Chapter 6 #2
Warmth, painful and raw, works its way through my fingers, thanks to his ministrations. But it also rises somewhere beneath my chest, a bubble of heat and gratitude, something a little too close to … actual feelings I shouldn’t be having. Especially right now.
I pull my hand out of his. He lets it go, reaching for my right hand, to do the same thing presumably.
“Lennie’s dead,” I say, my voice crackling with barely contained emotion.
Carter freezes mid-motion.
“Her body…” My throat closes off abruptly, and I have to take shallow breaths until the tightness eases. “She was on the ground under my … window. This morning,” I say as evenly as I can.
He pulls back to stare at me.
“And the police think I had something to do with it. Like I … pushed her.” There’s no point in trying to hide their suspicion of me.
Because he’s certainly going to find out anyway.
If Morales hasn’t already tracked back Carter’s number from her phone, she most certainly will soon.
But just saying the words makes me feel like two yawning pits have opened up, one in my stomach and one at my feet.
And I don’t know which one is going to get me first, turning me inside out or pulling me down.
Carter shifts in his seat to face me. “They think you did what?” he demands. “That’s ridiculous.” Bright spots of color rise in his cheeks. “You wouldn’t do that.”
I want to be comforted by his belief in me, his knowledge of my character, but that’s a little tough when there’s so much he doesn’t know about me. Can’t know.
I lift a shoulder in a mute shrug. I don’t know what else to say.
Actual guilt or innocence in the human justice system doesn’t really count for shit for the Old Ones and those of us who are stuck in their orbit.
If someone, one of my pseudo-cousins, wants to keep playing their game and make Detective Morales believe I killed Lennie, they will find a way to do it.
“Can you please take me back to Branwick? I need to find clothes, my phone.” Figure out what the hell to do next. And talk to Chessa who’s probably freaking out.
She likely arrived home after her run to find complete chaos … ambulance, police cars, rumors of a dead body, and her friend/roommate hauled off in handcuffs. Completely reasonable to panic in that scenario, even for non-prelaw students. I squeeze my eyes shut with a grimace.
When I open my eyes again, I find Carter watching me intently, his expression indecipherable.
His gaze clashes with mine, and I feel that silent pull toward him, the one that has always existed between us.
As if we are connected in some way that transcends the various obstacles between us—TA/student, calm rationalizer/impulsive hothead, human/whatever I am.
“I am so sorry, Jocasta,” he says, his voice heavy with emotion.
In that moment, I want to climb over the armrest between us and settle myself on Carter’s lap, let him wrap his arms around me until I feel safe, grounded again.
And I’m certain he would let me. In that moment.
After a second, though, he breaks the connection, turning to stare out the windshield.
I try not to dry-drown in the swell of disappointment.
On the way back to campus, the silence between us fills the car, with only the roar of the heater and the clicking sleet to interrupt.
But the quiet only allows my mind to wander without distraction. With the sound of the ice tapping overhead on the car’s roof, like impatient fingernails, I think about the roof at Branwick.
Had my fellow spawn talked Lennie through Branwick, up to the roof? That would explain why Lennie hadn’t knocked on our door.
Then he or she could have simply used magic to make her impact hit that much harder? Harder than normal physics would allow.
That still didn’t account for locked doors, though. None of the Old Ones or their children could pass through solid objects or manifest a material object out of nothing—as far as I knew anyway. It’s not how they—we—worked.
Of course, nothing would stop one of them from simply charming the keys off the residential director … or removing them from her corpse.
But maybe I’m making this too complicated. If it was a random War spawn, they would have just reached out and … pulled until Lennie’s insides spilled outside. Their connection isn’t just with violence but with bloodshed specifically.
That scenario plays in my head like a little movie, over and over again. I see the pain and surprise in Lennie’s tear-dampened eyes, the way she frantically grasps at her middle and the blood oozing between her fingers … and I can’t stop it.
I suck in a breath sharply, and Carter glances over at me.
He’s going to ask me if I’m okay. And I can’t have that, I’ll break.
“So, who is she?” I ask abruptly into the bubble of silence. Anything to change the subject.
“Who is who?” Carter asks with a frown, as he slows to turn onto Beecher Drive, the main thoroughfare through campus.
Turning to face him, I tap my jaw in the same place where his is marred.
His frown deepens. He flips down the visor for a quick look in the mirror. Irritation flickers across his expression when he sees the mark, but it vanishes immediately.
“No one,” he says, closing the visor.
“Really? Interesting.” I’m warmer now, and the emergency blanket is sticking to my legs. I adjust it, paying extra careful attention to the folds. “No one seems to have the suction power of a Dyson fresh off the charging station.”
Carter exhales through his nose. “No one you know, okay, Jocasta? Is that better?”
No. Because at least if I know who it is, I can imagine her.
While that hurts, it’s at least a known quantity.
I can point out to myself all the ways they’re better for each other.
And in my shitty person moments, pick apart their—her—perceived flaws.
Maybe she hates the way he spouts random psychology factlets or she wants him to be sportier, in the backward baseball cap–wearing frat crowd.
But a nameless, faceless stranger? She, whoever she is, will always be perfect.
He sighs, as if reading my thoughts. “This is what I mean. You always make things more difficult. More painful. Why?”
