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“Oh dear God,” Myra gasped from behind me. “What happened?”
I dropped the heavily bloodstained shirt and spun around. “It’s not how it looks.”
Tears filled her eyes. “It looks like the night you came home after your father died.”
That night, I’d been covered in my blood and Collin’s from the slashes on our palms. Unsure of where to go, I’d come straight to Myra’s house. I’d scared her half to death, still in too much shock to give her a rational account of what had happened. When I kept crying for Daddy, she rushed upstairs to check on him and was horrified to discover he was missing from his bed. Looking me in the eye, she asked if I knew what had happened to him. When I nodded yes, she asked if he was alive, and I refused to answer. It was no wonder the blood upset her.
“No, Myra.” I shook my head, picking the shirt back up. “It’s not my blood. I promise.”
“Whose…?” I know she hated to ask, but she needed to know.
“A cat. Thatmonsterleft it on my front porch. It scared me when I saw the mess, and I dropped the laundry basket. The clothes fell in the splattered blood.”
Some of the color returned to her face. “I think we should move.”
“What?”
“It’s too dangerous for you here, Ellie. We should go somewhere else.”
I turned back to my laundry. “You know that won’t help, Myra. These things will find me wherever I am.”
Her arms wrapped around me, and she trembled.
“I need to stay here, but you should leave.”
Her eyes bulged. “Leaveyou?”
“You think it’s bad now? This is only the beginning. And they’re going to target you and Claire to get to me.”
Myra’s face paled.
Why had I been so blunt? I needed to protect her from this, not scare her to death. “It’s going to be okay. David thinks he has some information that can help me.”
“He’s offered to help you?”
“I’m making him think about it before he commits.”
“It makes me feel better that you won’t be alone.”
The thought made me feel better too, selfish though it was. “Do you need help with breakfast?”
“No, I’ve got it covered for now, but you can take the cinnamon rolls out when they’re done.” She started to leave the room but stopped in the doorway. “Ellie, one more thing. If you come across an old ring, hold onto it. Your father showed it to me a few days before he died and told me that you needed it.” She looked down at her feet. “I didn’t think much of it at the time. Even though he seemed fairly lucid, he was acting paranoid. He was quite upset that you didn’t have it.”
My heart lurched. “Where is the ring now?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I tried to take it for safekeeping, but he refused to let go of it. He insisted he’d give it to you himself. He’d been scribbling drawings of those symbols and scratching down notes, so I just chalked it up to his dementia. Now I’m worried you might actually need it.”
“He was scribbling notes?”
“Yeah, on little scraps of paper.”
What if those notes had the information I needed? “What did the ring look like? Do you know where he usually kept it?”
“No, I’m sorry. I’d never seen it before, but it looked very old and worn. He had it on a chain around his neck. There was another object you needed too, he said, but he couldn’t remember what it was. He started muttering something about you needing time.” Her mouth twisted into a grimace. “Maybe he was worried you were running out of time?”
“And you have no idea where the ring might be?”
“No. I’m sorry. He was on the front porch when I saw it.”
