Chapter 24 #2
It was the equivalent of a smorgasbord, and even better, none of them were people I knew or would have to encounter again. Unlike the drama buffet I regularly tried to ignore in the halls of my high school.
I could sip freely here and no one would notice or realize that every time they felt dizzy I was always in the vicinity.
I was giddy with the sense of freedom and took gulps everywhere I could, dropping back from the rest of my classmates or shifting position on the sidewalk to bring myself into proximity with another source.
It lasted about six minutes, give or take. Just long enough for the spawn Kevin Gresham to sense what I was doing and charge down from his office on the thirty-fourth floor of the high-rise building on the other side of the bridge.
I saw him charging toward me, just a dadlike guy, balding, in a pair of chunky New Balances, khakis, and a short-sleeved polo with an ID swinging around his neck on a lanyard. Honestly, it didn’t even occur that he was coming for me.
Until his hand closed over my throat. Not that hard.
It didn’t have to be. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.
I could feel my pulse in my throat speeding up, pumping all the moisture right out of me and into his waiting hand.
The vampire legend exists for a reason, but the biting thing is bullshit—a creation from humans who need a method of feeding that makes sense to them and their limitations. Hello, we have magic.
“The Sanguine spawn, he took my presence and feeding as a challenge. He attacked me and I…” I grimace. “I defended myself.”
Panic rose in me, accompanied by a loud buzzing in my ears, and I thrashed trying to get free. But Kevin’s hold was firm, and it dawned on me—far too late—that this wasn’t just some rando attacker who had a thing for teenage girls.
He was like me, but not. One of the other spawn, a child or descendant of another Old One. Just as my father had told me about. He’d warned me to feed only near home. I thought it was just another one of his control tactics, trying to get me to do what he wanted, the way he wanted.
“I would choose differently today, but back then, I just … reacted.” Acting on instinct and those long-ago lessons, I ripped life out of my attacker. I don’t even remember searching for the brightness of his life. I was in survival mode.
He hadn’t aged, just keeled over dead. And when his dead weight toppled toward me, I shoved him right over the bridge railing. And people started screaming.
“The police arrested you, but you got off because they didn’t know, they didn’t understand how anyone could do something like that,” Chessa says, waving her phone.
I catch a glimpse of a screen full of tiny words.
“They thought he had a heart attack. All they got on camera was him grabbing you and you shoving him back.”
“Yeah,” I say. “That’s how it works.”
Chessa’s mouth works soundlessly in fury. “That’s not right. It’s not just.” She sounds exactly like I did, when I learned how I would have to sustain myself for the rest of my life.
I try to keep the sympathy from showing on my face; it’ll only make her angrier. “You’re right. But this is not the world you think it is,” I say. “Human justice isn’t really a—”
“It should be!” She slaps her phone down on the breakfast bar and holds up her fistful of crumpled papers. “And what about these?”
“I don’t know what those are,” I say.
“All the people who’ve died since you started going to school here.” She shoves them closer to my face.
The first sparks of anger catch in me. “I told you, I feed but I don’t kill.”
“Not even Tara Laurie?” she demands.
Tara. It takes me a second to place the name. “The girl from freshman year?”
“She lived on your wing in Corey Hall, two doors down from your room.”
Chess and I weren’t roommates back then, not yet. But we were friends. For some reason, that makes it hurt more.
“Tara’s not dead. She transferred.” After a very public suicide attempt, so I understand Chessa’s mistake. But I had nothing to do with that.
Chessa consults her scraps of paper. “Freshman year. Bryce Myer, Alyssa Hendrix, Jonathan Weiss, Aaliyah Cantu, Victor Garc—”
“Aaliyah died before we were even here,” I cut in. “Remember, she was the cautionary tale they kept circulating during orientation about not lying in the street when you’re drunk?”
She looks only momentarily deflated. “What about the rest of them?” she persists.
Jaw tense, I shake my head. “You know that Beecher has a reputation for—”
“If this is going to be an inquiry into every person who has died in Beecher, can I suggest that there are better ways to spend our time?” Devon says.
“No!” Chessa shouts, her hands shooting down to her sides, pages crumpling in her grasp.
I stare at her as she pants, out of breath from her outburst. “What is going on? Did something happen?” My heart trips in my chest. “Is it Daan? Did he—”
“No.” She takes a breath, steadying herself. But her eyes are shiny with tears behind her glasses. “Daan is … the same. But Emile—” Her voice cuts off, choked with emotion.