“It’s a gift,” I say with a careless shrug, mouth twisting into a grin that I don’t feel.
“It’s a choice,” he corrects, with a severe look and just enough of that know-it-all-ness that makes me want to push back.
“You went from slipping your hand under my skirt in a study room last semester to ignoring me and then telling me you want to be friends?” I shake my head.
“I’m not the only one making that choice.
” I had, however, worn the skirt, hoping to tempt him.
Hoping that he would slide his hand under the fabric, along the inside of my thigh.
“And the diathesis-stress model?” he asked in a calm, even tone, sitting next to me. To anyone walking by, it looked like he was helping me prep for my Abnormal Psych midterm, but all the while, under the table, his fingers stroked, teasing, against the front of my panties.
“It’s, uh…” I tried to get my brain to function. “The idea that there’s, um, a disorder is caused by both predisposition and…” My words cut off in a gasp as his fingers dipped inside the hollow of my leg and then underneath the fabric.
“You should know this,” he said, mildly scolding, even as his slightly calloused fingertips traced over my clit. “I’m not his TA, but I’m betting Bronson will have it on the exam.” And then he slipped the first two knuckles of his middle finger inside me.
I came almost instantly, and it was one of the hottest things I’ve ever experienced.
Carter’s hands tighten on the wheel, knuckles blanching.
“And last night? Last night, you told me you still wanted me, even though I was going to ruin your life.”
As soon as the words are out, I wish I could reel them back in.
Nothing said under the influence of a Lust spawn is fair game.
Just because you feel it doesn’t mean you’d act on it.
And Carter might not even remember saying it.
Not to mention, I absolutely do not want to explain the sudden strange compulsion he must have felt to say those things and—
Instead of responding to me, Carter slams on the brakes. The back end of the car fishtails hard to the left, throwing me into the locked band of my seat belt.
When we finally come to a stop, my breath comes out in a gasp, the seat belt friction burned against my neck. “What are you—” I begin.
But he’s busy staring out the windshield at a trio of girls, crossing in front of us in the middle of the road. Their enormous blue golf umbrella covers them almost to their waists. It must have blocked their view of us.
“Are you okay?” Carter asks, his voice a little unsteady.
I look down to see his arm braced across me, protecting me. “Yes,” I say, wrapping my fingers around his wrist. His pulse thrums furiously against my fingertips.
I don’t know what it will take to kill me (obviously). An arm across my chest wouldn’t save my life in a car accident any better than anyone else.
But it could break my heart.
Carter nods, carefully avoiding my gaze, then pulls away.
In the road, one of the girls tilts up the umbrella to glance out, finally recognizing that they might be in danger. Gabby Weiner (God, she must have hated high school). She lives in Branwick on the main floor.
She glares at us, as if we were the ones at fault.
I flip her the finger, before realizing she’s still in her robe, and the two on either side of her—Dara Park and Cassie Something—are in their pajamas and carrying shower caddies and bundles of clothing. What is going on?
“Jocasta,” Carter says, pointing past the girls. “I don’t think you’re getting back into Branwick, not any time soon.”
Following the direction he’s indicating, I look ahead toward Branwick, across the quad.
The police have blocked off the stone archway of the main entrance—probably all the entrances—of Branwick with yellow caution tape, as uniformed officers and white-suited crime scene techs swarm in and out and around the side of the building where the … where Lennie was.
But it’s not the police presence that holds my attention. I was expecting some version of that.
What I wasn’t expecting: dozens of students, some in a similar state of undress, milling around the grassy lawn in front of Branwick.
Others, with backpacks and coats, are gathered around the outer edges, watching or filming with their phones, like it’s a homecoming bonfire and they’re warming their hands on the spectacle.
So many people. Forty or fifty of them, maybe more, just out there in the open. Paying zero attention to anything or anyone around them.
Panic gnaws at me for a good long moment before I figure out why.
They’re vulnerable now. All of them. Whoever killed Lennie could be moving among them right now, whispering for them to slice their wrists or walk out in front of cars or just … gutting them right then and there before I could reach them.
Shit. I sit up straighter in the seat. I might not have claimed Beecher, but somehow these people, an entire campus’s worth, are now mine to protect. It could be any one of them next, showing up dead on the steps to my psych classes in Weir Hall or at the table I like at the library.
Or in my room.
I go still, breath caught in my chest. Pieces click together in my head to form a new picture.
Lennie wasn’t just a random student, was she? I would have still understood the message if it had been Gabby or Mena or my lab partner, Sean, in that garden this morning.
But Lennie is … was my friend. Beyond that, she was my most reliable source of sustenance. And she wasn’t just killed outside my dorm, but deliberately under my window.
This is personal. Someone who has taken the time to watch me, to know me. To aim precisely at the spots that will hurt the most. Intending not just to communicate but to wound.
Chessa’s face flashes in my mind. Her habitual early-morning run, three miles through the forest preserve, alone. Her earbuds are firmly in place, playing either old Dateline episodes turned into a podcast or her own voice memos reciting law stuff she wanted to memorize.
I search the crowd, hunting for even a hint of that obnoxious neon pink. Her running jacket would make her stand out in any venue.
But it’s not there. She’s not here.