Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
EXTRA TRAUMA, HOLD THE ANCHOVIES
Our apartment door, with its battered paint and dent from the time Casey tried to move a couch through it, has never looked so much like a shield.
I fumble the keys—of course I do, my hands are shaking so badly I can barely feel my fingers—and jam the wrong one into the lock twice before finally getting it.
Casey is so close behind me, I’m practically wearing him as a backpack.
“Inside, Kallie,” he hisses, voice shredded.
We tumble through and slam the door, double lock it, then Casey flips the chain for good measure and braces both arms against the wood as if he’s holding back a SWAT team.
I press my forehead to the wall and inhale cheap eggshell paint, trying to slow my breathing. Not working. My pulse is stampeding in my throat.
Casey lets out a long, ragged exhale.
It’s a solid minute before either of us moves.
“Think that’s enough?” I manage. “Or do you want to nail some two-by-fours over it, classic zombie style?”
He doesn’t even crack a smile, which is how I know shit is capital-S serious.
“We should check the place,” he says, but it’s like he’s trying to convince himself, not me. “Make sure nobody’s, uh—” He doesn’t finish, but he doesn’t have to. We’re on the same freaking page.
He moves through the apartment in a stumbling rush. My room first, of course. Closet doors wrenched open, curtains torn back, a quick, useless glance under the bed. I trail him, not because I think he’ll find anything, but because the thought of being alone is worse.
He attacks his own closet next, yanking the door so hard it jumps its track and smacks the wall.
We both freeze, listening to the sound die.
He doesn’t say a word.
He flicks the bathroom light on, the shower curtain shrieks as he rips it aside, metal hooks popping free. Every shadow in the living room is a threat until it isn’t. We end in the kitchen, breathless, the two of us just staring at the refrigerator as if it holds any answers.
My hands won’t stop shaking as I reach for a glass, and fill it with water. Most of it sloshes onto the counter before I can even drink it.
Fuck.
Casey slides carefully onto a kitchen stool, his hand hovering near the darkening bruises on his throat.
“Mafia,” he says, testing the word. “Territorial dispute. We walked into a drug deal.”
“The guy turned to dust, Casey.”
“Trick lighting,” he says, a little too fast. “Smoke bomb. A distraction, so we’d run.”
I stare at him. His certainty is a cheap suit, and it’s not fitting him right. We’re both avoiding the crossbow bolt that came from nowhere, the impossible speed, the one-handed lift.
“Tell me you saw the teeth and the eyes,” I say, my voice flat.
He goes still. The silence stretches, thick with everything we’re not saying.
“I saw something,” he finally admits, not looking at me. “The light was weird. I was… in shock.”
He doesn’t say fangs. I note that he doesn’t say fangs.
And because he won’t, I can’t.
Fine. If we can’t make it make sense, someone else will have to. I pull out my phone. “I’m calling 911.”
The hold music is barely a second, but it feels like forever.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
The dispatcher’s voice is clipped, annoyingly calm.
“I’d like to report an assault—an attack, I guess,” I say, and that’s when I realize I have no idea how to explain any of what just happened. “My friend was—he was… There was violence.” The words don’t line up in my head. They get jammed in my throat.
The pause on the other end is infinitesimal but cutting. “Where did this occur, ma’am?”
“Fangerella’s Pizza. On the corner of Westing and Mill.” I glance at Casey. His fingertips are barely grazing the outline of the bruises like he’s afraid to make contact. “We got out but I think… I think there are bodies. Or what’s left of them.”
I can’t bring myself to say what I really saw.
“Fangerella’s… Can you spell that?”
I spell it.
“I’m not seeing a Fangerella’s Pizza at that location,” the operator says, her keyboard clicking in the background. “Could you repeat the location?”
I do.
The operator’s tone gets tighter, more skeptical.
“Tell me what you think happened,” she says.
I clock the tone immediately.
“We had just walked in. There was a fight, I don’t—It was so fast. The guys were huge. I guess they were on something? One, the owner, I think, grabbed my friend, and it was like—I don’t know—he was strong enough to lift him one-handed off the floor.”
“Any defining details you can remember?”
“He had tattoos,” I reply, “and a suit. The other guy, I don’t know. I just remember his eyes were… wrong.”
“‘Wrong how?” The dispatcher’s voice is dull, bored. Clearly she thinks I’m making it up.
“Too bright. Reflective? Like an animal at night. I can’t describe it. Sorry.”
Silence. “Ma’am, are you currently under the influence of any substances?”
I want to throw the phone through the wall. “No,” I say, then, “Not for us.”
There’s another silence, this one thicker.
“We have your information on file. An officer will be out to follow up as soon as one is available.”
Click.
Casey’s voice is low. “They didn’t believe us.”
