Nails in the Coffin

or alternatively: Tucker Gets a Girl's Number, and Other Groundbreaking Developments

Danny showed up at lunch on Friday the 27th with a huge strip of gauze wrapped several times around his hand, purpling a little on the palm. "What happened?" Sam asked, tone shaded with concern.

Danny looked confused, then glanced down and was reminded of the injury. "Oh," he answered, smiling a little. "I cut my hand on a broken beaker in Chem and bled all over my lab partner. I hope he was able to find a change of clothes."

Tucker leaned in close, causing Danny to give him a weird look and back away slightly. He glanced around, then intoned, "Is that code for fighting a, you know" –he leaned in closer– "G-H-O-S-T?"

"What? No, it means that's actually what happened. I'm a total klutz."

"Oh."

"So, the crusade to figure out Dash's darkest secrets," Danny offered with the air of a person eagerly changing a subject. "Any results? Or do I have to beat him up later?"

"Yeah, actually." Sam lowered her voice to a safe level for the mostly empty area of the bleachers they were sitting on. She and Tucker had let Danny in on their preferred lunch spot a week or so ago. "Turns out he's a werewolf."

Danny choked on his watery cafeteria milk. "I'm sorry, actually? You're joking. Are you joking?"

Tucker felt gratified by this reaction, since it somewhat vindicated his own. Sam nodded soberly. "Not joking. And it gives him a decent reason for mysteriously ducking commitments on nights with a full moon."

The coughs had continued through this speech and showed no signs of abating. Tucker was beginning to wonder how effective the Heimlich would be on a ghost when Danny abruptly did something that set Tucker's teeth on edge, and the milk dropped through his throat. Sam looked queasy. Danny ignored it, thoroughly invested in voicing his disbelieving outrage: "You found out that werewolves are real and you didn't think that merited a text?!"

Tucker and Sam made eye contact, equally uncomfortable. Tucker murmured, "Oh, sorry, we just assumed you knew."

Danny looked almost homicidally exasperated at this point (another person probably would've looked angry, but every expression in Danny's emotional repertoire was at least a little bit tainted with "tired"). They would never find out what he was about to say, however, because they were interrupted by the tinny taptaptaptap of gel nails on metal way too close by. Tucker jumped and whirled to look for the source, somewhere immediately behind and below him.

Paulina stood on the grass at the bottom of the bleachers, uncharacteristically dressed down in Lulu leggings and a green crop top but appearing characteristically bored. The long cotton-candy colored nails she had just tap-tap-tapped on the bleacher railing disappeared as she folded her arms. "Hey."

Tucker and Sam stared.

Danny, likely because he was the one least familiar with Her Majesty Paulina Sanchez, reacted first. "Uh, hey. What's up?"

She paused before answering, as if to gather her thoughts or maybe overcome her disgust at associating with them. Paulina hadn't really been popular, per se, since freshman year; she had come into high school with that rare, magnetic breed of confidence seldom seen in fourteen-year-olds, but people had quickly recognized her standoffishness and relish for conflict as red flags. She had a decent number of friends, but nobody else really wanted to be her friend. And she had always seemed fine with that, which was why it was weird to see her here, alone.

She made eye contact with Tucker, expression intense and strange. "Dash told me about what happened at the mall, and what you were looking into. I might be able to tell you a few things."

Sam slowly put her salad down. "Like what?"

"Not here. You know the pool shed?"

The pool was a five-minute walk from the football field, around the back of the humanities building. They marched in silence (confused silence, on Danny's part), following a rigid-backed Paulina, who still carried her shiny silver backpack over one shoulder. It was another clouded-over day, and windy enough that the trash from Tucker's lunch fluttered and had to be held down with a thumb on the edge of the tray or weighed down by his lasagna plate. A moment of inattention as they walked cost him his almost-empty chip bag; it floated gracefully over one fence only to be caught by another and hang there, squirming. Everything was washed out and halfway to gray, like an old black-and-white movie halfheartedly colorized by a bored intern.

Danny edged up next to Sam. "What's in the pool shed?" he whispered.

"No idea." They were close enough to hear wind-thrown ripples lapping against the side of the pool.

The pool shed was one of those small plastic buildings commonly seen around schools that don't want to spend money on construction, about a foot taller than Tucker and maybe 10 feet square. Everyone was forced to duck as they entered. Coiled like slinkies on two walls were the green-and-white lane lines that floated in the pool during swim practice, and another wall was taken up by a metal shelving unit similar to the one in the janitor's closet, with chlorine and other chemicals as well as general cleaning stuff. A pool skimmer leaned in one corner, slowly dripping sharp-smelling water onto the grimy grey plastic floor. Paulina hesitated for a moment, then settled onto the cleanest part of the floor she could find, opposite the shelves. Her followers, slowly and with varying degrees of wariness, did the same, and Sam pulled the door closed, leaving them mostly in the dark.

