I love how you're all acting like I killed Mona. She is still VERY MUCH ALIVE, and still the awesomest person on that entire show. Do you REALLY think I would kill her? For one, I worship the very ground she graces, and for another, I'd rather she NOT come after me in the middle of the night and slit my throat. So Mona is alive still, if that makes you crazy humans feel better.

And now the bad news: tomorrow is going to be my last update for a while. A lot of you are wondering what could be wrong with me, and I'll finally answer: someone very dear to me passed away this past weekend, so I'm going to be out of town for several days for her funeral. My next update will be around Monday. Until then, reread what you can, look out for clues, that sort of thing. Just try to prepare yourself, because from this chapter forward, things are REALLY going to start picking up.

And with that, I leave you with this chapter. Enjoy.


"Wait, she came to you in the middle of the night?"

"It must've been at least midnight," Spencer said, still in a daze as she sipped her butterbeer. The four girls were in The Three Broomsticks at Hogsmeade with mugs of butterbeer in front of them. It was the one thing they had to look forward to during the year - especially this year, even when it was supposed to be their best year ever - so they always tried to cherish it as much as possible. Even so, Spencer didn't hesitate to use it as an opportunity to recap on all that she had been through the previous night.

"And she said she was being blackmailed?" Aria said, trying to process all of the new information before her. "Are you sure you believe that?"

"You all were comparing Mona to a Chihuahua earlier," Spencer snapped. "Now you're actually considering not trusting her?"

"The question is, why are you suddenly trusting her?" Hanna inquired haughtily. "Spencer, she admitted to being one of the people behind torturing us since September. She's working for the person who opened the Chamber!"

"Well… she didn't exactly admit to that part," Spencer said unsurely.

"I don't care! I bet it's true," Hanna said stubbornly, taking a giant swig of her butterbeer before slapping it back on the table, the caramel colored drink splashing onto the table in the process. Some of it splashed onto Emily's sleeve, but she ignored it. She had been particularly quiet the entire time, but the other girls were too distracted to comment on it.

"We need to find her," Hanna continued, "and we need to break her to get more information out of her."

"But you just said you don't trust her," Aria pointed out.

"Oh, that's because I don't," Hanna said simply. "Not one bit. But she has answers, and I'm ready to get them."

"Okay, I'm taking this away from you now," Aria said gently as she unraveled Hanna's fingers from the mug.

"Hey!" she protested, but Aria was persistent.

"No! We already have to deal with Spencer going on accusatory rampages of detective work. There's no way we're dealing with two of you, especially when one of you is drunk!"

"Excuse me!" Spencer started, but she stopped when something caught her eye. At a nearby table, a couple of older witches were pointing at Spencer and whispering, and she doubted they were talking about how much they loved her new scarf.

"I guess word gets around fast," Spencer muttered. "The article came out yesterday, and now the rumors are coming out today."

Hanna followed Spencer's gaze, and when she saw the gossiping witches she clenched her fists so hard that her knuckles turned a pale white. With that, she stood up from the table and turned her body fully toward the witches. "You know, I can take a picture for you. It'll last longer!"

Mid-whisper, the witches stopped in their tracks, gawked at Hanna in disgust, and then waddled away. Hanna stuck her chin up proudly before sitting back down and was immediately met with laughter from the other girls.

"But Hanna, you don't even have a camera!" Emily pointed out through her giggles.

"So?" Hanna shrugged. "I'll just grab one off of Rita Skeeter!"

At this Aria scoffed. "I'd love to see the story she makes out of that!" With that, she reached for her ear and undid one of her feather earrings so that she could hold it in her hand like a quill, and then put on her best smirk and nasally voice. "'Spencer Hastings and her band of thieves decided it'd be a fun prank to steal one of the Prophet's most prized possessions. Petty theft… or food for the beast embedded in the Chamber? I say… BOTH!'"

The other three girls doubled over in laughter as Aria put the feather back in her ear, but as soon as the laughter died down, an awkward silence took place. This usually happened whenever one of the girls told a joke. It was almost as though they didn't know how to joke anymore; they had lost that ability 5 months ago.

"Guys, I think Mona was telling the truth," Emily finally blurted out, and before Spencer could gloat and Hanna and Aria could argue, Emily went on to explain why.

"What she said to Spencer was important, and someone doesn't want that getting out."

