Chapter 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.
“Fuck.” The word escapes in a cloud of white steam, and I tighten my grip on the emergency blanket that’s not doing nearly enough to live up to either part of its name. I don’t want to have to think sixteen steps ahead. This is why I avoid the Old Ones.
Except this time, avoiding wasn’t enough and I’m not the one who paid the price.
The memory of Lennie picking me up last night plays through in slow motion, zoomed in on all the detail. She throws her head back in throaty laughter, delighted at her own “joke.” The interior of her SUV is dark around us, except for the quiet intimate glow of the dashboard lights.
How could that have been just last night?
Now, she’s cold and empty. A shell.
I can feel my grip on my emotions slipping.
A mix of rage and grief ready to spew forth at any second.
To keep control, I focus instead on a woman wandering the parking area off to the left of the police station.
She’s sort of meandering among the aisles, her keys in hand, glancing up every once in a while at the front doors.
She catches me watching her and ducks her head in embarrassment into the pulled-up collar of her dark raincoat. Yeah, a little rough if you’ve lost your car at the police station.
Carter’s shiny blue Honda Civic pulls up a few moments later, way quicker than his estimated twenty minutes. He must have been closer than he thought—or driving faster. Either way, I’m grateful.
I make myself walk down the steps slowly, not rushing. Toward him or away from law enforcement. I refuse to give Morales anything else to use against me.
But Carter blows a hole through all of that, jerking the car into Park and striding around the car to reach me before I even hit the sidewalk, his face tight with worry and anger. His normally stylishly rumpled hair is just sleep rumpled and the stubble on his chin is heavier than usual.
“Are you all right?” he demands, his gaze searching my face. “What happened?” He sounds horrified.
It’s only then that I realize what I must look like: dried blood still smudged around my nose and mouth, red-eyed from trying not to cry, dirt and dead grass on the side of my face and in my hair from when the police had me lie on the ground before pulling me up.
Also, I’m fairly sure the stinging rough patch on my chin is a decent-sized scrape I acquired somewhere, though I can’t be sure without a mirror.
His hands clasp either side of my face gently, shocking in their warmth as much as in the gesture in public.
“You’re freezing,” he murmurs, brow furrowed. His thumbs move lightly over my cheekbones.
And suddenly the tears I’ve fought back are battling their way out again. Why is it only when someone cares, when someone is kind, that my strength just sputters and dies?
“I’m fine,” I manage thickly, tugging at his wrists to move his hands from me, even though I’d like nothing more than to stay right there, surrounded by his warmth.
His mouth thins. “Try that when your lips aren’t blue, Jocasta.”
Before I can argue, he turns and opens the passenger side door, urging me forward and into the car.
I move carefully across the rough, salt-strewn sidewalk to climb inside, and a strangled curse emerges from Carter when he looks down at my bare feet.
His whole body tenses, and for a second it looks like he’s going to spin around and charge into the police station to tear into someone—in that searingly sharp but polite tone he has, the one that makes it clear he thinks you’re an idiot but he’s too civil to comment on it.
I don’t remember the last time someone spoke up in my defense. My heart aches with an echo of former longing, but I force myself to ignore it.
“I’m fine,” I say again, settling into the passenger seat, mindful to keep my feet—filthy now as well as bare, gross—on the otherwise pristine floor mat.
An embarrassed heat rises in my tingling cheeks.
“I chose to wait outside.” An explanation that sounds insane unless you understand the rationale, which I’m not able to give.
Fuck, I hate this.
Carter closes my door firmly with a sound that might best be described as taut exasperation.
He circles the front of the car once more at a clip and climbs back behind the wheel. But he leans over to adjust the heater and the vents until they’re blowing directly on me before he does anything else. “Do you always have to make things harder, Jocasta?”
I’m shivering too much to answer, either with a serious response or the more automatic one (“Seems to work for you, so yeah?”) to aggravate him. Somehow being warmer is only making me more aware of my previous chill.
With another frustrated noise, he tugs his sweater over his head, further ruffling his already mussed hair.
That’s when I realize: It’s the blue pullover he was wearing last night, with the same blue-and-white striped button-down beneath, though the pointed collar is certainly more wrinkled and less pristine this morning.
I might throw on yesterday’s clothes without thinking twice about it, but not Carter.
Other TAs upgrade to a slightly nicer T-shirt or real shoes instead of Crocs or flip-flops, but Carter dresses better than most professors.
Ironed shirts, ironed jeans that cling to those muscled thighs, shoes with actual laces—all from expensive but classic brands.
He always looks unruffled, untouchable, wearing authority like armor.
Control. That’s what it told me. Control is important to him.
Which I already knew. But I suspect it means more.
At Beecher, the wealthiest students dress like they’re three steps away from being indigent.
They might have thousand-dollar shoes, but they’re battered and mud-soaked like they’re cheap knock-offs.
Carter takes care of his shit. Which signals, to me, that he likely, at some point, hadn’t had much of it.
I know, I know, the hazards of profiling someone based on assumptions, but still … his sweater and shirt crumpled and looking like they recently spent a healthy chunk of time on a floor is out of character for him.
There’s also a new, faint but pink blotch on the edge of his sharp jawline. Not quite a hickey, but give it a few more minutes. And I should know because it’s almost exactly where I have set my mouth in times past.
Oh. The realization hits like a solid fist to the gut. Carter’s doing the walk—drive?—of shame this morning.
Even though I suspected it earlier, the confirmation sends my heart plummeting, like a speeding elevator burning out the last of its worn-out brakes.
But he still came to get me. That has to mean something … right?
Yes, he’s a decent person who truly wants to be friends. Just as he said last night. Get over yourself, Jocasta. We have bigger concerns.
“Come here,” he says, gathering the fabric up and holding it for me.
I should absolutely pull away, take the sweater, and put it on myself. I don’t need his help. But instead, I let him lean over me and guide the sweater into place.
I brace myself for the waft of unfamiliar perfume trapped in the folds. But it just smells like him, pine and citrus, with a hint of spilled beer. Probably from Happy’s. I still don’t know exactly when he left, what he saw.
And it doesn’t matter. None of this matters. Lennie is dead.
No. Murdered. By someone like me. Because of me.
Reality is settling in, bringing two disparate worlds crashing together. Beecher—the one I chose. And my father’s—the one I’ve fought so hard to stay out of.
It feels both impossible and like something I should have been expecting all along.
Carter tugs the emergency blanket down to my waist, pulling the sweater against my chilled and damp skin. The knitted material still holds the warmth from his body.
I wrestle myself into the sleeves and then wrap my arms tight around my quivering middle.
But he pulls my left wrist away, catching my hand in his. His larger thumb works the inside of my palm while his fingers rub against mine. “It’s like trying to restore circulation to ice cubes,” he says.