Page 89 of Some Kind of Haunted

Worse yet, deceased.

And then the very last thing that comes through the radio is loud and clear, and we all hear it just fine.

Don’t let the witnesses go anywhere.

Chapter Twenty-Four

“We’re not doing this here,” Logan tells the officer very purposefully. He shows no sign of emotion, but that’s because he’s put on his lawyer mantle, and I find myself happy to see it. He’s going to take care of this.

I want to believe that. I really do.

But Cleo is dead. A sob rises in my throat, but Nora is holding on to one side of me and Jack to the other, and I have to keep it together for them. She was more theirs than mine.

A few tears spill over despite my best intentions, but I manage not to sob.

“We can go to the station,” the cop says, not exactly kindly.

Logan smiles. It’s a razor. “That isn’t necessary, as I’m sure we’re both aware.”

The officer looks past him to me. “We just need to know why you’re covered in blood,” he says, sounding very reasonable. And much friendlier. “Did you and the deceased have a physical altercation?”

Waking up on that wall is all I remember, sticky and confused. I shake my head.

“Were you trying to resuscitate the body?”

“No. No, I didn’t touch her.” Logan is telling me not to speak, but I can’t help it. I want to make sense of it. I wasn’t there. I didn’t touch her. I didn’t.

“Then how are you bloody?” the officer asks.

More tears are falling. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

Logan shushes me, but I find myself repeating it over and over anyway.

What did I do? Why am I covered in blood? I don’t remember anything. Not even in dream form. One minute I was in my bed, asleep. The next, Cleo was dead.

I can see her crumpled body in my head and that is not a good thing for me to think about.

“She needs to change,” I hear Jack say sternly, in a kind of far-off voice that tells me I’m not breathing, because if I was I’d be able to hear him right.

I try to pull in air and count the rest of this away. One-two-three, everything is fine. One-two-three, your imagination can’t hurt you.

Except what’s happening right now is not my imagination.

The officer is treating Logan to an overly bland look, though his voice is impatient. “She needs to come down to the station and answer some questions. We’ll need to confiscate the bloody clothes.”

“She’s a victim in all this,” Logan argues. “Is this how you treat victims in Midas?”

“What are you a victim of?” the cop asks me, and he is neither sympathetic nor disbelieving. He is like a blank slate.

If he was being a dick, it would give me something to rally against. Instead, I find I can kind of see where he’s coming from. I’m covered in blood, even with the sweater loan. I’m in yellow cheese pajamas, no shoes. I’m sure there’s a hair situation. All signs point to me—and suggest I might also possibly be an escapee from an asylum.

This is not the first time I’ve run afoul of law enforcement while sleepwalking. Usually, I distract them from my typical confusion with the attitude that has led to Logan interceding on my behalf in a number of New York City precincts.

But this is the first time someone I know lies there in the dark, dead. Someone I liked. Someone I can’t remember if I hurt or not—and what if I did? Wouldn’t that make me the bringer of doom and destruction after all? Despite what I’ve come to believe were Amelia’s intentions?

I have no attitude left in me.

“I don’t know,” I whisper.