"That was a distaster! The mayor is furious! I've lost count of the angry phone calls, emails and people in the town, alumni and parents! They want answers and so do I!"

They were back at Nevermore. As of now, Ember was sitting in Weems' office, whilst she watched the angry principal pace and shout, ending up in her face.

"I would lead the inquisition, but I left my thumbscrews and rack at home," she decided to say, though in hindsight, it wasn't the most tactful of remarks.

Weems, meanwhile, had her index finger up, snarling. "Miss Addams... you're already on thin ice. Wafer thin ice!"

"I swear on my late spider's soul, my hands are clean," Ember said, and she wasn't technically lying. It was Thing who had lit the match, and soaked the fuse in gasoline.

This didn't cut it for Weems, though. "I may not have hard evidence, but I see you," She spat. "You're a trouble magnet."

"If trouble means standing up to lies, decades of discrimination, centuries of treating outcasts like second class citizens, or worse... then yes. I'm a trouble magnet," Ember said, getting up from her seat and walking towards Weems, staring hardly up at her. "If not, I prefer torture."

This confused the principle. "What are you talking about?"

"Jericho," Ember said quickly. "Why does this town even have an Outreach Day? Do you know its real history with outcasts? The actual tale of Joseph Crackstone?"

Weems looked down, guilt momentarily flashing across her face. "I do," she finally said. "To an extent."

"Then why play a part in covering it up?" Ember asked, angry now. "The whole reason for remembering history is so it can't be repeated."

Weems thought about this. "That's where you and I differ. Where you see doom, I see opportunity. Maybe this is a chance to rewrite the wrongs, to start a new chapter in the normie-outcast relations."

"I find it impossible to think that you believe that anything has changed since Crackstone. They still hate us," Ember told her principal. "Only now they try to sugarcoat it, whilst then, it was on the outside. If you're unwilling to fight for the truth-"

"You don't think I want the truth?" Weems was right up in her face, leering over her and snarling. "Of course I do! But the world isn't always black and white, there are shades of grey!"

"Maybe for you," Ember said. "But I like to add a shade of red. It's either they write our story or we do. You can't have it both ways."

Weems looked shocked and disgusted. "You're exhausting," she told Ember.

"I wondered when you would realise," the girl replied, making Weems' eyes swell.

Then the principal lowered her head, letting out a heavy sigh. "Goodnight, Miss Addams," she said firmly, looking back up.

Ember went to leave without word.

"But you should know," Weems stopped her in her tracks, making her turn round. The principal stood with a sick smirk on her face. "I don't tire easily."

Ember looked at her. "Neither do I."

And this time, she was leaving. No one was stopping her.

❣︎❣︎❣︎

"Too much?"

As Ember sat at her desk writing on the typewriter, Enid was busy choosing outfits. Ajax had said yes to her invitation of a date (as she had spent at least fifteen minutes telling Ember this when the girl had first appeared in their dorm) and now she needed something to wear to it. Right now, she had a bright pink beret on, matching lipstick and a pink jumper with a red tank jumper on top. She was holding up a blue, yellow and pink crop top, asking whether she should put it on.

"I find everything you wear nauseating, so I don't see why I should be the one to answer this," Ember said, turning round and back again immediately.

"Well... you're kinda the only one I can ask," Enid sighed, raking through all the clothes on her bed. She had pulled practically her whole wardrobe out. "I'm so glad I have my date with Ajax tonight!" She said as she searched her options. "Get my mind off that trainwreck of an afternoon. I literally have PTSD. I didn't even get to do my dance routine!"

"What a tragedy. I think many people's eyeballs gave been saved," Ember said under her breath. Enid didn't hear her.

"What kind of twisted psycho would want to sabotage such a life affirming event?" She went on, still with her back turned to Ember.

"You're going to be late," the girl decided to say. "Wish me luck!" She said, grabbing her light pink fur coat and squealing a bit.

"If he breaks your heart, I'll rip his out his chest," Ember told her. Enid nodded with a kind of horrified grin on her face, leaving the room.

So Ember was on her own, pushing keys on her typewriter, trying to get Crackstone's face out of her head.

I don't believe in mandatory volunteer work, sugarcoated history, or happy endings, but most of all... I don't believe in coincidences. Everything happens in a time, at a place, for a reason.

