The man pulled up to the station, then climbed out of the car. Belle counted heartbeats as he strode to her door. Five. Ten. Fifteen. She managed to get to seventeen, the exact number of years she’d been on this earth, when the door swung open and the man reached for her. “Why would there be other flowers?” he asked, guiding her out of the darkness. “Belladonna killed her.”
Belle lost a bit of time after that. They were in the local police station, but they wouldn’t be holding her there for long. She was a minor, so she’d be sent to the detention center up on the hill. It was kind of funny, if she thought about it. Once upon a time, there had been four of them: Raven, Lily, Poppy, and Belle. But three years ago, Raven went away to boarding school on the other side of the country. Lily left soon after that. Poppy didn’t split town so much as totally betray her, leaving Belle to pick up the pieces of their shattered friendship.
Leaving her alone.
“I hope she has the same number,” Belle said when the officer finally let her make a call. “She doesn’t even have the same name.She used to go by Poppy but…” She doesn’t anymore, Belle thought, realizing she was rambling. After Raven moved away, Poppy had changed her name to Jack. She’d started dressing in clothes that were typically relegated to the boys’ section of department stores, but she still went by she, and the cop wouldn’t have understood that.
Probably, he wouldn’t have.
Within seconds she’d dialed Jack’s old cell number, and to her immense relief, the phone started ringing. She prayed Jack would answer. She prayed Jack wouldn’t slam down the phone the second she realized who was calling.
“Hello?” That familiar voice came on the line and Belle’s hands started to shake. Tears filled her eyes.
“It’s, um… it’s me,” she managed, dashing away the tears with her free hand. “Please don’t hang up.”
“Belle? Why are you calling me from the police station?”
“I…” How much should she say? These conversations were probably recorded. But even if they were, they couldn’t be used in a court of law without her permission. Right? You had to agree to be recorded or it was inadmissible. She knew this, because three years earlier, she’d studied her rights. She’d prepared to be arrested after she put her plan into action. But the night before the murder, someone had gotten cold feet.
Now that someone was listening on the other end of the phone. “Belladonna,” Jack said, her voice low and hard. “What happened? What did you—”
“Raven’s stepmother was murdered,” Belle blurted. “Someone used belladonna to kill her. Only belladonna,” she added in a whisper.
“No. That’s not possible, unless you—”
“I didn’t. I swear. But Edwin was passed out in his bedroom all night, and no one can account for me.”
“I can account for you.” Jack’s voice was steady. Calm. “I’m happy to be your alibi, Belle, because I was with you all night. It’s not like you’re asking me to lie.”
Belle counted to five. Ten. Seventeen. “Why are you helping me? You should hate me, after what I—”
“I do hate you sometimes,” Jack admitted. “But I love you too. That’s how it is with family.”
Belle smiled. She was still crying, but she wasn’t alone, and it made all the difference. Jack was her family. Raven, too, before he went away. For years the three of them had taken care of one another because the world had betrayed them. Their parents had betrayed them.
Together they’d been unstoppable.
“Listen, you don’t know how much this means to me,” Belle began as the officer stepped toward her. He wanted her to hang up the phone. But she needed to say this before she ended the call. “I thought I understood what happened three years ago, but I never asked you—”
“Don’t say anything,” Jack interrupted, her voice still calm. “I’m coming down to the station and I’m getting you out of there. Okay? By tomorrow this will all be over. Try to stay positive.”
“How can I stay positive?”
“Because,” Jack said, and a chill unfurled at the base of Belle’s spine, “even though you’re innocent, you got what you wanted. Raven can come home.”
2
Jack of Many Trades
Poppy Jacqueline McClain was known, to her closest friends and greatest enemies, as “Jack.” It was a fitting name. She was a jack-of-many-trades, a talented sword fighter, and a climber of tall trees. She knew how to bring a fully grown man to his knees. Still, of all her skills and talents, Jack had never claimed one particular ability:
Telling the truth.
She sat at the police station, stuffed into a plastic chair, waiting for Detective Frank Medina to return from the field. She’d been there since eight in the morning. When he finally strode through the doors, well after noon, he took one look at her and sighed. “Miss McClain.”
“Detective,” she replied drily, wrapping her arms around herself. “Call me Jack. Please.”
He pulled back his chair, studying her for a minute. He wasn’t wearing his mirrored glasses. That would’ve been overkill in the brightly lit station with the overhead light flickering. Unfortunately, without the glasses, there was nothing to protect her from his shrewd brown eyes.
“Let’s start at the beginning,” he said, sliding into his seat. He was wearing a blue blazer and jeans, but she could see his gun poking out beneath the blazer’s hem. “Where were you between the hours of eleven p.m. Saturday night and one a.m. this morning?”
“I was with Belladonna Drake,” Jack said immediately. “I waited for my mom to fall asleep, because she doesn’t like Belle very much. Then I snuck out of the house and rode my bike across town. Belle was expecting me, so she let me in through the back door and we spent the night together. So to speak.”
A snort from the man in the chair. He was sizing Jack up, taking in the ripped men’s Levi’s and faded band T-shirt. She was wearing an olive-green jacket that Raven had given her on her thirteenth birthday, a faux-suede number with equally fake fur cuffs. Back then the floor-length jacket had been two sizes too big, but now it fit perfectly.
“So you and Miss Drake are… what? Friends? Girlfriends?” the detective asked, and Jack looked down. She was pretty good at blushing on command, if she thought of a certain person in a certain way.
“Let’s just say my mother doesn’t like us hanging out together. And if Edwin thought someone was visiting Belle in the middle of the night, he’d probably padlock her bedroom door.” On top of everything else, Jack thought, but she kept that detail to herself.
“Edwin? Belladonna’s father?”
“Adoptive father, yeah. He’s really overprotective, which is why I snuck into the house after he fell asleep.”
Detective Medina sighed. “So no one saw you entering the Drake residence? No one can corroborate your story?”
“The neighbors might’ve noticed me sneaking out around two thirty.” She flashed a taunting smile. “If you’re good at what you do, I’m sure you can drum up some evidence.”