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“I was worried you’d say that. ”
The screaming continued with the unabated consistency of an annoying car alarm. It had been carrying on so long now I almost didn’t notice it. The woman responsible for the worst of the noise was a bland-looking thirty-something sitting on the front steps of the school with her mouth hanging agape, emitting a high-pitched wail.
Sidling up beside her, I lowered to a crouch and took her hand in mine. For a long while she didn’t seem to recognize I was there, until the screaming petered out into hoarse, gulping gasps, and she turned her glassy, red-rimmed eyes towards me.
“I never…” Her lower lip began to tremble and mascara streaks smeared the underside of her eyes, making her face look like a hollow, ghostly void. Her hand squeezed mine, and the strength of the gesture was shocking.
“What happened?” I asked.
Behind us, a group of teenagers were crowded around the fence, speaking in excited tones. Several girls in their midst were crying, and dozens were on their cell phones. The woman holding my hand was grasping me like I was the last safe port in a storm, blubbering incoherently. Her eyelashes were frosty where her tears had frozen from the cold.
“Holden, can you go see what’s going on?” I didn’t look back at him but felt the presence of his body disappear. Still looking at the woman, I asked, “What did you see?”
“Death,” she whispered, and it was the first th
ing she’d said so far I really understood. She stared at me, her eyes haunted by something she would never be able to unsee, and I battled with myself over whether or not it was something I needed to add to the nest of awful things that lived inside my own mind.
“Secret. ” Holden’s voice came from the middle of the wide circle of teens and was heavy with something serious and frightening. “I think you’d better come here. ”
I let go of the woman’s hand, and she didn’t protest. Her body rested limp and useless on the steps, and she stared at nothing, tears streaming down her face. This was what my world did to people. This was what happened when there was no plan.
Meeting Holden where he stood amid the crowd of brave gawkers, I slipped in front of him to get a good look at what all the fuss was about. I was fairly certain I didn’t want to know, but blissful ignorance wasn’t an option in my line of work.
On the ground next to the brick wall of the building that neighbored the high school was a human body. Or what was left of it.
It had once been a girl, judging by the sky-blue taffeta party dress spread out on the concrete. The dress and the trunk of the body were all that remained. The girl’s limbs and everything above her neck was missing.
While the one teacher on the steps was too upset to act, several other teachers and adult chaperones were trying to move the teens back inside. A balding man in a cheap suit was crouched low to the ground where a group of girls were huddled together crying. One of the girls kept saying, “I don’t understand, she just went to use the bathroom. She was only gone for a few minutes. ”
I turned back to the body after she said it for the third time.
There was so much blood on the concrete it made the dress look like an island of blue floating amid a sea of blackened red. The reek of death was bold enough the crowd must be able to smell it. Whatever had done this, it had acted fast. Too fast to be anything human. One minute the girl had been inside at her winter formal, and now she was out here missing everything that could identify her except her blue dress. Anything that could tear a girl apart—without being seen—before her friends realized she was gone had to be a monster.
Reaching behind me, I grabbed for Holden’s hand without looking to see if he would take it. Cold fingers wove through mine, and for once I thought our temperatures might be the exact same. He gave me a reassuring squeeze, and it helped to know he was there, keeping me grounded to the world of the somewhat-living.
The song of sirens filled the night, coming closer.
“I need to call Mercedes,” I whispered, but the words got caught in a cold gust of air and were carried off unheard into the dark.
Chapter Seven
Holden and I were sitting side by side in an interrogation room, staring at the mirror facing us. I was grateful, not for the first time in my life, that vampires could cast a reflection. Otherwise we’d have some serious explaining to do.
I wasn’t too concerned about our situation. If we’d been in any real trouble, they wouldn’t have kept us together.
Holden had gone stone-still but was sitting close enough to me I could feel the rise and fall of his forced breaths. For my part, I was trying not to fidget. I wasn’t the biggest fan of small spaces.
The door next to the mirror opened, and Detective Nowakowski came in carrying a folder and a steaming Styrofoam cup of coffee. I waited for Mercedes to follow him, but he closed the door and took the seat across the table from us.
Tyler gave Holden a cold glare, and my vampire escort returned the favor by lifting the corners of his mouth in a telling smirk and putting his hand on my knee.
If the contact wasn’t so helpful in soothing my ragged nerves, I might have slapped him. As it was I rolled my eyes and crossed my arms defensively over my chest.
“Any word on who she was?” I asked, attempting to steer things towards a professional point of discussion.
“Her name was Ashley Parsons. She was sixteen and had just been crowned queen of the winter formal, so I’m told. ” Tyler leaned back in the metal folding chair, its old frame creaking with the shift in weight. “Tell me something, Secret. ”
There was a pause, so I filled it. “Something specific, or just anything that comes to mind?”
