HEATHER

Heather couldn't believe what was happening. She had come to PITY to improve her talents and meet new people. She had thought it would be a good experience.

She couldn't have been more wrong.

Our host is dead, she thought. Rick and Roy are missing. Stewart's hands are broken. She, Nathan, and James were awake, keeping the last watch before the night was over. The others paid little attention to her. They didn't even turn when she let out a sad sniffle. And now Madison is missing!

The situation seemed hopeless. So many things had gone wrong, and the only clues—the pictures, documents, everything—had been stolen right from under their noses. Heather couldn't understand how it had all happened; it seemed too horrible to be true.

The morning came at a dreadfully slow pace, and the desire to sleep weighed down Heather's eyelids. She pinched herself several times to scare the exhaustion away, but it was not very effective. The only thing that really kept her awake was her fear. If I'm not awake, she thought, and something horrible happens, it will be my fault. She glanced at the clock on the wall. Two minutes after six. Not much longer.

Around six-thirty, Amanda's eyes fluttered and blinked open, and Heather let out an audible sigh of relief. She was officially done with her watch. She was allowed to fall asleep then, but she didn't. Who could?

Amanda rose to her feet slowly. When she was up, she looked around, nodded at Heather, and walked to the bookshelves.

It took another hour for the rest of the students to rise. Soon after Amanda had woken up, Kathryn stood and stretched, followed by Julia, who walked over to her and started to ask her more about the search the night before. Slowly, Lara, Star, and Dwain got up as well, and Stewart emerged from the aisle of books where he had slept, looked around, and disappeared into another section of the library. Nathan and James, seeing everyone else awake, collapsed into chairs to catch a few more minutes of sleep.

Heather wandered over to Julia and Kathryn to see if she could join their conversation. They acknowledged her with tired nods and kept talking.

"Madison was the one with all the dreams," Julia said. "How are we supposed to know what to do now that she's gone?"

Kathryn sighed. "We don't need a dream to know what to do. Madison may have dreamed that Roy's still alive, but how can we really know that? And she didn't give us any clues where we could find the lost evidence or tell us anything useful about the murderer. Dreams or not, everything's just the same."

"Are you even upset that Madison's gone?" Julia asked.

"What a jerk." Heather's head turned slightly to see that Star had forcefully included herself in the discussion.

Kathryn sighed again. "Of course I'm upset, Julia," she said. "We all are. I'm just trying to keep everyone from freaking out. We need to be able to think straight. Once we're safe, we can worry about other things."

Star let out another "Hmph!" and crossed her arms. Heather had a fresh set of tears springing into her eyes.

Julia noticed. "What's wrong?" she asked.

Heather sniffed and wiped her eyes. "Kathryn's right," she said shakily. "Solving this is the most important thing right now, not finding the missing students."

Julia was silent.

"But I don't like it," Heather continued. "We're just standing here and doing nothing!"

Kathryn spoke, her voice firm. "We have to, Heather," she said. "It's the best thing we can do for them."

Heather blinked. Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw Stewart poking his head out from behind a bookshelf, watching them. Before she could be sure, he was gone.

"Are you okay?" Julia asked, bringing her back to the conversation.

Heather nodded. She did feel better. Not any happier, but more reassured. She sighed, her breath rattling. "I think I need some fresh air," she mumbled.

"Lara does, too," Amanda said, walking toward them with Lara. "She and I could go with you."

Heather looked at Amanda and smiled halfheartedly. "Sure," she replied. Julia and Kathryn said quiet goodbyes.

On the way out the door, Lara said, "I'm hungry. Can we stop at the dining room for breakfast first?"

Heather had only planned on going somewhere to catch her breath, but after Lara mentioned food she realized she was starving. "That sounds great," she admitted.

"And then we can go outside," Amanda added.

"Okay," Heather said. "Only...."

"What?" Lara prompted.

"I think we should avoid the pond."

Lara and Amanda nodded quickly.

After eating breakfast--which the maids still seemed to be producing faithfully even though their master was gone and schooling was definitely cancelled--Heather, Amanda, and Lara walked through the silent mansion toward the lobby.

