Chapter 28
“Told you to stay away,” Carter chokes out, holding his hand up against the light.
“Okay, college boy, that’s not my job, taking orders from you,” Morales snaps. “Stay here.” Then she stomps off. A few moments later, she returns and presses a squeeze bottle in my hands. “Diluted baby shampoo,” she says. “It’ll help with the pepper spray. Don’t touch the bottle to your eyes.”
I hesitate for a second and then lift it up and squirt it toward my face. The coolness immediately helps, and then, even when that fades, the stinging and burning is lesser. I squirt it twice more until I can open my eyes … mostly.
“You just carry that around in your car?” Chessa asks, her voice raspy and strained.
“I’m a cop in a college town. Do you know how often someone sets one of those things off by accident or in an enclosed space? Bars, movie theaters, parties…”
I crawl toward Devon and do the same to his face, though he might have been sheltered from most of the spray because of how he was lying, facing away.
When I search for the warm yellow glow of life in him, it’s not as bright as it usually is.
I fumble for and find his pulse in his neck. It’s weak but steady.
Without looking at Carter—oh my God, Carter, a War spawn—I hold the bottle up until he takes it. Keeping my back to Morales, I lay my hand on Devon’s chest and try to visualize reversing the typical flow of energy. Giving instead of taking. My last try didn’t go so well.
But this time, after a moment, a rush of dizziness washes over me, and Devon opens his eyes, blinking slowly.
“Do I need to call EMS?” Morales asks, edging closer.
“No. No, I think he’s okay,” I say, sitting down on the freezing ground next to him.
With assistance from me, Devon sits up, a hand to his head. “What happened?”
“Exactly.” Morales points to him. “Someone needs to start talking,” she says. “We get a call about kids in the cemetery, an area that’s supposed to be evacuated—”
“Then there should have been no one to see us,” Chessa points out but in a murmur.
“—and these two are telling me it’s nothing.” She gestures to Carter and Chessa. “Then while I’m trying to call it in, there’s screaming and they’re taking off across the street, against my direction. And I get here to find a girl running off and a mess of blood and pepper spray.”
Automatically, I glance up, looking for Nova.
We’re so vulnerable, sitting out in the open like this.
Instinctively, I inch closer to Devon and Chessa, to better be able to protect them.
Or try, anyway. Nova could be on us, killing us before we even realize she’s here.
But she wouldn’t just wait around here, would she?
She’s probably long gone. Nova. My sister.
I shake my head. I can’t start thinking of her that way. I’ve already had too many earth-shaking revelations in the past, oh, fifteen minutes. I can’t think at all. I just need to focus on this moment, to get through it. Preferably without being detained again.
“Someone?” Morales presses. “Words. Now.”
“We heard a voice,” Carter finally says reluctantly. He stands up with visible effort. “Someone shouting from inside the mausoleum.”
“We were attempting to render aid,” Chessa says. She doesn’t look great. Her face is kind of gray, and I can see her swaying on her feet. “I think that’s all you need to know.”
“Rendering aid? With pepper spray?” Morales raises her eyebrows.
“It wasn’t the situation we thought it was,” I add. “It was a trick. We were in danger.”
When Morales switches her attention to me, I immediately regret speaking. There’s a burning loathing in her gaze, the source of which I don’t understand. I’ve never met her before the other day, never did anything to her.
“A trick,” Morales repeats in a scathing tone. “You realize that everything that comes out of your mouth sounds like a lie, Trelane.”
Probably because eighty percent of it is, unfortunately. But this happens to be the truth. Or a version of it, at least.
“Where did all the blood come from?” Morales props her hands on her hips, revealing the badge glinting at her belt.
Devon coughs. “She was crazy, the girl who was inside. She, uh, had a knife.”
I grimace. I mean, that’s as good an explanation as any, which is to say that there is no good explanation that will work for Morales.
“And she cut herself? Before running away?”
“She went that way,” Chessa says, her face a mask of pain as she tries to point with her good arm toward Greek Row.
Nova might have run, but I bet she didn’t go far. She’s pissed and dying to prove herself, no pun intended. That is a bad, bad combination. I can almost sense her looming nearby, regrouping. All the more reason for everyone to get the fuck out of here.
If nothing else, she’s going to want to rub it in Death’s face that he made the wrong choice in selecting me as a successor. As it happens, I agree with her, but not to the point of wanting to die.
Morales fixes Chessa and Carter with a stern look.
