She shook her head. “Never heard them say a word. Sometimes Alice would whisper, but always in a language I didn’t recognize. Maybe it wasn’t English?”
Now that was interesting. “Not English? What did it sound like?”
Zoe shrugged. “I don’t know. I only speak English and Spanish. It was weird, though. Kind of soft? I just left them alone.”
Carol asked, “You didn’t notice any perfume, cologne, anything that stood out?”
Zoe actually thought about it. “Maybe? I guess there was a smell, but not bad. Like lavender, sometimes. Or cookies, if Alice brought snacks. Sorry. I’m not good at that kind of thing.”
Beth scribbled on her notepad, probably logging that clue for later. “You’ve been a big help, Zoe. Honestly.”
Zoe’s eyes shimmered in the alley lights. “You’re not gonna get me fired?”
I wanted to give her a hug but held back. “Not a word. Cross my heart. You did the right thing, telling us.”
She sagged with relief, then scurried back to the movie theater, glancing over her shoulder every few feet. The door thudded shut behind her.
We stood there in the alley, just the three of us and a pretty nasty stench coming from the dumpsters.
“Well, that was a bust,” Carol announced.
Beth started walking back toward the lobby, her shoes squelching slightly with each step. “Not exactly. We have a midnight visitor and a pattern of sneaking. That counts for something.”
I followed after them, massaging my lower back. “I’m starting to wonder if Alice is a secret super spy.”
Carol laughed. “If she is, her code name is definitely Bunny Slippers.”
As we walked around the building, Daniel pulled up. He parked, got out, and gave me a grin that caused every butterfly in mystomach to beat their wings like crazy. I gave him the short version of what we’d learned. He listened without interrupting, then nodded toward the side hallway.
“There’s a security room. Let’s check.”
I probably should have let him do it alone, but curiosity was a beast I couldn’t leash.
We filed into the tiny room off the main hallway. Movie posters plastered every inch of the walls. The guy manning the monitors looked about seventeen, like most life forms in this building. He glanced up, saw Daniel, and instantly muted whatever game he’d been playing.
Daniel’s sheriff aura worked wonders when we needed doors opened. “Need a quick look at the midnight surveillance images for the last few weeks. Please.”
Two minutes later, we were squinting at black-and-white footage on a screen the size of a legal pad. Daniel scrolled through the timestamps until he landed on a midnight showing from last week. The same day Zoe had mentioned.
It showed Alice, clear as daylight, slipping through the lobby. Then she paused by the front doors, scanned outside, and waved. A second figure popped into frame, head wrapped in a hoodie pulled so low you couldn’t see their nose. They moved fast and careful, somehow always turning away from the cameras as they moved past them.
Were they avoiding the cameras? Or was it a coincidence? We couldn’t be sure.
Even on freeze frame, the mystery person was unrecognizable. No obvious height difference. Nothing about the way theywalked, either. When they went to theater three, they took the back row seats, just like Zoe said, and stayed huddled together. When the movie ended, they left the same way, faces hidden every step.
Beth peered at the monitor, hands on her hips. “That’s not Henry. Not even close.”
The seventeen-year-old monitor guy snorted. “Your brother’s the one who always argues about 3-D glasses, right? Yeah, that’s not him.”
Daniel replayed the brief segment, slow-mo. “Whoever it is, it looks like they know the cameras are here. They’re doing everything possible not to be recognized.”
My mind spun. Why would Alice risk coming here at midnight, just to meet up with someone she had to disguise? Unless she was protecting them. Or herself. Or both.
Beth’s lips twisted sideways. “Maybe it’s another witch. Or an in-disguise celebrity. Hell, could be Bigfoot for all we know.”
I cracked my neck, suddenly exhausted. “We’re back to square one, except now I have even more questions.”
Daniel printed out a still photo of Alice and the hoodie-wearing sidekick and handed it to Beth. “For reference. I’ll do some digging on parking lot cameras, but I doubt we’ll get much. Not with this level of careful.”
