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“Cas has always loved to draw,” she said glancing at Damien as she pulled free a folder.
Damien smiled. “I’ve seen, she’s very talented.”
I watched intently as she opened the folder.
“I haven’t looked at these in a long while, but I started looking at them while…” She drew a deep uneven breath as she pulled free drawing after drawing and laid them out across the beds surface for us to see. Her eyes turned glassy, and I wondered if she’d gone searching for them to cope with the possibility that I might not return home.
“You’d be up in your room for hours drawing and painting your dreams.”
She handed me one of them, and my heart grew heavy as I imagined her in here, alone and crying. My eyes fell on the drawing. A poorly drawn little person stood in the center of the page, backed by an enormous shadow with a face. They were surrounded by multiple masses of black crayon on either side. “I don’t even remember drawing this.”
She pointed to the black shadow behind me. “You were only six when you drew this. But you told your father that this shadow was your dark knight, that he always protected you from the monsters. I always thought it was cute.”
I scrutinized the black scribbles, the sketches becoming clearer to me with each second, and Damien and I looked at each other. They weren’t some monsters under a child’s bed. God, they were darklings. I’d dreamt of darklings when I was a child.
She pulled another drawing from the pile. “When your father asked you to draw a portrait of your dark knight this is what you drew.”
It was another scribble, but I could faintly see the features of two people I looked down at. It was a woman with long hair donning some sort of gown, a tall warrior holding her hand, clad in black, long dark brown hair falling around his face.
“I thought it was so cute how fascinated you were with this dark knight. I was almost sad when you stopped talking about him.” She chuckled as she smiled over my shoulder at the drawing. “I want you to have them, maybe taking a trip down memory lane will help ease your mind.
I was having difficulty accepting it all. When I looked at Damien his eyes were locked on the drawing, reaching his hand out to take it.
“Thank you for showing me this, Momma.”
Her smiled faded. “I’m sure you’re tired, but the police are going to want to take a report. Damien told me the guy ran when they found you.” She took my hand. “I figured it might be better while any details are fresh in your mind. Do you think you can handle it?”
I swallowed but nodded.
19
It was around three in the morning when we finally made it back to Damien's house. He’d wanted to take me to Johnson, the doctor I briefly met at the apartment complex, to have me examined. It was the last thing I wanted—to be inspected. He’d insisted, though, fearful of any internal injuries I may have endured. I just wanted sleep, wanted to be somewhere familiar, somewhere safe.
My mind replayed everything I’d told the deputies earlier, terrified that I might have slipped something inconsistent or that might risk exposing Damien’s world. They’d been patient and accepting of the answers I gave them, but the anxiety remained. I wasn’t aware whether I’d breathed or not during our interaction with them, and it was a relief that they’d believed the lies I fed them.
The deputy shifted on his feet, jotting notes down on his report pad. “You couldn’t see anything? Any tattoos on his arms? Color of his hair?”
I shook my head. “I’m so sorry, Officer.” The lie left me full of guilt. I forced myself to calm down. “My eyes were always covered, and he barely talked to me. He was moving me somewhere when Damien and the others found us, and he dropped me and ran.”
“We didn’t get a good look at him; it was too dark,” Damien explained.
“Do you remember where this was?” he asked Damien.
“Not exactly. It was somewhere over in the woods near Devil’s Rock. We almost got lost ourselves.”
Whether that was where we really were, I didn’t know. Even if they searched those woods, they were so vast that looking for any evidence would be like looking for a needle in a haystack.
The deputy looked back to me, his shoulders sagging. “Whoever did this knew what they were doing. We weren't able to collect any fingerprints in your house." Of course, they wouldn't have found any fingerprints. Marcus was too smart to leave anything behind. "We’re glad you’re safe. Would you like us to escort you to the hospital? We might be able to find something that could identify your kidnapper. We need to do it before you take any kind of shower. If you bathe, the doctors won’t be able to—” The deputies’ eyes awkwardly shifted to Damien, and his voice lowered. “To perform a rape ki—”
“He didn’t…” My voice shook as I cut him off, and my vision blurred. “He didn’t do anything like that.”
The deputy sat in silence for a moment, his pity-filled eyes watching me as I hugged myself. He reached into the chest pocket of his uniform, pulling a card free to give to me. “If you change your mind or remember anything, call me. It’s best to do these things when it’s fresh.”
My body shook. I didn’t want to think about it anymore.
“You have a good night,” the deputy said, and left.
I blinked, realizing that I’d walked in a daze all the way to the second floor, unaware of my own movements. Damien’s room looked untouched, and by the shadows under his eyes and sluggish movements, I imagined he hadn’t slept since I’d been taken. He unzipped his jacket and let it slip from his shoulders, the coat dropping to the floor.
