“Exactly. I am going to find every Lord who has ever gone to this school and cross-reference them with the girls who went missing. The investigative avenues will be endless after that.”
“That’s going to take a while,” I say, but it’s far preferable to the thought of Tobin getting arrested for hacking government files.
“How’s your end going?” he asks.
I show him my meager list about Haden. “But I think the perfect opportunity to study Haden more closely just fell into my lap. He just came over and requested that I help him prepare for singing at the ‘festivities of lighting up Olympus.’ ” I move my arms while I’m speaking, acting like I’m doing an impersonation of a robot.
Tobin laughs. “That’s perfect.”
I stick out my tongue as he snaps a picture of me.
He puts the camera down and gets real quiet for a few minutes, absentmindedly picking blades of grass.
I fish my phone out of my tote bag and check to see if I have any messages or texts from CeCe, explaining why she quit and left town. I expect to find at least a good-bye text, but there’s nothing. I try to send her my own text, but it doesn’t go through. Like her number has been disconnected. I blink back tears, wondering why CeCe would just cut me out of her life like this.
Tobin brushes my arm, drawing my attention. I give him a small smile, happy to still have a friend like him.
“Just promise me you’ll be careful around Haden, okay?” he says. “Don’t get too close.”
I nod, remembering that Haden might be dangerous.
Chapter thirty-seven
HADEN
“That was very nice,” I say from the doorway of Daphne’s bedroom. She jumps and almost drops the guitar she’s been playing. I’d caught her right at the end of a song.
She shoots up from the edge of her bed. “What are you doing in here?”
“The door was open … and I didn’t want to interrupt you.”
“What, did you just walk right into the house? An open door isn’t an open invitation. Joe always forgets to shut it. And you’re not allowed in my room anyway.”
“Sorry.” I take a long stride backward so I’m now standing in the hallway outside her open door. I jam my hands into the pockets of my jeans because I don’t know what else to do with them. “I knocked on your front door. Your servant let me in. She said I could come on up to find you.”
“We don’t have a servant,” she says, like it’s an accusation.
“Thin woman? Hair slicked back into a hair … ball … thing … on the top of her head? She seemed too young to be your mother.”
“Oh. That’s Marta. Joe’s assistant.” Her tense stance softens a little. “Why are you here?”
“You said you’d help me with the festival song. It’s been a week, as you requested. Is this not your earliest convenience?”
“Oh. Yeah. I guess I didn’t mean in exactly a week. The festival isn’t until the end of November, you know that, right?”
“I don’t believe in procrastination.”
“Meaning I do?”
It had been a week since I had an excuse to talk to her, and not talking to her was making me feel addled. But I can’t tell her that. I point at her guitar. “Will you show me how to play?”
“You don’t know already?”
“I’ve had more important things to do.”
“If you were serious about the music program, you’d make time.”
“I’m here, aren’t I?” I temper myself, remembering that Dax told me to be nice. “I need your help.”
Daphne picks up the guitar and brushes past me through the doorway. I follow her to a large living room. She sits on the couch and looks up at me. “You coming?”
I sit on the opposite end of the couch. I set my schoolbag between us.
“How much do you know about playing?” she asks.
“Not a thing.”
She sighs. “We’ll start with the basics, then. Let’s go over finger placement, and then we’ll talk about the different chords.”
“Actually, will you do that song for me again? The one you were just playing in your room? I want to learn that one.”
“You’re not ready for that one.”
“Please?” I ask. “I want to hear it again.”
She locks eyes with me for a moment and then shakes her head in a resigned sort of way. “Okay.” She places the guitar in her lap, and I study the way she positions her fingers on the strings, memorizing each tiny movement as she begins to play the song. After a few notes, her voice joins in with the guitar and I almost forget to keep watching her hands. Her voice is soft, tentative at first, as if singing in front of me embarrasses her, but as the song builds, her voice flows out of her with a force that makes me almost quiver. Her words mingle and dance with the sounds her hands make as she plucks and strums the guitar.
I can feel a familiar ache in my own hands as my brain records the movements of Daphne’s fingers and imprints them in my muscles. I feel as though I am in a trance. When the song ends, I don’t snap back out of it until she says my name.
I hold my hands out for the guitar. “Can I?” I want to give it a try while the memorized movements are still vivid in my mind.
“Knock yourself out.” She gives me the guitar. “But don’t be upset if you don’t get more than the first couple of notes.” There’s an edge of challenge in her voice.
I place my hands on the guitar, perfectly mimicking her placement when she’d started the song.
She nods. “So far, so good.”
I think hard, replaying the song in my mind for a few moments, and then pick out the first few notes.
She raises an eyebrow. A slight smile plays on her lips.
I almost smile myself, liking that surprised look on her face. The stiff strings of the guitar bite my fingers, but it’s a welcome sensation as my power of mimicry takes over my hands. I launch into the next few measures of the song, playing with a precision that should make me proud—except even though the movements of my hands are perfect and the notes I play are correct, something about the song doesn’t sound right to me. That same warm feeling doesn’t fill me the way it did when Daphne played the song and sang. I don’t dare join my voice in with the music, but I concentrate harder on the guitar, launching into the more difficult part of the song.