Paulina unzipped her backpack, and something about the loud chainsaw buzz of it made the hair on Tucker's arms raise.

"You guys are looking into the supernatural," she began, totally nonchalant. "I know you confronted Dash after hearing that he's gone missing a few nights, and I know the killer attacked Tucker's cousin or something not that long ago, and I know that something's wrong with the new kid." She indicated Danny with a tilt of her head. "So what I think is that you realize something is up with this serial killer case, and you're trying to solve it."

They sat there in stunned silence for a second, and then Tucker figured he should respond for the group. "Wow. Yep, that's…that's about it." He shifted and resettled nervously. "So, uh…how do you know about the supernatural?"

"My aunt taught me a little brujería, when I was younger." When everyone but Sam showed no signs of recognition, she looked irritated but obligingly elaborated. "The way she used it, it was a broad term for a lot of Latin American and Afrolatino variants of witchcraft, including some religions. My grandma taught me not just the charms and spells you can't really see proof of, but also some of the more noticeable and…less socially acceptable techniques. That's how I learned that supernaturally influencing the world is possible.

"So" –and her tone of voice said naturally– "I started looking into other types of occultism. By now I'd say I'm probably a decently accomplished novice practitioner of a few things. The one I really became good at immediately, though, is tarot."

To punctuate this thought, she tossed down a deck of cards with one hand, then flipped her hair over one shoulder with the other. "I guess I'm just talented like that," she added in an airy tone, positively radiating smugness.

The deck of cards sat on the floor in the middle of their circle, tilted slightly upward–the plastic floor had puckered and deformed over time as the sun and water did their work. Sam eyed the cards the same way one eyes an undetonated land mine. "Okay," she hazarded. "What does that have to do with us, or the murders?"

Instead of answering directly, Paulina folded her legs to the side, leaned forward, and dealt, facing Tucker since he sat directly across from her. She went with a simple three-card spread, ostensibly Past, Present, and Future. With little fanfare, she flipped them all over. The three of pentacles, the king of swords reversed, and Death.

Tucker's spine twitched. Sam looked ill. Danny looked like he might have been nodding off a bit.

"For the past few weeks, all I've been getting for the future is Death. Even if I remove the Death card from the deck, I'll turn it over and it'll be Death," Paulina explained. She indicated the irritant card with a pink-nailed flourish. "I've never seen anything like it before. And lately it's gotten to the point where it's not just happening when I'm doing divination or other types of cartomancy." She scowled. "I can't even play solitaire anymore. It's like, honestly, I get the picture!"

Paulina always used English idioms like she was still slightly unfamiliar with them, deliberately rushing through "I get the picture" and "that's the last straw" like a middle schooler swearing for the first time. It was one of the few things about her that Tucker found disarming—it was her one admission of insecurity, but it also demonstrated her tenacious refusal to let insecurity overcome her. Paulina never apologized. Tucker had always been a little impressed by that, and a little scared.

Now, Paulina regathered the three-card spread into her hand, frowning. Hesitantly, Sam reached over and selected another three cards, dealing them out the way Paulina had. She flipped them one by one. Sure enough, the third was death. Tucker's teeth ground together again, and a sickness pooled in his chest. Paulina fanned out the previous spread, revealing that she now held the Fool as her third card.

"I think it has to do with this murder. Certain paranormal...elements…have been extremely unhappy since the murders came to Amity." Paulina paused for a millisecond of indecision, then continued a little softer than Tucker was used to from her. "Also, I was—good friends with Amber McClain. The, the fifth victim. She was my assistant coach in club soccer, and she got me and my friends into parties, and—well." She'd turned her head slightly to the side, gaze tangling somewhere in the lane line coils, but at this she abruptly refocused on her audience.

"I mention it because Amber was teaching me about Vodun before she died." The fierceness was back in the set of her jaw. "Eh, voodoo. Amber dabbled. I've been trying to build a group of people who share my interests for a while—"

"Wait, is that why you were so nice to me in middle school?" Sam interrupted. "I thought it was because I'm rich, but you were trying to build a coven?!"

Paulina fixed her with a bored look. "Yes, and from that you can understand how truly desperate I was, lacking even mediocre candidates. Now, can I get to the point?" She didn't wait for an answer, which was good, as it likely would have been extremely insulting.

