The Sleuth Will Set You Free - A Gallagher Girls Story

Chapter Thirteen

The night had been long, the heels had been high, and the questions has been hard.  Woods had been in a glorious mood all night, which meant, of course, that she had drilled me into nonexistence.  I had been slapped so hard with so many questions that my ears were still ringing from the hit.

How old would the Spanish Prince have to be to court the Bulgarian ambassador's daughter?

There are six people of political significance in this room who play a key part in the upholding of the Treaty of Caspia.  Name each, their titles, and the roles they play.

Who in this room is most likely to kill the United States President and why?

Where were you the night I died and what could you have done to stop it?

That last one wasn't Woods, but it was with an exhausted laugh and a pull in my gut that I admitted how hard it was getting to tell the difference between the real voices and the fake ones.  Or maybe there weren't any real ones at all.  Maybe every last bit of this stuff was in my head.

No.  Stop.

I couldn't afford to think like this.  Once I started, it was almost impossible to stop.  I had to shut the thoughts down before they could grow, consuming my mind like a mold.

I listened to the click, click, click sound that my heels made as I walked.  It had only been minutes since I'd taken them off, but it felt like it had been years, the cool tile of my grandfather's school providing relief from my blistering feet.  My dress collected dirt as it flowed around my toes, turning the hem from blue to black.

Blue and black.  Like my professor's eye.  Like my shoulder.

Bandages.  I needed to change my bandages.  I couldn't forget to change my bandages before I went to sleep.

Oh, sleep sounded wonderful.  I'd hop in a car with sleep and drive to Vegas if I could, but I had to shower first, otherwise I'd regret it in the morning.  I didn't know a single form of torture that was worse than brushing through day-old hairspray.  Shower, brush, sleep.  That was the plan.

I turned down the hallway, following a pack of sophomores who were giggling and sighing, one of them still dancing with the ghost of a boy she'd left behind.  I tried to remember when I had been that excited about prom.  When I had been that excited about anything.  Scout Jasons had been my date, not my doctor, and the hope of my mother's return had taken the form of conspiratorial whispers and international manhunts.

Nowadays, that hope took the form of a tired, babbling little girl, not a single soul taking her seriously.

Stop feeling sorry for yourself.

Pathetic.  It was pathetic.  I was pathetic.

I shook the thoughts away.  Shower, brush, sleep.  I just had to make it to make it to my room.  After I slept, I'd feel better.

I'd had a lot of homes in my lifetime.  There was my school.  My family's safe house.  The very peculiar number of apartments my family burned through in North Dakota.  And now Blackthorne.  It had only taken a year, but I felt completely comfortable sticking Blackthorne on my list of homes.

And, well, I knew a lot of things about this building.  There wasn't much that caught me off guard.  I expected my father's door to squeak when I opened it.  I expected Mr. Hughes to be hiding away in his training room.  I expected to see Alice sharing a room with me when she spent the night.

What I did not expect, was opening my door to find Alice, in her bed, underneath a boy with flaming red hair.

"Oh my god."