Flames At Midnight

10 | grace yearwood

The air was musty. Floorboards creaked loudly beneath us as we crossed into the foyer. It was dim and hard to see in the rundown house. The windows were covered with sheets of newspaper, faded yellow from the sun.

Dillon was kneeling next to a few spots of blood. "It doesn't look like it happened too recently. Maybe last night, if I had to guess."

"Could the blood be from a stab wound?" Kya asked.

The same thought had crossed my mind. I didn't want to say it, but there was a possibility that the masked attacker had beat us here.

My stomach felt knotted.

"This is my fault," I said slowly. I pressed my palms against my eyes. "If only I had agreed to come last night then maybe—"

Quentin dropped a hand on my shoulder, cutting me off. "Stop. It's not your fault. This isn't any of our faults. You could just as easily say it was my fault because I didn't see it coming. We should split up and try to see if there are any clues."

"Quentin's right. Maybe she just cut herself making dinner," Kya said, although she didn't sound like she believed it.

Dillon and Kya started to the left, checking the bedroom.

Quentin, Porter, and I turned right and into the kitchen.

"Can we turn on a light?" Porter asked.

"We shouldn't. We don't want anyone to know we're in here."

"I think all the cars parked outside are a dead giveaway," I said, checking through the row of cabinets above the sink.

There were some pots and bowls. A few mugs. She probably lived alone. There was a dirty pan in the sink and a shattered plate on the floor. I closed the cabinets and carefully stepped around the shards of ceramic. A chair near the kitchen table was overturned.

Something definitely happened here.

"Whoa. So cool. Check this out," Quentin said.

He had pulled all the cutlery out of a drawer and was lifting out a flat piece of wood.

The drawer had a false bottom.

"How did you even see that?" I asked.

"I wouldn't have except there was something sticking out of the side. It seemed like it was closed in a hurry." Quentin lifted up a silk ribbon. "This was caught between the board and the side of the drawer. It snagged on a fork."

"What are those things?" Porter asked, peeking around Quentin's shoulder.

Whoever lived here had been hiding dozens of jars under the false bottom of the drawer. They were filled with the most random things. I picked up two of them. One was a jar of stones labeled Amethyst and one was filled with green stuff labeled Wormwood.

"This is bizarre," I muttered, holding up one of the jars to get a better look at the contents.

"I wonder if she has, like, eyeballs stashed somewhere," Porter said, with a shudder.

"Come on. Let's keep looking."

We didn't find anything else exciting in the kitchen. After the trick drawer, we looked at everything more carefully. We even went as far as tapping on different floorboards, hoping to find another secret compartment. Porter got excited because he thought he found a small, weird weapon in the medicine cabinet. It was just an eyelash curler.