"Amber didn't deserve to have that happen to her." Tucker straightened a little, surprised. She was speaking quicker, and louder, abandoning any remaining vestiges of defensive boredom. "I want to help you find the cabrón who did it and make him pay with my own fucking hands. If he's something supernatural, we may be the only ones who can stop him, and also I do not want to deal with whatever terrible thing is going to happen when I can make you all deal with it for me. So. In conclusion. What do you know, and do you have any idea what's coming?"

Finished, the declaration of war drifted down to the center of the circle, settling next to the innocent tarot deck. Paulina sat back and crossed her arms. Waiting.

Tucker exchanged a glance with Sam. Even Danny seemed to wake up a bit. Tucker could see his own question reflected in the narrowing of Sam's eyes and the way her lips thinned. Paulina Sanchez was not a good person.

But was she trustworthy?

Tucker chewed on the inside of his cheek. Sam squinted one eye in distaste. Tucker smiled wryly–

"Well, mostly we've just been summoning victims, so they can tell us things. We know Schulker was a wechuge...all the victims were found on occult holidays, more or less...uh, it may have something to do with people committing crimes. That's what we know so far, I think. Did I miss anything?" Danny turned to Sam and Tucker, the picture of innocence.

Sam seethed, and Tucker frowned. The already tense mood in the pool shed soured. Well, those secrets are out now, Tucker reflected ruefully. No taking them back. Paulina was already eyeing them like they'd just told her chocolate was good for you.

"Summoning?" Paulina arched an eyebrow. "That's pretty high-level witchcraft. Since when can Manson summon things?"

"You talk like you're some big successful witch but you can't draw a circle and light some candles?" Sam laughed, angrily, and Danny looked at her, unnerved. The bitterness in seeping out between her next words was so palpable even Tucker cringed. "Turns out nobody stays dead in this town. Not if you know where to look."

Something dripped from the ceiling onto Tucker's leg. In the awkward moment that followed, Paulina sniffed and shook her head, throwing the full force of her dismissive dignity into her endeavor to ignore Sam entirely. "Okay, so what is this 'wechuge'? I have never heard of it."

Sam was fuming and Danny probably hadn't done his research, so Tucker recognized with discomfort that it fell to him to be diplomatic. Again. "Uh. Wechuge–or wechuges? I don't know the plural–share a lot of characteristics with wendigos, but they're more associated with, like, winter and ice. They're an Athabaskan thing, whereas wendigos are Algonquian. You know what a wendigo is, right?"

"Yes, basically." Paulina nodded.

"Uh…yeah." Tucker paused; something had just poked into his memory, like a pebble in his boot if his boot were his skull. "It's weird, though," he started slowly. "Schulker said he made a deal, like, stated his own terms to become a wechuge. But from what I've found on the internet, it's not something you choose. Some sources say it's a sort of possession thing by animal spirits, and religion-related, but it always seems to be unwilling."

"Huh." Paulina frowned. "I was going to say it sounds like some of the practices of Vodun, but the goal there generally is successfully being possessed."

"And Amber taught you about Vodun, right?" Sam growled from her corner. Good old Sam–Tucker could hear that she was struggling to suppress her annoyance, but she had her priorities straight. Sam leaned forward over her crossed legs and further into the circle, planting one fisted hand on the ground to support her and tapping impatiently on the side of her knee with the other. "Let's back up to that. That's three victims or attempted victims out of seven who we know were involved in the occult or paranormal before their deaths: Schulker, Amber, and Tristan. And I wouldn't be at all surprised if that motorcyclist–the second victim–had some sort of supernatural help to pull off those stunts."

Paulina put a crooked pointer finger to her lower lip and absentmindedly pressed on it, apparently a tic that showed up when she concentrated. (If it were anyone else, Tucker would assume she didn't know it was kinda hot.) "My dad once complained that Kwan's mom's enemies on the PTA always seemed to have bad luck. Like, I think Mrs. Winters got caught in her affair in the middle of the graduation debacle." She moved her finger to her chin, eyes narrowed. "And right when Daddy was siding with Ms. Lee against Mrs. Ainara on the expulsion procedure issue, the Lees were arrested for tax fraud."

They shared a wide-eyed moment in the dark.

Sam breathed out purposefully, anger fully pushed aside now that she had the puzzle pieces in her hands. "Okay. So I think it's safe to assume that they were all involved in some type of occultism. But you know what bothers me with this pattern? Why the hell would the killer come to Amity? Just based on population, wouldn't it make sense for there to be a lot more potential targets in Chicago?"

