“… I haven’t really checked. I thought maybe it had been Tom, my neighbor, but he was?—”
“Away in Philly, yeah.” Montrose waves his hand. “Alright, Ms. Kimball, do you know anything about this perpetrator that might help us with our investigation?”
“I have their number… and the text messages?”
“Great.” He hands me a card. “Text some screenshots to that number there, and we will get back to you as soon as we know anything.”
The officers stand as if to leave, and I leap from my seat. “What? No, don’t you want to see the garage or anything?”
Cadet Tessier waves his hand. “Nah, you’d be amazed what we can do with cell phones these days.”
“I see, I see…” I say. I’ve listened toSerial, I know what sort of things they can figure out from cell phone records.
“Thank you, Ms. Kimball, for the tea. We’ll let you know what we find.”
I squeeze my hands into fists. “And you’re sure I’m safe?”
“Perfectly.” They put their caps on their heads and mosey toward the door. As they are heading out, Sergeant Montrose looks over his shoulder at me. “Oh, and Ms. Kimball? If you wouldn’t mind, text that number back with my cell from my card.”
“Oh, sure, if you think it’ll help!”
“Yeah… also, I haven’t gotten my lights up yet, in case they’re looking for anywhere else to hit.”
Officer Tessier snickers where he stands in front of him, and they shut the door.
Well, double fuck.
CHAPTER
TWELVE
Who the fuck is Tom?
I glare down at the old cell phone in my hand, a growl rising in my throat. A crack forms on the edge of the screen, spiderwebbing out from the force of my grip as I try to make sense of Ada’s message.
When I left the human realm, everything felt like it was on the right track. Yes, I made a shameful detour by her window, but I got all the lights up, put away the bins, and Ada never summoned me to her dreams that night.
She was at peace in her sleep and would have joy when she woke up and saw the lights. That’s how it should’ve gone.
Instead, when I got back to the mortal realm, retrieving the phone from its hiding place in a sealed bag under the hollow frog statue half covered with fresh snow, I was met with this angry text.
Ada never makes mistakes in her messages to clients, but it’s riddled with typos and enough wrong words that it took me a minute to even understand what she was ranting about. Now, I’m sitting here on a rotted stump on the edge of the treeline surrounding her house, wondering how I went wrong.
Why isn’t she happy?
I did everything right.
Sure, the combination of lights and decorations is a little over the top, but they’re cheerful. Did I hang the weird berries incorrectly? Is that why she’s upset?
I’m going to strangle Rhys if that’s the case. But first, I need to strangle whoever the fuck this Tom is because he’s ruining my efforts to make Ada happy again.
A vision of my claws sinking into flesh as a faceless man begs for mercy flashes before my eyes, my blood singing with approval. The crack on the screen grows.
Something rustles nearby, snapping me out of my rage-filled stupor. I duck further into the treeline, heart pounding as I listen for the sound of someone approaching. A few moments later, I hear a distant bark. The happy one Henry makes when Ada takes him for a walk.
In a rush, the choking bloodlust vanishes entirely, the horrified realization that the impulse to kill came from myself rather than Ada’s dreaming mind.
Fuck.
