Slaughter Daughter by Eve Langlais
21
I was still mopingwhen Jag and my new uncle left. Peter, Cashien, and Jackson were off doing whatever, so it was just us girls with an armload of hair dye.
“I’m thinking of going blue on top with a white undercut,” Mary declared. “What about you, Abby?”
“Me? I probably shouldn’t.” With my luck, the cops would arrive in the middle of it.
“If you’re worried about the police, don’t. Cashien has already dealt with them and provided your alibi.” Kalinda answered.
“He did? What alibi?”
“He was with you, studying.” Said by my friend with a tilt of an eyebrow.
“Jenkins will accuse me of being an even bigger whore.”
Kalinda blinked. “That man is vile.”
I shrugged. “In his defense, he thinks I’m sleeping with Jag, saw me with Mathews, and now Cashien is claiming he spent time with me.” Which made me wonder why Cashien and not Jag…
“Lucky girl!” Kalinda winked. “All the more reason to play with your hair. Choose a color.” She grabbed a box of purple. “I’m going for a long, chunky streak.”
My currently plain brown hair hung over my shoulder. Mary didn’t have a box of my natural auburn color, but she did have a hot pink. “Do you have bleach?”
She did. Soon, the smell of chemicals had us opening windows. Our hair was in aluminum foil as we prepared it for color.
We sat on kitchen stools, and Kalinda slid a jug of juice in front of us with a plate of cookies.
I almost choked when Mary mused aloud, “Do you think the pentagram in the school was made with Erik’s blood?”
“Doubtful, given it already had a body,” Kalinda pointed out.
For some reason, I felt a need to divulge. “The professor thinks there’s another pentagram out there with Erik’s blood.” A morbid thing to even contemplate.
“He’s probably right. Why else drain his body?” Kalinda sounded so matter-of-fact.
“Who does that?” I exclaimed. I was very happy that neither of them said my parents.
Mary bit her lower lip. “Blood magic is common in many cultures.”
“But once you add in the pentagrams, the scope narrows.” I would know, I’d done the research. “It’s most likely a Satan-worship thing. Maybe we should be looking for a local cult.”
“Satanists are not the only ones who like to do blood rituals and sacrifice.”
“Come on, how many more clues do you need? Dark candles. Blood. Death. The pentagram. The dark robes,” I argued. I couldn’t have said why I was determined to make this out to be some satanic cult thing. The why didn’t matter, so long as we figured out the who.
“Robes don’t mean shit. Someone might choose to wear a robe while killing for many reasons. For one, it’s an easy garment to remove after blood spatter.” Mary ticked off her fingers. “Ritual dress. Camouflage.” More fingers lifted. “Could be the guard was mistaken and he didn’t see a robe at all.”
“Leaving us with nothing usable,” was my reply.
“Not exactly.” Mary pointed to her laptop screen. “Interesting thing about the first pentagram found. The lines weren’t even, and the grooves were too shallow, leading to the blood puddling outside them. Also, the candles, while all black, weren’t black wax. They had been painted black.”
“And?”
“It’s obviously a poorly rendered copycat,” Mary pointed out.
“Still don’t see how that helps us. Erik—the one who supposedly made the first pentagram—is dead. Meaning, he wasn’t on campus making the one that got burned down, and he hardly killed himself and moved his body.”
“Obviously, but I wonder if his crime led to us having a more adept copycat.” Kalinda jumped in.
“Great,” I grumbled. Leaning back in my seat, I eyed both women before saying, “I know you all think I’m innocent. And I am. But how come you think it might be a copycat? I mean, shouldn’t you be assuming it’s my parents?”
“Your parents are dead.”
“They are, although some say they faked their deaths. That it wasn’t my mom they salvaged from the car. That my dad never died at all.” I’d seen the rumors and even believed them for a tiny bit. Until time passed and I remained alone and realized they weren’t coming back for me.
“If they were alive, do you really think your parents would jeopardize you?” asked Kalinda.
I hung my head. “No.”
“Then we have a copycat. Possibly a friend of Erik’s.”
Or his killer.
