Murder of Crows Read online

  I would like to dedicate this to kids who see a thread and pull it. Who know that some trouble is good trouble and that they’re always strongest with their friends by their side. —K. A.

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  It was the summer of 1972.

  Local librarian Jet Cassidy hurried across the street and up the church steps under the cover of darkness. It was nearly two o’clock in the morning, and the streets had long since cleared of potential witnesses. Tucked under his coat, he had gloves, a flashlight, a pistol, and a small piece of paper that was going to change his entire life.

  The church doors were always open to the public, no matter the visitors’ intentions. Jet slipped inside and strode quickly across the room. The girls he had overheard in the library had been specific. Tucked in the corner, where they thought no one was listening, they said the secret that would grant its seeker untold riches would be located somewhere up high, and there was nothing higher and older than the chandelier.

  Taking a moment to listen to make sure the church was truly empty, Jet went up past the altar—farther than he’d ever gone as a member of the congregation. He followed a short hallway to the stairs that led to the double balconies: one for more congregation seating space for funerals and weddings, and the last a prayer sanctuary frequented only by the pastor himself.

  The third floor was a small space, the slanted roof tilting in so sharply he was almost too tall to stand. Across from him at face height was the chandelier. Jet had never seen the fixture this close before. It was dark this high up. The wide stained-glass windows on the first floor provided very little moonlight to see by. Jet took out his flashlight and shined it at the chandelier, his eyes picking over the intricate brass fixture one filigree at a time.

  There! Near the center, wrapped around the stem of a decorative leaf, was a small, tightly curled piece of paper tied to the twig with wire. The paper seemed to be wrapped around something—something shiny …

  Jet looked down at the pews forty feet below him, then back at the chandelier hanging eight feet away from the edge of the balcony. Leaning against the wall was the candle snuffer the church staff used to put out the candles. All he needed was to pull the light fixture closer to the balcony edge and the treasure would be his …

  The next morning, the steward opened the church doors to find Jet Cassidy’s broken body smashed across the tops of the pews. His blood was sprayed across three floors in a pinwheeling arc that dashed the balconies, entrance, and altar in biohazard. The chandelier was shattered on the ground around him, the candle snuffer still hooked on its base after Jet’s fatal grab. It took them three days to scrub the gore from the stone.

  What no one realized was that the secret that had cost Jet Cassidy his life was already gone. Mere minutes after the librarian had fallen to his death, the clever girls he had tried to steal from crept into the church. Together, they had managed to pluck the paper—and the object wrapped inside—from the chandelier, exiting again with no one the wiser.

  This time on Lethal Lit, join me, Tig Torres, on a mission to uncover the truth about a great and terrible mystery. A story of greed that began at the dawn of Hollow Falls’s birth, stretching nearly two hundred years through time. All mentions of it burned out of our books, all witnesses sworn to silence—the mystery of a great treasure permanently hidden in plain sight. A treasure that some of our most respected townspeople would kill to find, and that others have killed to keep hidden.

  It all revolves around a mysterious club with mysterious members: the Murder of Crows. Mr. Levinson, our beloved newspaper adviser turned violent serial killer, used this club as his hunting grounds—twisting his love of literature into a gory massacre that claimed many of its members.

  I never thought my shadow would darken their door again. But if I’ve learned anything from all I went through after facing down the Lit Killer, it’s that you can’t bury your past, no matter how dark it is. The truth will always come to light—whether you want it to or not.

  Abuela didn’t believe that. She thought her history with The Hunt and the Murder of Crows could be forgotten. That it was just another mystery buried deep beneath the ground of Hollow Falls. But she was wrong. And look what happened.

  I never thought I’d be back here, documenting another gruesome mystery for my loyal listeners in Hollow Falls. But I knew I had to find the founder’s treasure before anyone else got killed. Before anyone else I loved got hurt.

  No, you can’t bury the past—so I guess I’m going to dig it up.

  It doesn’t matter where you are on earth, one thing will always be true: Buses never come on time. I’d been sitting at the bus stop for over twenty minutes—way past the time the next bus should have come—and there was still no sign of it.

  While no one could ever consider me, Tig Torres, a stickler for punctuality, there is a definite limit to everyone’s patience, and I was rapidly reaching mine. School was a fifteen-minute bus ride away, but it had been a whole month and a half since I’d seen Wyn and Max. Max had mostly stayed in to recover from his attack by the Lit Killer, and Wyn’s parents had dragged her off for summer vacation. Meanwhile, I had spent some time back in New York, trying to shake off the events of the previous spring. But even summer in the city couldn’t make me forget what had happened.

  Max, Wyn, and I had been texting and messaging one another, but we had yet to meet up in person. I couldn’t wait to see them. It had been a weird and lonely summer.

  I shifted my backpack from one shoulder to the other and stood on my toes, trying my best to see down the road.

  “It’s going to be a while longer,” a voice behind me said. “Radio says there’s a bit of an accident on the other side of town.”

