I looked between Paige and Isadora, hoping to make the connection. I settled on speaking to Isadora. “What’s this about? Is she a hostage?”
“No.”
“Why is she here?”
“I chose to come,” Paige said.
Alexis spoke up, “You couldn’t choose to come unless she gave you the choice in the first place. I think he’s asking why Isadora gave you the choice.”
“Yeah,” I said.
Having someone speak up and help clarify this situation and help me feel a little less off-balance made a world of difference.
Isadora spoke up. “We were talking, I said I had something to do, she asked if it had to do with this world. I said yes. She asked if she could observe, as per our prior agreement, made a few days ago. I said she could do more than observe.”
“What are you doing?” I asked. “She knows some, but not enough? She’s a danger to herself, to the innocent, and to the rest of us, if the wrong thing gets said. She’s a walking minefield.”
“You just asked a question and answered it in the next breath,” Isadora said.
That took me a second to wrap my head around. “You want her to act as a walking hazard?”
“The sorority, the astrologer, your friends from the convenience store and the drunk, among others, will be arriving within the next twenty minutes, by my best estimate. Tensions are liable to be high.”
“Yeah,” I said. I’d said something only a few bit ago about possibly being shot through the window. No surprises with that pronouncement.
“This will go more smoothly with her here. Everyone will have to carefully choose their words, and nobody will pull out weapons with a relative innocent in the way. Peace, after a fashion.”
Because cluing her into the world behind the curtain means taking on some responsibility for whatever happens to her. I looked at Paige. She’s here because it means possibly finding answers.
This was a disaster waiting to happen.
“Did you find her, or did-”
Paige cut me off. “I found her.”
“She investigated on her own,” Isadora said. “Word was getting around about the altercation at the University, you and the drunkard’s friends. She heard, discovered it was you, and asked around. I was one of the people that she asked.”
“That seems like an awfully contrived series of events for someone who was just saying there are no coincidences,” I said.
Isadora smiled. “It illustrates my point, as a matter of fact. Paige? Remember what we talked about earlier? Rephrase it in your own terms, show me you understood the idea.”
Paige blinked a few times. Then she took the challenge. “Imagine a stone, the stone is tied to other stones, all arranged around the edge of a pond, or on the side of a bridge. Throw it in, and what happens?”
Maggie answered, “That’s a stupid hypothetical. It depends on the strength of the rope. The size of the stones, the number of stones…”
“And the strength of the throw,” Paige said. “Exactly. The stone could dangle, safely suspended above the depths, all other things being standard. If the stone is particularly heavy, however-”
She paused a half-second to glance at me.
“-Then the ropes could break, if the ties are weak enough, or, conversely, it could drag the other stones down with it,” Paige finished. “Our hypothetical stone had momentum, a stone was already gently rolling in that general direction, and-”
“-That stone, named Paige, followed the path of least resistance,” Isadora finished. “Good. Eerily accurate, as a matter of fact.”
Paige smiled, and that response bothered me more than I cared to admit.
I bit my lip. “I told you not to press, Paige. To let this be.”
“I did. For two days. I wrapped up all but one of my exams, but I hate leaving things unfinished. Our cousin died, and you had something to do with it, you were related to at least two murders, and I’m supposed to drop it on your say-so?”
“Yeah,” I said, and I sounded angrier than I should have. “Now you’re all wrapped up in this, and the S- Isadora is trying to convince you it’s ultimately my fault.”
“A great deal of this is,” Isadora said.
“Fuck that,” I said.
“A lot of what comes next will depend on your ability to accept that fact and pay attention to what’s happening and why. Tell me, Mr. Thorburn, why are the connections between you and the people close to you so strong?”
I glanced at Alexis and Tiff.
“I don’t know if they are.”
“If the connections were weaker, then they would break, and you’d spiral headlong into the murk, almost entirely alone,” Isadora said.
I thought of Joseph, who’d left rather than stay.
A weaker connection?
“Wow,” Ty said. “That’s fucked.”
“As I’ve been repeatedly trying to inform Mr. Thorburn, as ‘fucked’ as that might be, the alternative is uglier,” Isadora said. “In terms of how it involves those he’s tied to, and how it involves everything and everyone else.”
“I don’t want to plunge into any ponds,” I said.
“Yes,” Isadora said. Her gaze was level and intimidating. “You wanted to avoid the plunge, to avoid being stripped of everyone you hold dear, Evan excepted. Which, I presume, is why you murdered a man earlier?”
I didn’t flinch, but I could feel the attention of everyone else on me.
Murder. Not fancy, not explainable by saying he was an Other. It was just a splinter of wood to the throat, an awful lot of bleeding, and a slow death of blood in the lungs or blood loss.
I wasn’t proud, and I couldn’t explain without getting into stuff I was even less proud of.
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess so.”
“Holy fuck,” Paige said. “Really?”
The oven beeped. Joel looked startled.
He still made his way over. My oven’s door, the racks and the warped baking sheet made for a fair bit of noise as he got the frozen pizza out.
I approached him, then stopped halfway.
“Can I offer you anything to eat, Isadora, Paige?” I asked.
“It’ll be a minute before it’s cool enough,” Joel said.
“You’re talking about pizza not two breaths after we were talking about murder?” Paige asked.
“In this instance, Pizza could well be more important than one man’s life,” Maggie commented.
Paige spun on her, giving the girl an incredulous look.
“To answer your question, I’m rather particular about my diet,” Isadora answered. “And I ate recently enough. Just alcohol, if you have any?”
“Beer,” I said. I still had some in my fridge from a week ago.
“Now you’re putting me in an awkward position,” Isadora said. “If I act picky, I’m being rude, but if I accept blindly, I run the risk of being offered the swill that the students at my University call ‘beer’.”
“It’s decent enough,” I said. “Not swill.”
“Then I’ll gladly accept, thank you.”
“Can we get back to the topic of murder?” Paige asked. “Is this hypothetical murder, or-”
“Paige,” Isadora said. “Everything in its proper order. You were asked a question. Do you want anything to eat or drink? Be honest.”