Mind Games

by Heather W. Petty

  “Don’t say it.”

  “It’s just so perfect!”

  “Do not,” I warned, but Lock could not be stopped.

  “Nimue! She’s named you as the Lady of the Lake! It’s brilliant. I suppose that makes you Merlin’s betrayer, as well. Should I be afraid, then?”

  I invited him to stop talking with my glare, and this time it seemed to work for a while. That is, until we actually boarded the bus and he leaned closer to me and said, “Nimue’s not all bad. She did give Excalibur to Arthur.” Just the tone of his voice told me he wasn’t anywhere near done.

  “Truly, Lock, if you say it, I will be forced to injure you.”

  He never did take my threats seriously.

  “The sword that later killed him, if we’re being technical.”

  I reached through my crossed arms to pinch his side as hard as I could, but he only laughed through the pain. So I scooted closer to the window and turned as much of my back to Lock as I could—partly to hide my grin, of course. And when he finally stopped laughing, I looked over my shoulder and said, “It wasn’t Excalibur that killed Arthur. It was the sword Clarent.”

  Chapter 12

  I went to school early the next day, but never did make it to any of my morning classes. I hadn’t intended to hide away in Lock’s lab, but not even the loud bell ringing through the small space could entice me from my hiding space and into the halls. I did wander into drama class just in time to get counted for attendance, but when it was clear Miss Francis was only going to run scenes for those students taking summer theater courses, I hid up in the back rows of the auditorium where no one could see me in the dark.

  Lock joined me about ten minutes into class, flopping back into the seat next to mine with a sigh. I thought for sure he’d come to share all his insights into my case, but instead he just watched the movements of the class, saying nothing.

  It wasn’t as though we’d learned anything earth shattering, really. One of the magazines had come from that clinic, but it could just as easily have come from the trash in the building’s alley, or from any of the hundreds of patients who came in and out of there on a weekly basis. It didn’t have to be from Lady Constance of the Park. Or Mrs. Patel. Or even my Sally Alexander, who we now knew was actually called Mrs. Greeves. That name fit her nicely. It also sounded familiar to me, in that way that random names sometimes do.

  “What are you thinking?” I asked, after we watched a snubbed John Watson wander over to sit with a few of the set decorators, who were sitting in a circle onstage batting a Hacky Sack around using only the backs of their hands.

  Lock shrugged at first, but he leaned forward to rest his arms on the seat back in front of him. “I was wondering how much Lily Patel hates you.”

  “Why do you ask about Lily?”

  “Have you spoken to her at school?”

  “Not much.” I realized I hadn’t told him about my accidental bonding time with Lily at her father’s memorial spot in the park. But I wasn’t sure anything said there was particularly relevant. It was obvious that her mother working at the clinic meant she had access to the magazines by proxy, but I couldn’t imagine her hunching over them with scissors clutched in one hand and model glue in the other—not when she could just unleash her hyenas to rip me to shreds at school on a daily basis. “Why are you thinking about people who hate me?”

  “In looking at the magazines left out in the clinic, it would appear they subscribe to six publications and change out the magazines every three months.”

  “And?”

  “Even if we assume that one or two get taken home with a patient, or our sticky-fingered Lady Constance perhaps, that would still leave twelve magazines for Nurse Patel to hand off to Constance.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. You can’t know how many were stolen or damaged or didn’t arrive in the post.”

  “True. But we do know how many were used to make your letter. Five. The letters used came from five distinct magazines.”

  He was being slow on purpose, which he knew I hated.

  “And?” I said again.

  “And Mrs. Patel only handed seven to the bag lady. The five used to make your letter were missing.”

  I frowned and let my mind drift a bit. “What is the point, though? What possible reason would someone have to send me a drawing and a threatening letter? What do they want?”

  “They want you to confess.”

  “To what end?”

  He shrugged. “Two possibilities. They think you’re a conspirator with your father and want you to go to prison with him.”

  “Or?”

  “Or they think you’re the culprit.”

  “And want my father to go free?”

  He was quiet, but my mind reeled. Suddenly, Mrs. Greeves’s picket signs and screaming all felt more sinister. “You recognized our protester?”

  Sherlock nodded and sat back in his chair again, steepling his fingers and resting them at his chin. “She has access to the magazines.”

  “And wants my dad free, though I’ve no idea why.”

  “She’s older though. Too old to have a son who builds models. And I don’t think she’s our witness or artist either.”

  “Why?”

  “You said she wants your father freed. Does she strike you as the kind to wait for your confession? I say she’d just go directly to the police if she had witnessed the act herself.”

  I pushed my fingers into my hair and rocked back in my theater seat. We’d gone from no suspects to too many in the space of an afternoon, and there were too many variables and not enough real data to find an answer that meant anything. It was all just randomness. No pattern.

  “Have you heard of Ulam’s spiral?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “It has to do with prime numbers. There’s not supposed to be a pattern to primes. They’re distributed through the integer string seemingly at random. But when this mathematician named Ulam doodled numbers into a spiral, the primes started to line up diagonally.”

  “Line up?” He smiled at me like I was about to tell him the most fascinating of stories.