The halls were emptier than they had ever been. No student dared to set foot outside the library unless they had to. Because of this, the maids had started lighting fewer candles and lamps in the dark passages. Most of the time Heather could barely see the next light up ahead.

Despite the darkness, the three girls made it to the lobby. There was more light there, since the maids had taken the time to light a fire in the fireplace. With no other source of light in the room, the fireplace cast its own eerie shadows along the walls and lit up the lines of the large card-portraits in a way that made the kings, queens, and jacks look like they were watching Heather, Amanda, and Lara.

Heather shuddered slightly. She picked up her pace, hoping the others would do the same. They did, and soon they were out of the mansion and in the bright morning sunlight.

Heather breathed in deeply when the clear air first hit her face. She closed her eyes and stood still for a moment, drinking in how the sunlight felt on her skin and how beautiful the birds and the wind in the trees sounded.

It's so strange to be out here, she thought. It's so calm and peaceful, like nothing could possibly be wrong. She opened her eyes and glanced at the mansion behind her. It rose out of the ground, casting a long shadow. Its windows were dark and its spires twisted, making it look like a horned demon with black eyes, crouching in the beautiful grove and watching everything pass by.

Heather took her eyes off the building and turned to see that Amanda was watching her. Amanda nodded and continued walking down the path.

Heather cast one last glance at the mansion, then followed Amanda and Lara. It was a lovely day, one that she would have appreciated if her mind hadn't been so weighed down with darker matters. To her, the bright sunshine seemed to mock their grim situation, and the birds in the trees suddenly sounded like they were laughing at the girls as they walked down the path.

Heather tried to shake the thoughts from her head. I'm out here to relax, she told herself. For a second, the chirping of the birds became a pleasant song again and the grass was greener. However, only one glance back at the mansion shadowed everything again.

The girls were turning onto another walkway when something at the edge of the forest caught Heather's eye. A shadowed figure moved, then vanished into the trees when she turned to look at it. Heather stopped and shielded her eyes from the sunlight so she could see more clearly. But as quickly as it had appeared, the figure was gone.

Heather glanced at Amanda and Lara. They were still walking, unaware that she had stopped. Heather looked to where the figure had vanished, then back at the girls. She stepped onto the grass so it would muffle her footsteps and started toward the edge of the woods.

Heather kept looking over her shoulder to make sure the others hadn't noticed her leaving. When she was a good distance away, she ran.

It wasn't long before she reached the first tree. Heather brushed the leaves off a rock and sat down to catch her breath. Her heart was beating from exercise and nervous energy. While she calmed her breathing, Heather swept her gaze over the green fields to see where Amanda and Lara were. They were too far away to see their faces, but even then Heather could tell that they had started looking for her. Time to go, Heather thought, ducking behind a tree.

When she had gone deeper into the trees, Heather started looking for signs of the person or animal that had been there only a few minutes earlier. She found a tiny set of footprints that led off into some wild raspberry bushes. Those are too small, Heather decided. The figure had been big enough to be either a person or a large animal, maybe a deer.

After about ten minutes of scouring the forest floor and examining tree trunks, she was just about ready to give up. But then she spotted a small object that had fallen into the crevice of a split rock. Leaves and branches crackled under her feet as she drew closer to it. When she got a good look at it, she froze.

Oh no, she thought, her heart jumping. The object nestled in the rock was a playing card.

Heather stumbled back. Not here! She swung her head around, watching for someone to jump out and attack at any moment. She shrieked as she heard something snap behind her. She jolted forward. In her panic, she tripped and found herself lying on the ground with a mouthful of dirt.

Heather spat and scrambled to her feet. She was ready to continue her mad dash when she noticed something. Leaning over to look at the card more closely, she saw that it wasn't what she had originally thought. Sure, it was a playing card. But it wasn't a joker. It was a king.

Heather crouched and picked the card out of the crevice gently. "What's a king doing in the middle of the woods?"

Something rustled in the bushes. Heather's head popped up, and she froze. "Who's there?" she said quietly.

