Truly Devious (Truly Devious #1) - Maureen Johnson Page 0,12

her boxes with stars, and she opened this one now. This box contained the bare necessities of her life: her mystery novels. (At least, a carefully curated selection of a few dozen essentials.) These were lovingly arranged on the bookshelf in the order in which she needed to see them.

“. . . the chute to the furnaces in the basement where the bodies could be . . .”

Sherlock Holmes on top with Wilkie Collins. Then Agatha Christie spread over two shelves, leading into Josephine Tey and Dorothy L. Sayers. She worked her way down to the modern era and ended with her books on forensics and criminal psychology. She stood back and examined the overall effect, then tweaked until the arrangement was just right. Where her books were, she was.

Get the books right and the rest will follow. Now she could address the rest of the room.

“. . . acid, a collection of poisons, a stretching rack . . .”

Stevie was less concerned about the day-to-day items like her clothes. Stevie had very little interest in clothes and no money to buy them anyway, so her wardrobe tended to jeans and plain T-shirts. She coveted a heavy fisherman’s sweater, because the detective in her favorite Nordic Noir wore one, and preferred a sensible cross-body bag like the one worn by her favorite English TV detective.

She did have one prized possession in terms of clothes—a vintage red vinyl raincoat, straight out of the 1970s, which she had found at the back of her grandmother’s closet. It fit Stevie as if it had been made for her, and she decorated it with a selection of tiny lapel pins honoring her favorite bands, podcasts, and books. The coat had deep pockets and a thick belt, and when she was wearing it, Stevie felt powerful, prepared, and extremely waterproof. Even her mother, who disliked Stevie’s taste in clothes, was on board for the red raincoat. (“Finally, some red.”)

She was hanging the coat in her closet and had just closed the door when she turned and saw the zombie.

Stevie often read that actors look a little different from the general population because the camera distorts appearances. Someone who looks good on camera looks so good in person that reality starts to bend a bit. This was the case with the figure standing in Stevie’s doorway. It was a guy dressed in a white linen shirt and a pair of bright-blue shorts, looking like a wandering J. Crew ad in search of a glossy spread.

His face was unmistakable. When she had seen it last, it was grim, covered in dirt, frequently crying. Now it was smiling gently. His features were soft and rounded—happy cheeks, a small, playfully rounded nose, a dimpled chin. His brown hair was longish on the top and fell in easy waves. His brows had to be artificially shaped. No arch that arched existed in nature. He looked toned all over, but his calves were particularly so. His calves, in fact, had outgrown the rest of him. Beefy calves.

“Hey,” he said.

His voice was deep and smooth and rich, like what gravy might sound like if gravy could talk. (Which, luckily, it cannot. Gravy might have a nice voice, but the conversation would probably be dull.)

“You’re Hayes Major,” Stevie said.

“Yeah.” He chuckled in a soft, self-deprecating way that Stevie was pretty sure wasn’t truly self-deprecating.

Hayes was a YouTube star. At the start of the summer, he had released a ten-part online show called The End of It All about a survivor of a zombie invasion. All of the videos were shot from a basement bunker, just Hayes to the camera, discussing his survival in something called the Hungry City, a beachside town that had a few pockets of human resistance. His show was one of those things that wasn’t there one moment and was everywhere the next.

Stevie had known Hayes went to Ellingham and that she might see him at some point. She did not expect to see him standing in her doorway as she unpacked. She didn’t know he would be in her house.

“Sorry, I was on the phone,” he said. “I was talking to some people in LA.”

He held up his phone, as if indicating the presence of tiny Los Angelenos inside of it. It wasn’t clear to Stevie why he was apologizing or even explaining why he had been on the phone before she had seen him. But she nodded anyway, like this made sense. Maybe this was something celebrities—Hayes probably