Finally, Esmeralda raised her head. Astonishingly, she somehow appeared younger, and there was a whisper of a smirk on her face. “Hey,” Esmeralda said in a completely different voice.
Aria gasped. Noel flinched too. It was Ali’s voice.
“So you wanted to talk to me?” Esmeralda-as-Ali said, sounding bored. “You only get one question, so make it good.”
A dog howled in the distance. A door slammed across the street, and when Aria turned, she thought she saw Jenna Cavanaugh gliding past the bay window in her living room. And Aria even thought she could smell a hint of vanilla soap wafting out from the bottom of the hole. Could Ali be right here, staring at her through this woman’s eyes? And what was Aria supposed to ask her? There were so many secrets Ali had kept from them—about her tryst with Ian, the problems with her brother, the truth about blinding Jenna, and the possibility that Ali wasn’t as happy as everyone thought. But really, one question stood out cleanly from the others.
“Who killed you?” she finally asked in a quiet, quaking whisper.
Esmeralda wrinkled her nose, like this was the stupidest question in the world. “Are you sure you want to know?”
Aria leaned forward. “Yes.”
The medium lowered her head. “I’m afraid to say it out loud,” she blurted, still in Ali’s voice. “I’ll have to write it down.”
“Okay,” Aria said quickly.
“And then you have to leave,” Esmeralda-as-Ali said. “I don’t want you here anymore.”
“Sure,” Aria wheezed. “Anything.”
Esmeralda reached into her purse and pulled out a small, leather-bound notebook and a ballpoint pen. Scribbling quickly, she folded the note and handed it to Aria. “Now go,” she growled.
Aria backed away from the hole, nearly tripping as she went. She didn’t even feel her legs as she sprinted to Noel’s car. Noel was right behind her, pulling her to him and holding her close. For a moment, they both were too overwhelmed to speak. Aria stared at the Ali Shrine again. A single candle flame illuminated Ali’s school picture from seventh grade. Ali’s wide, toothy smile and unblinking eyes suddenly made her look possessed.
She thought about the story Noel had mentioned—“The Fall of the House of Usher.” Just like the sister in the story who had been entombed in that old house, Ali’s body had been trapped under the concrete for three long years. Were souls released from their earthly vessels as soon as a person died . . . or much later? Had Ali’s soul escaped that hole just after Ali took her last breath . . . or only after the workers excavated her rotted corpse from the ground?
The slip of paper Esmeralda had given her was still in Aria’s palm. She began to slowly unfold it. “Do you need a minute alone?” Noel asked softly.
Aria swallowed hard. “It’s okay.” She needed him here. She was too afraid to look at the note by herself.
The paper crinkled as she spread it out. The letters were round and bubbly—Ali’s handwriting. Slowly, Aria read the words. There were only three, and they chilled her to her very core:
Ali killed Ali.
Chapter 23
All in the Family
About an hour later, Spencer sat at her desk in her bedroom, staring out the big bay window. The back porch lights threw an eerie glow over the ruined barn and the twisted, hideous forest. All the snow had melted, leaving a film of muck over the ground. A bunch of tree surgeons had hacked away at the brambles with chain saws, leaving a big pile of dead timber on the lawn. A cleanup crew had ransacked the barn today, depositing the remaining furniture near the patio. The round rug where Spencer and the others had sat the night Ali hypnotized them was propped against the steps of the deck. It had once been white, but it was now burnt-marshmallow brown.
Aria and Noel were no longer gathered around the hole. Spencer had watched them from the window; the whole thing with the medium had taken only about ten minutes. Though she was curious about what Aria had discovered with Madame Psychic Friend, she felt too stubborn to ask. The medium looked suspiciously like the woman who hung out on the Hollis College green, claiming she could speak to trees. Spencer hoped the press wouldn’t get wind of what Aria was doing—it would just make them look crazier.
“Hey, Spence.”
She jumped. Her father stood in her doorway, still in a dark pin-striped suit from work.
“Want to look at windmill Web sites with me?” he asked. Her parents had decided to replace the fire-damaged windmill with a new one that would help to power the house.
“Um . . .” Spencer felt a twinge of regret. When had her dad last asked her to take part in a family decision?
Yet she couldn’t even look at him. The letter she’d found on his hard drive scrolled through her mind like the CNN news ticker. Dear Jessica, I’m sorry things got cut short. . . . I can’t wait to be alone with you again. Xx, Peter. It wasn’t hard to draw awful conclusions. She kept imagining her father and Mrs. DiLaurentis sitting on the beige wraparound sofa in Ali’s living room—the very same couch Spencer, Ali, and the others sat on when they watched American Idol—nuzzling noses in the same way some PDA-obsessed couples did in the hallways of Rosewood Day.
“I have homework,” she lied, the grilled chicken salad she’d had for lunch churning in her stomach.
Her dad looked disappointed. “Okay, maybe later then.” He turned and padded down the stairs.
Spencer let out a pent-up breath. She needed to talk to someone about this. The secret was too weighty and overwhelming to handle alone. She pulled out her phone and dialed Melissa’s number. It rang and rang.