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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The images before me may as well be news footage played on mute. Lights on all of the squad cars ring out in red and flashing white, but there are no sirens. The police walk around in drab black jackets, their chins tucked low and somber. They’re trying to seem calm, like this happens every day, but some of them look like they’d rather be off in the bushes somewhere throwing up their donuts. A few use their bodies to obscure the view of nosy camera lenses. And somewhere in the center of it all is a body, torn to pieces.
I wish I could get closer, that I kept a spare press pass in the glove compartment or had the money to keep a few cops in my pocket. As it is, I’m lingering on the edges of the press crowd, behind the yellow tape.
I don’t want to believe that it was A
As the crowd watches, the police exit the park with a gurney. On top of it is a black bag that should normally be shaped like a body but instead looks like it’s been stuffed full of hockey equipment. I suppose they put him back together as well as they could. When the gurney hits the curb, the remains shift, and through the bag we can see one of the limbs fall down, clearly unattached to the rest. The crowd makes a muffled noise of disturbed disgust. I elbow my way back through them to my car.
* * *
I pull into her driveway and park. She’s surprised to see me. I’ve been gone less than an hour. As my feet crunch up the gravel I don’t know whether the noise comes from the dirt, or from my grinding teeth. A
“Cas? What’s the matter?”
“You tell me.” I’m surprised to find how pissed I am. “Where were you last night?”
“What are you talking about?”
She needs to convince me. She needs to be very convincing.
“Just tell me where you were. What did you do?”
“Nothing,” she says. “I stayed near the house. I tested my strength. I—” She pauses.
“You what, A
Her expression hardens. “I hid in my bedroom for a while. After I realized the spirits were still here.” The look in her eyes is resentful. It’s the there, are you happy now? look.
“You’re sure you didn’t leave? Didn’t try to explore Thunder Bay again, maybe go down to the park and, I don’t know, dismember some poor jogger?”
The stricken expression on her face makes the anger leak out through my shoes. I open my mouth to pull my foot out of it, but how do I explain why I’m so angry? How do I explain that she needs to give me a better alibi?
“I can’t believe you’re accusing me.”
“I can’t believe that you can’t believe it,” I retort. I don’t know why I can’t stop being so combative. “Come on. People don’t get butchered in this city every day. And the very night after I free the most powerful murderous ghost in the western hemisphere, somebody shows up missing their arms and legs? It’s a hell of a coincidence, don’t you think?”
“But it is a coincidence,” she insists. Her delicate hands have formed balled-up fists.
“Don’t you remember what just happened?” I gesture wildly toward the house. “Tearing off body parts is, like, your MO.”
“What’s an ‘MO’?” she asks.
I shake my head. “Don’t you get what this means? Don’t you understand what I have to do if you keep on killing?”
When she doesn’t reply, my crazed tongue plows ahead.
“It means I get to have a serious Old Yeller moment,” I snap. The minute I say it, I know that I shouldn’t have. It was stupid and it was mean, and she caught the reference. Of course she would have. Old Yeller was made in like 1955. She probably saw it when it came out in theaters. The look she’s giving me is shocked and hurt; I don’t know if any look has made me feel worse. Still, I can’t quite muster an apology. The idea that she’s probably a murderer holds it in.
“I didn’t do it. How can you think so? I can’t stand what I’ve already done!”
Neither of us says anything else. We don’t even move. A
“I’m sorry,” I hear myself whisper. “It’s just that— I don’t know what’s happening.”
A
“You saved me, you know,” A
I can see her talk herself out of coming closer. Calmness settles over her like a blanket. It covers up the melancholy and silences any wishes for something different. A thousand arguments pile up in my throat, but I clench my teeth on them. We’re not children, neither of us. We don’t believe in fairy tales. And if we did, who would we be? Not Prince Charming and Sleeping Beauty. I slice murder victims’ heads off and A
“It isn’t fair.”
A
“You know what you are, don’t you?” she asks. “You’re my salvation. My way to atone. To pay for everything I’ve done.”
When I realize what she wants, it feels like someone kicked me in the chest. I’m not surprised that she’s reluctant to go out on dates and tiptoe through the tulips, but I never imagined, after all this, that she would want to be sent away.
“A
She doesn’t reply.
“What was all this for? Why did I fight? Why did we do the spell? If you were just going to—”
“Go get your knife back,” she replies, and then she fades away into the air right in front of me, back to the other world where I can’t follow.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Since A
So why am I so creeped out by a dream? Because it felt real. And it’s been there for too long. I open my eyes and don’t see anything, but I know, I know, that if I reached down below my bed, some decaying arm would shoot out from underneath and drag me to hell.
I tried to blame A