Chapter 3
The footsteps grew closer.
Then I caught a whiff of something.
It was the smell of turpentine.
Artists used turpentine to thin their oil paints.
I spun around, nearly bumping into the person behind me.
It was Sorcha.
She held a tube of paint, looking a bit surprised.
"Nyx? What are you doing here?" she asked.
"Just taking a walk," I replied. "What about you?"
"Sketching," she said, pointing to the abandoned factory nearby. "The light's good over there."
I looked at the paint tube in her hand, then studied her expression.
Her eyes were calm, so calm it felt unnatural.
Normally, if a girl was walking alone down a deserted path and someone suddenly spun around to startle her, she'd be surprised or at least a little nervous.
But Sorcha wasn't.
Her eyes didn't even flicker.
"Do you sketch here often?" I asked.
"Sometimes," she replied.
"Better watch yourself," I said with a smile. "It's been kinda sketchy around here lately."
Sorcha smiled too.
"I will," she said.
As she walked past me, I picked up on her scent.
It wasn't turpentine.
It was a faint trace of laundry detergent, the exact same smell as that strand of hair I'd found in my closet.
When I got back to the dorm, I waited until Sorcha was out and opened her closet.
Inside, a row of clothes hung neatly, and beneath them were several canvases lined up.
I picked up the top canvas and turned it over.
It was an oil painting.
It depicted a woman lying on a bed, her eyes shut tight, with clear bruises from strangulation around her neck.
I picked up the second canvas.
Same woman, same pose, but from a different angle.
I kept going, third, fourth, fifth...
Seven canvases, all together.
Seven paintings, all of the same woman.
Seven paintings, all of the same woman, each from a different angle.
And I knew that woman.
She was the first girl to disappear, two years ago, and they never found her body.
My fingers paused at the edge of the canvas.
On the back, written in pencil, was a single line.
On the back of the canvas, in pencil, it read: "Day Seven."
I slid the canvas back into place and shut the closet.
Then I sat on my bed, rethinking the whole case.
Sorcha, sophomore, art major.
She lived in 306, right next to the first girl who went missing.
She carried the same scent as the hair left behind by whoever rummaged through my closet.
Her paintings featured the dead girl's face, and the girl was unmistakably depicted as dead.
That meant she'd either seen the body, or been at the crime scene right after it happened.
Or maybe she was the killer herself.
But there was a problem.
Serial killers don't usually stash paintings of their victims in their own closets.
Unless she wasn't the killer at all, but something else entirely.
Maybe she was a killer's devotee, someone obsessed with them.
Or maybe she was an accomplice, someone the killer kept under their thumb.
I grabbed my phone and shot Chase a message.
"Can you look into someone for me? Sorcha, sophomore, art major at Abyssal Metropolitan University. Focus on her connections to the first two missing girls."
Three minutes later, Chase replied.
"Got it. Be careful."
I deleted the message and slipped my phone back into my pocket.
Just then, I heard that song echoing in the hallway again.
This time, it was very close.
Right outside my room.
I went to the door and opened it.
The hallway was empty.
But there was something sitting on the floor.
It was a tiny doll, just about the size of my palm.
A red string was tied around its neck, the other end knotted into a noose.
I crouched down and picked it up.
The doll's face was marked with rough features, and the stitching was all crooked, like something a child had made.
But the doll's clothes had been cut from an actual shirt.
I recognized it from the photos of the girl who disappeared.
I flipped the doll over and saw a small patch of fabric stitched to the back.
On it, written in ballpoint pen, were two words.
"Next."
I slipped the doll into a sealed bag and handed it to Chase.
"This is a threat," Chase said, his brows knitting together as he looked at the doll. "They know you're digging around."
"Not necessarily," I replied. "Maybe it's an invitation."
Chase didn't catch my drift, but I didn't bother to explain.
Some things I just couldn't spell out.
In criminal psychology, there's a concept known as "prey invitation", when the hunter gets lured in by the killer.
When a serial killer realized someone was digging into their secrets, they had two choices.
They can either bolt, or make the investigator their next victim.
And the killer I was up against definitely picked the second option.
He left me a clue.
The doll's outfit was made from the clothes of the first girl who went missing.