The only other survivor from the Foreign Language House. “Shit. He didn’t make it.”
“No,” Chessa says, but the word comes out silently, caught behind her grief, her worry.
Carter, still only in jeans, leaves the living room area and returns with a zip-up hoodie and a handful of tissues, shrugging into the former while handing the latter to Chessa.
The three of us are quiet while she dabs at her face and regains her equilibrium. Though Devon, off to my side and leaning against the back of the couch, is practically vibrating with impatience.
After a moment, Chessa clears her throat, balls up the tissues, and then pins me with a look. “Can you do something? That’s what I want to know.”
No. What she wants to know is if I can save Daan, and I’m pretty sure that’s out of my hands.
“I don’t know. I’m doing my best. But even if I manage to stop whatever’s happening, I don’t know that I’ll be able to change Daan’s condition. I tried to save Izzy and—”
“Almost got herself killed,” Devon points out. “The first time.”
I glare at him over my shoulder. “But I will do my best for Daan, for any of them,” I say to Chessa. “You know me, you know that.”
Chessa doesn’t respond, just eyes me, gaze cold, distant, evaluating. As if I’m a stranger she’s deciding whether to trust, rather than the person who rubbed her back when she vomited up platefuls of bad shrimp scampi sophomore year.
“I’m in,” she says finally.
I blink at her. “I … sorry, what?”
“I’m going to help,” she says, pulling out one of the stools at the breakfast bar and hopping up to sit.
“No.” I try for patience. “You’re going to leave. Go to Milwaukee, to your grandma’s, where you’ll be safe.”
“Why? Carter is staying,” she says, daring me to take her on. “Unless you’re saying he brings different assets to the table.” She tips her head to one side, in faux inquiry.
Jesus, Chessa. I scrub my hands over my hot face, avoiding looking at Carter. “No, I want him to leave too, to be safe, but I—”
“I told my parents to take my sisters to Milwaukee.” She grimaces. “They think I’m having a nervous breakdown, but after the gas main explosion—”
“Not an explosion,” Carter, Devon, and I say simultaneously.
“—and the attacks at the hotels in town, they were more inclined to listen,” Chessa says, regarding us with a frown.
“Wait. What attacks at the hotels?” I ask.
“If we can focus, please,” Carter interjects.
“A couple of desk staff were taken to the hospital with bumps and bruises after someone came up behind them, but nothing was taken,” Chessa answers me.
“The Just Fuck It?” I ask immediately. Maybe my plan worked, just later than I expected.
“No, the other two. Why?”
“When was this?” I demand.
“Is this really relevant to—” Carter begins.
“Yesterday. Noon or early afternoon, I think,” Chessa says to me, ignoring him.
When I was at Carter’s apartment or searching for Devon on Greek Row. Fuck. One more thing. Though this one might not be related to me.
“Again, I ask, why?” Chessa folds her arms over her chest.
I shake my head, denying her a response. “You are in danger here. That’s the whole reason I told you the truth. I wanted to—”
“You wanted to lie about who you are until you absolutely had to come clean,” Chessa says. “Good to know where your priorities are.”
Stung, I rear back. “Hey, I didn’t have to say anything at all. It’s actually forbidden to tell anyone outside of the—”
“Is anyone the least bit interested in knowing what I’ve discovered?” Devon asks languidly, but his body holds a tension that belies his tone.
“Yes,” Carter says. “Please.”
Chessa straightens on her barstool, turning her attention away from me and focusing on Devon. “Yes, go ahead. I’m done with this conversation.”
Excuse me?
Devon steps between us, into the center of our little crooked circle in the small walkway between the living room and the corridor. “As it turns out, the union display held quite a bit of information about the cemetery.”
“The cemetery on Old Campus?” Chessa asks, confusion wrinkling her brow. “What about it?”
“Jocasta and Devon seem to feel that might be the locus of what’s happening here,” Carter says.
Wow, I didn’t know it was possible for two syllables of a name to hold so much disdain.
“To clarify, Jo is the one who senses the power emanating from the cemetery. I just feel … something,” Devon adds, smiling at Carter.
You hear people described as smiling without it reaching their eyes—I’ve never really been able to picture that. Until now. Despite the crinkles of humor at the edges, Devon’s eyes are flat green stones, full of loathing.
“Something I didn’t sense originally on my arrival,” Devon says to Chessa.
I nod. “Yeah, this is new.”