“It’s real.” I bent down and brushed across a white line with my index finger. “It’s here, isn’t it?” I tugged at my collar. “Did Fallon make this fire? Did she do it before she saw the pentagram?”
“There’s no way Fallon made that fire.” Will stepped through the broken window and shot the licking flames with an extinguisher.
“Hey, that’s evidence!”
“No,” Will corrected. “It’s a fire hazard.”
I coughed at the ash that kicked up and took a step back, realizing a second too late that I was standing in the center of the pentagram, my feet firmly planted on a smear of blood.
“Oh, God!” I jumped forward, feeling instantly nauseous.
I paused when Will turned on the overhead light and the whole room lit up like it was day.
“That blood looks awfully thin.” I grimaced. “I can’t believe I said that. I can’t believe I know that.”
Alex crouched down and pulled a Q-tip from the evidence pack he carried in his windbreaker. He rubbed the cotton tip over the stain and frowned. “It’s definitely not blood. Hey.” He glanced over his shoulder at Will. “Why do you think the girl didn’t make the fire?”
“You mean how do I know she didn’t make the fire?” He used the poker to push around the debris. “An accelerant was used. You can smell it. It wasn’t on Fallon’s hands or clothes, and there was no soot or residue. The container’s not here either.”
Alex stiffened. “She threw it away.”
“Not in any trash can in the house or the ones outside.”
I saw Alex press his lips together, still unconvinced.
“When this fire was started, it would have been a near fire ball.” Will pointed to spots on the fireplace fa?ade with seeping black burn marks. “And I know the bird.” He fished something out of the fireplace. “If she was going to burn her clothes, she wouldn’t do it in her family fireplace.”
I felt my mouth drop open as Will laid out what remained in the ashes of the fire.
“It’s another Mercy uniform.”
Alex stepped forward. “Does it belong to the victim?”
“Fallon, her name is Fallon. And I’m going to find out.”
The second I walked out of the dining room, the cool night air broke over me and I realized I was sweating.
“Fallon.”
She was still sitting on the edge of the tailgate, still wearing the gray blanket. A few people—neighbors, I suspected—were huddled around her, looking on sympathetically. She looked up at me, her eyes red-rimmed and tired looking.
“Tell me the truth. Did you start the fire?”
She shrunk back into the blanket and the sympathetic eyes were turned on me—but they were angry now.
“Leave this girl alone,” someone said, shoving toward Fallon.
Fallon held the woman off. “It’s okay. Yeah, I told you I started the fire. I knocked over the candle. It was an accident—I was freaked out.”
“Imagine,” another woman said, “a Satanic cult breaking into this child’s house. Breaking into our neighborhood!”
“I mean the fire in the fireplace. Did you start that?”
Fallon frowned. “Of course not.” Her eyes were hardening, the old Fallon showing through now that she had her entourage—albeit a less stylish one. “I don’t even know how you make a fire in there. Isn’t there just some kind of switch? Maybe I did when I was running out, I don’t know.”
“So was the fire going when you went into the dining room?”
Fallon’s eyes rolled skyward. “Um, maybe. It was hot. Wait, yeah, yeah, I guess so.”
“You’re not sure?”
Now she rolled her eyes. “I was kind of in the middle of a major trauma. Someone broke into my house and made one of those Satan things and there was blood. I wasn’t paying attention to whether or not my potential killer wanted to make the room warm and cozy with a fire. One of my best friends just disappeared, you know.”
“So you didn’t know that someone was burning a Mercy High School uniform in your fireplace?”
Her eyes went wide, her surprise seemingly genuine. “What?”
“One of the firemen found the remains of a school uniform in your fireplace.”
Fallon clutched at her throat. “Mine?”
“I don’t know. Is your uniform up in your room? Would you allow us to check?”
Fallon sucked in a long, dramatic breath. “I suppose so. I mean, if there was a killer pawing through my things—oh my gosh.” She clapped a hand over her mouth. “What if he’s still there? What if he’s in my closet, lying in wait? Maybe he didn’t even want Alyssa or Kayleigh—maybe he was after me the whole time!” She seemed to crumble as enormous tears rolled over her cheeks. The women closed in on her, soothing and clucking. I stepped away, grateful for a few moments alone.
I was on the front porch when Alex and Will caught up with me.
“What’d the girl say?” Alex wanted to know.
I glanced up. “She didn’t start the fire. She didn’t know anything about the uniform.”
I could see Will’s chest bolster a tiny bit.
“But I’m going to check her closet just to be sure.”