“Shane is still developing his abilities but he’s… strong.” Maggie draws in a deep breath. “His mother is worried about him being recruited. He needs an alliance, too.”
Now all the pieces are fitting together. “That’s why you were following me,” I say. “To confirm I wasn’t power hungry and randomly draining the life out of people.” Exactly as Devon had. Jesus, I might as well rent a fucking billboard.
“Yes! When I saw you try to save that girl, I knew you were different. But then I lost you when all the ambulances and thepolice showed up. It took me a while to track you down. Basically by revisiting all the places I’d seen you before, but obviously, you wouldn’t go to the police station again.” She laughs and it sounds almost giddy. Now that she’s found me and I haven’t lashed out at them, the relief floodgates have opened. In the form of lots of words at rapid speed.
“Listen,” I begin. “I’ll tell you what I told Devon, I’m not going to—”
“And even though Branwick reopened last night, I didn’t think you’d go there,” Maggie continues, seeming not to have heard me. “Not with the explosion so nearby.”
My head is spinning; I can’t keep up.Branwick is open again? Since when?But then the rest of her sentence sinks in. “Explosion? What explosion?” I demand, an icy chill of foreboding slicing through my middle.
Maggie pauses, her hesitance returning. “Well, yes. Last night around midnight.”
Devon and I were here by that point. Too far to hear sirens or anexplosionon campus.
“The university is saying it was a gas leak because it tore up the street a little. But I mean, clearly that’s not right. Especially because the kids who died at that house, the administration is saying that was because of carbon monoxide poisoning. I think they’re probably just trying to cover their asses because they don’t know what’s really going on—”
Shit, shit!I close the distance to stand directly in front of her. “What house, Maggie?”
She swallows audibly. “Uh, I don’t know. It’s down there by the sororities and fraternities. It’s brown, I think.”
A horrible calm numbness washes over me. It’s fine. Daan andChessa are fine. They’re at Chessa’s parents’ house, probably still asleep or working very hard to ignore the smell of coffee brewing downstairs. Chessa’s dad is an early riser.
There’s no way they went back to campus last night. They’d only just left for Chessa’s parents’ house in town. They wouldn’t have done that. It would make no sense.
I turn on legs that feel stilted and wrong, as if my knees are bending the wrong direction, and hobble back toward the motel room.
“What’s wrong? Did I say something that upset her?” Maggie asks.
Dimly, I’m aware of Devon’s reassuring murmur to her behind me.
But my focus is zeroed in on the door we left partially open, then the bed with the tousled covers, and the flat black rectangle of a phone that’s charging on the nightstand.
My hands are shaking so hard, it’s hard for me to disentangle the phone from the cord and tap one of the contact numbers I saved—but did not call—last night.
When I finally manage it, the call rings twice before someone picks up.
“Hello?” a male voice asks.
I pull the phone away from my ear, double checking that I’ve hit the right contact. But it says Chessa’s name right there on the screen. “I’m sorry, I’m trying to reach—”
“Jocasta?” The voice now sounds utterly recognizable around the familiar syllables of my full name.
“Carter?” I ask, confused. “How did I… I didn’t call—”
“It’s Chessa’s phone,” Carter says. “She can’t have it with her in the ICU.”
17
I can’t breathe.
Carter keeps talking but his voice washes out into a dull buzz, like a call on speakerphone from the other side of a restaurant.
I catch a few words, names, here and there. “Chessa… Daan… carbon monoxide… gas main leak… calling it a localized explosion… Foreign Language House.”
Devon reenters the room and finds me crouched between the bed and the far wall.
I don’t know what he sees in my face, but it’s enough to convince him to reach over and pry the phone out of my hand.
