I recognized two of the clay heads: Ada and Whitney. Was the third head Candy?
Did Jamie sculpt all three dead girls? And paint them to look so lifelike?
I looked to the back wall. Jamie was still leaning into the open kiln.
I couldn’t take my eyes off the sculpted heads. I moved as if in a daze. Hardly realizing what I was doing, I crept up to the pedestals. I reached out a trembling hand. I touched the sculpture of Ada. Touched her cheek.
And opened my mouth in a wail of horror.
The heads . . . they weren’t clay. They weren’t sculpted.
These were the real heads of the murdered girls!
29
Jamie spun away from the kiln at the sound of my scream. Her eyes went wide with surprise, then narrowed at me coldly.
She moved quickly to the worktable. She picked up a black remote controller and clicked it twice. Behind me, I heard the garage door sliding shut.
“You’re locked in,” Jamie said, tossing down the controller and moving toward me. “I see you are admiring my art gallery.”
“Jamie . . . I—I . . . why?” I stammered.
The eyes of the three dead girls stared at me blankly.
“Pretty heads, aren’t they?” Jamie said. “And look, Dana—I have an empty pedestal. Whose head do you think should go on it? Yours, maybe?”
I took a step back. I glanced frantically around the garage. No side door. The window was open, but too small to fit through. No way to escape.
I turned back to my cousin. “What have you done?” I cried. “Why are these heads—”
My breath caught in my throat.
As I gaped at her, Jamie’s face changed. Her eyes darkened. Her cheeks sagged. Her features transformed until she wasn’t Jamie anymore.
I realized I was staring at the face I’d seen late last night in Jamie’s room. An older woman’s face, with icy black eyes and a cruel, tight-lipped smile.
“Jamie isn’t here,” she said in a dry whisper. “Don’t you recognize me, Dana? Don’t you know who I am?”
And in that instant, I did recognize her. I recognized her from the photos in my file.
Angelica Fear.
A chill tightened the back of my neck. I stood staring at her, frozen in horror. “I . . . don’t understand,” I choked out. “How . . . ? Where is Jamie?”
She shrugged. “A year ago, Jamie fell onto my grave in front of the Fear Mansion. So lucky for me. I always knew I could come back to life. I could be immortal.”
I pointed. “You . . . you . . . ” My teeth were chattering. I couldn’t talk.
“I took her body,” she said in her low, hoarse whisper. “I’m alive again after a hundred years!”
She reached under her collar and pulled out a jeweled pendant. The amulet! “I have the real one, Dana,” she whispered. “The one that has made me immortal.” She waved it in front of my face.
“But . . . you killed these girls!” I finally found my voice. Anger was quickly overtaking my fear. “Why, Angelica? Why are you killing the Collingsworth Prize finalists?”
She let the amulet fall to her throat. Her dark eyes flashed. “Are you making a joke, Cousin Dana? The idiotic prize doesn’t mean a thing to me. I plan to kill everyone who looted my home. Everyone who broke into the Fear Mansion last year and found my secret room. They took what is mine—and they will all pay for it with their lives.”
She petted Candy Shutt’s head, smoothing back her red hair.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Why did you make it look like I was the murderer?”
“To distract everyone,” she replied, still petting Candy’s head. “To throw suspicion off Jamie so I could do my work.”
She moved quickly, spinning away from the poor dead girl’s head, and grabbed me by the shoulders. “Enough talk,” she said, scowling at me. “You’ve outlived your usefulness, Cousin dear. And we can’t allow you to tell everyone the truth—can we?”
“Wh-what are you doing?” I demanded.
But I didn’t need to ask. I knew what she was doing. She was backing me up to the open kiln.
Her fingers tightened around my arms. She pushed me with incredible strength.
“I have a lot more thieves to deal with,” she said. “The Night People. They all stole from me, from my house. They all must die.”
“Let me go—please!” I begged. “I didn’t steal anything! I wasn’t around then! Please—stop!”
Gripping my arms, she gave me a hard shove. Back . . . back . . .
I tried to dig my heels in. But my sneakers slid over the concrete floor.
Back . . . back . . .
Her dark eyes glowed with excitement.