There was no answer. Heather rose to her feet slowly, turning in circles to look for the source of the noise. Her eyes rested on a cluster of bushes to the left of the rock where she had found the card. She squinted at them and took a step forward. She wasn't sure, but she thought she could see a pair of eyes looking out at her....

Something sprang out of the bushes. Heather screamed, closed her eyes, and tensed. But when nothing came her way, she opened her eyes and saw a blurry figure retreating into the trees.

"Hey!" she yelled. "Stop!"

It didn't stop. Heather ran after it, leaping over fallen trees and boulders and twisting around bushes. She could just barely see the figure up ahead, a flitting shadow weaving through the forest. It disappeared into a dark clump of trees, and Heather thought she had lost it. But then something darted away to her right as she passed a tree. She quickly changed direction.

Heather chased the figure deep into the forest. At one point, it disappeared again. She heard nothing for an entire minute, and she was sure that it was gone for good that time. However, before she gave up, she ran around a tree and collided with something that let out a weak yell and tumbled to the ground.

Heather brushed the hair out of her eyes and looked at the person who was scrambling in the dirt at her feet. He was a man, on his hands and knees on the ground, gasping for air with his mouth hanging open and looking up at her with wide eyes. Sweat glistened on his forehead, mixing with the dirt that covered him.

"Who...?" Heather started.

"Please," the man gasped. "Don't hurt me."

Heather only stared. The man coughed out dirt-filled saliva, then looked back up at Heather, his eyes full of terror.

"I...I don't want to hurt you," Heather stammered. "My name is Heather...." She stepped forward.

The man stumbled back. "Stay away!" he shouted.

Heather stopped. "I'm not going to hurt you," she said more firmly.

"Then why were you following me?" the man questioned, swallowing nervously.

"I saw you watching me and my friends from the edge of the trees," Heather said. "So I followed you."

"Why?"

"I don't know," Heather replied, shrugging with exasperation. "I was curious. Maybe I thought you wanted to hurt me."

"Of course not," the man muttered. "My intentions are good."

Heather cocked an eyebrow at him. "And what exactly are those intentions?"

The man looked up, paused, then shook his head. "Can't say. Can't trust you."

"How come?" Heather demanded.

"I don't know who you are."

Heather sighed. "Okay. My name is Heather, I'm currently staying at the mansion nearby. I'm--"

The man shook his head again. "That's not what I mean," he said, a hint of sadness creeping into his eyes. He looked her up and down for a moment, then scratched his scraggly beard thoughtfully. "Do you like to sing?" he asked unexpectedly.

Heather was confused by the question. "Why would you want to know that?" she asked.

"Just tell me."

"Not that much," Heather answered. "Can you please tell me what you're--"

"Have you ever read The Diary of Marguerite Thomas?" he asked.

Heather was about to say no, but then she caught herself. She remembered the autobiography Amanda had been reading, the puzzling words she had overheard that had struck her so deeply. I never did a thing. And yet I suppose one can't truly tell. "I've heard of it," she answered quietly. "Why?"

The man didn't answer, instead watching her face closely. His eyes lit up, and he finally rose to his feet. "I see," he said. He brushed the dirt off his clothes. "Well then. You are most certainly not who I thought you were. My apologies. What did you say your name was again?"

"Heather," she replied.

The man's eyebrows twisted. "Heather? Hmm...." he stroked his beard. Heather thought he was going to stand like that forever. But she was wrong. Before she knew it was happening, the man was walking away with long, quick strides.

"Wait!" Heather called. "Where are you going?"

The man didn't answer, and Heather had to follow after him once more.

Although he was only walking this time, Heather could still barely keep up with him. While she was having a hard time finding her way around trees and bushes, he seemed to know exactly where he was going and sometimes left her far behind. After he had been out of view for a long time, Heather was about to yell after him, but her words were cut short when she stumbled out of the trees into a clearing and saw a small shack-like structure squatting lopsided among some tall grasses.

Heather approached the shack slowly. She was halfway to it when the man's head popped out of a crude window that had been cut into one of its sides. "Well, come on," he said. "I don't have all day for you to stand there, gawking at my mansion."

