Finale

I wondered if, like Patch, he’d be in disguise, which would only make picking him out of the crowd that much more challenging. Would he be
dressed in lumberjack clothes? Standard CHS Razorbills garb? Would he go so far as to dye his hair? If nothing else, he would be in the top percentile when it came to height. I’d start with
that.
    I found Marcie at the concession stand, shivering in pink jeans, a white turtleneck, and a matching pink puffer vest. Seeing her dressed this way made something in my brain click.
    “Where’s your cheerleading costume? Don’t you have to cheer tonight?” I asked.
    “It’s a uniform, not a costume. And I quit.”
    “You quit the team?”
    “I quit the
squad
.”
    “Wow.”
    “I have bigger things to worry about. Everything else kind of pales in comparison to finding out that you’re”—she glanced around
uneasily—“Nephilim.”
    Quite unexpectedly, I felt a strange sense of kinship with Marcie. The moment quickly dissolved when I ran down the list of various ways Marcie had made my life miserable in the past year alone.
We might both be Nephilim, but any similarities ended there. And I’d be smart to remember it.
    “Do you think you’ll recognize Blakely if you see him?” I asked her, keeping my voice down.
    She shot me a look of irritation. “I said I know him, didn’t I? Right now
I’m
your best shot at finding him. Don’t question me.”
    “When and if you see him, keep it discreet. Patch will grab Blakely, and we’ll follow him up to his cabin, where we can all question Blakely together.” Except by that point,
Blakely would be passed out and no good to Marcie. Minor detail.
    “I thought you broke up with Patch.”
    “I did,” I lied, trying to ignore the guilt twisting my stomach. “But I also don’t trust anyone else to help me deal with Blakely. Just because Patch and I aren’t
together doesn’t mean I can’t call in a favor.” If she didn’t buy my explanation, I wasn’t too worried. Patch would erase her memory of this conversation shortly.
    “I want to question Blakely before Patch does,” Marcie said.
    “You can’t. We have a plan and we have to stick to it.”
    Marcie hitched her shoulder in a really snooty way. “We’ll see.”
    Mentally, I did some deep breathing. And quashed the urge to grind my teeth. Time to show Marcie she wasn’t running the show. “If you mess this up, I
will
make you regret
it.” I put all my warning behind it, but right away I knew I needed to work on issuing threats. Maybe I could recruit Dante’s help. Even better—get Patch to teach me the finer
points.
    “Do you really think Blakely has information about who killed my dad?” Marcie asked, fixing her eyes on me in a calculating, almost perceptive way.
    My heart stumbled, but I held my expression in check. “Hopefully tonight we’ll find out.”
    “What now?” Marcie said.
    “Now we walk around and try not to draw attention.”
    “Speak for yourself,” Marcie said with a snort.
    Okay, so maybe she was right. Marcie
did
look fantastic. She was cute and annoyingly confident. She had money, and it showed in everything from her tanning-salon glow, to her
so-natural-they-passed-as-real highlights, to her push-up bra. A mirage of perfection. As we marched up the bleachers, eyes flicked in our direction, and they weren’t looking at me.
    Think about Blakely,
I directed myself.
You’ve got bigger things to worry about than energy-sucking envy.
    We strode along the bleachers, past the restrooms, and cut across the track circling the football field, heading toward the visitors’ section. Much to my chagrin, I saw Detective Basso in
uniform standing on the top row of the bleachers, gazing down at the rowdy visiting crowd with hard, skeptical eyes. His gaze shifted to me, and the doubt in his expression deepened. Remembering
the strange feeling he’d given me two nights ago, I grabbed Marcie’s elbow and forced her to walk away with me. I couldn’t accuse Basso of following me—he was clearly on the
clock—but that didn’t mean I wanted to remain the subject of his scrutiny any longer.
    Back and forth along the track Marcie and I walked. The stands were crowded, night had settled in, the game had started, and other than Marcie’s throngs of male admirers, I didn’t
think we drew any unwanted attention, despite the fact that we hadn’t taken a seat in over thirty minutes.
    “This is getting old,” Marcie complained.