I bit back a mean response. The truth was, Loretta never wanted to take action, not even when Greg was the one being bullied. “If you hear or see anything, can you let Andre know? That way you don’t even have to talk to me. I just want to find Greg before she…”
Loretta’s eyes blazed. “You made a deal, didn’t you? So she can’t hurt him.”
“If I know anything from my time in Dunwich, it’s that Hermia West knows how to loophole her way to getting exactly what she wants. I don’t know how you know about my bargain, unless she told you. Unless you’re working with her. Are you going to tell your pal Courtney I’m back? Or Ms. West?”
Loretta didn’t answer. Instead, she stepped toward me. “I haven’t decided. It all depends on why you came back.”
“I know you don’t like me, but I want to help you. To help everyone.” I gestured to the graves. “I think there might be a way to reverse all this, to give them all back their lives. But what I really, really wantright nowis to find Greg.”
“Why don’t I like you?” The faintest hint of a smile played on her lips. Ice crept down my back. I didn’t think I’d ever seen Loretta smile.
“Huh?”
“Tell me why I don’t like you, since you’re such an expert on my feelings.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with anything, but okay, sure. You don’t like me because you think I made things worse for you. I drew attention to myself, and you suffered for it. You don’t like me because I always tried to stand up for myself and for others, but you just rolled over and took their cruelty. You wanted to be more like me. You were jealous.”
Loretta snorted. I was beginning to hate that sound. “Of course you’d think that.”
“Fine. You tell me why you didn’t like me.” I shrugged.Why has she surprised me just to talk about this?“Or not. I really couldn’t care less.”
“But that’s not true. Youdocare. That’s your problem. You pretend you’re so above everyone, you’ve had such a hard life that nothing could possibly affect you. But everything you do is about getting attention and making people see you.” Loretta mocked me in a high-pitched voice. ‘I’m amazing Hazel! Notice me! Love me!’”
I sighed. “That’s why you don’t like me, then?”
“I never liked you because you don’t learn anything. You thought you could get what you want because you stamp your feet and you scream the loudest.”
“It’s better than doing nothing.” I swept my arm across the tombstones. “How can I just pretend this didn’t happen? How can I wait for them to hurt Greg and Andre? I’m trying to give all our classmates back their futures.Yourfuture.”
“By sneaking around school and poking at their graves?” Loretta sneered. “I bet they sure are glad Amazing Hazel is on the case.”
“Fine. Then help me. Work with me. Tell me about the ceremony Ms. West used to give your soul to the god and bring you back from the dead. Tell me what happened!”
“You’re Hazel Waite. You know everything,” Loretta shot back. “You tellmewhat happened.”
“I don’tknow.” My hands balled into fists again. “I don’t know anything, and that’s the whole problem. I know that all the students are trapped on the school grounds, but I don’t know what thatmeans. I don’t know why you seem to be different, why you were allowed back into class. All I know is that it was supposed to be me they took away, but instead, you disappeared and you returned the next day, but you were changed.”
“Was I changed?” Loretta asked. “Or did you just never bother to get to know me?”
“I…” I didn’t know how to answer that.
“Was I in factexactlythe person I’d always been, except that I had a new haircut and better fitting clothes and different friends? Was it in fact that you know so little about me that you couldn’t even tell?”
My mouth opened and closed. I couldn’t comprehend what Loretta was saying. It sounded like she was saying that she hadn’t been turned by the god. But then why did she go away and come back? Why did she suddenly become friends with Courtney? Why…
Fuck.
“You’re not an edimmu?” I managed to choke out.
Loretta smiled without mirth. “I’m still alive, just like you. No thanks to you, either, since it was your boyfriends who tried to have me sacrificed when it should have beenyou.”
They hadn’t been my boyfriends then, and I wasn’t even sure they were my boyfriends now. But I wasn’t going to split hairs with Loretta over that. Trey had given me his points so that I wouldn’t be sacrificed, but that had put Loretta next on the soul-stealing block. Only it turned out her soul was intact. “Butwhywould the god spare you?”
“Because you and I are the same. The god doesn’t want to drain us of our life. He wants to study us. We fascinate him.”
“We do?”
“Of course. He wants to understand us. Because we’re the murderers. The only ones he’s ever met.”