Heather raised her eyebrows. His mansion? She had seen a real mansion before, and the sorry pile of sticks and mud sitting in front of her was not even close. "He's crazy," she muttered to herself as she stepped forward. "He's probably spent too much time living out here in the forest."

Heather was only a few feet away when the man's voice rose from the shack again. "I resent the first comment." Heather could no longer see him through the window. "Though I do believe the second is true. I have wasted too much time in this forest. I think I'll go on vacation."

Heather eyed the shack. "How do you get into this thing?" she asked, interrupting the man's ramblings. His head appeared in the window again.

"I'm sorry, Miss Heather. I forgot to mention," he said, "there are no doors."

"Then how did you get in? The window's too small," Heather said, gesturing to the opening.

The man smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "This place is dangerous. You shouldn't expect me to have a door." He paused, his eyes twinkling slightly now. "But there is another entrance."

"And what would that be?"

His head ducked out of sight, and Heather thought she could hear something being moved. Before she had any idea what was happening, the ground underneath her collapsed, sending her tumbling down into a tunnel.

She screamed all the way down. Dirt clods broke loose and bounced along with her, and her clothes got snagged on roots more times than she could count. Her screaming stopped abruptly when she landed, sprawled out on a bed of pillows.

She looked around. The pillows that she had landed on were made of soft red velvet, but they were covered in dirt. She was in a room that had been carved out of the ground. The walls were lined with wooden planks, as was the ceiling, which was held up by wooden support beams. The room was larger than she expected, with a wooden staircase leading up to another room, probably the shack above the ground. The floor was carpeted, caked with grime like the pillows. Worn out tables and chairs were placed around the room, along with a few vases holding wilted flowers. Even a few faded paintings hung from the walls.

Heather scrambled to her feet when she heard footsteps at the top of the stairs. She saw the man coming down slowly, one step at a time. When he saw her looking at him, a small smile appeared on his face. "Do you like it?" he asked, spreading out his arms.

Heather nodded slightly. "I guess."

The man continued downward. "My mansion has been here for quite a while. I built it long ago, back before...." The man stopped, then shook his head. "It was a nice place then, but lately it has been so hard to keep it in good repair."

Heather nodded again, trying to seem interested in the "mansion." But she was more interested in who the man was and what he was doing living underground in the middle of the forest.

When the man came to the bottom of the stairs, he looked around and sighed. "It's so lonely down here sometimes," he admitted softly, gazing at one of the pictures on the walls. Heather looked at it too, but couldn't tell what it was.

"Excuse me," she said, stepping forward. "If you don't mind me asking, what are you doing here?"

The man's eyes grew clouded, and Heather noticed for the first time the way his brow was creased, as if laden with a hundred worries. "I never intended to be," he said. "But now I can't leave. Not yet. Something still has to be done...." His voice trailed off, and he looked at the picture again.

Heather took another look at it, but still couldn't tell what it was supposed to be. "Um," she said. He turned his attention back to her. "You don't know anything about the mansion nearby, do you?"

The man chuckled softly to himself. "Do I?" He never really answered.

A thought struck Heather. "You know, I told you who I was," she said. "Don't you think you should tell me who you are?"

The man stopped to think about it for a moment, scratching and pulling at his beard.

"Well?" Heather prompted.

"My name is John," the man said simply.

Heather was about to protest how she had given him more information about herself, but she stopped. She blinked a few times, then looked the man up and down for the second time that day, studying his dark hair, scraggly beard, and dirty clothes. Her eyes widened.

"John," she said breathlessly. "You mean John Quincy King?"

The man's eyes flashed and he took a step back, the corner of his mouth twitching.

Heather was stunned. His black hair, his goatee—now overgrown from lack of attention--his dirty and rumpled but still unmistakable suit. All of it was the same. Even his red tie, which Heather had just noticed, was covered with little faded hearts. "It's you!" she shouted. "J. Q. King!"

The man's eyes flashed again, although he allowed himself a slanted smile. "One and the same," he said with a small bow.

"But you're dead!" Heather exclaimed.

Worry replaced any other expression on the man's face. "I'm what?" he said quietly.

