Chapter 25
There is absolutely nothing suspicious about four people piling out of a Toyota Sienna right before the Beecher hardware store closes, to buy a shovel, rope, several pairs of gloves, keychain pepper spray, several saws (added to the cart over my objection at Chessa’s bizarre insistence), and disposable hand warmers.
All about to be paid for by what is likely a “borrowed” credit card, thank you, Devon.
Nope, nothing suspicious at all.
I mean, throw a tarp and some duct tape in there, and someone would be calling the cops. As it is, the cashier is eyeing us like she’s going to have to describe us to a sketch artist.
On the plus side, at least I’m finally in my own clothes again.
Even with Old Campus being evacuated, it seemed illicit grave digging and mausoleum entry would generally be best accomplished at night. So we used the intervening time to prep. More research, eating, changing into a variety of all-black ensembles.
While Devon returned to the fraternity house to access his wardrobe and check on any remaining brothers, and Carter sourced enough food for everyone, Chessa drove me back to Branwick so we could get into our room.
Dr. No sent a campus-wide announcement via the emergency alert system that Beecher University would be shifting to remote classes for the remainder of the semester “out of an abundance of caution.”
Or, because, as Kenzie pointed out to me earlier in the day, you can’t have classes if you don’t have students.
So when we walked in, Branwick was a mix of eerie emptiness and scattered confusion and chaos as the final residents scrambled to leave.
A spawn of Zephryus was waiting for me in the front foyer, near the former parlor.
She was a tiny thing, willowy and hollow-boned with big dark eyes.
Given the chance she might have sucked all the air out of the room, but when I glared at her, she fled before she caused anything more than a few coughing fits.
My reputation was evidently spreading, likely thanks to what I’d done to JT, the Fear spawn at the hospital.
I couldn’t decide how I felt about that.
But at least it allowed us to continue upstairs without incident. I don’t think Chessa even noticed.
When we got upstairs, though, Morales’s business card was stuck in the outer edge of the doorway to our room, a small white rectangle with that official blue and yellow BPD crest, screaming out its presence. She’d been here, looking for me.
Shit. Instinctively, I reached to snatch it down.
“No,” Chessa said sharply.
When I looked at her, she said with a sigh, “If you take it down, she’ll know you’ve been here.”
So. Still angry with me, but also on my side, sort of.
“Come on,” she said, leading the way into our shared space.
The room was a disaster from the police search the other day, neither of us having stayed here since.
“That’s how I knew you were at Carter’s,” Chessa said when I started swearing at the overturned mattresses and the drawers emptied on the floor.
Okay, yes, I like things tidy. Call it only-child syndrome. Chessa, who has shared space with her twin sisters since they were born, is more relaxed about mess.
“I could have been anywhere,” I argued.
She paused in digging through the scattered piles of clothing to snort at me. “Please. Jo, the two of you are twisted up so tight that when he breathes funny, you’re the one that sneezes.”
“That’s not—”
“If his building was going down in flames, you would use that as an excuse to go inside and warn him personally.”
“That’s not exactly a bad thing—”
“And he would tell you he had it under control and he didn’t need your help,” she finished.
I grimaced. “Fair. I guess.”
“You guess? You act like I haven’t had a front row seat to this codependent shitshow for the last year and a half.” She shook her head. “The two of you are messed up.”
It was the closest moment to normal that we’d had since I’d told her the truth.
And it couldn’t last.
“He’s not my favorite person, never has been.” She held up a black sweatshirt, smelled the armpits, and deemed it acceptable enough to add to our “take” pile. “But you should leave him out of this.”
I looked up from where I was searching for my other snow boot. “I tried to leave both of you out of this!”
“I get that it’s probably … lonely,” she said, her mouth a moue of distaste. “But if you really care about him, you need to let him go.”
I stood up, then. “Why him and not you?”
“Because I’m here for Daan and to keep other people from being hurt,” she said wearily. “But Carter is here for you.”
And fuck if my heart didn’t immediately plummet toward the messy floor.
Chessa and I didn’t talk any more after that, except in essentials about what to take and when to leave.
But now, hours later, I can’t stop thinking about what she said.
