It was twenty minutes before the police arrived - or, at least, who I'd presumed would be the police. The knocks on the door were staccato and clear, and Vivian jumped up from the sofa to answer it with more verve than I'd ever seen her exhibit.
She hadn't stopped crying since I'd run down the stairs screaming about what had happened. After inspecting the scene herself, she'd burst into tears, ushered me into the living room, and cordoned off the stairs with a length of ribbon that she usually used to decorate birthday cakes. Her eyes were still glazed over with too much moisture.
When Vivian opened the door to reveal Ivana Burr standing on the porch, I had to suppress a gasp. She looked like an ice sculpture, with her signature white coat and her frost-kissed skin. Behind her were two police officers, one of them middle-aged and balding, the other young and scrawny, smiling with such fervour that I couldn't help imagining it was his first day on the job.
Ivana smiled, reached up to balance her sunglasses on top of her head, and spoke. "Hello, Mrs Sweetman, I presume? May we come in?"
"O-of course," my mother stammered, stepping aside. She eyed Ivana with a sense of complete befuddlement. "W-who are you, exactly?"
"Oh, yes, how rude of me," said Ivana, stepping over the threshold and into our living room. She surveyed the room and her gaze found me. Her eyes twinkled. When she spoke, she seemed to be addressing me alone. "I am Ivana Burr, the recently appointed First Councillor for Magpie's Nest. I was at the station when you called, and I thought I'd accompany Officer Burke and Officer Toland in their investigation. It's important to me that I become familiar with the townspeople, especially in light of recent events."
"R-recent events?" Vivian enquired.
Ivana tore her eyes off me. "Were you not aware of the string of missing persons across the county recently, Mrs Sweetman?" Her voice seemed to emit something on par with condescension. "Grant Jenkins, Kitty Stringfellow, Dale Treharne and the latest, of course, poor little Lucy Lidlow?"
I recalled the mosaic of the missing on the noticeboard at work, the painted newspaper faces, the colour of memories and the past. A spattering of goose-bumps exploded across my skin.
"Oh, yes, I didn't realise-"
"It's quite alright, Mrs Sweetman," said Ivana, dismissing my mother as she turned back to me. My feet felt suddenly heavy, as though they were weighted down with lead. "And you are Sapphire, whose bedroom has reportedly been ransacked?"
I nodded. While her eyes were on me, I found myself unable to speak.
"Yes," said Ivana, her expression sparkling with an all-knowing familiarity. "I believe we have met before, at least from a distance. You were in a spot of bother, were you not?"
My mother shot me a glare.
"Mrs Vanderbilt truly does run a fine establishment," said Ivana. "I thought it quite necessary to familiarise myself with the most esteemed school in the county. And, of course, it is where my son, Jet, is attending. I think he may have mentioned you, Sapphire, only he calls you by something else."
"Saffy?" I whispered. The thought of Jet mentioning me to his mother made my intestines squirm.
Ivana nodded, her smile widening. "Yes, that's it," she said. "Anyway, shall we have a look at this alleged break-in that has set you so on edge?"
Her general air of indifference remained, seeping into her words in a way that made me want to scream at her. I stood up, numb and zombie-like, and made my way up the stairs. Ivana and the two police officers followed, tailed by my mother.
My bedroom door stood open. A few straggled tatters of bed sheet had wandered into the hallway, carried by a non-existent breeze. Inside, spores of stuffing drifted aimlessly through the air, catching the late-September sunlight in a way that was otherworldly. Nothing was where it should have been; everywhere I cast my eyes I discovered new misfortunes to behold, further belongings destroyed.
Ivana made her way into the centre of the room, cautiously treading over the bales of debris that now constituted the floor. Officers Burke and Toland followed her, the older of the two jotting down notes in his little book as he entered.
I felt my breath catch in my throat as Ivana rotated slowly on the spot, allowing her eyes to absorb every morsel of information she could gather, and finally came to rest on the mirror. Of course, the first thing I'd done upon seeing the message was smear it with my sleeve. Now, only a smudge of red remained. It wasn't as though I'd have trouble remembering the words.
Rigatona is coming. They were imprinted onto my eyelids, so that I could see them even when my eyes were closed. What did they mean?
Ivana hesitated for a moment, and then returned her attention to us. Her eyes scanned over me in a way that made me feel vulnerable, naked.
"Can you explain to us exactly what happened, Miss Sweet?" the older of the officers asked me. He reached up and squatted a speck of pillow stuffing from his forehead
I recounted the tale to them, the memories still completely raw and unspoilt in my mind. For the first time, Ivana seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say. She hung on my every word and once I was done she proceeded to twirl in a slow circle to flit her gaze over each and every surface of the room, for the second time.
"Did you leave any windows open when you left for school this morning, Sapphire?" asked Ivana.
I nodded. It was easier to lie through gesture than through words. The windows had all been closed when I'd entered the room: that was one of the things that scared me the most. Whoever - or whatever - had done this seemed to have entered through the walls rather than through the windows.
I'd thrown them wide open myself before running downstairs, right after I'd slandered the message on the mirror. This was beyond Ivana and her police officers, beyond regular human capacity. I needed to make it look like it was my fault. Well, you left the windows open - that's practically inviting a burglar right in.
