“I’m sorry, when did we turn into Mystery Inc.?” Sebastian furrowed his brow. “The police are on our asses every single second. After tonight’s little disaster, I can’t see them turning a blind eye to us any time soon. And now you want us to investigate the murder of our friend that may or may not be connected to whatever the hell is going on here?” He looked between his two friends. “No.”
“Sorry.” Delilah huffed. “My mom is at my apartment. I had to wait until she was asleep to leave. What’s going on? What did I miss?”
“This.” Sebastian handed her the letter.
Delilah took the letter with a frown, her eyes scanning the words. “Who sent this?”
“I don’t know. There’s no return address.” Lilia shook her head. “Someone knows what we did.”
“Why not go to the police, why send something anonymously? If they know—we should be in jail by now.”
“Do you think it’s whoever sent the texts?” Delilah asked.
“It has to be. It’s probably the same person who dug up Willow’s grave, who killed her,” Augustus said.
“So we find out who it is. We figure out who had the motive to kill Willow, and we find out who’s sending the text, and whoever sent this fucked up letter.”
“Are we seriously doing this?” Delilah looked between her friends. “Should we even be doing this, where is Eleanor? We shouldn’t be making decisions without her.”
“We can fill her in tomorrow. But we don’t have much of a choice anymore. Someone is trying to frame us; the letter, the grave—what’s next? We have to figure out who killed Willow, and we need to do it now,” Lilia said.
“We should start at the lake house,” Augustus concluded. “It makes the most sense logistically.”
They all nodded. It made sense.
But were they ready to go back to the place where it all began? The place where their demons clawed to be free.
They stood among the trees, the waning moon, and the breeze that seemed to blow through every few seconds. They weren’t perfect—far from it. They were murderers. They were liars. That was who they would always be.
“To the grave?” Augustus said.
“To the grave.”
Chapter Six
8:45 p.m.
November 2nd, 2022
The Montgomery lake house
The drive to the lake house was tense, each of them lost in their thoughts, the familiar roads winding through the woods like a path to a place they’d much rather forget. The moon hung low overhead, hidden behind the clouds. The house loomed ahead, shrouded in darkness. It was the same as it had always been—an old, sprawling structure with a wraparound porch and tall windows. But it felt far different now, like a skeleton of its former self. The last time they had been here, they were celebrating the end of finals, laughing and dancing as if the world outside the walls simply didn’t exist. Now, it was just a shell, haunted by memories of what had happened after.
Sebastian was the first to break the silence as they got out of the car, his voice light despite the tension in the air. “Well, if anyone’s keeping a tally, this officially makes us repeatoffenders. First grave robbing, now this? Whatever will the public have to say about us?”
Delilah rolled her eyes, pulling her jacket tighter around her. “You need to stop making jokes at times like this.”
“It’s called coping, Delilah. You should try it sometime,” he shot back, offering her a crooked grin.
Eleanor forced a smile, shaking her head. “Can’t say I missed the musty smell of this place.”
“It used to smell like summer,” Augustus said quietly, his eyes lingering on the house. “Now it just smells like dust and memories.”
Lilia led the way up the porch steps, the wood creaking under their weight. The front door was locked, but it only took a few moments of Sebastian’s finagling with a hairpin to get it open. They slipped inside, closing the door softly behind them as if afraid to disturb the ghosts of the past.
The inside was exactly how Lilia had imagined it—frozen in time. Sheets covered the furniture, dust hung in the air, and the light from the outside barely illuminated the room. The police had torn the place apart after Willow went missing, and it was clear no one had been back since.
“Let’s split up,” Augustus suggested. “We’ll cover more ground that way.”
