time I woke up, it was late afternoon, and Wyn refused to apologize for letting me sleep all day. (And although I hated to admit it, I did feel a little bit better after some shut-eye.)
After refueling on the cold leftovers we found in the fridge, Wyn and I planned to meet up with Max at Mr. Green’s house, the large Victorian near the bus stop where I’d first met him. I didn’t plan to call ahead. I needed to catch him off guard if we were going to get any real information out of him.
When we arrived, I pounded on the door repeatedly until it finally swung open. Mr. Green was wearing another hideous wool suit (a drab brown this time), but he looked much older than he had when I’d seen him last. Even his mustache appeared to be drooping. And despite our showing up unannounced, Mr. Green didn’t seem that surprised to see us.
“Ah,” he said. “I was wondering when you’d show up.”
Mr. Green opened the door wide and gestured for us to enter. His house was modest in comparison to Mr. Wyatt’s, and the interior was art deco–inspired, with rich velvet, dark wood, clean lines, and gold furnishings. It was the kind of house where you knew immediately that there was a library inside it somewhere.
Mr. Green sat us down with him in his sunroom so that we could watch the birds in his garden. Then he doled out small cakes and cookies and delicate cups and saucers filled with a floral-smelling tea.
“Are you done stalling?” I asked sharply once he settled into his own chair.
Mr. Green sighed. “Alan asked you to find the founder’s treasure, didn’t he?”
“Yeah,” Wyn responded. “And since then we’ve witnessed a man fall to his death, Tig and I have both been attacked, and Mrs. Torres has been kidnapped!”
Mr. Green gasped and nearly dropped his saucer. “Sofia has been kidnapped?” He looked to me as if for confirmation. I nodded sharply, the lump in my throat making it difficult to speak.
“When Alan told me he thought things were ramping up again, I told him he was being silly. I never thought … For fifty years, there haven’t been more than whispers about The Hunt. I thought we had effectively wiped it from living memory.”
“Your book-burning campaign was a success,” Max chimed in. “We could barely find anything about The Hunt in the library. You missed the Talon archives, though.” He grinned, and Mr. Green managed a weak chuckle.
“Bookish people like you, my young detective, are hobbled at the knees without their research. Reduced to interviews and old-fashioned guesswork. The purest of all capers … the most prestige of cases lying in your lap.”
“When Mr. Wyatt said they removed all references to the founder’s treasure from public record, I didn’t think he really meant it quite so literally.”
Mr. Green took a sip of his tea.
“You should always fight for the preservation of knowledge,” he said sagely. “So much is lost if it is destroyed forever. Alan allowed me to keep a few books on subjects I admire, and he had one version of every edition we removed in his library, but there was so much richness that was burned in order to protect the people of Hollow Falls.”
“How did that work out for you?” Wyn asked.
Mr. Green fixed me with a steely gaze. “The only places information on the founder’s treasure can be found are in people. People are a kind of book, you know. The original book: storytellers.”
He put his teacup down and folded his hands in his lap. “The main issue is that we are delicate … impermanent. Not the most infallible keepers of information. There are things only Alan, Noel, Sofia, and I know. We thought that by splitting up the artifacts and agreeing to keep them apart—to keep ourselves apart, to an extent—we could contain The Hunt and prevent people from pursuing it. But I suppose greed is the greatest of motivators.”
He paused for a long moment. “And you consider me a suspect, am I right?”
“If you’re involved in all this, you’re not doing it alone,” I said, maintaining eye contact with Mr. Green. “Not to be rude, but you’re not strong enough to carry Abuela anywhere against her will. And you were literally downstairs serving cake when Mr. Wyatt fell. So unless you have teleportation powers, it had to be someone else.”
Mr. Green huffed in amusement. “Very true.”
“Uh, shouldn’t you be more upset about your best friend’s murder—not to mention being accused of committing it?” Max asked.
Mr. Green shook his head. “We lived our youth flirting with danger. We never expected to get this old at all—Sofia included. The golden summer had our nails ringed with blood and our adrenaline pumping day in and day out. Alan went out in a blaze of glory, not lying sick in bed. As long as whoever did this to him gets their just deserts, I’ll choose to celebrate his life rather than mourn his death,” he said wistfully. “In fact, Wyatt is probably looking up at us from hell right now, raging at me to start swinging a club around to avenge him.”
“Hell?” I said, scandalized.
“Heaven wouldn’t be interesting enough for him,” he said firmly.
“Can you tell us what happened between you all?” I practically begged. “I can’t help thinking that if I know more about Abuela when she was younger, it will help me figure out what’s going on and how to find her.”
Mr. Green looked wistful. “Alan and I were always neck and neck with Sofia and Noel in pursuit of the founder’s treasure. They would beat us to one location, and we’d beat them to the next. We didn’t officially meet until the night a man named Jet Cassidy died. He was—”
“The librarian who died in the church,” I interjected.
“Yes,” Mr. Green said, sounding surprised. “That really was the beginning of the end. We spent another couple months working together, trying to piece together the last few clues and discover the location of the treasure. But the fighting became too much. Alan didn’t want to see someone else die the way Jet had. We decided collectively that it would be better if the treasure was never found.
“Would you like to hear the story of what happened that night—the night I met your grandmother?”
We all nodded, and Mr. Green settled back into his chair and began to speak.
* * *
“I can’t believe he beat us here!” Sofia said, shaking her long dark curls angrily.
Noel took a long drag on her cigar as Sofia tucked her machete back in its sheath.
“I’m just glad we don’t have to fight him,” she said, breathing smoke out into the chill air. “Although I bet he wished he’d minded his business. Your blade would have hurt a lot less than that.”
Jet Cassidy, the local librarian (and riddle thief), lay mangled at their feet from his hideous fall. The blood was still rolling down the main aisle to the front door of the church.