Tucker was sitting in a damp spot on the floor, and it was starting to soak through his jeans. He shifted to put his weight on his right hip and arm, leaving as little of himself on the ground as possible. "My cousin did say Casper High has a weird amount of supernatural stuff," he ventured. "Maybe that extends to all of Amity?"

"But Chicago has a lot of ghosts. The boundary is thinner there. That usually leads to weird things developing." Immediately, Danny looked like he regretted contributing to the conversation, because now Paulina was devoting her full attention to him, along with an unhealthy amount of curiosity. Tucker noted that Danny hadn't shared any information about his whole deal when he was spilling the results of their investigation. And what exactly was the boundary, beyond what the context implied?

Sam was still reasoning through this latest snag in the puzzle-solving process, staring off into the middle distance. "Maybe he's not just looking for occultists or whatever," she muttered, sounding it out as she went. "Maybe it's more specific. But Vodun and Athabaskan folklore don't have a lot in common–wait."

Tucker could see the moment of lightning inspiration. Sam's eyes positively burned, she looked so excited. Her stray hairs caught the thin grey light from the crack between ceiling and wall, and she sparkled.

The group waited, holding its collective breath. The pause stretched further.

And further.

Paulina lost patience first, despite being the member of this quartet with the greatest appreciation for drama. "What, Manson?"

She grinned widely. "It's contract magic!"

…

Everyone kind of looked at her blankly. Tucker thought he would have to prompt her to explain, but after a few seconds, once she saw that no one appreciated her brilliance off the bat, she deigned to elaborate. "Okay, so! Paulina was saying that practicing voodoo–Vodun–is like the wechuge because it involves possession, right? There's another, stronger, extranormal party involved. And Schulker said he'd made a deal, while in voodoo I think you do have to offer something in exchange if you want to, like, commune with a–loa, I think?–or ask a favor! And Tucker, when you've talked about your psychic thing, you make it sound like there's some big outside force that's giving you information in exchange for your performing certain duties and responsibilities. Like a contract!"

Tucker grumbled. "Can I break it, then? I don't remember signing anything."

"Shut up, I'm being a genius. Johnny–the 13 motorcycle guy–could easily have, like, a demon contract or something! I think the victims are being targeted because they practice this kind of magic–having outstanding deals or exchanges with a supernatural being. Because wouldn't there be power? In breaking those contracts, or assuming them?"

Something twanged, a slender finger plucking one of Tucker's neural connections like a guitar string.

Tucker's hindbrain liked this theory. Which was, on so many levels, disturbing.

Distantly, the grating brinnggg of a bell careened between buildings and back down the wires of the PA system, signalling the end of lunch and the beginning of 7th period extracurriculars.

"Shit, I have cheer." Paulina dug into her backpack and pulled out a flowery notepad with a pen in an elastic loop on the inside cover. Shifting her weight over her legs until she was kneeling, she scratched something onto a clean page, then tore it out ruthlessly so it ended up a trapezoid with one messy edge. There were more pastel flowers printed onto in the upper right-hand corner, and when she shoved it at Tucker he saw that she'd written ten digits. "Here's my number. Text me if you think of anything, and I will help you make this bastard pay."

Then she gathered up her cards, rocked back on her heels to stand, and stalked out into the open air with a hiss of "This never happened."

The sudden opening of the door let in a cascade of light, stronger and whiter than the cloud-cover grey of before, and Tucker blinked as his eyes adjusted. In the wake of the tornado that was Her Majesty Paulina Sanchez, the three of them sat for a moment, processing, and then began struggling to their feet.

"Well," Danny drawled, grinning at Tucker. "That's one way to get a girl's number."

Tucker shoved him into the cleaning supplies.

Sam, who now stood just outside the door, was not amused. Honestly, Tucker had hoped they could avoid this whole argument as Sam basked in the lingering warm self-satisfaction from developing her theory, but she wasn't one to let things go easily.

"Are you stupid, Fenton?! The killer is probably someone connected to the school, and Paulina is connected to the school and the supernatural! You can't just tell her everything immediately!" she ranted, gesticulating wildly.

Danny halted in the doorway, looking surprised. Sam kept walking, so Danny was forced to jog a few steps to catch up as he responded. "Oh. Sorry, it's just—I mean, she's in our class! I've fought some pretty tough kids who, like, died tragic and traumatic deaths, but in my experience normal spoiled high schoolers just...don't really pose a legitimate threat."

"Have you heard of a school shooter?!"

Fair point. "I mean, yeah, but, the stuff I fight…." Danny trailed off. Considered Sam's profile for a long moment, and something contorted in his face.

"...I can see your point, though. Okay. Sorry, I just–I think my sense of scale for danger has gotten a little screwy. With, you know, dying and all." He frowned, and nodded. "Yeah. I won't do that again."