  I turned to find an old man standing close to me. Uncomfortably close. He was barely an inch taller than me and wrapped in the itchiest-looking split pea soup–colored wool suit. His brown loafers were polished to a high shine, and his hair was slicked back in waves like a banker in a 1930s black-and-white film. He had a bulbous nose that had a bushy white mustache frothing out beneath it. His eyebrows were nearly invisible beneath the furrow of his brow, and teetering delicately on his nose, with no wires holding them behind his ears, were a pair of gold spectacles. He had a book in his hand with some paper sticking out.

  He also looked entirely too old not to be taking advantage of the nearby bus stop bench.

  “Geez, buddy! Where did you come from?” I said, stepping away from him discreetly. “If you want to sit down you can; I’m not using the bench.”

  Hopefully, he would take the hint.

  “No, thank you, young lady,” he said to my severe disappointment. “A man my age rests in one place too long, he never knows whether he’s going to get back up again.” He smiled cheerfully, his eyes crinkling at the sides.

  We settled into silence for a moment, and I used looking down the street again as a way to put more precious inches between us. But the old man was undeterred.

  “You seem to be someone used to wai
ting for buses,” the man continued. “That doesn’t quite sound like someone from around here.”

  “Buses are never on time no matter where you’re from,” I said dryly.

  He let out a bark of a laugh. “Well spoken and very true. But I do think I may still be right. I beg your pardon if I’m prying, but I’m looking for someone in particular, and you do seem familiar.”

  I glanced at him again out of the corner of my eye but didn’t move my head to face him. It was a trick I’d learned on the New York City trains. The more eye contact and attention you gave a complete stranger, the more they would continue to talk. If you didn’t want to get involved, you just looked away and kept it that way. Before I moved to Hollow Falls, I could sit stock-still on the subway while a drunk man screamed two inches from my face. This wasn’t much of a challenge in comparison.

  “Mm-hmm,” I said.

  “Well!” the old man said with confidence. “I’m a mystery solver, so I’d better confront the challenge directly.”

  The phrase “mystery solver” piqued my interest, and I turned to meet his gaze.

  The old man tucked his hands behind his back, like he was Sherlock Freakin’ Holmes, and walked around me in a circle, looking me up and down.

  “Let’s see,” he began. “I might be rusty, but I think your haircut is a bit too modern for Hollow Falls. I’ve seen the likes of it on television, but new fashions take an extra three years to get here, and you’re here right now. And you have to be from somewhere that produces certain styles quicker than others because the color of your sweater hasn’t had a home in youth fashion since 1988, so, like the hair, it must be fresh!” He nodded sharply in self-congratulation.

  “As you know,” he explained conspiratorially, “all things are cyclical—fashion included, my dear. Let’s carry on. Your style makes it likely you’ve come from a big city. But not the West Coast, as you’re dressed a bit more minimalist than they tend to.

  “And you’re headed north, and there isn’t much retail north. There are houses; it’s residential. You’ve got a rather large bag with you, but it’s not quite late enough in the day for a sleepover, so I doubt you’re heading for a residence. Perhaps the school? You’re the right age to be an attendant of Hollow Falls High. I’m an alumnus myself. But why the school when classes don’t begin for nearly a week? And it’s not quite three o’clock, which is far after school closes anyhow. Perhaps a club or activity that reconvenes early—the school paper would be my guess. Not the athletic type, are you?” He chuckled.

  It was uncanny, but he was right. About all of it. It was very weird how many things he was able to pick out from my appearance to differentiate me from any other random teen in the town. I had been in the press recently, but stories about the Lit Killer hadn’t included a picture of any of the students involved since we’re all minors. Random townspeople shouldn’t be able to get this close to figuring out who I was. Well. He might be able to recognize my voice from the podcast, but what was the point of him putting on this performance if he was a regular listener?

  I took one step in the direction of school, having made the decision to bail on the bus and walk and wanting to use his moment of distraction for an escape.

  “You must be Tig Torres!” he exclaimed, his eyes bursting open. “The bright young thing who got involved in the Lit Killer case! And your city? New York, of course. You can’t have moved here more than a year ago! Welcome to Hollow Falls. I’ve been looking all over for you.”

  I took an automatic step backward, in the direction of the school.

  He opened his arms wide and bowed. “I am Mr. Green, and I have come to deliver to you … a package!”

  Like a horrifically timed omen, the bus burst over the horizon and beeped loudly at Mr. Green to move back from the edge of the sidewalk. My opportunity to make a quick escape dissolved before my eyes. Now I’d be trapped on the same vehicle with him, potentially for the whole ride.

  The old man shuffled as quickly as he could away from the curb, just in time for the bus to roll directly next to the space he had just vacated. The doors slammed open, and the bus driver glared at both of us. She definitely looked like she’d been held up on the other side of town: short of patience and sweaty with frustration.

  “You coming or what?” she snapped.

  “Oh, no, thank you, my dear. But this young lady has been waiting for some time, so I’m sure she’s eager,” he said politely, and turned back to me.

