“That’s none of your concern. You’re on my property. Don’t?—”
I smack the demon’s arm. “Don’tthreaten the police,” I grind out.
He takes a deep breath. I can feel him cussing me out in my soul. “What do you want?”
“Do you live here?”
“Yes.”
“Tell them you’re helping me fix up the property in exchange for a free place to stay,” I order.
He—begrudgingly—does as I say, throwing in my name for good measure. Then he frowns when the officer’s radio crackles with a voice that’s too full of static for me to make out. My breathing stalls, my grip tightening on his arm.
Please, just act natural.
Lynx looks around like he’s searching for another person but fixes his attention back on Tolsen when he speaks.
“We’d like to talk to the owner of this property. She hasn’t been answering our calls and wasn’t home when we visited her apartment. We spoke to her parents, and they’re also quite concerned.”
It’ll be a cold day in Hell when my parents show a modicum of worry about me.
“I’m on holiday,” I rush out.
“She’s on holiday,” Lynx responds without missing a beat. “Now, this is going to be the last time I ask: why are you here?”
He scowls at the phone Roberts removes from his pocket, looking a little too bewildered to be natural as he watches the officer tap the screen to pull up a picture to show him.
But all I see is the mauled, dirt-covered human foot sticking out from beneath a pile of leaves and trash under the stairwell.
I lunge forward, kicking it aside before they spot it.
But they do notice.
Everyone’s eyes swing my way, and I freeze like I’ve been caught, until I remember that the only person who can see me is giving me the universalAre you kidding me?look.
“We have a pest problem,” Lynx says, saving the day.
Tolsen shivers and takes a healthy step away from the pile, and my shoulders relax. Just. Somewhere at the back of my mind, I see Father shaking his head at me for nearly screwing things up.
If this goes south, I’ll witness seeing his face in real life again.Thatwould be hell.
I scramble up to Lynx’s side as Roberts raises his arm again to show him the phone.
“Do you recognize him?”
“No,” Lynx and I lie at the same time.
My stomach turns as I move closer to inspect the photo of the shithead I was terrorizing two nights ago—Connor, who arrived at the house first, littered on my lawn, and tried to roofie a girl.
Is he the owner of the arm I saw near the driveway? I should’ve gone back to check if there was a body nearby.
And how he died.
Maybe it was Tidus, or he hit his head harder than I thought when he fell down the stairs.
Good fucking riddance he’s dead, but that thought only heightens my panic. If something happened to him while he was at the party, and the cops are here because of it, then there’s a good chance they’ll come back to snoop when we don’t notice.
There are acres of land, so it’ll be like finding a needle in a haystack, but it’s still a possibility that makes me sick.
