“Let’s talk about something else,” I said.
There was a flash of something on his face-delight. As though he’d discovered something about me, a weakness, and would squirrel away the knowledge for his future use. But maybe Langdon had just made me paranoid about him.
That’s what they do, psychopaths. They figure out your language, your currency, your needs, your dreams and fears. Then they figure out how to use those things to get what they want from you. Most of us wear it all on our faces. We telegraph our inner lives with what we choose to eat, how we eat it, what we wear, how we carry ourselves, the words we use and don’t use. We tell about ourselves in a million small and large ways. And most people don’t even notice, because they’re so busy telling about themselves, listening to the symphony of their own inner lives. But the psychopath doesn’t have an inner life-no attachments, no feelings, no self-doubt, no regrets. Psychopaths just have their own desires, and a single-minded focus to achieve those desires-whatever they happen to be. So they have a lot of attention to direct at their chosen quarry, figuring, testing, planning, exploiting. But that wasn’t Luke, was it? It couldn’t be.
“So,” he said. “Let’s start our game.”
There it was again, that sweetly mischievous grin.
“Sure,” I said. “Why not?”
I was happy for the distraction. There was only an hour before Rachel had said she’d be home. After that, I’d have to reenter the real world, face the ugliness of it all.
“So this hunt will be like a history lesson,” said Luke. “How much do you know about The Hollows?”
“Some,” I said. I knew quite a bit about the sleepy, spooky little burg in which my college nestled. But I didn’t want Luke to know how much I knew. I figured that would give me a much-needed leg up.
He took something from his pocket and clicked it on the table. It was a rusty old key. Tied to it with a piece of red yarn was a blue-lined index card.
“What’s this?” I said with a smile. I held up the key and looked at it. It was warm from his pocket, with a heart-shaped bow and a long stem. He watched me intently as I turned it in my hand.
“Where did you get it?”
“Read,” he said.
I turned the card toward the light. It read:
Within its walls,
For a hundred years,
People have learned and prayed and died.
Now, some believe, a tortured soul is trapped inside.
On a winter’s night when the moon was full,
A broken man decided that his life wasn’t much fun.
So he drank a bottle of whiskey
And ate the barrel of his gun.
Why did he do it?
What secret did he hide?
What led him to end his life
While his children cried and cried?
I stared at it a moment. It was written in the careful print letters of a child’s hand. When I raised my eyes to Luke, he was staring at me with an odd and unsettling grin.
“I’m a poet,” he said. “And you didn’t know it.”
Just then, we heard a key in the door and we turned to see his mother walk through, brushing snowflakes from her coat. I couldn’t help but notice her shoes, a practical but decidedly unstylish pair of boots. They seemed not to belong to her, and I found myself hyperfocusing on them for reasons I couldn’t explain. But I guess when it came to snow boots, it was function over form, even for the most fashion-conscious. The snow outside was falling heavily now, and the sky was turning black. I shoved the note and the key in my pocket.
“Lana,” she said. Her face was flushed with cold, and she looked pretty in her red wool hat. “I tried to call but got a strange busy signal. I closed up early because I was worried that you’d be on your bike. I wanted to drive you back to the dorm before the storm gets too bad.”
Luke wore an expression of unmasked annoyance. She’d broken the spell he was weaving and he was pissed about it.
“Oh,” I said. “Thanks.”
Luke helped me get my bike into their garage (Rachel had too much stuff in her trunk to fit it in the car), neither one of us looking at the other. Like a little man, he took the bike from me and rolled it down the path and up the driveway. As he leaned it against the wall, I noticed a kid’s dirt bike stood on a kickstand just over to the left. The wheels were caked with mud. I wondered when he had time to ride it. There wasn’t another adult bike in the garage, and I couldn’t see Rachel letting Luke ride around by himself.
“Do you still want to play the game?” he asked.
I was already puzzling over that odd poem, tumbling its words around in my brain. Of course I wanted to play, more than any adult reasonably should. In fact, thinking about the poem was the first moment that I wasn’t thinking about everything else. Here was a puzzle I could reasonably solve. Not like my life, which seemed like an endless series of questions with no answers. But I didn’t want him to see how creepy and bizarre I thought it was, how anxious I was to figure it out. Somehow I thought if I did, Luke would have the upper hand. And I couldn’t let him get that.
“Definitely,” I said. “Yeah, I’m looking forward to it. I mean, I’ve got some stuff going on. But I’ll think about it.”
I turned away from the dark look he gave me. He expected more from me. I had disappointed him. Inside I smiled.
We all hopped into the Range Rover, Luke in the backseat, me up front with Rachel. There was a very faint scent of cigarette smoke, covered by some kind of artificial cherry smell. I could see her as a secret smoker. It was something she tried to give up over and over, I guessed. But she just couldn’t kick it. She hid it from everyone, sneaking smokes on the deck after Luke was asleep, or as she drove home with all the windows open. Her breath always smelled like peppermint, candy she was probably sucking on to hide the smell. She didn’t smoke enough that it permeated the fabric of her clothes.
“You two are awfully quiet,” she said after a few minutes. Her tone was light and playful. The windshield wipers were scraping against the glass, the icy bits of snow crunching softly. “Are you up to something?”
“Lana’s upset,” Luke chimed from the backseat.
“Oh?” said Rachel.
“Her friend is missing.”
“Oh!” she said, giving me a sideways glance of concern. “Is that true?”
“Why do you always think I’m a fucking liar?” said Luke, his tone slicing and bitter.
“Watch your tongue,” she said, just as sharply.
“Watch your tongue,” he mimicked nastily. “A physical impossibility, by the way.”
He was mad that we’d been interrupted, that she’d come home early and ruined his game. I just knew it; I don’t even know how. An awkward silence swelled, and I could hear him tapping on something in the backseat.
“She didn’t come home from the library last night,” I said, addressing Rachel. I was eager to move on from the uncomfortable vibe in the car. I could see how things might quickly heat up between them and I didn’t need that. “But that’s happened before.”
“I hope she’s okay,” said Rachel. “Wasn’t there an incident a couple of years back?”
“Yes,” I said. “There was. Another friend of mine fell down some stairs and she was missing for a few days before-” Rachel glanced at me and I clamped my mouth shut. It wasn’t really appropriate to be talking about this in front of Luke. I certainly wouldn’t have brought it up if they hadn’t.
“Before what?” said Luke. He was straining forward in his seat.
“Before they found her.”