“Nope.” I plop onto the seat next to him. I want to kick something. “No one’s coming.”
He stares at me for a second, then lets his head drop into his hands. “What the hell happened in there, Kallie?”
I shake my head. “I have no fucking clue.”
Casey’s gaze drops from my eyes to my hands, and his brow furrows.
“Kal, your hand.”
I follow his gaze to the hand holding my phone. It looks fine. A little shaky, but fine. “What about it?”
He lets out a slow breath. “Your other hand.”
I lift my left hand. For a second, my brain doesn’t process what it’s seeing. A smear of crimson across my palm, a few bright drops of it on the countertop. It’s like looking at a picture of someone else’s injury.
Then I flex my fingers, and a web of sharp, stinging pain brings it all into focus.
It’s my blood. My pain.
“Oh,” I say, the sound small and distant. “Guess I landed on some glass.”
Casey reaches across the table and grabs my wrist.
“Come,” he says. “We need to clean those out.”
I want to argue—my default setting—but his face is pale, and his voice is just this side of cracking, so I go without fuss.
In the bathroom mirror, I catch my reflection and immediately wish I hadn’t. Hair everywhere, skin shiny with dried sweat. But my knees are the real horror show—a raw mess of gravel and blood, the bruises already blooming dark at the edges.
I turn on the faucet and stick my hands under, watching the water go pink, then clear.
Casey hovers, like I might bleed out if he leaves me alone. I fight the urge to hide my hand behind my back, because I don’t want to seem more fragile than I already do, but I guess the point is moot when my legs look like they’ve gone a couple rounds with a cheese grater.
Eventually, his hero complex takes over, and he takes my hands gently—way too gently—inspecting them.
Once he’s certain they’re clean, glass and gravel-free, he takes a dab of Neosporin and dabs it over the cuts.
This angle gives me an up close view of his throat, at the raw, bruised handprint that circles it.
Guilt makes my stomach twist into a knot.
If I hadn’t forgotten my bag. If I hadn’t wanted pizza. If I had just listened to every alarm bell screaming at me to stay away from that place—
Casey would be fine right now.
“You want me to get some ice for that?”
He shrugs. “Doesn’t hurt as bad as it looks.”
“Yeah, okay, tough guy. Sit down, I’ll grab you some ice.”
He rolls his eyes, but obeys.
I pad to the kitchen, dig through the freezer, and come up with a bag of freezer burnt peas. I wrap it in a dish towel and make my way to the living room.
“Bad news. One of us forgot to fill the ice tray, but I did manage to find an ancient bag of peas.”
“You first,” he says, nodding toward my scraped knees.
Knowing it’s useless to argue, I sit on the edge of the couch. He settles on the floor in front of me, glasses sliding down his nose as he concentrates on picking a tiny shard of glass from my knee. I press the cold bag of peas gently to the bruises on his neck.
He holds my leg steady, fingers gentle and warm, and for a second I forget about the world outside. Or the one inside, screaming at me that none of the events of tonight can be real.
Except… here we are.
Eventually, Casey says, “What do we do now?”
It’s not a question I can answer.
“I don’t know,” I admit, adjusting the bag of peas against his throat. “Wait, I guess. Hope nothing comes lurking in the dark.”
A rough laugh escapes him.
“Great plan.”
“Thanks. I spent a lot of time on it.”
The corner of his mouth twitches before fading again.
“I thought you were dead.”
The words slip out before I can stop them.
Casey’s hand stills against my leg.
“When he grabbed you...” My voice catches. “I thought that was it.”
For a long moment, neither of us says anything.
Then he sets the tweezers aside.
“I thought he was going to hurt you.”
I blink.
“The way those guys were looking at you...” His jaw tightens.
Something twists painfully in my chest.
Because even now, with a handprint circling his throat, he’s worried about me.
His hand finds mine.
He doesn’t say anything, just threads our fingers together and holds on like he’s drowning, and I’m the only thing keeping him afloat.
Or maybe it’s the other way around.
Eventually, Casey pushes himself up from the floor with a tired grunt and drops onto the couch beside me.
The cushion dips beneath his weight.
For a second we just sit there shoulder to shoulder, staring at absolutely nothing.
Neither of us seems interested in moving.
After a while, his head tips back, his breathing evens out. Deepens. His hand goes slack in mine, heavy with sleep. I don't let go. I count the seconds between each inhale, a quiet anchor in the ringing silence.
I try to sleep. I really do. I close my eyes and will my brain to shut down, to rest, to forget.
But the darkness behind my eyelids isn’t empty. Every time I drift toward sleep, I see teeth. Red eyes. Casey dangling by his neck, feet kicking, face turning purple.
It isn’t until the sun is coming up, smudging light through the blinds, that my eyes finally get too heavy, and I drift.