Chapter 22
The brain has natural filters that keep most people from perceiving the dead. Alcohol strips those away. Of the two hundred and two possession cases my team has documented, forty-five victims were frequent drinkers or had been drinking at the time of initial contact.
I pause against the wall next to the door, careful not to touch it in case it creaks and gives me away.
“Send me to the Fort,” Nico begs. “I’ll work the case from there. I don’t care. I can’t be around her anymore.”
It’s as if his words curl up and swing straight for my stomach.
“You know I can’t do that,” Donny says gently.
“Please,” Nico begs. “You have to let me leave.”
“My decision is final,” Donny says. “I need you here.”
I can hear my own heartbeat pounding in my ears. A long silence passes before Nico’s voice comes back, hard and angry.
“She invites herself along to everything with no respect for anyone else on the team,” he snaps. “She treats everything like a joke. She acts before thinking. She never stops talking. She’s too emotional, and above all, we don’t need her.”
Oh.
Okay.
Cool. Great. Awesome.
I press my back against the wall, my hands balling into fists at my sides. I’m only inviting myself along because I’m trying to help. I want to learn. That’s what you’re supposed to do when you’re new at something.
My throat burns. I swallow hard against it.
Screw him. I may be emotional, and yes, I do put my foot in my mouth, but I’m working on it. I’m trying so hard to do a good job here, and at least I’m not fucking mean.
I walk past the door before I can burst in there and tell Nico exactly where he can shove his opinions about me. My hands are shaking with the need to punch something. I actually thought we were getting somewhere. That conversation in my room—I thought maybe he didn’t hate me anymore, but no.
When I walk into the kitchen, DJ’s sitting at the table and eating an apple in front of her open laptop.
“Can we go to a bar?” I ask.
DJ looks up from her screen, one eyebrow raised. “It’s the middle of the afternoon.”
“So?”
“So, it’s the middle of the workday.”
Right. Normal people with normal jobs don’t just leave in the middle of the day because their feelings got hurt. I should go back to the library and keep reading or do something productive instead of spiraling over what Nico thinks of me.
Except my chest feels like someone’s sitting on it, and if I don’t get out of this house right now, I’m going to lose it. DJ must see it on my face, because she closes her laptop and throws the apple core in the trash.
“One of the good things about this job is the flexible hours,” she says, standing up and grabbing her jacket off the back of the chair. “Let’s go.”
If the bar DJ brings me to were a human, it would be a barely-conscious farmer slumped over in a rocking chair with a piece of straw hanging out of his mouth.
The building is made of crumbling brick with a wooden sign that creaks in the wind, and the neon sign is missing half its letters.
But as long as it has alcohol, the building could be falling over for all I care.
I order a double Jameson. The bartender barely glances at my ID before pouring and I knock it back in one pull, feeling the whiskey burn all the way down.
The bartender scratches his orange beard. “Bad day?”
“Can I get another?” I glance back at DJ. “What do you want? I’m buying.”
“I’ll have a beer,” DJ says, sliding onto the stool next to me and giving the man her ID—I glimpse West Virginia on the top. “Also, some peanuts. Please.”
The second whiskey goes down faster than the first. I can already feel the volume on everything turning down.
“So,” DJ says, uncapping her beer. “Are you going to tell me what’s bothering you, or are you going to make me guess?”
“I overheard Nico talking to Donny about me.”
I fill her in. DJ eats peanuts as she listens, piling shells in front of her.
“Ignore him,” DJ says. “Try not to take it personally.”
Why does everyone keep saying that?
“Hard not to take it personally when he said I, personally, was annoying.” I stare into my drink, watching the amber liquid catch the dim bar light.
“Why do you care what he thinks so much?” DJ asks, tilting her head at me.
I open my mouth to answer, but all the words I planned to say disappear. Why do I care? Donny isn’t going to fire me, so why does it matter if Nico likes me or not?
It’s not about Nico at all.
“I want to belong here.”
My voice comes out so small I can barely hear myself, probably because even my body knows how humiliating that is to say out loud.
I had three foster homes give me up because my grief was too heavy, and they didn’t know what to do with me.
I felt like I was walking around with a thundercloud hanging over my head, dumping rain onto me and everyone around me.
In high school, I ended conversations every time I walked into a room.
All the friends I had before the murders stopped reaching out because they didn’t know how to talk to me.
The only people in my foster homes who’d engage with me were Maya, even when I wished she’d stop asking me so many questions, and Tori.
Tori was one of those girls who was quick to call me a friend any time she wanted someone to sneak out of the house with, or someone to go with her to meet older guys who’d trade pills for whatever Tori was willing to do.
She would tell me to wait in the living room, and I’d sit there staring at water stains on the ceiling, trying not to listen to anything happening on the other side of the bedroom door, until I gave in to her pleading that we’d get more if I joined her.
I did everything Tori told me to do for those men, because at least when I was thinking about them, I wasn’t thinking about how much I didn’t want to be alive anymore. Now Tori won’t even reply to my texts.
Dylan only wanted me for one thing. Ray only hired me because of Dad. I thought I’d found something here that I was actually good at, but apparently, even when I’m useful, I’m still too much of a disaster to want around.
