Page 91 of Some Kind of Haunted

“They’ll take you in. They can only hold you for twenty-four hours while they apply for a warrant, and I’ll be right behind you.” I nod, and he frowns, and I get the impression that he would be grabbing me by my upper arms right now, the way he used to do when we were younger to get his point across, if he didn’t think the police were running out of patience with us.

If I wasn’t covered in blood.

“They’re going to take your clothes, take pictures, collect evidence. That’s all fine. You let them. But if they question you, don’t say a word until I get there. Understood? Not one word.”

I manage a nod, my eyes on the increasingly unamused policemen behind him.

“I’ll get you out before the damn sun rises. Got it?”

I nod again, even though I doubt that he will, in fact, get me out that quickly. I glance at Jack. He looks a bit like he’s ready to commit assault on an officer.

It’s not going to help any of us.

“I’m okay,” I tell him. “I’ll be okay.”

There are so many other things I want to say to him. To Nora. To my brother.

But I’ve run out of time.

The policemen aren’t brutal or too rough, but they take control of the situation. They peel me away from Jack and Nora. One pulls my arms behind my back at an angle I can’t say is comfortable, and I don’t have to see the handcuffs to know exactly what’s happening to my wrists. While he does this, the other one is reading out the words everyone knows, because we hear it on television so often.

It feels like I’m in some kind of play where even I know the words, but not what’s going to happen next. I look over my shoulder and see the other three, standing there and looking as shell-shocked as I feel.

But it’s Jack whose gaze I hold. Jack, whose fierce expression makes me feel, if not soothed, at least a little bit better.

And then I am unceremoniously led to a cop car, encouraged to duck my head as I get in and try to sit with my hands bound by unforgiving metal behind me, and driven away.

I’m exhausted, and it doesn’t get better as the night wears on.

If anything it gets worse, but there’s nothing I can do about it. They take me to a part of Midas I’ve never seen, farther down the river on the other side of the flood wall so that when the Feed comes, there will be police to talk to the news cameras about a flash flood and what a tragedy it all is.

I remember reading something about the deliberate placement of the police away from the old town, where the original jail still stands and is, of course, a tourist attraction. But tonight I’m marched into a very real jail that no one would pay to visit.

It’s smaller, a lot more generic office building than I imagined, but it’s still a jail. One cell instead of a row of them. No prison guards to yell at me, just the two officers from tonight.

They have to take pictures. Of my arms, my face, my clothes. I can’t shower—they don’t have one of those, they inform me, but there will be a sink in my cell where I can wash up. It’s all a kind of daze when they fingerprint me and let me change into what I’m fairly certain is a prison uniform.

I look like shit in orange.

I tell Logan that when he joins me.

“I know that, Lex,” he replies, sounding a little hoarse. “I’m the one looking at you.”

We both laugh at that—okay, it’s hysteria—and we don’t so much as crack a smile again as the police come back in.

They ask me questions I can’t answer—even if Logan would let me talk, which he won’t. I watch my twin brother pull out every lawyer trick in the book. No one is moved. None of it works. He is forced to leave me once all is said and done.

I spend my first night in jail. I cry into my arms that smell like the bleach they must wash these awful, uncomfortable scrub-like clothes in, but I don’t have much in me. I pass out pretty quickly, despite where I am.

Another silver lining is that I’m used to sleeping and waking in shitty places. I’ve been doing it all my life.

When I’m finally asleep, I dream about the rock.

It’s a pretty upsetting dream, but the really nice thing about jail, I discover, is that you can’t sleepwalk through steel bars someone else locked up tight.

Or I can’t, at least.

When Logan comes to see me the next day, I know nothing good has miraculously happened to allow me to get out of here. I want to ask him what they did with Cleo, where she is. I want to know who’s taking care of Virginia.