  Mr. Green pushed a book and letter into my hands. “This little mystery is for you. There’s a lot about this place waiting to be discovered and somehow … I feel like you’ll be the one to get to the very bottom of it,” he said with a wink.

  Then Mr. Green waved at the bus driver and began hobbling slowly back down the sidewalk. I took the bus stairs in one giant leap, dug out one of those irritating fare tokens, and shoved it in the till, then packed myself in with the rest of the passengers who had been picked up on the delayed route.

  As we rolled down the street, I watched Mr. Green duck into a large Victorian house at the end of the block. He’d barely had to leave his house to find me … I shivered and looked over my shoulder. I really hoped that I wasn’t being watched.

  The book in my hands was titled Hollow Falls: A History by Alan Mortimer Wyatt. The letter tucked inside had my full name written on it in spindly handwriting, curly like wedding calligraphy. Curious.

  I glanced around the bus quickly. A woman a few seats up was peering nosily at me, and the old lady in the opposite aisle across from me was a gossipy neighbor of Abuela’s. I frowned at the first woman until she turned away, and then tucked the book under my arm and out of view.

  Clearly, this would have to wait until I got off the bus.

  Walking onto the school grounds felt eerie. It always does if you come after hours, on weekends, during summer break, or way too early in the morning. It’s like visiting the house you grew up in, long after another family has moved in. The grass was still green, and the hallways smelled like they always did, but it still felt … hollow.

  My heart began to beat a bit faster as I got closer to the Talon office, where Max, Wyn, and I had agreed to meet. I could hear muffled talking, which wasn’t a surprise because I was definitely late.

  I pushed open the door. Wyn and Max were there, just like I’d expected, but to my surprise Ella was there, too. I mean, I know she had helped us out during our hunt for the Lit Killer—and she even helped keep Max’s faked death a secret—but I didn’t realize she had been upgraded to a “hang outside of school” friend.

  Although, perhaps hanging out was generous. Ella was sitting on top of a desk with her phone in her hand, looking exceedingly bored, while Wyn and Max were having some kind of heated argument. At the sound of the door banging against the wall, Wyn and Max both stopped shouting, and for a moment, everything was still.

  Max had his bag in mid-swing, like he was getting ready to leave the room—the expression of irritation melting from his face. He had gotten a haircut, one that made his ears stick out a bit but made his eyes look bigger and sadder than I remembered. He was also taller and broader around the shoulders. It was startling how much he’d grown.

  Ella was also a bit different from the last time I saw her. She was freckled and wearing surprisingly casual jean shorts and a T-shirt. Instead of her immaculate blowout, her hair was a riotous mass of ginger curls piled on her head in a scrunchie. She looked like a particularly glamorous camp counselor.

  Wyn’s white-blonde hair had gotten long and her skin brown from the sun of wherever she had vacationed. She seemed anxious, her hand dropping from where it had been reaching out to stop Max from leaving. For the first time since I’d known her, she was wearing short sleeves. It took me longer than I’d admit to tear my eyes away.

  “Tig!” Wyn shouted, and suddenly the arms I was staring at were around me tight as she collided against me with enough force to push the breath out of my chest.

  “It’s
good to see you, too!” I laughed, patting her on the back.

  Max crowded into the embrace, putting his chin directly on the top of my head. “You have no idea how boring it’s been without you. Thank god you decided to show up.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I wouldn’t miss this for the world!” I said, my words getting muffled in the expanse of his chest.

  Ella shot me a quick smile over Max’s shoulder and tucked her phone back into her purse.

  “Nice to see you made it,” she said. “I wish I could say the same for our stupid new adviser.”

  Adviser?

  Max dropped his backpack onto the floor next to Wyn once our hug broke up. Wyn, looking a bit more flushed than usual, hopped up to sit on the desk next to Ella and folded her legs pretzel style. All the chairs were still stacked up for summer vacation. To my surprise, Ella didn’t scoot over to give Wyn more room. They seemed strangely comfortable so close to each other. I guess I missed a lot this summer.

  “I really am glad you made it,” Wyn admitted. “I didn’t know if you would want to help with the Talon this year, after … What I mean is, I would understand if you wanted to bail.”

  “Of course I was coming,” I replied gently. “I wouldn’t just leave you guys hanging. I’ve been looking forward to this, actually. And honestly? I’m ready for summer to be over.”

  “God. Same,” Ella griped with an eye roll. “I fell asleep on the beach, and there’s not going to be nearly enough time to fix my complexion before I have to start seeing actual people again.”

  Max pulled a chair from the stack and sat on it hard, primly swinging one leg over the other. “I feel that. I almost need a vacation from summer vacation,” he said, waving his hand impatiently. “Plus, it’s nice to be able to meet up with you guys again, after everything that happened, without it being on the first day of school. It … might have been too much to face the halls of this place while everyone was running and yelling—happy to be back—when the last thing I remember about being here was …” Max trailed off.