“We should start it again,” she said, confirming my guess.
She flipped her coin and it landed on the damp earth between us, clover-side down, which is when I realized that all the coins were different. Instead of the Tree of Life I’d expected to see, Lily’s coin had her dad’s cross emblem. All the members had their own symbol on their coins, and I was willing to bet that all their hidden cache spots were marked with both the clover and their specific symbol. I wondered then, just how much money was hidden around London and in the outer boroughs now that everyone was dead—hidden fortunes marked with symbols no one else would understand.
“Sorte Juntos had an entire team of people to rob those places. We have just the two of us. It’s not enough.”
Lily frowned at that. “Then we’ll find others. We’ll find who we need.”
“To do what?”
“Anything we want.”
The way she looked at me then brought to mind what Lock had said before—the statement I’d dismissed so easily. I was wondering how much Lily Patel hates you. The answer was in her eyes just then. She hated me. But she also wanted something from me, and the war those emotions created inside her was fascinating to watch.
“And what do you want, Lily?”
She looked down at the contents of her dad’s box again, smiling to cover whatever else it was that she was thinking. And then she stood and grabbed all her things. “Think about it,” she said.
She left me there, sitting between the now-meaningless symbols of her father’s coin.
Chapter 17
I should’ve gone straight home, but that only meant being bustled off to Mallory and his inane questions, and facing down some unknown witness bent on destroying me and releasing the monster. And I was tired. Tired of fighting things and people I couldn’t see, of not being able to move on with my life.
In the end I couldn’t seem to make it past the bandstand. Past the willow tree at the edge of the lake. That was where I’d found my best friend dead, where I’d known for sure my father needed to die. Would it also be the place I made the one mistake that could free him? Would that one lame attempt to disarm a killer become my greatest regret?
My mobile rang before I could find an answer, and I ignored it at first. Texts came next, but I knew I couldn’t neglect Alice forever. So I called her back.
“Where are you?”
I kicked my heels up and let them thud back against the cement base of the bandstand. “I’m in the park.”
“He says if we don’t show up by seven, he’ll come arrest you at school tomorrow.”
“Then I won’t go to school.”
Alice grunted out a laugh. “You want to run? Over some witness who might not be any threat at all?”
I loved Alice for posturing just then. Her false confidence was probably the one thing I needed to bolster mine.
I sighed. “I’ll be home in a few minutes.”
“I’ll call a taxi.”
? ? ?
I was approaching the end of hour two of being stuck alone in the flickering fluorescent-lit nightmare that was Interview Room 2A. I sat in an orange chair that once was cushioned but had probably been in active duty for at least a decade. It was a mirrored room, rather than one with a camera, which meant there was at least one officer silently watching me through the glass like a creeper in the night. Worst of all, the vent just above my head had a rattling part that was starting to tear at my reason and sanity.
“Police interview rooms are inhumane,” I declared for whoever was behind the mirror to hear. “If you’re going to waste so much of our taxes on chasing after innocent schoolgirls, you should at least spend a little to fix your ventilation system.”
I’d given up on my original plan to affect a stony silence until I was allowed to leave. I justified my talking into the void by deciding that as long as I cut off all speech the moment they came in the room to question me, my protest of silence would still stand. But perhaps I was just drunk on boredom.
“Could you at least give me something to read?”
A sudden scuffle in the hall distracted me from my request. The door burst open, but instead of Mallory, the Lady Constance of Regent’s Park barged in with a constable struggling to restrain her.
“You!” she said, thrusting a finger at me so that the bag wrapped around her wrist swung out and knocked the interview table sideways a few inches.
Mallory rushed in, red faced and angry like I’d never seen him. “Get her out of here!” he bellowed. I honestly didn’t think he had it in him.
Try as the poor constable might, however, Lady Constance would not be moved. “Vivian can never win!” she cried, smacking the constable with her clutch. “You can’t keep him locked away forever!”