  “It doesn’t matter which number you start with at the center of your spiral or how many numbers you use. It doesn’t even matter what shape your spiral is. If you write integers in a spiral pattern and circle the primes, you will have a diagonal line of circles. A pattern from randomness.”

  “A pattern from randomness? Is that what you see here?”

  I shook my head. “Not yet. But it has to be there, doesn’t it? If we just manage to circle our primes.”

  Lock stared at me and waited for me to speak again. When I did not, he asked, “Tell me what you’re thinking?”

  I focused on Lily, who sat down on the spot-lit stage, alone for once. Then I followed a taped-off line that came from under her uniform skirt and crossed the stage diagonally until it was interrupted by a knee—a knee that belonged to her Watson. I wondered then if he knew he’d done it. If  Watson had connected them on the stage on purpose or subconsciously, or perhaps it had been a mere coincidence. Just two people sitting on a large plane with an accidental line drawn between them. A pattern from randomness.

  “I wonder who will be at the end of my diagonal line,” I said. I leaned on the armrest between us and tried my best to lighten my tone to hide the darker turn of my thoughts. “When the random reveals its pattern, who will emerge?”

  Sherlock turned in his seat until we were face-to-face, suddenly closer than we’d been even the day before. “Don’t turn away,” he said quietly.

  I still felt the need to put more space between us, but I resisted. Had the turning away just become habit? Was I thinking too much?

  He started to speak a few times, taking small breaths, then huffing them out. Finally, he said, “No matter who is facing you at the end of your line, I will be next to you. Do you believe that?”

  I wanted to believe, wanted to dismiss the way my brain screamed it wasn’t true, couldn’t possi
bly be true, that he’d only ever stand on the side of what he thought was right regardless of where I’d be standing. My thoughts fell into a blaring turmoil as I held Lock’s gaze. And I was so tired of the noise of it. Of the unending mental noise whenever what I knew of the world warred with what I wanted. What I needed.

  Lock reached up, and I almost flinched. He must have felt it somehow too, because he slowed the movement of his hand. And the very moment he rested his palm against my cheek, the noise stopped. My mind fell blank. Or maybe it was just that I suddenly became hyperaware of the rush of blood to my heart.

  He traced my cheekbone with his thumb. “Can you believe that?”

  I shook my head slightly, but covered his hand with my own so he wouldn’t pull away. I wasn’t sure I could take it if he stopped touching me just then. “Make me,” I said. “Make me believe you.”

  He moved closer so slowly, I thought my heart would stop altogether. We shared one breath and then another, before finally his lips found mine. He kissed me softly but long, holding me close with his fingers twined in my hair. He stopped only to study my eyes, as if he couldn’t believe I was still there. The next time he kissed me, I smiled against his lips and kissed him back.

  We traded kisses and awkward glances until a giant crash onstage broke our spell. But Sherlock held my hand for the rest of class and all the way home. The very minute he let go and I closed our front door behind me, a hundred protests crashed through my mind, the word “temporary” flashing in red to mark each one. But I didn’t care anymore. Maybe I was being selfish or stupid or whatever else. But I wanted him, my Lock. And for now he wanted me back.

  • • •

  Alice handed me another envelope after dinner that night—one without a postmark that faintly smelled of model glue. I should have opened it right away but instead placed it on my bed and stepped back to think a moment. Then I called Lock.

  Before he could say hello, I said, “I got another envelope.”

  “I’ll be right over.”

  “No. Don’t come. I just . . .” I didn’t know why I’d called him exactly, but I could hear him moving around, as if he was coming over anyway. So I opened the envelope and was surprised to find THANK YOU embossed in silver across the card inside. The glue smell had made me sure it would be another threat. “I think it’s a drawing.”

  I didn’t really know what I was waiting for, and it was uncharacteristic of me to pause at all. But I felt like maybe I didn’t want to see what would be drawn there. Not this time.

  I heard Mycroft call, “Sherlock!” and then the sound on Lock’s end muffled, as if he was pressing his mobile against his shirt. I used the pause in our conversation to study the way the pencil lead smudged around the edges of the card, and then Lock said, “Call you right back?”

  “Yeah.”

  And I was left alone with the card once more.

  I opened it finally, to keep my self-derision at bay, and immediately wished I hadn’t. Similar to the first drawing, this one had a main story in the background with an ornate, framed foreground and a male figure peeking in—no whispering princess, however. It had the same level of detail and it filled the entire white space of the card. In fact, the only style difference was that the main characters of the background story weren’t wearing medieval gowns. Perhaps, if they were, I might have answered when Lock called back.

  My phone blasted out that bloody barcarolle, and instead of answering, I stared at an almost perfect rendering of Sadie Mae in her school uniform. She was being pushed up against a willow tree by a large white man. Her perfect spiral curls, the look of abject terror on her face, his white fingers clamped around her throat. She was even missing a shoe, my Sadie Mae.

  The card started to shake, and I realized I was gripping the card stock too tightly when I heard it start to crinkle in my fist. I dropped the thing, and still I couldn’t look away. Which is also when I saw the hidden message in the leaves that formed the frame of the image. I thought maybe I was seeing things at first, but looking at it from far away and at the angle it had fallen, the words were definitely there: SECOND SIN.