Sofia wrinkled her nose. “Come, Noel, don’t be cruel. A man just died—even if it is his own damn fault.”
Noel stretched and rolled her shoulders. She shifted the wheel of rope she had brought from one side to the other.
“Well. What do you wanna do now, darlin’?” she asked. “The fellas from the club must be on our tail. Or do you think they saw the body and bailed? You can always count on a man to have a weak stomach.”
Sofia peered into the night suspiciously. “The blood’s too fresh. Mr. Cassidy couldn’t have fallen more than ten, fifteen minutes ago. I think we beat the Murder of Crows for once.”
Sofia leaned down to examine the body as closely as possible, without disrupting the scene. “He doesn’t seem to be holding anything, so what we’re looking for might still be up there. I think we should take our chances … but if we do, we have to do it now. There’s no time to waste.”
Sofia rolled up her pant legs, tucked in the laces of her shoes, and hopped her way across the church floor, avoiding the splashes of blood. Noel leaned down and put out her cigar on the stone floor of the church and then came up close behind her companion, following her to the staircase leading to the balcony.
The girls thundered up the steps. “We’ve gotta be close after this one, right? How many could be left?” Sofia asked.
“How about none?” a voice from the landing echoed. “Get out of the church. This one’s ours.”
Sofia looked up to see two shadows silhouetted by the light of the moon. The Murder of Crows had made it to this location after all. The two men wore masks and gloves so you couldn’t see their eyes or hands. One of them—the taller of the two—was holding a rapier and the other had a common billy club. Sofia didn’t know which was more dangerous.
“We’re getting whatever’s up there. Get out of our way before someone else has to die tonight,” Sofia warned.
The Crows switched places, the larger one in front and the shorter, more slender one in the back. They had silently decided who would be fighting who.
“Fine,” Noel snapped.
She threw her rope like a lasso around one of the men’s necks. Clearly very well trained, he stuck his club underneath at the last moment, wrenching it upward to free himself before Noel could tighten it.
The larger man advanced on Sofia and swung his rapier in a wild arc. Sofia blocked it easily with her machete, but he used the connection of their blades to push her backward down the stairs. She stumbled but caught her balance. Sofia couldn’t see this man’s face, but she could swear he was grinning.
He rushed forward with powerful strikes, his only weakness, the flexibility of his blade. The machete Sofia carried was shorter, stronger, and much sturdier. But it also shortened her reach and put her in more danger. She took a precious second to glance behind her and hopped back down five stairs, rolling to her feet. The man froze and looked back up the stairs for a moment.
Sofia could hear Noel holding her own, the sound of a large weight hitting the floor punctuated by a cry that was certainly not hers. Sofia smiled.
“Where did you learn to fight?”
The man sliced across the air, and Sofia ducked just in time, the blade slicing the tips of her hair as it floated behind her.
“Wouldn’t you like to find out?” she teased, jumping up on a pew to avoid stepping in gore and leaving her footprints behind.
The man didn’t take the bait, but he saw what his opponent was doing and followed suit, standing on a pew behind her. Their blades sung and clashed as they fought, slipping down the polished wood. Suddenly, Sofia stumbled, dropping her blade as her foot collided with a hymnal someone had left on the bench in the dark.
She screamed, but before her head could crash against the edge of the pew, the man reached out quick as a flash and snagged the front of her sweater tight in his grip.
Sofia panted in surprise as he hauled her back up. She pressed her hands against his chest and stared into the black void of his mask.
The man gently let her down and without a word clapped her in handcuffs. “Try beating us to the treasure now,” he said with glee.
Sofia looked down at the clink of the metal. “Hey!”
“Sofia!” Noel shrieked from above.
Sofia and her opponent looked up. Noel’s rope was wrapped around the base of the chandelier. She was holding on to the other end with an iron grip, shimmying her way up the rope toward the fixture. The Murder of Crows member who had chased after her was nowhere to be seen.
“It’s not steady,” the taller man shouted from his place beside Sofia. “Get down from there!”
“I’m so close,” Noel said. “I can see something glittering.”
A thrum of terror ran through Sofia as she saw her dearest friend dangling from the ceiling.
“Get down, Noel! We can find another way!” she shouted.
There was a horrible creaking sound. The chandelier tinkled dangerously. Noel’s opponent wobbled into view. He had chased her up the final set of stairs, and he was now holding his head in his hands, like he’d just regained consciousness. The instant his eyes focused on Noel, he, too, began shouting.
“What are you doing? A man literally died doing this tonight!” he yelled, gesturing to Jet’s broken body.
“I’ve almost got it …” Noel said.
The chandelier let out another metallic whine, and Sofia screeched in terror.
“Noel, I’ll never forgive you if you don’t get down from there. The treasure isn’t worth it! I cannot lose you—not like this!” Sofia yelled.
But Noel didn’t listen. She edged her body even closer to the chandelier, and her fingers closed over something tightly.
“Whew! Got it,” she crowed triumphantly. “You gotta have a little faith, baby! Two for the clue crew!”
“I’m not kidding!” the man on the balcony said hysterically. He reached out his arms to try to guide her back to solid ground—their differences forgotten in the face of actual danger.
Noel sighed heavily and scooted back down the rope, but that bit of movement was too much for the chandelier to take. It began tearing from the ceiling with a horrible crunch, leaving one side still embedded in plaster—for now. The rope, which had been pulled taut against the base of the chandelier, began to slip, and Noel finally screamed.
“Noel! Noel!” Sofia cried, dashing across the pews to stand directly beneath Noel to break her fall, but her hands were still cuffed together.
“Uncuff me!” she shrieked.
The taller man darted forward, and with a flash of his key, Sofia was free. She turned toward the staircase.