“I don’t know what she’s done or said to convince you to participate in this, but I’m telling you, it’s a bad idea to go along with her.
On anything.” Then she turns on me. “Just because you’re in the clear, for the moment, on McCarthy’s death, does not mean you’ve gotten away with it. ”
It takes me an extra second to process what she’s saying. She means Lennie. Lennie’s death. “You got the security camera footage. Saw that I never left the building,” I say, taking a guess.
“There are other exits,” she says, staring me down.
“You think I jumped out of a window?”
“Look, I don’t mean to interrupt this fun, possibly illegal, or at the very least unethical interrogation, but I think maybe I’m going to pass out.” Chessa holds out her arm, which despite the bulkiness of her coat, seems to be bending in the wrong place between her elbow and wrist.
Oh, shit.
“I’m Trelane’s roommate. I’ll answer any questions you want about her and Lennie, if you get me out of here and to the hospital.” Even in the faint light, sweat gleams at Chessa’s temples and across her upper lip.
“Chessa…” I begin, panic setting in. Maybe I hadn’t been clear enough about exactly how forbidden discussing the Old Ones actually is.
She glares at me. “I’ll tell you everything you want to know,” she says to Morales. “On the way to the hospital.”
Morales pauses just long enough to take in my reaction and then she nods at Chessa. “All right. You got it, let’s go.” She gives me a grim triumphant smile.
Fuck. So, that’s one murderous Death sibling who is probably looking to feed and feed fast, one ex-crush/hookup who is a giant liar on a scale I don’t even know how to process, and one former best friend who is probably going to get herself killed and me in a metric shit-ton of trouble.
Can I quit now? I feel like I should quit before I get any farther behind in whatever cosmic, dice-rolling, fate-aligned game we’re playing.
As Morales leads the way to her sedan parked in the street, with Chessa, chin up in defiance, following behind, Chessa doesn’t even bother to look back at me. Just drops the pepper spray in a big gesture, as if she’s washing her hands of us, the whole situation.
Great.
Devon staggers to his feet, swaying. “I need to feed.”
I nod wearily and push to my feet. He’s not the only one. Nova fed heavily from me as well, before she was interrupted. “We need to change out of these clothes, too, to get rid of the spray,” I say. Another random fact that stuck around after self-defense class.
I stumble toward Devon, looping his arm over my shoulder to help keep him steady.
“Jocasta,” Carter says, with that stern, undeniable tone that used to send pleasant shivers down my spine, making me soft and eager to do whatever I could to hear more of it.
“No,” I say flatly. No trouble denying him this time.
“We need to talk,” Carter says. “Please.” Emotion fractures his voice.
I can’t look at him. I know the red, swollen eyes are a result of chemicals, but it hurts to see him, to see the pain. “There is nothing to talk about.”
Devon and I awkwardly shuffle our way toward the gate and the street beyond. It’s going to be a long walk back to Branwick without—
My foot connects with something that clinks on the ground.
When I look down, I find the pepper spray Chessa tossed aside so dramatically. But not just the pepper spray.
Silver glints in the faint light. Keys. It’s the fob to her mother’s minivan.
The realization clicks a second later. Chessa was putting on a show. Luring Morales away with the prospect of the “truth” so I could do what I needed to do.
Relief makes my held breath whoosh out in a loud exhale. Oh, Chessa. I owe you.
I can practically hear her in my head: You bet your ass you do.
Bending down, I scoop the keys off the ground. When I press the button to unlock the doors, the vehicle gives a welcoming chirp and flash of the lights.
Thank God.
I guide Devon through the rest of the cemetery, out of the gate, and over to the van’s passenger side. Carter follows us, a looming silent presence at my back that I’m determined to ignore.
“Almost there,” I say to Devon, panting, my eyes burning again from our stupid clothes.
He nods, his head sagging. I help him into the seat and shut the door, locking him safely away. Even if that is more gesture than practical defense.
I’m worried about him. But also? If I have a shit list, he’s the second name from the top. What did he know and when did he know it, those are my questions, and I bet I’m not going to like the answers when I get them.
I turn away from the van, marching determinedly around the hood to the driver’s side.
“Jocasta,” Carter says. “Please. It’s important.”
Why? Why does that “please,” grating and desperate, still work on me? Because some pathetic part of me is still desperately hoping there’s an explanation that doesn’t make him an asshole and me a fool?
Yeah.