She pushed more keys, trying to type out all the fear she didn't want to feel.

To paraphrase Agatha Christie, one coincidence is just a coincidence, two are a clue... and three are proof.

She tried to think about her novel... but it wasn't happening.

Rowan's drawing of me and Crackstone happens sometime in the future. Goody Addams' warnings about Crackstone were in the past. And the monster is here in the present. Three 'coincidences' that I know are connected.

She thought about the Old Meeting House... about the vision... about the tracks... monster to human...

That monster could be anyone.

More keys. More pushing. More ink on the paper.

The sheriff thinks they only exist behind the walls of this school. But the truth is, there are monsters everywhere.

And sometimes, the monsters we least suspect are the most dangerous. They don't need teeth and claws to terrify. They hide in the shadows until no one is looking. And then they strike.

Ember was suddenly thinking of Xavier, how he told her that her visions weren't the truth... how she had chosen not to believe his rubbish...

But I'm looking now.

And I won't stop until I find the truth.

❣︎❣︎❣︎

The morgue. That was the next stop on Ember's list. She had to see the monster's victims in order to understand what it was doing.

Thing came in first, sneaking in through the vent and covering the security camera in black bubblegum, which Wednesday had given Ember (she had a big supply).

Dr Kinbott tells me I should get out more, Ember thought, as she heard him crawling through. Says I need to open my mind to new people and experiences. Who am I to argue with her professional cliches?

Thing jumped down off the camera and walked on his fingers across the room, hopping up on the wall to get to the buttons that opened the door, pressing the green one labelled OPEN.

The door Ember was waiting outside slid open, and she ducked under it and Thing hit the one labelled CLOSE. They were inside.

"While I do the autopsy, you find the files of the monster's victims and make copies," Ember told Thing, heading straight into the morgue and unloading her bag on the table, her tools now in full view. She usually used them for torture but they would work for autopsy now.

"Don't pout," she added, as the hand seemed hesitant. "Your scalpel skills are questionable." She rolled out all her tools. "Do you remember on my thirteenth birthday, when Uncle Fester gave me that cadaver? You sliced right through that man's carotid," she told him, heading over to the dead bodies.

She opened one of the 'drawers', looking at the dead body, trying to find the bearded man that had been at the Old Meeting House. She had overheard the sheriff and Weems talking. "No," she said quickly, seeing it wasn't him.

The drawer diagonally down was also a miss. "No."

"There you are," she said on the next drawer, when she spotted the frizzy hair and beard.

She got up her recorder, speaking into it as well as to Thing. "Thursday, seven twenty three pm. The body is that of a fifty year old male."

Thing got on the photocopier, making copies of all the monster's victims' files.

Ember, meanwhile, lifted the sheet covering the bottom half of the man's body. "Lacerations and defensive wounds appear on both hands. What remains of the chest and torso indicates a frenzied attack. Subject has been almost entirely disemboweled."

She then ducked down, looking further into the drawer. Her eyes went wide. "This is curious. Subjects left foot is missing," she pulled the drawer further out. "It appears to have been chewed off at the ankle."

Suddenly, Thing hopped off the photocopier and out the door, Ember, who was still looking intently at the missing foot, only noticed him come back.

"Have you seen a left foot anywhere?"

But instead of answering her, he started to sign rapidly.

Someone's coming! I heard voices!

"Calm down, who's coming?" Ember stopped his quick signing, shutting the drawer and doing the next best thing she could do; climbing into a vacant one so the people coming in wouldn't know she was there. There wasn't enough time to get out now.

In the next few minutes, she heard two voices. One of them was definitely the sheriff's, and the other was one she didn't recognise. They talked for a while, but Ember couldn't hear, as she was in the freezing drawer, playing dead unless they checked on her.

And it just so happened that they did. The man Ember didn't know opened her drawer. The girl fought to keep her eyes still, and her body limp.

"Ahh, I don't remember this one coming in," the man said, staring at her intently. He poked her in the cheek. "Full rigor. You've been dead a while. Guess you won't mind waiting another day for me to cut you open."

He gave a smile and shut the drawer, walking out of the morgue happily.

