Last to Die

THIRTY-FOUR

BLOOD IS MORE EASILY WASHED AWAY THAN MEMORIES, THOUGHT Claire. She stood in Dr. Welliver’s office, surveying the brand-new rugs and furniture. Sunlight gleamed on spotless surfaces, and the room smelled of fresh air and lemons. Through the open window she heard the laughter of students rowing on the lake. Saturday sounds. Looking around the room, it was hard to believe that anything terrible had ever happened here, so thoroughly had the school transformed it. But no amount of scrubbing could erase the images seared in Claire’s mind. She looked down at the pale green carpet, and superimposed on that pattern of vines and berries, she saw a dead man staring up at her. She turned toward the wall, and there was Nicholas Clock’s blood splattered across it. She looked at the desk and could still picture Justine’s body lying nearby, brought down by Detective Rizzoli’s gunshots. Everywhere she looked in this room, she saw bodies. The ghost of Dr. Welliver still lingered here as well, smiling across her desk, sipping her endless cups of tea.

So many ghosts. Would she ever stop seeing them?

“Claire, are you coming?”

She turned to Will, who stood in the doorway. No longer did she see the pudgy, spotty Will; now she saw her Will, the boy whose last impulse when he thought they were going to die was to protect her. She wasn’t sure whether that was love, exactly; she wasn’t even sure what she felt about him. All she knew was that he’d done something no other boy had ever done for her, and that meant something. Maybe it meant everything.

And he had beautiful eyes.

She cast a final look around the room, said a silent goodbye to the ghosts, and nodded. “I’m coming.”

Together they walked down the stairs and stepped outside, where their classmates were enjoying that bright Saturday, splashing in the lake, lolling on the grass. Shooting arrows at the targets that Mr. Roman had set up that morning. Claire and Will headed up the path they both knew well now, a path that brought them up the hillside, winding through the trees across lichen-covered boulders, past scrubby juniper bushes. They came to the stone steps and climbed to the terrace, and the circle of thirteen boulders.

The others were waiting. She saw the usual faces: Julian and Bruno, Arthur and Lester. On that fair morning, a chorus of birds sang in the trees, and Bear the dog dozed on a sun-warmed rock. She went to the edge of the terrace and looked down at the castle’s jagged rooftop. It seemed to rise from the valley below like an ancient mountain range. Evensong. Home.

Julian said. “I now call to order this meeting of the Jackals.”

Claire turned and joined the circle.