Ones that seem to be growing.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
After nearly three days of no breaks, Max came into the library with a strut in his step like he’d just won the lottery.
“Who’s your Daddy?” he said, wiggling his eyebrows before slipping the toxicology report under my nose.
“Do I even want to know how you got this …?”
“Probably not. The act’s illegal on three continents.” He winked, and I made a face.
“Kidding. My mom made her famous peach pie. Always a hit.”
“God bless Mrs. Middlemore.”
“And maybe a little help from our favorite jeans.”
“Oh God, not the supertight ones? You still have those?”
He wiggled his eyebrows again. “What? Jealous I’m not wearing them for you?”
I rolled my eyes and reached around him for the report. “Give me that.”
“No drugs in her system. Alcohol under the legal limit,” he said.
“So she wasn’t under the influence of anything. Anything non-Magical, at least,” I said.
“I also asked around to some of the Chemistry and EEMM majors. Hexed pills are definitely possible, though none of them know anything about campus drug deals other than weed and some caffeine pills.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You’ve been busy.”
“And that’s not all I found,” he said, taking out his phone. “Grant Hafer’s social media pages.”
The picture showed a white guy with beady eyes and a short black beard. He looked straight at the camera, unsmiling, like he was daring the cameraman to flinch.
Grant’s page was filled with math proofs, offensive jokes, and a number of conspiracy theories reposted from other accounts.
“Gross.”
He tapped his finger on the screen. “And look at this.”
“What is that? A meme?”
“If it is, he’s got a dog-shit sense of humor.”
It was Maya’s face photoshopped onto a person wandering down a path that split into two. The one on the right side went through a patch of green grass beneath a shimmering sun and a river of clear water. On the left was a darker path full of upturned nails and a river full of toxic sludge. A murderous clown hid behind a tree with a saw. Maya chose the worse path—stepping on rusty nails, heading right toward the tree with the hidden clown, a stupid smile plastered on her face.
Above the meme, a caption read:RECEIVE NOT A SWALLOW IN YOUR HOUSE … SHE COULDN’T SWALLOW FOR SHIT ANYWAY.
The comments were filled with a string of laughing emojis from other accounts.
“That’s disgusting.”
“Look at the date,” Max said.
“Two days after Maya’s death.”
Our eyebrows raised, and I knew what we were both thinking without saying it.
