“There you are!” Ethan cried on the other end. “I’ve been calling all night!”

“Huh?”

“Didn’t you get my messages?” Ethan sounded out of breath, as if he’d been running. “I need to talk to you!”

Oh, now you want to talk to me, Emma thought, glancing out the window. A familiar red car sat at the curb. She dropped the curtain and pulled her T-shirt down so that it covered her stomach. “A-are you outside Sutton’s house?”

There was a pause. Ethan sighed. “Yeah. I was driving around, and I saw Madeline’s car in your driveway. Can you come out?”

Emma wasn’t sure how to feel about Ethan sitting outside the Mercers’ house in the middle of the night. If it had been anyone else, she would’ve thought it was slightly stalkerish. At least he’d used the phone this time, instead of pebbles. “It’s three A.M.,” she said frostily.

“Please?”

Emma ran her finger around the lip of a bowl on the hall table. “I don’t know. . . .”

“Please, Emma?”

The area around Emma’s temples began to ache. Her muscles were stiff from squeezing into the cave. She had no energy to play hard to get right now. “Fine.”

The lights on Ethan’s car died as Emma padded across the yard. “Why didn’t you answer my calls?” he asked when she stepped off the curb.

Emma peered at Sutton’s iPhone. Sure enough, there were six messages and missed calls from Ethan. She hadn’t noticed them before—she’d been having too much fun with Sutton’s friends, giving Gabby and Lili makeovers, drinking Kahlua shots, playing Dance Dance Revolution, and, of course, inducting Gabby and Lili into the Lying Game.

“I was busy,” she answered, a hard edge to her voice. “I figured you were busy, too.”

Ethan squared his shoulders and opened his mouth, but Emma held up her hand to stop him. “Before you say anything, it’s not Gabby or Lili. They aren’t who I thought they were.” She was careful to use I instead of we, like it was her investigation only, not both of theirs.

Ethan frowned. “What happened?”

Emma took a breath and told him about the night. “It was just a prank,” she concluded. “I mean, Gabby and Lili were definitely mad about the seizure thing, but they aren’t Sutton’s killers. All they wanted was to be part of the Lying Game.”

Ethan leaned against the door of the car. A few houses down, a dog let out a lonely howl.

“They didn’t drop that light on my head either,” Emma went on, a shiver trailing along her spine. “I think Sutton’s real killer did.”

“But Gabby and Lili made so much sense. You said yourself Lili went back upstairs to retrieve her phone just before the light fell.”