Odin's Murder

“But nothing. Those two aren’t going on a walk. Faye was hiding something behind her back and Memory? Well, let’s just say I can smell trouble and she reeks.”

Julian stares at me as I walk away. I didn’t ask for the job of stalking Memory, but I can’t deny I’m suspicious anyway. Not to mention I kind of just like watching her tromp around campus in her silly shoes and short shorts. Even if I have no plans to ever touch that again, I can still look at her ass.

Faye’s excited rambles are only murmurs at this distance, though I have to fight to keep my laughter at Memory’s posture, the way she shrugs her shoulders and her head tilts in obvious confusion. I’m sure I seemed just as baffled, yesterday. I’ve never met anyone like Faye before. Blunt and self assured, she’s probably the smartest chick I’ve ever met. Cute, like a rebellious china doll, though not my type.

My type is taller. And wears clothes like a pin-up-girl and walked as high above the ground as she could get, and looked like she wanted to puke after I kissed her.

The girls prowl up to the chapel, though I don’t get why they’d have to keep follow-up on the project a big secret. Faye points at the front door, but they keep moving, to the path that curls around the building. I wonder if she’s got it in her mind to break into the basement without me, but then they’re beyond it.

Careful to stay in the shade and avoiding the twigs that will make noise underfoot,

I tail them around the building. It’s just as empty as yesterday, undisturbed but for the grass trampled under the back windows. I drop my bag on the ground, kneel at my shoe as if I’m tying it, and scan the scenery behind me for spectators. No one is watching me or the girls as they walk to the far gate. In fact, no one is around other than some kids with a Frisbee in the upper field, beyond the tree break.

I try the window. It’s loose, but still locked; there is no way they’ve had time to get inside and then re-lock the window back before I caught up to them. I snag the dean’s letter opener from my camera bag, and slip it into the space between the window frame and the building. It only takes a second of wedging the metal around in the gap, and I pop the window open, breaking the century-old lock. Cold, dusty air gusts from the cellar. I lean in, but can see nothing through the dark.

No way the girls went in there, not Cherry in her absurd heels, and neither with flashlights.

I pull back, muffle my cough in my elbow, and close the window.

Standing, I stash the knife and grab my camera, clicking a shot of the one that is unlocked. I scout the two tracks of footsteps disturbing the grass, curving around the edge of campus. I follow after them, holding the camera like I’m taking random shots of the scenery, but the Frisbee players pay no attention to me.

The girls are nowhere in sight.

“Where are you going, Cherry?” I mutter, but no-one answers, save for a bird, cawing into the distance. I glance down at my camera, and stop. I frown, adjust the viewfinder and look through it again.

A house stares back at me, tumbledown green, with paint peeling off black shutters, and a sorry looking potted plant on the stoop. I lower the camera, look at the Frisbee kids, the chapel in the trees, the trod-on grass leading through the back gate of the campus, but there are no houses in view.

Still walking as casually as I can, I turn the camera off, and adjust the settings. I scan through the images saved to the card. The last one I took was of the window by the basement door of the stone church. I pass the sleeping guard and ease through the open gate, spinning once around to look behind me. The wooden striped bar doesn’t slam down with an alarm, and the fence doesn’t roll in on its motored wheels. There’s no electric or barbed wire at the top.

My heart is beating heavy against my ribs. I look at the outside world, the trees that go forever, the horizon behind them, easy hills. Freedom.

I step to the left, but Memory’s voice calls to someone, from the other direction. Digging in my bag, I duck into the shadow of a low branched tree and find the zoom, twisting off my usual and mount the larger lens. I hold it up, pan to the right. “Where are you?” I whisper.

There’s a sofa on the view screen. A couch with ivy fabric cushions, against a shadowed wall with scribble print wallpaper. I’m looking at someone’s living room, someone with butt-ugly furniture.

I lower the Nikon. In front of me is a narrow street, one lane, curving through the sparse trees. I raise the camera, focus again. This time I see the houses at the end of the street. In the distance a figure is walking away, a brown paper bag under one arm. I take a picture, look back at the saved images, but see no house, or couch. Only a guy with groceries.

One of the Frisbee kids shouts at another, or maybe it’s the bird cawing again. I look back at the gate, take a deep breath. “Sorry, Mary,” I say under my breath, as I break every rule handed down from Zoe, Dean Burnett, and several family court judges. “Extenuating circumstances.”

I walk down the street, one foot in front of the other. No one is watching me. My chest is still pounding, and I take huge strides, fast. I come to the end, and the scattering of houses, old nice ones, all well-kept and maintained—except one. It’s green, with black shutters and sulking plants in orange clay pots.

My stomach ties a square-knot and I know without a doubt the girls are in this one, the one I’d seen in my camera, though I shouldn’t have. Of course they couldn’t have picked the nice, freshly painted yellow one, or the one on the left with the tricycle in the front. I stand at the little fence and sure enough, the grass to the door is marred, pushed down by useless sparkly platforms and a tiny pair of witch boots.

I unlatch the gate and walk to the door, only pausing for a second to knock on the torn screen door. The interior door is open and the heat from inside the house is harsh and ripe, the opposite of the air in the chapel basement. No one responds to my knock. “Cherry? Faye?” I call. “Dammit.”

I’m not breaking, I tell Mary. I’m only entering. And we need to get my camera looked at, too, please.

“Hello,” I say louder, pulling back the screen door. The springs protest with a loud creak. I hear a muffled thump and a small Faye-voiced-squeak, but then my mouth goes bone-whisper dry. I’m staring at a small living room, with scribbled wallpaper, shadows drifting over a hideous couch with ivy print on the cushions.

Shit. My mouth forms the word, but no sound comes out.

“Ethan?”

Relief washes over me. “Cherry. What are you doing here?”

“Come in here.” She waves from a hallway, pointing into another room.

I walk past the sofa. She takes my hand, tugs me deeper into the house. Her fingers are tight on mine. “What is going on?” I ask Faye.