“But I don’t think they’re there,” he added. “I heard somebody go out earlier.”
“Why don’t I give it a try anyway,” she said. That’s another thing she’d learned over the years from her work: Believe only half of what people tell you.
After mounting the stairs, she rapped lightly on the door up there. It was heavily chipped, but there was a new-looking straw doormat on the floor in front of it, and tacked to the door was a Pennsylvania Dutch hex sign designed with two black-and-red birds and the word Wilkum. Both items were the kind of things a mother would send in a care package. Getting no response, Phoebe rapped again, harder this time. She waited. Nothing.
Just as she was about to leave, she heard soft footsteps making their way to the door. It swung open and revealed a tall, pretty redhead with pale skin. Her hair was pulled back in a high ponytail, and there were faint smudge marks beneath each eye, as if she’d slept in her eye makeup and hadn’t washed her face yet today. She was wearing a neon green camisole and tight jeans tucked into knee-high gray suede boots. A frown began to form on her face as she took Phoebe in.
“Yes?” the girl said. She cocked her head as she spoke, and the ponytail followed.
Phoebe introduced herself and explained she was a teacher at Lyle. “Are you Blair?” she added.
“No,” the girl said bluntly. “She’s not here right now.”
“Will she be back soon?”
“I’m not sure. What’s this about?”
Obviously the phrase “teacher at Lyle” had failed to elicit even a soupçon of respect.
“I’m sure you’ve heard about Lily Mack,” Phoebe said.
“Of course. Why—is there some other news?”
“No, but I’ve been asked to help in the internal investigation the college is doing. You must be Gwen, then.”
“Yes—and we’ve already told the police everything we know.”
“The school has to look into what happened as well. May I come in for a minute?”
“I guess,” Gwen said, petulantly. “If you’re saying it’s absolutely necessary.” Gwen opened the door fully, and Phoebe stepped into the apartment. To her surprise she saw that it was in total contrast to the junk-strewn foyer downstairs. Though the walls were cracked and blistered in spots, they’d been painted a pretty yellow in the hall and red in the living room beyond. There was an old gilt-framed mirror in the entranceway and a small table, both the type of used but respectable booty you lugged home from Goodwill. Everything was neat and tidy, almost disarmingly so. The only sign of student life were two field hockey sticks leaning against the hall wall, along with a padded knee brace. A ripe, sweet smell filled the air, as if a vanilla candle was burning somewhere.
“Sooo?” Gwen said.
“Do you mind if we sit down?” Phoebe said, pointing with her chin toward the living room.
“I have to meet someone in a minute,” Gwen said.
“It won’t take long, I promise,” Phoebe said. Begrudgingly the girl led Phoebe into the living room. Though Gwen continued to stand, Phoebe perched on the edge of a faded floral sofa. Above the mantel of the walled-in fireplace hung another Pennsylvania Dutch hex symbol. When you were this age, weren’t you supposed to have Twilight movie posters plastered on your walls? Phoebe wondered.
“I love how you’ve fixed up your apartment,” Phoebe said, smiling. “This reminds me a little of my college apartment, but ours didn’t look nearly as nice.”
“Thanks,” Gwen said, unmoved.
“I’m so sorry about Lily’s death. Were you friends with her too?”
“I knew her. But she was really Blair’s friend.”
“I heard she was thinking of staying here the night she disappeared.” She let the comment hang there.
“You’ll have to ask Blair that,” Gwen told her after a moment. “I really have no idea.”
“So you hadn’t heard that?”
Gwen rolled her dark green eyes back and sighed in exasperation.
“Yeah, I heard that—after the fact. To be perfectly honest, she hadn’t really been staying here much anymore.”
“Did Lily ever seem depressed or worried to you lately?”
Another sigh. “I just told you, I really never saw her.”
Phoebe didn’t even consider broaching the subject of the Sixes. Gwen would only tip Blair off, and Phoebe would lose her edge when she spoke to the girl directly.
“Understood,” Phoebe said. She let her eyes roam absently, as if she was gathering her thoughts, when she was really checking out the space.
“Could you ask Blair to call me, then?” she said finally. She took out a pen from her bag and scribbled the information on a piece of paper.
“Sure,” Gwen said, taking the paper limply, as if she planned to let it flutter to the floor the moment Phoebe departed.
As Phoebe started on her way back home, she found it hard to judge whether Gwen’s attitude was just the general sullenness that Phoebe often witnessed in girls that age or something else—a defensiveness because she had something to hide.
The apartment had surprised Phoebe. Its tidiness, its pretty decor. And then there were the hex signs. Such an odd choice for college girls. One would have said a gift from Mom; two said something more intentional.
Phoebe herself had never liked hex signs. She’d first seen them on a trip to Pennsylvania Dutch country with Alec. The Amish farmers didn’t display them, but other people in the area did, and they popped up everywhere—on barns, houses, calendars, and half the souvenirs at the various tchotchke shops. She had almost bought note cards designed with them, just for something to take back, but she realized that she found them creepy. Maybe it was because of the flat, two-dimensional design—or the fact that they were supposed to ward off evil, hinting at witchcraft.
Could that be what the Sixes were about? Phoebe wondered, stopping abruptly on the sidewalk. Didn’t the word hex mean to put a spell on something? Maybe the girls in the Sixes pretended to be witches and threatened to cast evil spells on girls they didn’t like or who broke their code. If so, that could explain Alexis Grey’s hysteria. Nothing like finding out that a witch’s curse has been placed on you to send you over the edge.
And then with a start Phoebe thought of something else. The word hex also meant “six.”
6
BACK HOME PHOEBE flipped open her laptop and did a Google search for hex signs. She discovered that they’d been introduced by German settlers in the 1600s, though there wasn’t a consensus as to why. The most common theory, as Phoebe had suspected, was that they were used to ward off evil. The word hex was actually derived from the German word for witch. So wait, Phoebe thought, does it not have anything to do with the Greek word for six? It seemed it didn’t, but as she read more, she learned that many early hex signs had six-pointed stars, and surprise, surprise, one theory held that the name hex had evolved from a mispronunciation of the German word seches—meaning “six.”
So maybe the hex signs in Blair and Gwen’s apartment had nothing to do with witchcraft, but were simply a way for the girls to sneakily announce that they were part of the Sixes. Funny, she thought, how secret organizations always had to make sure they had their damn symbol down, to give members a way to show that they belonged. Because what secret societies invariably wanted was to not be a total secret—they wanted people to whisper about them, to yearn to belong, and in some cases, to be very afraid of them. Phoebe had learned that all too well.