Page 90 of Some Kind of Haunted

I can feel Logan’s frustration crash over me. Never talk to cops, Lexi. How many times has he told me that? But Cleo’s dead.

If I did it, I want them to take me away. I want to be locked up forever in the kind of facility I’ve always been afraid I’ll end up in one day.

“She doesn’t have to answer anything,” Logan is telling the officer. “I’m taking her home.”

That’s when the other cop appears, coming swiftly out of the dark with a much harder look on his face. He’s got blue latex gloves on now. And he’s holding a bloody knife.

Logan’s eyes narrow, but he doesn’t react. I hear Nora make a noise from beside me. I swear that I can feel Jack growl.

All I can seem to do is stare.

“We have a weapon,” the bigger officer says to the cop who’s been talking to us. “Show us your hands,” he says to me.

“She absolutely won’t,” Logan replies immediately.

But I am looking down at my hands. One is very bloody on the palm. One only has blood on the outside. I feel like that is . . . not good. I tell myself that surely I would know if I stabbed Cleo. If I found a knife somewhere and carried it with me and when I saw my friend—

My stomach heaves even thinking about it.

“I couldn’t have. I wouldn’t have. The dem—”

“Don’t,” Jack orders me in a low voice that’s more a rumble inside me than anything else. So they won’t hear him, I realize a beat too late. His big hand is wrapped around my wrist, the heat of him the only reason I’m not shivering right now. “It’ll make it worse.”

For a moment I don’t understand what he’s telling me. My head still feels odd and outsized—but then I get it.

These cops don’t believe in the demons. Me claiming invisible demons came and killed my friend while I’m standing here bloody is hardly going to work in my favor.

I can’t see any way out of this, and that makes me go cold despite Jack’s hand on me, because I know what that means. The asylum. The nuthouse. The nearest psychiatric facility for broken creatures like me.

Yet, before I woke up on that flood wall, I didn’t feel broken at all. Pretty much the opposite. Jack is beside me, and I can remember what happened between us with perfect clarity. Nora is on my other side, pale and quiet, but I remember sitting on my bed with her, convinced we were already friends.

Midas is the place that healed me. Not the place where I break apart and release the heretofore unknown slasher within.

One-two-three, everything is fine, I count out. One-two-three, your imagination can’t hurt you—

So I won’t let my imagination fill in the gaps here.

I did not kill Cleo.

I let that settle in me, calcify like bone.

I did not kill Cleo.

But I have no memory of what I did do. Clearly, we were together at some point tonight. How did she end up dead at the base of the wall while I ended up alive? Where did that knife come from?

And that’s not even getting to the blood.

“We’re going to have to take you in,” the larger officer tells me, and he is deadly serious. He sounds businesslike and certain about the outcome of this interaction. “I’m going to read you your rights, ma’am. Then I’m going to cuff you.”

He looks at Jack when he says that, because Jack doesn’t look like he has any intention of releasing his hold on me. On my other side, Nora presses in closer, too, looking lost.

Logan’s starting to lose that lawyer polish enough I’m worried he’s going to get arrested. He’s arguing, throwing out statutes and case law, and I can see the officers are both beginning to wonder if he’s a problem they’re going to have to address.

We can’t both be locked up. Who would get us out?

“Logan.” I say it softly, but he immediately turns to look at me. “Maybe this is the best way to sort it all out.”

He curses. Loudly. But he gets close and meets my gaze.