That seemed to have taken the wind out of Sam's sails; she turned to look at him for the first time, posture opening. Tucker was surprised, too—he himself was a pretty easygoing guy, but he almost never backed down like that, especially with Sam. They didn't tend to get into actual fights, but they could argue for days about minutiae, continuing long after either of them actually cared about the topic at hand. And Danny didn't seem all that mature.

Huh. Well, Tucker wasn't complaining. He could see it in Sam's tense back and fidgeting fingers as she mulled it over, and he could see, as they turned the corner and followed the humanities building's north wall back toward the main courtyard, when she reluctantly let it go.

Which was good, because the usually comfortingly populated main area of the school wasn't comforting in the least–figures dotted edges and doorways, but he couldn't make out a single face.

Dense winds tugged at his ankles, chuckling softly, and the sky was still so dark. His gorge rose, remembering the sick way his bones had clacked and rubbed past each other when Paulina had turned over that last card. The bulbous yellow skull in black armor, mounted, peeked around bricked corners and leaned against shadows, horse pawing restlessly at the ground. Stumbling, erratic, huge eyes rolling…waiting the gentle heel-touch to the ribs that would signal the charge…

Haha, I hate it! Tucker checked over his shoulder once more, and then jogged up to level with the other two. "So! Now that you're not going to kill each other, how about a movie night?" he yelped. His voice sounded too bright to his own ears. "You can sleep over after, and we even have" –though he shuddered at the thought– "vegan popcorn!"

Tucker hoped his grin didn't twitch.

~(*0*)~

Against all odds, since all odds seemed to indicate that the world was ending or something equally terrible and ridiculous, the movie night was pretty fun.

Sam offered her house, since she had the better gaming system, TV, and general floorspace, but Tucker was mindful of his new curfew. He'd promised to be home by eight, and he wasn't exactly thrilled at the idea of leaving Sam's an hour and a half after sunset to return to a dark, empty apartment, so he insisted his place was the best option. They met up on the school's front steps and made it there around 3:30, leaving a comfortable three-hour cushion between them and the encroaching night.

"Are we ordering a pizza? Sam yelled from the upstairs closet, where she'd gone to grab spare pillows and blankets.

"Yeah," Tucker shouted back. "Spinach flatbread?"

"Obviously!"

Tucker turned to Danny, who'd just gotten off the phone with his parents. "What do you want? Like, pepperoni, or something else?"

"Uh. Can I get sausage? I'll pay you pack." Danny had a hip hooked over the arm of the sofa as he surveyed the living room. "Did you lock the door?"

"Yep." Tucker popped the "p." "But let's not talk about that! Do you know a movie we should watch?"

"Uh, nah, I'm good with whatever. Are we not gonna, like, strategize or something?"

"Nahhh. We are going to sit back, relax, and not think at all about our impending doom. Sausage it is!" Tucker started typing the name of the closest pizza place into his phone (it was a mom and pop business called Cheese Please, though he hit enter before completing the phrase so what he actually searched was cheese "pleas") and waved absently toward the kitchen. "We have, like, cereal in the pantry in the meantime."

"Oh. Thanks, but I'll pass." He laughed lightly. "Wow, it's kind of funny–I've seen your room but literally none of the rest of your house. And your room is upstairs."

Oh, right, Danny had been summoned directly into Tucker's room, and then left via un-summoning rather than the front door. Tucker snorted, surprised at the warm amusement that curled in his chest. "...Why are our lives like this?"

"Ignorance is bliss, dude." Danny dropped backward onto the couch, leaving his legs hanging over sofa's squashy blue arm and smiling wryly. "Ignorance is bliss."

The three ended up huddled on Tucker's couch, digging socked feet into the carpet and watching the most lighthearted, least threatening thing they could find. They settled on Parks and Rec. Danny claimed it didn't really fit his sense of humor, but that didn't matter much because he conked out at six and only woke up two hours later, roused by the smell of Sam's vegan aberration parading as popcorn butter.

Tucker realized at some point that evening—probably when Danny woke up to find Sam had drawn a pretty realistic goatee on his face while he slept, and looked to Tucker for permission to use one of his couch pillows to beat her up for it—that Danny had stopped being "that weird guy from school who's, like, arguably dead" and become "our weird guy from school who's, like, arguably dead." It was a nice realization. Tucker fell asleep smiling, listening to Sam's whistling breaths from the other end of the couch and Danny shifting in a pile of blankets on the floor. (He didn't breathe audibly? Which should have been much more disturbing than it was.)

He didn't dream at all that night.