“You have to,” Zehra croaked. “But before you go, there’s one last thing…”
“Yeah?”
“On that bench over there… there’s something you should see.”
I followed Zehra’s finger to the end of Ms. West’s lab table. In a plastic tray sat a stack of newspaper articles. I started to flip through them and realized where they’d come from.
“I overheard a conversation between West and another teacher, Atwood,” Zehra said. “They found those articles I left for you in the room of a student named Loretta.”
Loretta took the articles.I’d gone to show Ayaz what I’d discovered about Miskatonic Prep, and in my haste, I hadn’t picked up the rest. When I came back to the storage room, they were gone. I’d never found out who took them or why.Loretta.If the teachers found them in Loretta’s room, that means it was probably from her that they learned about the secret passage.
Bitch.
I picked up the stack of articles. I’d never finished looking through them. The first few were about the Miskatonic Prep fire, then there were some about problems at the Arkham General Hospital morgue, although it never spoke about Ms. West by name. If I’d known all this sooner, it might’ve saved us some time.
Zehra coughed. “Find the article about Loretta.”
I flipped through the stack, scanning the tiny print for Loretta’s name. It didn’t make sense that she’d be in here. These were all articles from decades ago—
I stopped short, my breath catching in my throat.
Loretta’s face stared back at me from a small image. She wore a blue dress with a white lace collar. A Sunday School dress.
The headline read, ‘14-YEAR-OLD GIRL SUSPECTED OF MURDERING HER FATHER.’
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I scanned the article. It talked about her mother’s suicide, and how Loretta had been given to her father to raise after her death. The reporter in Loretta’s local town seemed to believe it wasn’t fair that Loretta’s father – who’d never wanted her – had a child thrust on him. An unstable child who ran him through with a pitchfork. Police found Loretta standing over the body of her dead father, silent and covered in blood. Her prints were on the pitchfork handle. The reporter made no secret of the fact she believed Loretta wasn’t just guilty, but evil.
A pitchfork.My eyes bugged out.That’s brutal.
Loretta was tiny. How did she even have the strength to lift a pitchfork, let alone drive it through someone’s ribcage?
Another article explained details from the court case. The defense argued that Loretta couldn’t have committed the crime because of her size and the amount of power and brutality required. They pointed out that a distraught Loretta, upon finding the body, tried to pull the handle free and ended up with blood all over her. They added witnesses who stated her father was a brutal man who had several ongoing disputes with neighbors and with a local shopkeeper. Loretta had been found not guilty, and she looked after by her grandparents.
Because we’re the murderers.
With shaking hands, I tidied the stack of articles and replaced them in the tray. Zehra watched me, her eyes swimming with pain. “Ms. West is interested in this girl,” she said. “You should talk to her.”
“Oh, I plan on it.” I hugged them both.
It felt like a betrayal to lock Zehra and Greg back in that room, to find another length of chain and wrap it through the padlock, to turn our backs on our friends and follow the rats out of the gym, but that was exactly what we did. I hated every moment of it. At the bottom of the staircase, the urge overcame me and I turned back. Quinn stopped me by grabbing my arms and turning me around again.
“The only way to save them is to keep going with the plan,” he whispered into my hair.
“I know.” I buried my face into his chest. “But it sucks.”
“Yeah, it does.” Quinn rubbed my back. “Greg’s pretty brave. I don’t know if I’d opt to stay in a rat-infested shithole just to help you save some ungrateful rich assholes.”
I smiled.Ungrateful rich assholeswas a pretty accurate description of the student body. “I told you he was special.”
We made our way back to the basement without being seen. Trey was at the door as soon as we turned the handle. “What happened?” he demanded, dragging me into the bed with him. His fresh herb and cypress scent hit my nose, allowing me to shrug off some of the horrors that clung to me like weeds. “You’ve been gone for hours.”
Quinn and I filled him in on everything that happened. Between the teachers plotting to kidnap Courtney’s mother, the rats, the discovery of Greg and Zehra in Ms. West’s lab, and Loretta’s articles, it was a lot to take in.
“What are we doing about the kidnapping?” Quinn asked.
“We leave the faculty to it,” I said. “We’re continuing with our plan. As far as I’m concerned, any advantage they gain over the Eldritch Club will work in our favor.”
