We look at the notes again. There’s not a lot of information, but we do arrive at a few possible thoughts: the killer is trying to say something about love, fidelity, rebirth, and pride; the killer is tying this to juniors at our school, so has some connection to our class; and he—or she—is focusing on Eva. It’s nauseating that someone can be so twisted as to think that murder has anything to do with love. The fidelity part is a little more interesting considering what we now know about Robert’s lack of faithfulness.

“So did he kill Amy because Robert slept with her?” Eva wonders aloud. “It’s not her fault that he was dating me. If it’s about being faithful, shouldn’t Robert be a target?”

“Maybe?”

Eva and I exchange a look, and she says, “I need to see him then. I need to see how he dies.”

“Micki wasn’t unfaithful to anyone. Neither were you.”

“Nate doesn’t date, so that’s not it there either,” she muses.

After a few more minutes, we are forced to admit that these facts aren’t enough to figure out who the future victims are. There are around two hundred people in our grade, so if we look only at the girls, we have maybe a hundred or so potential victims. That’s a lot of people. If we narrow it down to people who are faithful or have pride issues, that’s . . . impossible to figure out.

“They might not all be girls if your visions are real, but they are all people you spend time with. That’s the only thing in common between the victims and me and Nate too. It seems pretty simple, but it’s all we have.”

“So I need to start looking at my friends’ deaths,” she says softly. “If I’m all that everyone has in common, we need to start looking at their deaths to see who the next victim is.”

We decide to start with the people most likely to visit her. Rather than text them all, she simply sends a message to Piper, who was to visit soon anyhow. “Bored and trapped in the house. Invite the usuals to come over for lunch.”

A few moments later, she reads Piper’s reply: “On it.”

I’m not sure who all will be around, but I suspect that Piper will just send a group message to some combination of their core group: Laurel, Jess, CeCe, Bailey, Madison, Robert, Reid, Grayson, Carter, and Jamie. To be sure, she sends another text to Robert.

Quietly, Eva tells me, “The idea of having most of them in the house with Nate makes me want to cringe, but I need to start looking for more clues.”

“You do know Nate slept with Jess . . . and possibly with Piper.”

“I know what he’s done the past two years, Grace,” she says. “It didn’t cure my crush when he was doing it, and it’s not curing it now.”

At the sound of a throat being cleared, Eva glances at her doorway. Nate stands in the hall awkwardly, hands shoved in his pockets and lips pressed together as if he’s disapproving of something—quite possibly the words he just overheard.

Eva tilts her head, her chin jutting out as if she’s about to challenge him. “Did you need something?”

He shakes his head. “I’m not going to even try to answer that one, Eva.”

He stays outside of her room, like there’s a line he can’t cross, and I have the overwhelming urge to yank him inside, run out, and close the door on them. He needs to get past whatever this is, but I’m not so heartless as to put Eva in that situation—at least not today.

“The social elite are stopping by,” I tell him.

“What?” He looks from Eva to me and back at her. “What did you do?”

“Texted Piper and Robert.” She folds her arms over her chest. “I’m investigating. All the victims are tied to me, so I’ll look and see if we can figure out who’s next.”

“You let her do this?” He glares at me.

“Check the attitude, Bouchet.” I stand and step between them. “Crazy killer is obsessing on her. What do you think she’s going to do? Sit around and wait for him to kill another girl?”

Nate folds his arms over his chest and says, “If the victims are all tied to you, don’t you think the killer might be too?”

“They’re my friends, Nate. They might be jerks sometimes, but no more so than you.”

He doesn’t look convinced, but I’m with Eva on this one. I don’t know what a killer is supposed to look like, but I’m having a hard time picturing anyone I know as a murderer. They’re potential victims, though, and I really hope that Eva can see deaths because I don’t want anyone else to die for real.

DAY 14: “THE ADULTERER”

Judge

I KNOW HE’S THERE, close to her, touching her like she’s his. She’s not. She’s always been mine—and she always will be.

Her mother hired him, invited him into her home, and I am confused by it. I don’t understand why she picked him. Why didn’t Mrs. Tilling place an ad? Why didn’t she ask Eva’s friends? I could have been there every day. She’d see how life should be then. She’d understand my love for her, my need for her. I could touch the cuts on her skin, marks that no one else has put on her, like symbols of our connection. If I study them, I wonder what they’ll say. What messages are written on her skin for me to read?

The Lord is mysterious, and I don’t even begin to understand his ways. When the glass carved her face, I didn’t think to wipe away the blood to find the messages that the Lord might have left there. He carved the commandments in stone tablets. He spoke through a burning bush. Perhaps, Eva’s skin is the parchment on which he wrote our own private commandments.