“You, your mother, Fanny, Francis Biancardini, and Francis’s son…on some level, you’re all responsible. You’re all guilty.”

“I suppose Ahmed told you?”

She moved toward me, flanked by her hellhounds. I thought of Hecate, Greek goddess of the shades, always accompanied by a pack of dogs howling at the moon. Hecate, who reigned over nightmares and suppressed desires, those parts of the human spirit where men and women are the most impure and the most fragile.

“Despite the evidence, I never believed that Vinca ran away with that guy,” Alexis said. “I’ve spent years uncovering the truth. And by a cruel twist of fate, when I least expected it, it was served up to me on a platter.”

The dogs growled at me. Panic was beginning to set in. The very sight of the animals left me paralyzed. I tried not to look them in the eye, but they could sense my fear.

“It happened about seven months ago,” Alexis explained, “in the fruit and vegetable aisle of a supermarket. I was doing my shopping, and Ahmed recognized me. He asked if he could talk to me. The night Vinca died, Francis had sent him to collect some of her things, clean up her room, and get rid of any evidence that might implicate you all. When he was going through her coat pockets, he came across a letter and a photograph. He was the only one who knew from the start that I was Alexis—a secret the dumb bastard kept for twenty-five years.”

Beneath her apparent calm, I could sense her rage, her fury.

“Ahmed wanted money to get home to Tunisia, and I wanted information. I gave him five thousand euros and he told me everything: the bodies walled up in the gym, the horror of that blood-soaked December night in 1992, the fact that you had all gotten off scot-free.”

“Saying something over and over doesn’t make it true,” I said. “There’s only one person to blame for Vinca’s death, and that’s you. The person responsible for a crime isn’t always the one who held the gun, as you well know.”

For the first time, Alexis DeVille’s face glowered irritably. As though responding to some telepathic order from their goddess, the three hounds encircled me. I felt cold sweat trickle down the small of my back.

In spite of my rising panic, I continued.

“I remember you back then. Your charisma. All the students admired you. Me most of all. A bright, beautiful thirty-year-old teacher who respected her students and knew how to get the best out of them. All the girls longed to be like you. You represented a kind of freedom, an independence. To me, you represented the triumph of the intellect over the mediocrity of the world. A bit like a female version of Jean-Christophe Graff and—”

At the mention of my old teacher, Alexis gave a bitter laugh.