Auracle by Gina Rosati Page B

went to the school today. I heard them talk to the police.
    “Okay,” Rei sits back and spins his desk chair in little quarter circles while he digests this latest bit of bad news. “How can I help Seth, then? I can’t just leave him out there.”
    He seems to have something planned. Let him do what he’s doing. He’s done plenty of camping; he knows how to fend for himself. If he doesn’t get in touch with you by tomorrow afternoon, I’ll bring you to him.
    “Fair enough,” he turns back to the computer with his poker face in place, but his aura tells me differently. He’s not happy with this compromise, and his blues give way to layers of dismay.
    The air feels heavier, like a wave of negativity has rolled into the room. I’m sure it’s Rei’s energy reacting to my reluctance to lead him to Seth until I hear a car door slam, then another. I fly to the window just as the doorbell rings.

 
    CHAPTER 13
    I give Rei a warning look while the sound of the doorbell echoes through the house.
    As soon as he sees who is here, he mutters one of those Japanese words he won’t translate for me.
    “Wait here,” he tells me.
    Not a chance. I hover at the top of the stairs, out of sight. The police look in expectantly when Rei opens the door.
    “Can I help you?”
    “Are you Rye Ellis?” asks the same short, bald police officer I saw at school.
    “Rei Ellis,” he corrects them.
    “Okay, Rei. I’m Officer Daigle; this is Officer Mooney. We’d like to ask you a few questions about Seth Murphy.”
    Even if Taylor called the police right after Rei left, they wouldn’t be here asking questions so soon, unless …
    I zip over to the river where I last saw Taylor’s body bobbing in the current. The birch branch now cuts freely through the water, and the mud along the shore has been trampled and stamped with dozens of heavy boot prints.
    They know.
    There’s very little Rei can tell the police about Seth. He mentions Seth’s stolen phone, the note on his locker, the fact that he hasn’t heard from him since yesterday afternoon. The police ask Rei about me, so I’m going to take a wild guess here that Taylor wasted no time after Rei left to make that call. Rei mentions my concussion and memory issues. Twice. They don’t leave until the short, bald police officer hands Rei a business card and asks him to call if he hears from Seth.
    Rei crumples the card slowly in his hand as he watches the cruiser back out of his driveway and head over to my house, then he takes the stairs two at a time. “Anna!” He stops short before he plows right through me. “Sorry. Hey, the police are on their way to question Taylor. Can you go listen to what she says?”
    Me? Eavesdrop on a private conversation? Sure, why not.
    Twenty minutes later, I’m back, furious at Taylor and even more anxious for Seth. Rei stands at his bedroom window watching the police car leave my driveway when his keyboard clatters into motion.
    She described everything Taylor was wearing, how all the buttons were ripped off her shirt and her fingernails were all bent back. Nobody would know that unless they were there or they had seen the body. Which they found, by the way—I checked.
    Rei sits on the edge of the bed and leans over to read the computer monitor.
    “Wait a second. You told me before that when Seth grabbed her, her shirt ripped. You meant all the buttons were ripped off?” I can tell by his expression that his attempt to visualize this is having staggering results. “Wow. That’s really … bad.”
    It was a really flimsy shirt, but still, it does look really incriminating.
    “Well, yeah, I guess it would.”
    If I can just get her out of my body, they’d have no witness.
    “You know,” Rei says with a trace of bitterness, “it would be nice if your father could just tell the police you were home in your room the entire time.”
    Yes, it would, but Rei knows as well as I do that my father’s brain has all the mental retention power of