The Devil Inside

4: The Empty Room

Wolf in sheep's clothing.

Wolf, indeed, Calla mused, digging out the lockpicks she'd stashed in her nightstand. Time to go hunting.

"I'm heading out," she called, hoping her mother would be able to hear her from the kitchen.

Soft footsteps alerted her to her mother's approach. Calla quickly tucked the small leather kit in the waistband of her shorts. "You just got home," Rosalind Parker protested, appearing in the doorway with a bag of chips in hand.

"I want to stop by Rachel's," Calla murmured, letting her eyes drop to her feet.

Her mother immediately went to her side. "Oh." Calla often frequented her dead best friend's place. Morbid, perhaps. But a grieving teenager needed a ritual, and her mother did not begrudge her this. "Spaghetti for dinner?"

Her favorite. "Sure."

Her mother smiled a bit sadly and then left, returning to the kitchen. The smell of potato chips vanished.

Calla turned back to the nightstand, debating. Better safe than sorry. She snatched a golden key from the drawer and followed in her mother's footsteps. She paused at the threshold of her bedroom, her eyes lingering on the door across the hall.

What's behind that door?

Rachel had asked her that question only once—in life, and in death. Calla's answer had been the same on both occasions.

An empty room.

Calla's hold on the golden key tightened.

The room reminded her of a child's laughter: a little boy with blonde curls and ruddy cheeks. She closed her eyes, trying to hold onto the memory.

But it wasn't the little boy she saw behind her eyelids. Instead, she saw an abandoned hallway.

An abandoned hallway and a dead girl in a ballerina costume.

# # #

The lockpick kit had been a gift for her seventeenth birthday. I'm definitely going to regret this, Cooper had told her as she'd ripped into the bag, a wide grin spreading across her face when she realized what he'd gotten her.

She'd spent the last eight months putting the kit to good use, learning how to pick a variety of locks with meticulous efficiency. Padlocks. Deadbolts. Lever locks. Cooper had once caught her fiddling with a Euro cylinder beneath the oak tree. His reaction had been a snort of laughter.

He hadn't laughed when she broke into his locker the next morning.

Clutching the pins in one hand, Calla slowed as she approached the mansion at the end of the drive. She immediately checked her phone.

Just over twenty-one minutes, she observed. Not bad. She'd dedicated herself to improving her long-distance performance, and had shaved an entire minute off her typical eight-minute-mile since the start of the summer.

Her attention drifted to the mansion looming ahead.

Hello, old friend. Her sneakers made little sound against the marble steps as she ascended, her eyes zeroing in on the knob lock on Rachel Smith's front door. She'd become quite familiar with the model over the last two months. Too familiar, perhaps.

The lock quickly gave way beneath her ministrations. Tucking the toolkit back into the waistband of her shorts, Calla slipped inside.

"I'm back," Calla greeted no one in particular, taking the stairs two at a time. Patricia and Richard Smith had officially flown the coop. I don't imagine we'll be back, Patricia had explained to Calla over the phone, barely a week after her return from the hospital her sophomore year. I'm glad you're alright, sweetheart. Take care of yourself. You're still welcome to visit her anytime you like.