Heartless. (Book Seven)

Five: A Spiritual Awakening.

Monday morning, Byron offered to drive Aria to school in his ancient Honda Civic since Aria's Subaru was still on the fritz. She moved a pile of slides, battered textbooks, and papers off the passenger seat to the back. The area below her feet was littered with empty coffee cups, SoyJoy wrappers, and a bunch of receipts from Sunshine, the eco-friendly baby store that Byron and his girlfriend, Meredith, shopped at.

Byron turned the ignition, and the old diesel engine grumbled to life. One of his acid jazz tapes blared through the speakers. Aria stared at the blackened and twisted trees in her backyard. Little curls of smoke rose from the woods, the fire still smoldering in places. An entire roll of yellow Do Not Cross tape had been strung up along the tree line, as the woods were now too brittle and dangerous to enter. Aria had heard on the news this morning that cops were combing through the woods in search of an answer at to who might have set the fire, and last night she'd received a call from the Rosewood PD, wanting to know to know about the person she'd seen in the woods with the can of gasoline. Now that the person definitely wasn't Wilden, Aria didn't have much to tell them. It could have been anyone under that enormous hood.

Aria held her breath as they rolled past the large colonial that belonged to Ian Thomas's family. The lawn was covered with morning frost, the red frost, the red mailbox flag was up, and a couple of coupon circulars were scattered on the Thomases' driveway. There was fresh graffiti on the garage door that said, Murderer, the paint an exact match to the KILLER graffiti someone had painted on Spencer's garage door. On instinct, Aria reached into her yak-fur bag and felt for Ian's class ring in the inside pocket. She'd been tempted just to give it to Wilden yesterday—she didn't want to be responsible for it—but Spencer had a point. The Rosewood PD had missed the ring entirely during their massive search through the woods; they might assume Aria had planted it there. But why hadn't they found the ring? Maybe they hadn't searched the woods at all.

And where was Ian, anyway? Why had he given them the wrong information in his IMs? And how had he not noticed that his ring was gone? Aria doubted that it had just slipped off his finger—the only time that had happened to her was when she washed out brushes after painting, and she always noticed her rings falling off right away. Was it possible that Ian was dead, and that the ring had fallen off him as someone roughly dragged his body away when Aria and the others had run back to find Wilden? But if that was the case, then who was speaking with them on IM?

She sighed loudly, and Byron gave her a surreptitious look. He was extra disheveled today, his dark hair standing up in thinning tufts. Despite the cold, he wasn't wearing a coat, and there was a big hole in the elbow of his heavy wool sweater. Aria recognized it as one he'd bought when the family had been living in Iceland. She wished her family had never left Reykjavik.

"So how are you doing?" Byron asked gently.

Aria shrugged. At the corner, they passed a bunch of public school kids waiting for the bus. They pointed at Aria, instantly recognizing her from the news. Aria pulled her faux-fur hood around her head. Then they passed Spencer's street. A big tree service vehicle was parked at the curb, a police car behind it. Across the street, Jenna Cavanaugh and her German shepherd service dog walked daintily to Mrs. Cavanaugh's Lexus, avoiding patches of ice. Aria shivered. Jenna knew more about Ali than she'd let on. Aria even wondered if Jenna was keeping a burgeoning secret—on the day of Meredith's baby shower, Jenna had been standing in the middle of Aria's yard as if she needed to tell Aria something. But when Aria asked Jenna what was wrong, Jenna turned and fled. She seemed to know Jason DiLaurentis pretty well, too—but why would Jason have barged into her house last week and started arguing with her? And why did A want them to know it, if Jason truly had nothing to do with Ali's death?