Heather looked closer. It was definitely him, but she still couldn't believe what she was seeing. "What are you...?"

J. Q. King waved her off before she could finish. "Please, no more questions. What did you say about me being dead?"

Before Heather could stop herself, her mouth opened, and her words spilled out. "You are dead! At the mansion...Kathryn and Julia...they found you! You were murdered. I saw...." She trailed off. She had noticed something odd. She took another step forward and squinted. "Something's wrong with your eyes...."

J. Q. King covered his eyes with his hand, turned, and started pacing around the room. "I was murdered?" he asked, not looking at her.

"Yes."

"By whom?"

"We don't know!"

"We?" J. Q. King asked.

"Me and the other students," Heather explained, exasperated.

J. Q. King changed directions and started pacing the other way. Heather followed behind. "Of course," he said. "The other students. Why didn't I think of that?"

Heather was about to say something else when J. Q. King stopped and she ran into him. He whirled around and grabbed her by the shoulders.

"The other students," he demanded. "They weren't hurt, were they?"

Heather stared at his wild face, confused. "Why do you want to know?"

"Just tell me!" he exclaimed, shaking her.

"All right!" Heather cried. "But only if you let me go!"

J. Q. King let go shamefully, as if he hadn't noticed. "Sorry, Miss Heather," he said, subdued. "Now please, can you...?"

"I can tell you about the students," Heather said. "But you might not like it."

J. Q. King swallowed nervously. "Go on."

Heather took a deep breath. "Nine of us are perfectly fine. A bit shaken, maybe, but okay. But...."

"But?"

"Stop interrupting me!" Heather said. What she was about to say was not going to be easy. "First, you were killed." She looked up to see how he reacted. He nodded as if accepting the fact, however impossible it was.

"Then," Heather said, a tiny tremor creeping into her voice. "Then a boy disappeared. He's been gone for so long, he might be...."

J. Q. King nodded again, and Heather didn't feel the need to finish the sentence. "Then another boy was lost. He was...drowned."

J. Q. King was suddenly more attentive. The look on his face was fearful. Heather looked away and continued. "After that, another boy was almost killed. Both of his hands were broken."

J. Q. King flinched.

"Then there was a girl who disappeared. We haven't found her." Heather suddenly had a thought. "You know, I've disappeared too, now. The students probably think something bad happened to me."

"They shouldn't worry about you," J. Q. King said, staring at the floor. "I'd be more worried about myself if I were one of them. So many students hurt, so many...." J. Q. King's speech faded into mumbling as he started to walk around the room again.

Heather shrieked when the pensive man suddenly became more animated and ran to her. "Wait a second!" he yelled, almost shaking the shack with the force of his voice.

Heather bumped into the wall, terrified.

J. Q. King looked her in the eye. "How many did you say were fine? Nine?"

Heather nodded. "Yes," she squeaked.

"And there was a boy and a girl who disappeared, a boy who drowned, and one whose hands were broken?" he continued, counting them on his fingers.

"Yes, that's what I said!"

"No!" J. Q. King cried, turning away and storming to the center of the room. "That's thirteen. Thirteen!"

"What's wrong with thirteen?" Heather asked in a scared whisper.

J. Q. King overturned a table, sending a vase of wilted flowers to the floor with a crash. He let out another angry exclamation and pulled at his hair. "That's too many!"

Heather watched him, her eyes wide and unblinking. Her heart jumped wildly, and all she could do was tremble. "Wh-what do you mean?" she stammered.

J. Q. King strode toward her and took her by the shoulders again. When he stared into her eyes, the storm was gone. "I know you think I am dead," he said, his voice quiet but intense. "But I can assure you that I am J. Q. King, the owner of Murray Mansion."

Something in his eyes seemed so sincere that Heather believed him. She didn't know how, but he was J. Q. King.

"I can also tell you who I invited to PITY," he continued. "I promise I only sent twelve invitations. Twelve. For only twelve students."

Heather nodded, and J. Q. King let her go. She was about to sit down when the full force of the words hit her.

"Then who's the thirteenth?" she exclaimed.