Chapter Forty-Two Willa

Chapter Forty-Two

Willa

Now: Sunday, 1:15 p.m.

I'm alive.

I gasp frigid air into my lungs. Someone is holding my hand. I blink up at them. It's Piper. Not Liam. He saved me, but now he's gone. It's our pattern, eternally repeating.

"What happened?" I croak. My body is spent, wrung out. Somehow I manage to prop myself up on shaking elbows. Piper stares at the house, worry etched across her brow.

"I don't know. You collapsed down the stairs, scared the life out of me. So I dragged you outside."

That explains how I ended up on the porch. And why I'm soaked and freezing.

"I would help you up, but I dislocated my shoulder a bit." Piper touches her finger to her injured arm with a wince.

"Holy shit. I'm sorry."

Piper displays mild surprise at my cursing but waves me off. "It happens a lot. I'll need help resetting it." She peers up and into the house again, as if looking out for Liam and Delaney.

"Are you okay?" I ask, maybe the stupidest question ever at this point. My senses slowly flood back, my body listening to my brain better than before. I manage to get my feet under me, and by gripping the door frame I'm able to stand.

Piper worries her lip. "Something's wrong. Off. It's been bothering me. How the pieces don't quite fit together with the party motive." She fiddles with something in her hoodie pocket. "Why now? Three years later. If it is Camille, for instance, she was bumped off the Olympic track ages ago. For that matter, so was I. She got into college for gymnastics in the end—I didn't. So if that was the motive, why now? And why target Declan, and Wyatt, and Eden, when she thought I was the one who drugged her?"

"Maybe the revenge was framing you for murder," I suggest. "And she could have been pretending not to know it was Eden who drugged us."

"Maybe…" She gets a faraway look. "It's the timeline that's bugging me," she says. "Everyone signed up for the original excursions before winter break. Well, you guys did. I thought I'd still be in the hospital, so I didn't bother. The office put me on this trip, not Silva."

Piper paces the length of the porch.

"But sometime in the last two weeks, the plan changed. You all got notice that your other trips were overbooked, and you were moved to this one. What could have happened in the last month, between winter break and now?"

I think I might be sick, so I sit down on a snow-covered bench.

Piper halts her step, turning on me. "Because of the cards, it has to be something about the party, but also not about the party. I can't figure it out. The text messages and DMs were specific about each person, and they started at least a month ago for Eden. Remember the messages?"

Again she glances inside, lowers her voice to a hushed whisper. I realize what's got her on edge. She thinks it's one of them—Camille, Delaney, or Liam—who could emerge at any moment.

"Maybe Eden created a fake account to mock the killer about something from the party? What could it be? I wasn't there for most of it."

No, she wasn't. And neither was I after Wyatt assaulted me in the bathroom.

But I know what happened at the party. Long past its apex, everyone high off their faces.

It's about the party. And it's about last month.

And suddenly I know who it has to be. And why.

"Guys!" comes Delaney's breathless shout. Piper shoves her hands deep into her hoodie pouch. A moment later Delaney appears, Liam close behind.

"Camille's dead," she says, then heaves a huge sigh. "It's over."