“But . . .” Andrea glanced back at Piper. Was she conscious? Why was she breathing like that? And what was that splotch on the floor next to her head? Blood? Then she noticed more blood on the wall. A spatter of it, head-height. There was more blood on the floor and scattered around Piper’s body. Andrea looked at her hands in dismay. They were clean.

“What’s going on?” she whispered. She turned to Lauren, the panic rising. “What the hell happened?”

“I-I’m not sure. I ran and hid back there.” Lauren pointed to a little alcove down one of the offshoot halls. “I heard thuds—I don’t know who it was.”

“You didn’t see anything?” Andrea cried. Lauren shook her head.

“What the fuck?” called another voice. Ronnie sat up on the other side of Piper. She looked at Piper like she was going to be sick. “Why is she here? Did one of you do this?”

“No!” Andrea cried, inspecting Ronnie as she stood. She, too, had no blood on her. “What happened? Why are you on the ground?”

Ronnie rubbed the back of her head. “Someone ran into me. Elbowed my head.”

“Who?”

But Ronnie didn’t answer. Her gaze flicked to Piper again, and then she made a gagging sound. She twisted to her right, steadied her body with her palms, and dry-heaved.

“I’m so sorry, guys.” Lauren was backing away from the scene, farther toward the door they’d come through—which, by now, was shut tight. “I should have never brought us in here. I should have told you to stay outside. This is all my fault.”

Andrea tried to think. How did she not have answers to what had happened? She remembered standing in the hallway outside Piper’s office while Ronnie searched the drawers and Lauren hacked the computer. Her heart had been hammering. Then there had been a noise. Yes, that was right—a noise in the hallway, a sort of thud. Piper, falling? Her head hitting the wall? Whatever it was, it freaked Andrea out. She’d hurried down the hall, needing to see what had happened. The next thing Andrea knew, she was waking up on the ground. She wasn’t immune to fainting; as a child, it happened a few times when she felt stressed or overwhelmed. Perhaps the sight of Piper triggered it? But that didn’t explain why Piper was lying on the ground, unable to breathe. And with so much blood around her.

“We need to call 911,” Andrea said, reaching for her phone. “And I need to get to Arthur.” Something terrible struck her—if they hadn’t hurt Piper, someone else had. And that someone might still be on school premises, intending to hurt someone else.

“Wait,” Ronnie said. Her eyes shone in the near darkness. “We will—but wait. How are we going to explain why we were in here?”