Mary-Lynnette pushed away the image this evoked. "Urn, you want to register a guess on Whodunit?"
0Rowan sat down in a kitchen chair, smoothing a wisp of brown hair off her forehead. "I don't know. I wonder if it's somebody we haven't even thought of yet."
Mary-Lynnette remembered what she'd been talking about when the door banged. "Rowan, I always meant to ask you-you said that only Ash could havefigured out where you were going when you ran away. But what about the guy who helped yousmuggle letters off the island? He would know where your aunt lived, right? He could see the address on the letters."
"Crane Linden." Rowan smiled, a sad little smile. "No, he wouldn't know. He's ..." She touched her temple lightly. "I don't know what you call it. His mind never developed completely. He can't read.
But he's very kind."
There were illiterate vampires? Well, why not?Aloud Mary-Lynnette said, "Oh. Well, I guess it's one more person we can eliminate."
"Look, can we just brainstorm a minute?" Mark said. "This is probably crazy, but what if Jeremy'suncle isn't really dead? And what if-" At that moment, there was a crash from the front porch.
No, a tap-tap-crash, Mary-Lynnette thought. Then she thought, Oh, God . . . Tiggy.
Chapter 15
Tiggy.
She was running. Throwing the door open. Visionsof kittens impaled by tiny stakes in her mind.
It wasn't Tiggy on the front porch. It was Ash. He was lying flat in the purple twilight, little moths fluttering around him.
Mary-Lynnette felt a violent wrench in her chest.For a moment everything seemed suspended-and changed.
If Ash were dead-if Ash had been killed ...
Things would never be all right. She would neverbe all right. It would be like the night with the moonand stars gone. Nothing that anybody could do wouldmake up for it. Mary-Lynnette didn't know why-itdidn't make any sense-but she suddenly knew it was true.
She couldn't breathe and her arms and legs felt strange. Floaty. Out of her control.
Then Ash moved. He lifted his head and pushed up with his arms and looked around.
Mary-Lynnette could breathe again, but she still felt dizzy. "Are you hurt?" she asked stupidly. She didn't dare touch him. In her present state one blast of electricity could fry her circuits forever. She'd meltlike the Wicked Witch of the West.
"I fell in thishole, "he said. "What do you think?"
That's right, Mary-Lynnette thought; the footsteps hadended with more of a crash than a thud. Not like the footsteps of last night.
And that meant something ...if only she couldfollow the thought to the end... .
"Having problems, Ash?"Kestrel's voice saidsweetly, and then Kestrel herself appeared out of the shadows, looking like an angel with her golden hair and her lovely clean features. Jade was behind her, holding Tiggy in her arms.
"He was up in a tree," Jade said, kissing the kitten's head. "I had to talk him down." Her eyes were emerald in the porch light, and she seemed to float rather than walk.
Ash was getting up, shaking himself. Like his sisters, he looked uncannily beautiful after a feeding,with a sort of weird moonlight glow in his eyes. Mary-Lynnette's thought was long gone.
"Come on in," she said resignedly. "And help figure out who killed your aunt."
Now that Ash was indisputably all right,she wanted to forget what she'd been feeling a minuteago. Or at least not to think about what it meant.
What it means, the little voice inside her head said sweetly, is that you're in big trouble, girl. Ha ha.
"So what's the story?" Kestrel said briskly as they all sat around the kitchen table.
"The story is that there is no story,"MaryLynnette said. She stared at her paper in frustration.
"Look-what if we start at the beginning? We don't know who did it, but we do know some things about them. Right?"
Rowan nodded encouragingly. "Right."
"First: the goat. Whoever killed the goat had to bestrong, because poking those toothpicks through hidewouldn't have been easy. And whoever killed the goat had to know how your uncle Hodge was killed, because the goat was killed in the same way. And they had to have some reason for putting a black irisin the goat's mouth-either because they knew Ashbelonged to the Black Iris Club, or because they be longed to the Black Iris Club themself."
"Or because they thought a black iris would represent all lamia, or all Night People," Ash said.
Hisvoice was muffled-he was bent over, rubbing hisankle. "That's a common mistake Outsiders make."
Very good, Mary-Lynnette thought in spite of herself. She said, "Okay. And they had access to two different kinds of small stakes-which isn't sayingmuch, because you can buy both kinds in town."
"And they must have had some reason to hate Mrs. B., or to hate vampires," Mark said.
"Otherwise, why kill her?"
Mary-Lynnette gave him a patient look. "I hadn't gotten to Mrs. B. yet. But we can do her now. First, whoever killed Mrs. B. obviously knew she was a vampire, because they staked her. And, second ...
um...second . . ." Her voice trailed off. She couldn't think of anything to go second.
-240 "Second, they probably killed her on impulse," Ash said, in a surprisingly calm and analytical voice."You said she was stabbed with a picket from the fence, and if they'd been planning on doing it, they'd probably have brought their own stake."
"Verygood." This time Mary-Lynnette said it out loud. She couldn't help it. She met Ash's eyes and saw something that startled her. He looked as if itmattered to him that she thought he was smart.
Well, she thought. Well, well. Here we are, probably for the first time, justtalking to each other. Not arguing, not being sarcastic, just talking. It's nice.