“Hello?” Carter sounds raspy with sleep, wary at the unknown number on his screen.
Oh, thank God.Relief washes over me in a wave of dizziness. I steady myself with fingertips on the table, under Morales’s scrutiny. “Hi. It’s me.” I hesitate. “Jocasta.”
“Is everything all right?” Fabric rustles, Carter sitting up in bed, most likely. It’s still early.
I brace myself for the low murmur of a female voice in the background—I wouldn’t blame him after last night—but there’s silence.
“I, uh, need you to come pick me up at the police station,” I say. “City, not campus.”
“What happened? Are you okay?” His voice sharpens with concern. Concern for me. So whatever he may have seen and heard at Happy’s, at least that hasn’t changed.
For some reason, that is what breaks me, everything hitting all at once. I’m finally full but only because Lennie’s dead. Someone left her poor smashed body at my doorstep. And it’s my fault. My messed up life that brought Lennie into range of this danger.
I turn my back on Morales, trying to blink back tears. “Um, yeah,” I say, working to keep my voice even. My throat is tight, though, and it’s a losing battle. “But it’s been a shitty morning.” My breath catches on a sob. “And I don’t have my phone or a way back to campus.”
“Or shoes,” Morales reminds me loudly.
“I’m… not in Beecher right now,” Carter says.
So there is a girl. Just not another student.
“Um, you know what, it’s fine,” I begin, the lump in my throat swelling. “I can—”
“I’m coming,” Carter says firmly. A flurry of activity on his end of the call includes what sounds like the jingle of car keys and a door slamming shut.
“Twenty minutes. Just hang tight. Jocasta…” Carter pauses.
I press the phone harder against my ear, trying not to sniffle audibly.
“I’m coming,” Carter says again, and it feels like a promise.Then he adds, “You’re going to be fine. Everything’s going to be fine.”
His certainty, even without knowing all the details or any of the details, makes me want to cry harder.
Sometimes that’s what you need—someone to tell you it’s going to be all right, even if that’s not true.
But God, I hope it is.
6
I fucked up the first time I was arrested. Or “detained.”
To be fair, I was only fourteen at the time and hyperventilating because I’d just killed someone. Accidentally. (My father had tried to warn me.)
After the Chicago police from the Central Division handcuffed me—turns out they can cinch those bracelets down pretty small—I babbled freely about everything. Except the Old Ones. Even then I wasn’t young or stupid enough to mention them.
But sobbing, apologizing, offering to answer questions without a lawyer or my mother? Yeah. In truth, I was more afraid of my mother’s reaction than law enforcement’s.
This time, though, I know better.
I wait for Carter outside, under the brick overhang of the police station, trying not to look cold. Or scared.
Or guilty.
Easier said than done. Lennie’s death is on me, even if I didn’t kill her. And it feels like Detective Morales senses that somehow,though the whole truth is far more convoluted than she could ever imagine.
Morales hadn’t tried to stop me from walking out. But even now, I can sense eyes on me through the windows behind me. Watching, evaluating. It might be the detective herself. Or whoever’s manning the front desk, under Morales’s instructions to report back. I shift my weight, toes going numb in the cold, hard pebbles of rock salt digging into my bare soles. Waiting inside felt like just offering myself up. Giving them additional opportunities to pick apart my words, try to interpret my body language.
Of course, you could make the same argument about my decision to wait outside in below-freezing weather—that says something, too. I won’t die of hypothermia or lose a toe to frostbite. Probably. Spawn are tougher than the average human, though I’ve avoided testing those limits as much as possible. But Morales and her colleagues don’t know that.