"What about yourself, Mrs Sweetman? Surely you must have heard something from downstairs," enquired the younger of the officers. "A ransack like this can't have gone by unnoticed."
Vivian gulped, her entire frame suddenly small and mousy. "I've been at the bakery all day! I-I just don't understand how this could have happened."
Ivana crossed her arms over her chest, drawing lines in the unblemished fabric of her trademark coat. Her eyes were still fixed on me, unmoving. "Ah, yes, your prized family bakery. Did you not notice anything out of place when you got home, Mrs Sweetman?"
"I-I don't think so," my mother answered. Her eyes were welling up again. I moved over to her side, slipped my hand into hers. She responded with an indiscreet squeeze that almost cracked my bones. "I've been in the kitchen ever since I got home. Unless if they were really quiet about it, there's no way I wouldn't have heard somebody sneaking about the house behind my back."
"Have there been any other disturbances around the house?" asked the younger officer, Officer Toland.
"Nothing. Everything else is normal."
"Have you searched the house to make sure the intruder is no longer inside? Looked through cupboards, under beds, that sort of thing?"
My mother paled over. For a moment, I thought she was going to faint.
"Don't scare them, Barry," Ivana snapped, and then she gave Officer Burke a nod. He bowed his head and dipped out of the room. I could hear him moving about in the spare room, no doubt getting onto all-fours to check under the bed and inside the wardrobe.
"As bizarre as it may seem, Mrs Sweetman, I can assure you that my dependable investigatory team will get to the bottom of the matter," said Ivana. I frowned at her, and I noticed that Officer Toland was doing the same. Her team? It was as though she thought she'd founded and built Magpie's Nest from scratch.
Officer Toland went about the room with a camera, snapping photographs of each and every ruined surface until there wasn't a single inch that hadn't been exposed to its flash. When he was done, he gestured my mother and I out of the room.
"We'll be needing to take statements from the two of you," he said, "and then we can start thinking about insurance and the like. Shall we go downstairs?"
My mother nodded, all too eager to vacate the room, but as I made to follow her a spindly hand came to rest on my shoulder, holding me back.
"A word, Miss Sweetman," Ivana's voice said into my ear.
I stopped, rooted to the spot by legs that had suddenly grown ten times heavier. She waited for the sound of my mother and the police officers talking to retreat down the stairs, and then she immobilised me with an iron gaze.
"Show me your arms," she said.
"What?" I was caught completely off-guard.
"Don't question me," she said, without any of her former decorum. "Show me your arms."
I opened my mouth to object, but, finding no plausible alibi to counter whatever crazy idea she had brewing in her head, drew my arms upwards.
"Happy now? What even are you-"
"Turn them over."
My mouth fell open. "You're crazy," I said, but I turned them over anyway, so that my forearms were pointed skyward- and froze.
My right sleeve was smudged with thick red marks, the same colour as the vague scarlet haze that still clung to the surface of the mirror. I met Ivana's gaze, speechless. Her own eyes spoke on behalf of us both, gleaming with triumph.
"You're lying," she said to me, her voice so quiet that it bore all the subtle certainty of a threat. "Why are you lying to me, Miss Sweetman?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," I whispered, and Ivana uttered a low laugh.
"Let's not play games, Miss Sweetman. I'm a busy woman. Now, why don't you tell me what was written on that mirror and why you decided to erase such valuable evidence? That's an offence in the eyes of the law, I hope you know, but it is something that I am willing to overlook, should you be willing to cooperate."
I bit my lower lip until the pain became a focus-point. How could I have been so stupid, so negligent? "It was a message," I finally said.
Ivana seemed to let go a breath that I didn't realize she'd been holding. Her entire face was alight with what looked like greed - like somebody on the verge of discovering something that they'd worked so long to discover. "What sort of message?"
Before I could stop it, the lies were rolling off my tongue in reels. I knew that what I was saying was dangerous, but I couldn't stop. It was better than admitting to the truth, that the damage that had been done here had been dealt by otherworldly hands. Hands that weren't necessarily human - not anymore, at least.
"A message from a girl in school," I said, before I could stop myself. "Her name is Carmen Vespin. She wasn't in school today. She climbed through my window and wrecked my bedroom."
"Why?" Ivana breathed. She was entirely still; I could barely read her reaction, but it was clear that this wasn't what she wanted to hear.
"Because she hates me. She's been trying to ruin my life for a long time, now. When I got home, Edith Vespin - that's Carmen's mother - and Mavis Peabody were downstairs giving my mother hell because they thought I was bullying Carmen. I bet Carmen used that timeframe to climb up on top of the porch and into my room. That's why my mother didn't hear anything. She was distracted."
I imagined Mona cheerleading me on as the words spilled out of my mouth, gazing upon me with pride in her eyes as I fought my corner. This was what she'd been pining for me to do all along.
You made your move, now I've made mine. That was what I'd said to Carmen less than a day previous. She'd countered quickly, no doubt, by sending Edith over to drive a wedge between Vivian and myself, but now I was getting into my stride. This was my rebuke. It was dirty, and it was unnecessary, but it felt good.
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