Irritation has me grinding my teeth. “You’ve known of our existence forhoursand suddenly you’re an expert?”
“It’s only logical,” she snaps. “I’m trying to help.”
“No, you’re trying to slap back at me for not…” I take a deepbreath, stopping myself. I’ve rarely had friends close enough to, in moments of disagreement, know exactly how to get under my skin. But Chessa is and she does.
She arches her eyebrows at me. Clearly she’s taking my retreat as a win. To call her competitive is a vast understatement. The woman can make anything into a challenge, but normally we’ve been on the same side.
I’m not sure that I would count pissing off the daughter of Death as any sort of victory, but hey, you do you.
Is what I want to say. But I don’t.
Because no matter how angry she makes me, I refuse to resort to that level. I am who I am in spite of my heritage, not because of it. I don’t want to be that person. Plus, I suspect she’s testing me, making sure I’m the person she thought I was before.
But sometimes, oh, sometimes, the thought of giving in is tempting, like sinking your teeth into a brownie fresh out of the oven, even when you know it’s going to burn your tongue.
I wrestle my emotions back under control, working not to react to her self-satisfied expression. She is my friend. Or was. Either way, she’s struggling now and if this is how she needs to handle it, fine.
“If we’re going to the cemetery, I don’t see the harm in investigating both,” Carter says, offering a compromise of sorts in the taut silence.
“Excellent.” Devon claps his hands together with faux cheer. “A plan.”
“Great,” Chessa says. She slides off the barstool and digs keys out of her pocket, holding them up. “I have my mom’s van.”
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 Cartersourced 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.