"How do you know this?" Hanna asked.

"Well, I'm gonna take a hunch and say it's because I saw her lifeless body on the ground last night."

Aria lurched forward, spewing her drink all over the table. She ignored Hanna's mangled squeals as she hastily reached for the napkins in the center of the table, cleaning up the mess as she gasped, "Mona. Got. Attacked?!"

"In the middle of the night," Emily said mournfully. "Probably shortly after she had that talk with Spencer."

"In the same way Mike and Scorpius and Maya got attacked?" Spencer asked, and Emily nodded her head.

"But that would mean that the other three held valuable information as well, wouldn't it?" Aria pointed out as she piled together all of the used napkins and threw them in a nearby trashcan from her seat. She missed, but she ignored that for now. "I doubt my baby brother knew anything about the Chamber of Secrets."

"Maybe not," Spencer said thoughtfully. "But that gives us information about the beast who's attacking all these people."

"What?"

"It can probably roam freely if it's going after all of these random people," she explained, "but if it goes after Mona when she reveals something, it can probably be controlled as well."

"That tells us nothing, Spencer!" Hanna snapped. "That goes for almost all the animals ever!"

"Well, I'm sorry for speaking!" Spencer snapped back. This 'game' had gone on for far too long, and the girls were all getting very irritable. It was getting pretty annoying.

But suddenly, something Emily said rang in Spencer's mind, and she turned to Emily. "Why were you up that late?"

"What?"

"When you saw Mona's body, you said it was late at night," Spencer continued. "Why were you out that late?"

"I wanted to visit Maya," Emily explained. "But… that's another story for another day."

"How'd it go?" Aria asked.

"I don't know, because I didn't get to see her!" Emily said, frustrated. "Something else got in my way."

"What?" Aria asked innocently.

Emily bit her lip, wondering if she should let this out. But Aria had asked, so…

"I saw Ezra and Toby," she confessed.

"WHAT?" Spencer and Aria both looked as though someone had shot several volts of electricity up their spines. Aria was the first to speak. "What were they doing?!"

"It looked a lot like they were working together," Emily said, preparing for the final blow.

But even she couldn't prepare herself for Spencer's wrath. "They're working together?" she exclaimed, seething. "Are they… sleuthing?"

"Probably, and they had a bunch of books with them. I'm guessing they got them back from Rita Skeeter."

"Well, now that two spouses are sleuthing, I guess it's time I confessed about the third," Aria said sheepishly.

Hanna and Emily both turned their attention to Aria, extremely suspicious. "What third?" Hanna said warningly.

Aria sighed. "Hanna, Caleb's been trying to crack the case as well."

"WHAT?" Hanna stood up, nearly knocking over her mug. "How could he do that? I'm going to kill him!"

"Guys, let's calm down," Emily said rationally. "First of all, it's not like either of us are dating them anymore. Second of all, they're just trying to help."

"Easy for you to say," Hanna mumbled bitterly. "I don't see Paige digging her nose into all this bru-ha-ha."

"Believe me, Paige has kept herself busy digging her nose into plenty of other things," Emily muttered under her breath, before pausing, and turning her attention back to Hanna. "Bru-ha-ha?"

"I looked it up," Hanna said with a shrug. "It's not like any of us can think of any other word to describe this mess."

"Guys, focus," Spencer finally said. "Mona's out of the picture now, but there's still Lucas and Noel. Hanna, you can squeeze Lucas like a pimple! Just go after him and make him sing like a canary!"

"Okay, first of all, gross," Hanna said, disgusted. "Second of all, there's no way I'm talking to Lucas after what happened. Do you even realize how awkward things are between us?"

"Of course I do!" Spencer reasoned. "But that doesn't matter right now! All of that awkwardness is because he was blackmailed by a very specific person that we still don't know the identity of."

"And you really think that those two are just gonna crack under pressure and tell us?"

"It's worth a shot!" Spencer said. "I actually feel like we could be getting somewhere, you guys. Maybe this thing could be over soon!"

At this, Aria excused herself to the bathroom. But as she walked away, she muttered, under her breath of course, "Believe me, Spencer, you don't want to be getting somewhere."


Side Note: There are a couple of references in here, so try and catch them! What could Aria be hiding? Someone mentioned the idea of one of the girls being behind it... could it be Aria? Sound off in the reviews!