I woke up to a soft knocking on my door. I rubbed away the sleepiness from my eyes and opened the door. Noah was standing behind the door with his mobile in his hands.

"Hey, it's dinner time. I am ordering Indian food. Shall I make it two or do you have plans?" He asked.

"No, order something veg for me," I said walking towards the couch, still thinking about the weird conversation I had with Mrs.Lewis earlier.

"Done," Noah said, taking a seat beside me. He grabbed the remote and said, "What do you want to watch?"

"Whatever. You choose." I said hugging my knees. I was mentally absent. I should stop thinking about all these things or I was going to get crazy. My brain was telling me to stop my little investigating. It was not my business. There were police to take care of the murder. But my heart was telling me there was some part I had to play. All this business about the pearl had me worrying. Why would Mitchell give something so important to me? She knew I was not the most careful person in the world. I recalled the day that Mitchell gave me the pearl.

It was a weekend day. Mitchell and I were home and ordered a takeout just like this day. We used to cook dinner at home to save the expenses, but that day, we both were just not in the mood. Mitchell was tense the whole day, talking to someone on her phone continuously. I thought Kevin and she had a spat. I asked her a couple of times if everything was fine and she said she was okay. I didn't push her, sensing she didn't want to speak about it. When the takeout arrived I knocked on Mitchell's room. She came out, her face tired and worried. She had a small, white pearl in her hand.

"Naina, keep this with you," she said taking my hand and placing the pearl in it, "I don't want to see it ever. Hide it somewhere away and don't tell me where it is. This is really important."

She didn't tell me anything else and I didn't ask anything. I never saw Mitchell so serious and out of control. Her weird behavior shut my mouth from asking any questions. I put it in my room and we had dinner as though nothing happened. The next day, I mailed the pearl to my home in India and told my mother everything Mitchell had said. I couldn't for the life of me take care of such a valuable thing. On the other hand, my mother kept things as safe as a Swiss bank. In addition to that, if Mitchell never wanted to see the pearl again, a different continent was as better as any place. Only my mother had to comply with my weird request.

Turned out I didn't have much convincing to do. My mother always loved Mitchell for her politeness whenever she talked to her on Skype. She would do anything for her. So, she agreed to keep it safe and mail it back whenever I asked.

I didn't think of it again until I listened to the audio clip yesterday. Now, I couldn't help but think that this murder was in some way linked to that pearl. But whoever were the murderers, they couldn't know it was with my family, right? Had I put my family in danger unknowingly? Or was the murderer planning to kill me just like they killed Mitchell? A shiver ran down my spine at that thought.

"Naina, is everything okay?" Noah asked, his brown eyes looking concerned.

"Huh? Yeah. Yeah." I said composing myself, "I'm just homesick." I said the first lie that came to my mind.

I hated how similar today was to that day. I didn't want to end up in Mitchell's place.

"Whoa. And I thought there was a killer on loose searching for you." He said sarcastically without knowing how close to the truth he was.

"No one with Noah should be in a bad mood, okay. I'm here to take care of you." He said dramatically, placing a hand around my shoulder.

"You are such a drama queen." I rolled my eyes, thinking how easy it was to talk with this boy. It was like he was not a stranger I had met three days ago but a friend I knew so well.

"Now let's watch the remaining episodes of your favorite show." He said clicking the play button on You. I settled my head on his shoulder, grateful for some human touch. Even though I had Jane, she had Matt and I couldn't always expect her to spend time with me. She had her own life. Maybe I had reached my breaking point in being alone, so Noah, showing a little attention was refreshing to me. I knew he meant nothing by this, but still, it felt good to have someone to idly watch TV with. We were watching the show and the most important thing that was running through my mind was how good he smelled.

"You smell so good." He said out of the blue, nuzzling his nose into my hair, halfway through the show, "What shampoo do you use?"

It was like he was reading my mind and I didn't want a mind reader on top of all the things I was finding.

"Uh.....mint?" I said suddenly feeling self-conscious. His voice was not sounding silly anymore. And I realized we were almost cuddling on the couch. I was grateful I couldn't blush, otherwise, I would have been as red as a tomato by now.

"Hmm. I like it." He said, his fingers now playing with my hair. Things were getting weird and I didn't know what to do, thanks to my practically non-existent dating life.

The doorbell rang suddenly jolting us to the real world. Grateful for the distraction, I jumped off the couch.

"I'll get it," I said, and controlling myself from running, walking to the door. I brought the take out and placed it on the coffee table.

Next time you want to cuddle a boy, think of your mother with a rolling pin in her hand, I made a mental note to myself.

"Hmm. Food from your motherland. Let's dig in." Noah said opening the boxes. I was grateful he was back to his normal self. I didn't want to deal with that kind of thing right now. I was already driving myself crazy without adding a boy into the equation. We finished dinner and the show. The night was finished without any further moves from Noah, fortunately. But I was also a bit disappointed, to be honest. We retired to our rooms to sleep. But sleep was not showing any mercy on me this night. Maybe it was due to the nap I had earlier, or due to the talk I had with Mrs.Lewis or due to the worry, I could be the next target to Mitchell's murderer.

Or the boy sleeping in the next room? my subconscious chimed in.

I got up and sat cross-legged on my bed realizing I could not sleep. I grabbed my phone from the bedside table and opened the weird video again. This time, I watched it for clues. Maybe I could find something that would throw light on who the group of people might be.

When I finished watching the video the third time, I observed two things I left out during my initial watching. The first thing was the back of the cloaks of those people have a symbol on them. I could see it when the first one to undergo that procedure was retreating into the crowd. The symbol was none other than the inverted pentagram I had seen on The Satanic Bible in Mrs.Lewis's bookshelf. The symbol was drawn in black on the red cloak. This confirmed my suspicion that the group of people was a satanic cult.

The second thing I observed was when the second person, the person with the camera, was taking the bowl from the leader's hands, a bracelet peaked from under the sleeve. A silver bracelet with a black pendant in the center. I knew that bracelet. I had seen it so many times in the past two years. It was Mitchell's favorite bracelet, one she never removed from her hand. And I realized only now, there was no bracelet on her hand when I saw her dead body.

The things I could summarize from these things were Mitchell was part of a satanic cult and her bracelet was stolen when she was murdered. I thought I should immediately tell Detective Graham about this new development. But a thought held me back. This assumption of mine could be nothing. This could be misleading to the investigation. And also police could get suspicious about me if I start dropping out clues all of a sudden. I didn't want that. As much as I want to get my friend justice, I didn't want to get into pickle myself. Seemed like I should find out what had happened myself and where did that pearl come into the middle of all this. After this resolution, I could finally sleep. In the sleep, my dreams were dominated by a certain brown-haired boy with golden specks in his brown eyes.