To Tell An Altswood Lie (The Altswood Saga #3)

Chapter 13 - Wolf

Except...

I stepped over the police tape again, leaving the cordoned area. Because Livana's driveway was so pitch black, my eyes had snagged onto a smattering of white on the cement, along the edge of the house. I crouched low, until my nose almost met the ground, and smeared my fingers into the strange, fine dust.

Cigarette ash?

"Look, she's right there."

I emitted a surprised gasp, caught off-guard by the shout. I leaped upright, taking a step back to distance myself from the police tape, but it was too late to look innocent.

Francis had turned his accusatory stare on me.

"Why has no one arrested her?" he snapped, flailing his arms when the officer in front of him tried to calm him down. His eyes were wide, bulging, reminding me of an overly startled fish. "Oh, right, I know, because daddy is the law enforcer, right? And when that's not enough, her boyfriend's daddy steps in instead."

I wanted to hide. I wanted to smooth down a different hair colour atop my head and pretend I was someone else, pretend that Francis was gesturing at someone behind me.

There was no one behind me.

"Francis," I sighed, "please stop using the word daddy unironically."

"No one else is seeing how messed up this is?" he exclaimed, ignoring my remark.

Francis turned on his heel, appealing to the masses now, trying to convince those who had turned their attention on him to listen. "Never mind that this guy actually shot someone—" He stabbed his pointer finger at Jules, who frowned, "—but then this girl," he returned his attention to me, "appears on the island out of nowhere and people start dying? How many has it been? How much more of our graduating class is going to get hacked to pieces before we realise the common denominator?"

"That's not fair, Francis," Dad boomed. "You—"

Francis didn't let Dad finish. He didn't wait around to hear about how I had no influence on Rebekah or Joshua. He knew all that already, he wasn't stupid. He was just angry, and he wanted a scapegoat.

Francis marched forward, not stopping until his toes almost touched mine, and stuck a finger at me. It stopped at my clavicle, at the soft skin underneath my throat unsupported by bone, and if he pressed hard enough, perhaps he could open a hole and choke me to death.

"I know what you did."

"What did I do?" I asked. My words felt too big to fit through my narrow vocal cords. "Clean up your mess after you ditched the Hunt and left me at the top of Rebekah's list?"

"I bet that was real sad, huh?" Francis shot back. "Now you can murder me yourself."

I exhaled slowly, trying to control my temper. "I didn't kill anyone."

"You're mentally ill. It was bound to happen sooner or later."

My fist clenched. The burst of hot energy from earlier returned, curling around the base of my spine and licking outwards in fury. It was a sort of blind wrath that cancelled out my rational thought, that quietened my anxiety about every consequence that could arise, begging me to act now, begging me to answer for my actions later.

But Jules beat me to the punch. Literally.

I didn't even see him approach. One second Francis was looming over me with a finger prodded at my chest and the next he was on the ground, holding his nose and groaning.

"Jules!" I hissed, grabbing onto his shoulder before he could attempt anything else. Gabriel and Annabelle rushed towards us. All our schoolmates were staring at Jules in horror, but he hadn't seemed to notice.