Page 61 of The Debutantes
“But one of the men brought her,” I say.
“Yeah. I don’t really know anything about him, but…” She hesitates, and I clock the moment she decides to trust me with whatever she’s about to say. “Things seemed different between them. Most of the women, it’s clear it’s transactional, but this guy and Margot… I’m pretty sure they were, like, together.”
The memory flashes again: Margot hiding her phone from me. The secretive smile pulling at her lips as she bent over thescreen. I was sure that she was texting Lily, that they were laughing at me, conspiring about how to ditch my deadweight.
Now, though, the image shifts, sharpening into higher resolution.
“When did you meet Margot?” I ask.
“Last fall, I think,” she says. “Maybe end of summer.”
Exactly when Margot was hiding those texts—just before she’d started pulling away, disappearing, busy whenever I tried to hang out. I’d always assumed it was Lily. Iknewit was Lily. As a photographer, you’re supposed to be good at details, weaving images together into a coherent composition, and that was the one that made the most sense. The only one that made sense.
But what if I had been dead wrong?
“Is there anything else you can tell me about him?” I press. “What he looked like, or…?”
“He was the type who always kept his mask on. But…” Renee hesitates. “It was this wolf mask.”
There’s a shift like a storm moving through the room, static all over my skin. The Rougarou’s voice curls into my memory like smoke.The other one was seventeen, wasn’t she?
“I saw him,” I say. “On the balcony. I mentioned Margot, and he knew her.”
My heart pounds as I wrack my brain for any details I remember about him—his voice, his eyes—but it’s like my memory is a deep black pool, so wide and dark that I can’t see the bottom.
“Shit,” Renee says.
“Have you ever talked to him?” I ask. “Do you have any idea who he could be?”
Renee shakes her head. “I see him every so often, but he’s never talked to me or anything, not since Margot died. Hebarely even looked at me before. I try to stay away, ’cause he gives me a weird vibe, but I never thought…” She pauses, dread deepening on her face. “Do you think he really might have done something to her?”
I don’t answer. I don’t have to. Because it’s dawning on both of us now, the horrible truth: I came face-to-face with Margot’s killer. I could have torn off his mask, pushed him up against the balcony railing, demanded that he tell me what he did to her.
But I didn’t.
I did what Margot always feared I would, what I ended up doing to her in the end.
I ran.
22PIPER
JANUARY 2, 3:50P.M.
Aiden starts to speak, but I beat him to it.
“Where the hell did you get this?”
“I—” He stops, and his expression changes from panic to something unexpected. Relief. “You know.”
Confusion makes me hesitate, but I won’t back down. “I asked you a question.”
“It’s not mine.”
“Bullshit.”
Aiden’s gaze locks on the invitation in my hand. And then, when he seems to conclude that I’m not letting him get out of this, “If I explain, I need you to swear that you won’t tell anyone.”
“Why?”
