Page 26 of Mischief Night (The Obsidian Brotherhood 1)

CHAPTER TEN

I had no idea what I was looking for when I went back to Green-Wood Cemetery. In the light of day, the statues looked more like broken angels than creatures lurking. Birds sang in the trees, and people walked the pathways around the lakes. The chapel, while still gothic, was less intimidating. As I walked up to the entrance of the tomb that led to The Chamber, two stone lions stared back at me. I wanted to ask them what all they’d seen, the secrets they kept.Who did Lyric leave with that night?

I didn’t find any answers there, not that I expected to. Some part of me just wanted to breathe in the air of the last place I saw her alive, to see if I could still feel her here. As if somehow I would be miraculously blessed with a gift like those women who help cops solve murders by channeling dead people’s emotions.

Ha.

If only.

Every time I asked Lincoln if he had heard anything about what really happened to Lyric, he got angry and told me I needed to let it go. People talked. There was no way he didn’t know anything.

“Who did she leave with? Who gave her drugs? Was it Jake Ryan? Chandler Carmichael?”

“Leave it alone, Tatum. You’re fucking with things you don’t understand.”

He was right.

I didn’t understand it. Why else would I have asked?

Dad still wasn’t speaking to me unless he had no choice, like at dinner or a social event. He never brought up my Life360 location that night, and I didn’t either. Sometimes omission is the best part of a lie. If he suspected I was with Caspian, he never said anything.

Mom was Mom. She said all the things she’d been bred to say.

Be thankful for the memories you have, Dear.

One day it won’t hurt so bad.

You’re going to get through this.

Chin up. You’re a Huntington, and Huntingtons don’t give up.

She was right. I wasn’t giving up. I needed to know what happened.

I went by Chandler Carmichael’s house because I remembered Caspian telling him to take Lyric home. All I got was more vague answers.

Lyric made her own choices.

Stop looking for answers you’ll never find.

Don’t make her mistakes.

What did that even mean? What mistakes did she make? What choices?

I even bartered favors until someone finally gave me Kyle’s number. The minute he heard it was me on the phone, he hung up.

Dick.

He wasn’t so quick to dismiss me on Mischief Night. I’d heard someone jumped him outside of a club last week. At first, I felt bad for him. Now, not so much.

It seemed like the more I talked about Lyric, the less everyone else did. Within a week of her memorial, the media had moved on to the next piece of celebrity gossip.

I promised Lyric I wouldn’t let them forget, and it seemed like that was the one thing they all wanted to do. She was my best friend. I knew everything about her.

Didn’t I?

I went by her apartment one day after school. Her dad was there, standing in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows, staring out over the city. It was his penthouse, but Lyric might as well have lived alone. He was never home.

Now it was empty.

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