There were individually wrapped boxes of shrunken heads, jars of severed hands floating in liquid, and rows of crudely made dolls with no faces. Other jars contained dead scorpions and spiders, snake fangs, live maggots, rat tails, even one labeled “eye of newt.” I would’ve laughed at the irony, but I was too grossed out. Some of the stuff I didn’t recognize at all, but from the rank, decaying smells lingering in the place, I could tell it was all bad.
“Wow,” said Eli, covering his nose. “What the hell is this guy into?”
“Look, there’s moonwort.” Paul pointed down the row.
I shook my head. “This is creepy, but it’s not what we’re looking for. We should spread out, see if he’s got an office or something.”
Everybody agreed to the plan, and I made a left at the nearest aisle and walked all the way until I reached the edge of the chamber. I made my way around the perimeter and in moments had come across a door. I undid the dead bolt and swung it open, fully expecting to find another storeroom beyond it.
It opened into a tunnel. I looked right and left trying to determine where it went, but the tunnel disappeared into blackness a few feet from the doorway. The air was much cooler and damper out here than in the storeroom and held the distinctive, slimy odor of canal water. The tunnel must connect to the main ones on campus. Well, there was one mystery solved. Culpepper must’ve used this as his exit the night he came up behind me in the cemetery.
I stepped back into the storeroom and moved on. After a while, I came to a desk set in a small nook between two rows of shelves. More evil-looking items cluttered the desk, so much so that I was afraid to touch anything for fear of bumping into what looked like the severed hand of a werewolf being used as a Post-it notes holder or the skull that held an assortment of pens and pencils sticking out from its eye sockets and nose hole.
“Need a hand?” Eli said from behind me. I jumped, knocking over a pile of paper on the edge of the desk.
“Crap.” I stooped and started picking them up.
Eli squatted down to help and said in a low voice, “I didn’t get a chance to tell you earlier, but I think Selene’s right. Your mom doesn’t give me the impression that she would do something like this.”
I snorted. “You just think she’s hot.”
He grinned. “Yeah, well, so does everybody. But there’s more to it than that.” He paused. “She reminds me a lot of you, actually, like the way you play soccer, so fierce and tough, but honest.”
I blushed, my heart rate increasing. “I never knew you saw me play.”
He shrugged, looking embarrassed. “It’s sort of hard not to notice you. But the point is, I know someone like you would never get caught up in something as bad as this.”
“You don’t know that for sure. I mean, look at what I did to Katarina in that dream.” It was the first time either of us had mentioned it. For whatever reason, Eli had pretended it never happened, and I was grateful for that. But it had happened. There was no denying it, much as I wanted to.
He touched my arm, his hand warm through my jacket. “That was different—you didn’t know what would happen. Besides, we’ve all done things we’re not proud of.”
“Well, I really hope you’re right about my mom,” I said, “but it’s like Paul says, people are capable of anything.”
Eli grimaced, letting go of me. “Doesn’t surprise me Paul was the one to say that to you. Have you noticed how he sort of eggs you on about your mom being guilty? Giving you that e-mail. Doesn’t it bug you that he’s so ready to pin it on her? There’s something not right about it.”
I stood up, suddenly angry. “Don’t start in on him again, okay? I mean, geez, I haven’t said anything bad about Katarina in at least twenty-four hours.”
“It’s not about that, it’s just—” He broke off, and I turned to see Paul coming toward us.
“Find something?” he asked, his gaze shifting between Eli and me.
I motioned toward the desk. “I was just getting ready to check the drawers.”
“Here,” said Eli. “I’ll do it.” With way more bravery than I possessed, he started pulling open drawers. Thankfully, they contained the kind of stuff you expected to find in a desk, like a stapler and tape dispenser. The largest drawer on the left held hanging file folders. The first one was labeled “Ankil.”
“Jackpot,” said Eli, pulling out Mr. Ankil’s file. He pushed aside the junk on the desk and flipped the file open, rummaging through the contents.
“What is it?” I asked, peering around him.
“Looks like he’s keeping tabs on people. Here are vital statistics, family background, and I’m guessing this is a record of purchases.”
I looked at the paper he was indicating and saw a list of dates, items, and prices. The dates were pretty regular, one every couple of days. Beside nearly all of them Culpepper had written the word pot.
“Do you think that means ordinary pot?” I said. “Like marijuana?”
“Well, he always did strike me as a bit of a hippie,” said Eli.
“But why would Culpepper keep all this?”
Eli turned to the next page. “Blackmail maybe?”
Paul squatted in front of the drawer and started shuffling through files. “Everybody’s in here.” He paused. “Even my uncle.”
“What about my mom?” I asked.