  “ ‘Second sin,’ ” I said aloud. In the next second I was shuffling through my schoolwork and the other useless papers and books on my desk. And when I’d knocked near half of them to the floor in my rush, I found it. The first drawing. I could see that there were words as plain as anything, now that I knew what to look for. I dropped it next to its sibling on the floor and adjusted it until it was at the same angle. “ ‘First sin.’ Oh God.”

  I grabbed the lamp from my desk and pulled it to where the drawings rested, straining the electric cord to the farthest it would reach. Then I got down on my knees, studying every inch of the drawings. I found two anomalies. First, someone had doctored the drawings. While the original lines were drawn using a true black-colored pencil, the shading that created the “sins” messages looked slightly lighter, as if whoever had doctored them had used a normal lead pencil instead of an art pencil.

  The second was more disturbing. That same lead pencil had been used again on the second drawing. The right hand of the man peeking around the frame had been messily erased, and, over the top, the person doctoring the drawing had replaced the hand with a stump and had drawn blood dripping down his upper arm in dark gray rivulets.

  I wanted to obsess over the fact that someone was cataloging my sins, and not just my stupid mistake of throwing my father’s sword into the lake. They knew I was responsible for Sadie’s death as well. Somehow, whoever doctored the drawings knew enough to know what I’d never said aloud—that I’d invited my best friend into the house of a serial killer, when I wouldn’t be there to protect her.

  I shielded myself from the pain of that by focusing back on what my discoveries might mean. First, the smell of glue on what was clearly a drawing meant that Sherlock had been wrong that the drawings and threats were coming from two different people. Clearly, the card picked up the scent on a shared surface or by being handled by the same person who glued the letters on the threat. It possibly also meant that another threat would be coming to me in the mail.

  Second, the fact that the drawings were doctored meant that the person sending me the drawings was not the artist. Third, whoever doctored the drawings had taken the time to sever the hand from the man character, which had to be a message. The hand found in our rubbish—it belonged to the man in the drawing. It was possible the man in the drawing was the artist.

  So, I knew a few facts and several possibilities, and still I couldn’t answer the larger question: WHY? Why would someone send these to me at all? What was her end game? Did the sender think she could scare me into some kind of confession? Did she really hate me that much? And how many more of my sins had been documented in this way?

  When Sherlock’s ringtone filled the room again, I was still sitting on the floor, glancing back and forth at the word “sin” written on each card. I didn’t even know how long I’d been there. Without looking away from the drawings, I reached for my phone and answered, “Don’t come over. I’ll show you the second drawing tomorrow.”

  Lock paused just long enough for me to wonder if the change in costuming in the drawings was a message too, and then he said, “I need you.”

  The tone of his voice caught my attention. I looked up at my window. “Where are you?”

  “Hospital. Charing Cross.”

  He hung up before I could tell him I’d be there, leaving me with a name I hadn’t heard in almost a year, a place I never even allowed myself to think about. The place I’d left my mother. I had sworn that I would rather die on the street outside the front doors than walk the halls even one more time, but one phone call with three words from Lock and within minutes I was walking to the Baker Street Tube station, leaving the drawings and everything they represented on the floor of my room.

  Chapter 13

  My mobile rang again as I approached the bright blue awning of the Baker Street Tube station. I didn’t reco
gnize the number, but on the off chance it was Sherlock calling from a hospital phone, I picked up on the final ring.

  “It’s Lily.”

  “I have somewhere to be. How did you get my number?”

  “I’m at your house. Where are you?”

  I sighed. “Baker Street Tube station. What’s this about?”

  “Baker Street? Stay there. I’ll come to you.”

  She ended the call, and I looked between the awning and my phone, trying to decide what to do. I scowled, but I stayed aboveground, watching the minutes creep past on my mobile. Just as I was about to give up on her, Lily appeared, her cheeks pink from running and a bouquet of flowers clutched in her hand.

  “You hid the weapon.” I could tell she was trying not to sound accusatory, but it didn’t work. Her anger and confusion shimmered off her.

  I wasn’t sure how she’d found out, but I could guess. I doubted Mallory would give that kind of information to the victim’s family, but he was hardly the only member of the police that Lily could get her information from. She could have heard the accusations about me and the sword from anyone, really.

  Maybe I should have lied to her, or kept quiet like I did when Mallory was the one interrogating me on the issue. But Lily deserved better from me than that. “I did.”

  Lily clutched the bouquet with both hands like a shield. “You said you wanted him to pay for what he’s done.”

  “I do.”

  She thrust the bouquet at me so roughly that a few petals fluttered to the ground at my feet. “You said you wanted him to pay for what he’s done! How could you? . . .”

  I started toward the stairs, but Lily rushed to block my way.

  “You knew where it was all this time, and you said nothing!”

  She was yelling on the open street, oblivious to the stares we were already attracting. It was only a matter of time before someone recognized one or the both of us. I stepped toward her until our shoulders almost touched. She flinched when she thought I’d push past her, so I grabbed her forearm just hard enough to keep her beside me and spoke just loud enough for her to hear me over the street noise.