"Of course not," Ember spoke, as Thing opened her drawer from the outside and tried to help her out. "I was just getting comfortable."

❣︎❣︎❣︎

Ember sighed, pinning up the last picture to her board, Thing nodding his wrist stump as she did so. She had made a start with the pictures Thing had managed to copy, as well as some close-ups of the monster he had found.

"When I suggested giving your side of the room a makeover, I did not have Ted Bundy's Pinterest in mind," Enid said, looking at the board with a scrunched up nose.

Ember turned to look at her. "Still not as creepy as your stuffed unicorn collection."

"Is this why you snuck out last night?" Enid asked. "I mean, normally, I would think a case of sneaking out was for a boy, but not you since you... you know."

"I know," Ember replied. "My 'sneaking out' may or may not have been an unsanctioned trip Thing and I made to the county morgue to copy the files of the monster's victims."

"Okay, there are so many levels of ew in that statement, that I don't even know where to begin..." Enid said, looking as though she wanted to be sick. She was also as pale as Ember, which was a concern.

"I need to get inside it's head," meanwhile, the girl looking at the board she was swiftly getting on with was ignoring her roommate, talking to herself. "Discover any patterns or anomalies.

"I've already made a big discovery," she added, turning to Enid. She collected the copies of the mudding body parts off her board and went over to her. "Turns out all of the monster's victims have had body parts surgically removed."

She went over to Enid, handing her the relevant pictures as she spoke. "The first one a kidney, the second a finger-"

Enid looked like she was going to be sick, swaying about on her feet. "Ember, I don't- I don't feel-"

"Third a gall bladder," Ember continued, not paying attention to her, turning back to the board to get her last copy. "And the bearded man from the Old Meeting House, two toes."

She handed Enid the last photo, going back to the board. "Do you know what this means? These murders aren't mindless, he's collecting trophies like a seasoned serial killer. It's quite impressive, actually-"

She turned round just as Enid's body slammed to the floor, looking her unconscious body up and down. She turned to Thing, who shrugged.

"Fetch the smelling salts," she instructed him, a heavy sigh on her lips.

"Again."

❣︎❣︎❣︎

"While most plants reward their pollinators with sweet nectar, many carnivorous varieties turn to sexual trickery or deception."

Ember sat beside Xavier in Botany, listening to Ms Thornhill go on and on. But this time, it was different. She had spotted three scratches on Xavier's neck, looking very much like claw marks.

Then he grunted when retrieving a book from his back. "I tweaked my back at fencing," he said, noticing her stares.

"The orchid produces a pheromone that mimics a female insect, luring the males in," Ms Thornhill went on, as Ember and Xavier shot each other curious looks in turn. "Now, once the plant is pollinated, what do the male insects get in exchange?"

"Nada," Bianca answered, looking around her, smirking. "Just like all the guys at the Rave'N."

This got a few laughs.

Ember, meanwhile, was just rolling her eyes. Ah, yes. The Rave'N.

It was a school dance that was being held this weekend, and everyone (and Ember meant everyone) was obsessing over it. Well, everyone except for her.

"Okay, okay, I know you're all excited about Saturday," Ms Thornhill quietened the class down. "And that is why I haven't assigned any homework."

"Yes!" Was echoed from around the room.

"Okay, okay, but I do still need volunteers for the decorating committee," Ms Thornhill followed it up with. A lot of hands shot up. "Anyone interested, come up and see me here."

As loads of people went up, Xavier used the moment to tease Ember. "What, you're not gonna volunteer?" He asked, smirking. "Aren't you pumped about disco balls and spiked punch? There's even a DJ. MC Blood Suckaz."

He chuckled. Ember looked at him as if he had gone mad. "I'd rather cough up my own guts and bake them into a cake," she quipped. "Actually, I'll probably do that anyway..."

Xavier smiled. "Or you could invite someone and have a little fun."

He grunted again as he went to put his stuff in his bag. Ember noticed those scratches again.

But instead of pursuing the subject right now, she decided to respond to him. "Fun isn't exactly a concept of mine."

Xavier shrugged. "Yeah, but I don't really know what is. Look... all I'm saying is, there's gotta be someone out there who wants to go with you."

And, as he left the conservatory, Ember became distinctly convinced that he was talking about himself.