Бри Деспейн - The Lost Saint

The phone kept ringing, and Mr. Day stalked toward his office. “You two get on to school,” he said, pointing back at Daniel and me.

“But we can help,” I said.

“You kids got college applications coming up soon. Don’t want you messing up your grades because of this. But I expect you back here after school,” he said to Daniel, then grabbed the receiver of the ringing phone on his desk. “Hello!” he practically shouted into the phone before he shut the office door behind him. Mr. Day really didn’t deserve this—especially after what had happened to Jessica.

“I guess we should head out, then.” Daniel handed his broom to Chris. “I’ll be back right after my last class.”

“We’ll still be here,” Chris said, sounding like he wished he had an excuse to take off, too.

Daniel took my hand and we headed toward the nonexistent door, but after about four steps I noticed something sticking to the bottom of my shoe. I let go of Daniel and reached down and peeled some kind of plastic card from the heel of my boot. I flipped it over. It was a plain white card with a small logo on the front that said THE DEPOT and a magnetic strip on the back. It reminded me of my frequent buyer’s card for the Java Pot that they swiped each time I bought something.

Daniel stopped and looked back at me. “What’ve you got?”

“Looks like a membership card or something. You ever heard of a place called The Depot?”

Daniel shook his head.

I held up the card. “This could be a clue, don’t you think? Maybe the person who did this dropped this card.”

“Hmm, could be, I guess.” Daniel looked like he didn’t put much stock in that idea.

Stacey made a snorting sound from behind me. “You sound like one of those Scooby-Doo kids,” she said. “Don’t get your hopes up, though.

Customers drop crap like that in here all the time. We’ve got a whole box of lost-and-found stuff in the office, but hardly anyone ever comes to claim anything. I’d just chuck it in one of the trash piles.”

I flipped the card over again. Rose Crest hosted only a handful of businesses, and none of them were called The Depot. It probably is just trash, I thought, but I tucked it into the pocket of my jacket instead of throwing it away.

Daniel raised his eyebrows at me, but he didn’t say a word.

FIVE MINUTES LATER

Daniel left his motorcycle at the market and hitched a ride with me in the Corolla. It rattled and groaned the few blocks to school, as if telling me that it didn’t plan on making it through another winter. Hopefully, Daniel could keep it running for a while longer, considering money was tighter with Mom not working anymore and the extra expense of a housekeeper. I wondered how much longer Dad could afford to keep paying Debbie—let alone even think about buying a new car.

I parked in my usual spot near the parish, and then we started across the school parking lot together. Daniel sipped his coffee and made an appreciative grunt. His face looked gaunter than it had in a while, and his shaggy hair was tussled more than usual. He ate the cinnamon muffin I’d given him in three huge bites, and then cleared his throat.

“He’s got a point,” Daniel said. “What Mr. Day said—it would take someone with a lot of special abilities to pull this off in that short amount of time. A superpowered teen, perhaps?”

I held up my hands. “I’m innocent, I swear. Unless I ransack stores in my sleep …”

Daniel smirked, but it lasted only a second. His face was straight and serious when he said the name I’d been trying to deflect with my humor:

“Jude. It makes sense, don’t you think?” Daniel asked. “He was in town last night. He went to Maryanne’s house, and he was probably outside

James’s window. It makes complete sense that he’d go to Day’s next.”

“What, like he’s taking a tour of all the places …? Oh.” I stopped right in front of the main doors of the school, suddenly knowing what Daniel was getting at. Maryanne’s house, James’s window, Day’s Market. These were all the places where the wolf had caused him to lose control last year.

He’d mauled Maryanne’s frozen body as she lay dead on her porch, then he’d gone through a window at my house and stolen Baby James to make it look like he’d been carried off into the forest, and then he’d left Jessica’s body in the Dumpster behind the market where Daniel worked—all in an effort to frame Daniel as the monster.

“You think the wolf is making him revisit the places of his past crimes? But why? And do you think Jude’s really capable of doing all that damage over at Day’s by himself?”

“Excuse me,” a high-pitched voice yelped from behind us.

I turned slightly and saw my former best friend, April Thomas, standing there. She trembled in that cocker-spaniel way of hers like she did when she was excited or frightened or experiencing pretty much any other emotion. It was one of the things that I’d always liked best about her.

“Excuse me, Grace,” she said again, her voice all shaky.

“Yeah?” I asked, feeling a rush of mixed emotions: resentment that she hadn’t wanted anything to do with me in the last ten months, and joy at hearing her voice actually speaking my name.

April looked at me for a long moment, twisting her finger in one of her springy curls. Her mouth twitched, like she was trying to figure out how to form the words to something important she wanted to say.

But all she finally did was shrug and ask if she could get by me through the door. “Don’t want to be tardy,” she mumbled, and brushed past me when I stepped aside.

I watched her disappear into the throng of students in the main hall until Daniel lightly nudged me through the door.

“You know what worries me the most, Grace?” Daniel asked as we approached our lockers in the senior hall.

“What?” I gave him a quizzical look, still thinking about April. Did she really want to say something to me?

“What you said just a minute ago about Jude not being capable of ransacking Day’s Market by himself … Well, Jude may or may not have been involved in what happened, but whoever did do this couldn’t have been acting alone.”

LATER THAT SAME DAY

It hadn’t taken long after Christmas vacation and school starting up again for people in our neighborhood to notice that Jude was gone and that

Mom wasn’t exactly acting like her usual Martha-Stewart-meets-Florence-Nightingale self. By the end of the first week of school in January, the whole parish knew that something was off with the Divines, and Dad decided that he should make some sort of statement to his parishioners. He’d wanted to tell the truth. At least the version of it that didn’t involve werewolves—my own mother didn’t even know that much, and considering her fragile mental state, it was probably for the best.

“All I want to say is that Jude was troubled and ran away,” Dad had explained to us. “And we’d appreciate everyone’s patience while our family adjusts.”

But Mom wouldn’t allow it. She hated the idea of people judging her parenting, thinking anything ill of our family.

“So what do you want us to do?” Dad had asked her.

“We lie,” she said.

“To the entire town?” I asked.

“Yes.” She rocked back and forth in her chair and stared at the TV set. “He’ll be home soon. We’ll find him. Nobody will know anything was ever wrong.”

So that second Sunday in January, Dad fed the “official” story to Rose Crest—lied to everyone right over the pulpit. According to what my mother wanted him to say, Jude had gone to live with Grandma and Grandpa Kramer in Florida, because they needed help around the house after