“Not worth the risk,” she said when I mentioned it during dinner.
“You don’t know that. If he is the killer, it’s totally worth it.”
Selene shook her head. “There haven’t been any signs about Culpepper in Eli’s dreams, right?”
“Well, no. Just more football playing, ice fishing, and Katarina.” I made a face.
“Then it’s definitely not worth it. I get you want to find the guy. I do, too, but those dreams are your best shot. And way less risky.”
“What risk? Worst-case scenario, I get caught ditching and end up in detention.”
“I dunno, Dusty.” Selene shuddered. “Culpepper gives me the creeps. People say he’s crazy. What if he hurts you?”
“How? He’s magickind. I’m magickind. Never the two shall meet.”
“Tell that to Rosemary.”
Ouch. Maybe I should have been spending as much time trying to figure out how she was murdered as why.
I let the subject drop as I caught sight of Lance holding up a piece of paper in my direction from across the room. Written across it in big black letters was Dusty 1, Lance 2. I sighed, catching the warning at once. A whole week had gone by without him retaliating, and I’d half-hoped he would be happy keeping things equal between us. But apparently he had another prank in the works.
“Better watch your back.” Selene obviously had come to the same conclusion.
I glanced at her, startled by her dark tone. “You don’t think he’d do anything really bad, do you?”
She took a drink from her water goblet, considering the question. “Depends on your definition of bad. I mean, he wouldn’t do anything to hurt you physically. He’s too much of a coward for that. But he’s not particularly concerned about hurting people emotionally.”
“I guess you would know?” I said, making the statement a question. Selene might be my best friend, but she was also the most private person I knew. She’d much rather talk about my troubles than hers. I’d never learned the real reason why she’d ditched the in crowd, although I’d gathered it had a lot to do with Lance.
“Yes,” Selene said, surprising me with that admission. I pressed her for more, but she refused to elaborate.
Still, I took her advice, and was extra cautious the rest of the night and all through breakfast the next morning. But Lance didn’t strike until psionics class. Distracted by Mr. Ankil asking me how the snatch-and-smack practice was going, I failed to check my seat before sitting down. A huge fart sound erupted from beneath my butt, followed by a smell so realistic it might as well have been the real thing. I leaped up, red-faced. I looked down at my seat and watched in horror as a whoopee cushion, one bewitched with an invisibility glamour, came into view.
Humiliation was too inadequate a word for what I felt as a couple of people laughed and even more snickered. I noticed Eli wasn’t laughing, though. He stood up and came over to me. He picked up the whoopee cushion and tossed it in the wastebasket, the action effortless.
“You all right?” he said, touching my shoulder. His hand was impossibly warm through my shirt. I shivered, the sensation far more pleasurable than it should be, considering how mortified I was.
With a feeble shrug, I brushed him off. “I’m fine.”
Later, it was my lingering humiliation, and the prospect of seeing Lance’s triumphant expression again, that prompted me to ditch gym class and tail after Mr. Culpepper. Or so I told myself.
I spotted Culpepper walking across the Commons, looking suspicious. He usually shuffled along with a slight hitch to his step as if he had an old injury, but today he moved quickly, looking over his shoulder as if he expected something to attack him any moment.
I kept a fair distance between us as I trailed after him, staying hidden behind trees and buildings. After a while, he made a right down the path around Jupiter Hall, and my certainty that he was up to something increased. If he’d been heading for the maintenance garage, he would’ve turned left at Jupiter. But the faculty and staff town houses were this way—maybe he was going home.
Culpepper didn’t continue down the path toward the faculty housing, but made a left at the Lady of the Lake statue. A couple of turns later, we arrived at one of the side entrances into Coleville cemetery. I hid behind a building, and poked my head around to watch him. I wondered whether this was some kind of sociopathic behavior. Maybe he was returning to the scene of the crime to gloat over it. He didn’t have any work reason to be in there. There wasn’t a single mechanical thing in the entire place that might need fixing. Electricity was forbidden in the cemetery because of the animation effect—nobody wanted a bunch of corpses and skeletons milling around the gardens.
I followed after him, finding easy cover behind the trees, mausoleums, and statues. I had no idea how large Coleville was in terms of acreage, but Culpepper traveled so far into it the place began to feel as vast as Yellowstone Park. We were well off the main paths, but Culpepper moved with a certainty that suggested he came this way often.
Finally, he slowed down, and I ducked behind a headstone, crouching low and peering carefully around the side. I could just see Culpepper in the distance, standing in front of the door of a small, ancient-looking mausoleum. Whatever name used to be engraved above the doorway had long since faded. The edges on the building were chipped and crumbling in places. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the thing were haunted, but Selene had assured me time and again that ghosts weren’t very common. That was a good thing, because real ghosts were supposed to be far scarier and more dangerous than those reality TV shows made them seem.