Page 32 of Blade

Downstairs, I find Westin gone and Artis waiting for me by the door. He’s slipped on his boots and tucked the pant legs of his suit inside them. The fake fur on the collar of his parka frames his face. The rest of it seems to swallow him whole.

“Did you see Grace upstairs?” Artis asks.

I shake my head. “Let’s just go.”

The dark clouds are here now, along with the wind that tears right through my coat and sweater, to my skin and into my bones as I walk from the front door to the parking lot.

I shiver as I climb into Artis’s SUV.

“You got soft in New York,” he says with a smile.

We take the long way to Avery Hall so we can drive by the field. The scene of the crime. I want to look at the layout again, the proximity to the dorm and The Palace. And, also, the highway that runs along the other side.

With the town hunkered down for the storm, the roads are deserted.

“Does Shannon know we’re coming?” I ask Artis.

“Yeah,” he says. “She remembered you right away. You skated here at the same time.”

My entire body recoils—not at the thought of Shannon, but at her mother and the other bleacher bees who tormented us. I remember how they would sit in the stands above the snack bar. The lessons I had to learn about them. How their words turned to knives. How they were always looking for ways to hurt us, undermine us, come between us. Anything that would weaken us so their daughters would have an advantage, especially over Indy.

“A lot of skaters are still here,” he adds. “It’s a cool town.”

I nod, thinking it has nothing to do with Echo. They couldn’t let go of this world and now cling to it for dear life. But what do I know? Maybe they’re happy here, hiking and fly-fishing.

Artis turns off the engine. “Looks like they’ve removed the police tape,” he says, pointing to the field. “The body was found just beyond the tree line.”

I let myself see it now.Reallysee it, the way it was. The field. The cheap beer in plastic cups, spilling on my hands. Wiping them on my jeans, or the dead weeds. Pot smoke. Fires burning. Music playing. Cars and kids. Finding a place to pee behind a tree, girls laughing, standing guard on wobbly legs.

“What goes on here now?” I ask.

Artis shrugs. “Same as before—small-scale stuff. Kids coming to score, drink, make out in cars. There’s still that truck stop about a quarter mile up the highway, so we get some riffraff from that.”

“Is that a possibility, then?” I ask, wondering. “That Emile was killed by a stranger—a trucker maybe—or maybe he was involved in something, like drugs?”

“That doesn’t explain the blood on her skate. And I’d bet good money Grace came here to party like we did, which means she knew her way around.”

His smile fades as he looks from me to the window, out to the field.

“But why would she come here with Emile? In the middle of winter?”

This doesn’t make sense to me.

A gust of wind rocks the car as Artis turns the ignition. “We should get moving,” he says, making a U-turn to head back to the access road.

The car moves, and the field disappears, and I look ahead to the storm clouds and the deserted road.

Artis draws a long breath and holds it, like he’s not sure how to say something.

“Westin’s kinda odd, right? Or is it just me?”

I don’t know how much to tell Artis about Westin. I remember Grace with her finger to her lips. The whisper,shhhh. Why she didn’t want me to answer his question about her mother. And why Westin brought up the conference in Aspen.

“Did you know about his name being on the new edition of Dawn’s book? His whole life is tied up in this.”

“When you saythis, do you mean Dawn?”

“Dawn, The Palace, the training,” I say, pondering the possibilities. “The point is, Westin has an interest in protecting the program. And that could be at odds with helping Grace.”