DJ’s eyes go soft in that way that means she feels sorry for me, and I want to crawl under the bar. I need another drink and for her to stop looking at me like I’m a kicked puppy.
“You do belong here,” she says. “Nico is just going through a hard time right now.”
“Why are you defending him?” The words tumble from my mouth before I can stop them.
“I’m not defending him, I’m just—” DJ pops a peanut into her mouth, rolling it around like she’s working out how to say something hard. “There are things you don’t know about him.”
“Such as?”
DJ sighs and braces her elbows on the bar, resting her face in her hands. “Donny’s dying.”
I pause with the glass on my lips. “What?”
“He has stage four pancreatic cancer. Was diagnosed a month ago—the doctors gave him three months to live. Donny’s basically Nico’s dad, so Nico is taking the news hard. Donny wants this work to continue after he’s gone, so he’s been training Nico to take over as the boss.”
Oh.
Poor Nico. Dad died suddenly, which was its own type of awful that I’ll never come back from, but I can’t imagine watching someone you love die over months. To know exactly how much time you have left and watch it drain away like sand through your fingers.
It takes a couple more seconds for the full meaning behind her words to sink in. Nico doesn’t need to change Donny’s mind about me. He can fire me himself in a couple of months.
Fuck this. Fuck all of this.
This is so fucking stupid. I can’t believe the one time I find something that I might actually be good at, it gets yanked away because the guy in charge thinks I’m annoying.
“Nico won’t fire you,” DJ’s voice cuts through my spiral. “You’re too powerful to ever get rid of.”
I want to believe her. I want to believe her so badly, but the whiskey’s making everything feel too big and too close at the same time.
“Nico was begging Donny to let him leave, like he was trapped or something.” I stop, not sure how to ask this without sounding paranoid. “Is there a reason Donny won’t let him go?”
“Donny just needs him here because we have an active case,” DJ says. “It’s not a good time for Nico to take off—especially not when we’re this close to narrowing down suspects. You can’t let Nico’s mood swings get in the way of you doing your job.”
“I’m not trying to—”
“I know,” DJ stops me. “I’m just saying this job is bigger than him.” DJ peels the label off her beer bottle in one long strip, then releases a long sigh. “I started dating this boy when I was fifteen. Cody.”
She balls up the label and places it on the glossy wood.
“Everyone thought he was perfect,” she says, her fingers picking at the glue still clinging to the bottle.
“But he wasn’t. He’d get mad over nothing—if I talked to another guy—if I didn’t answer his texts fast enough.
At first, it was just yelling, but then—” She runs her hands down her face, shaking her head like she can’t say the words.
“I needed to end things, but he was so sorry every time, and I thought—I was being dramatic, you know? One night, he took me to this lake I used to go swimming in as a kid with my brothers. He’d planned this whole big thing, and wanted to go all the way—I got scared—he got mad—dragged me to the water and held my head underwater.
I remember fighting—trying to get away—but he was stronger and I couldn’t… I thought I was a goner.”
It’s as if gravity gets stronger, dragging my entire body harder down toward the ground.
“DJ,” I say, but she keeps going.
“My big brother Aaron had this bad feeling that night,” DJ says. “He couldn’t explain it—just knew something was wrong—so he came looking for me. Pulled me out of the water and did CPR until I came back.”
The whiskey in my stomach suddenly feels like acid. I remember what it felt like when the plastic bag suctioned to my face, when I thought I was going to die, and the two people who had always protected me weren’t coming.
“Cody said he didn’t know what happened, but Aaron saw through it and killed him,” DJ continues. “Aaron’s still in prison. Has been for seven years, and has another three to go. The system said Aaron was a murderer, but if he hadn’t come for me that night, I’d be dead.”
DJ looks up at me. Her eyes are shining.
“I’m not telling you this so you’ll feel sorry for me,” DJ says.
“Helping people the system can’t reach is the only way I know how to honor what Aaron did for me.
Nico’s struggling right now, but this job is bigger than him, and you need to find a way to still do it regardless of how he’s acting.
Plus, I want you to know I’m really glad you’re here.
I was starting to drown in a house full of men.
I’m happy to have another girl in the house who actually likes me. ”
I reach out and put my hand over hers. She grips my fingers so tightly they hurt.
“For what it’s worth,” I say, “I think your brother’s a hero.”
“Me too.” DJ chugs the rest of her beer and slams the empty bottle on the bar. “Okay, enough heavy shit. Let’s get drunk.”
“The best words in the English language,” I say.
Three shots later, the bartender is starting to look too much like he jumped off the front of a box of Lucky Charms for me to keep a straight face, and DJ’s laughing so hard she’s folded over the bar.
I should stop. I know I should stop, but I’ve never been good at knowing when enough is enough, so I order another whiskey to sip because if five drinks make things bearable, maybe six will make them disappear.
Except they never disappear. Drinking until I can’t feel anything just means I wake up the next morning feeling everything twice as hard, but I never seem to learn that lesson.
I’m raising the bar glass to my mouth when cold blooms at the base of my neck.