If Chessa wants to help Daan and other people who might be affected, and Devon wants me to accept a role as the new Death, those are their motives for doing this. But Carter doesn’t have one. Carter is—can only be—here for me.
Which leads to the part she isn’t saying. If Carter dies, he dies because of me.
“I think they’re bonding over sharp objects,” Carter says to me, tipping his chin toward Chessa and Devon in the checkout line. The two of us are on the other side of the register, waiting.
Chessa is holding up a hacksaw in one hand, gesturing enthusiastically with the other hand, mimicking a back and forth sawing motion. Devon nods and reaches into the cart to remove the other saws, handing them to the baffled cashier.
“Should we be alarmed?” Carter asks dryly.
“Probably,” I say with a sigh. “Especially because I think they’re bonding more over being stuck with me.” Devon would rather have someone more eager to be Death, and Chessa would just rather have someone else.
Carter wraps his arm around my shoulders, pulling me to his side.
I tense at first, mostly out of surprise and habit. But worrying about whether our relationship might be whispered about suddenly feels like fretting over a speck of sand in my eye when a whole-ass beach is getting ready to pour down on us.
Carter presses a kiss to my temple. “You know, we can still leave, just go,” he whispers.
In a flash, I have a vision of what that life might look like. Fresh brewed coffee in the mornings in matching mugs, a bed with crisp white sheets, with a smooth expanse on the opposite side where he would join me.
Carter in his glasses at night, reading on his tablet. My own stack of books and work on the table next to me. The two of us arguing over the latest pop psychology theory circulating on social media. His body over mine, our hands linked, soft murmurs in the dark.
A place to belong. A home.
Temptation flares in me, so hot and intense that it steals my ability to breathe for a moment.
My whole life I’ve always been caught between two worlds, two parents, neither of whom wanted me the way that I was. But in this imaginary vision of what could be, I am enough. And that, way more than the matching mugs or the sex, is utterly alluring.
But it’s not real, and it never can be.
“It’s not too late,” he says, leaning down to meet my gaze, his expression too serious.
Shame courses through me. What have I done, luring him into believing any of that is possible with me? “It is,” I choke out over a lump in my throat.
In truth, there was probably never a time in which this wouldn’t have been the ending.
I bite my bottom lip, teeth digging in until the pain shatters the remaining warm illusions. Only then do I let go. “Carter. After this, I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I don’t think I’ll ever get to go back to normal.” I grimace. “Even what passed for normal for me.”
I swallow hard, make myself keep going even in the face of the hurt brewing in his expression.
“It’s not fair to you. The life that you could have with someone else, I can’t give you that.
I’ll never be able to give that to you. And to make it worse, you’d be in danger the whole time. Forever, actually.”
The imagined vision of our future in my mind shifts to show those mugs shattered on the kitchen floor, bloodied sheets torn and twisted on the bed, and … Carter staring up at me, blue eyes empty and sightless.
At best. I might one day, instead, come home from class or a job and find bits of dust and bone—a husk all that’s left of him.
I shudder and pull away from him, as if that alone will be enough to save him, keep that image from coming true. “I can’t do that to you.”
“Deciding that is not up to you,” Carter argues, his face darkening. “It’s up to me. And I know what it means to choose sides, to take a risk—”
“You don’t, you can’t. Not in this situation,” I say.
His mouth goes tight, as if he’s struggling to keep words inside that he knows he’ll regret. Then he shifts position, grasping my shoulders to hold me in front of him. “Please. Just trust that I know what I’m saying. I know the risk I’m taking.” His gaze bores into me, both pleading and defiant.
But it’s the urgency, the need in his voice that feels very much like desperation.
I frown up at him. “Carter, is there something—”
“Ready?” Devon asks loudly from behind Carter. He holds up a series of plastic bags in one hand—a folded-up receipt sticking out the top of one—and the metal shovel in the other. Off to his side, Chessa is examining the hacksaw in its packaging, possibly reading instructions.
“Yes,” Carter says, immediately turning for the exit, as if that will end our discussion in his favor.
Devon and Chessa follow him out, continuing what appears to be an earlier argument about whether snacks should have been purchased as well.
I trail after them, a new uneasiness settling in my chest.