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“Hi!” I greeted when I saw her.
She looked up at me, light filling her eyes the way it usually did when she saw me. “Hi. I heard you at the door with my dad.”
“Mm-hmm,” I said. “He looks much better today.”
“Yeah, he even made lunch.”
There was an awkward silence for a moment, which was weird because Nyra and I hardly ever had awkwardness between us. But that was probably because Nyra was always talking and livening up our conversations. I could see that she was in a somber mood today, so I took control of the conversation. “Are you okay?”
“Uh?” She asked, looking up from the domino tile she was placing a finger-measured distance away from another tile.
“You saw Angelique yesterday, right? I’m sure it must have been difficult when you were interrogated this morning?”
She was silent for a few seconds before bowing her head to continue with her dominoes. “Did you hear that they thought I was the killer?”
I grabbed her hand and squeezed it in consolation. “Yeah, I thought Chief Perez was silly to have decided that you were the killer just because Angelique spilled her drink on your dress. But then again, they also thought I was the killer because I was the last person Angelique offended other than you, so don’t take it to heart.”
My words got her to look away from her dominoes and focus on me with her light brown eyes.
Under her attentive gaze, I shared the full story. “They came to get me in Chemistry class and even incited Nathan to accuse me of killing Angelique. Then they interrogated me, too.”
“Chief Perez is truly . . . a piece of work.” She said through gritted teeth and I realized that her interrogation had probably been brutal, too.
However, I didn’t blame Chief Perez. While humans had reduced the use of threat-filled psychological interrogation practices, supernaturals still used them. I’d even seen my father use them, too, so I couldn’t even stay mad at Chief Perez.
“I guess he was just doing his job, so I forgave him,” I said, handing her a domino tile.
We were quiet again for a few minutes as I kept giving her domino tiles.
“Do you remember seeing anything before you left Angelique alone in that room? Or hearing a scary growl or something?” I asked.
Nyra didn’t raise her head from where she was arranging a domino tile and she only replied after what felt like minutes of silence. “Not really. My memory of that night is a bit fuzzy. The spare dress she claimed to have was just an excuse to detain me, so I sneaked out of the party through the window in the bathroom to avoid anyone seeing me in my stained dress.”
“Oh.” I was disappointed that she didn’t remember anything.
Before I could try to get her to recall what she might have inadvertently noticed when she was with Angelique, Nyra changed the subject. “I heard about what Caden and Mateo did.”
“Yeah . . . turns out Angelique spilled her drink on your dress to get me upstairs so Mateo could seduce me. I’m so sorry about that, by the way.” I apologized as I handed her another domino tile.
She leaned closer to the ground as she placed a domino tile a short distance away from the previous one before replying, “Why are you sorry? Angelique is the one who spilled her drink on me. Are you sure you’re okay after what they did to you?”
I was seated on the floor, using Nyra’s bed frame as support for my back.
When I heard her question, I leaned my head back on her duvet. “I don’t know. I haven’t had time to process how I feel.”
“But you’re mad at them?” She asked as if she was my therapist.
“Yes, but I just can’t bring myself to hate them, which is weird because I’m the kind of person who finds it hard to forgive.”
“You’ve got to make them pay, right?” Nyra asked, finally leaving her dominoes and moving closer to me.
When she sat close to me, I placed my head on her shoulder and received a kiss on my forehead.
“Probably not . . . Alpha Owen said he’d deal with them, though.”
Nyra’s lips parted in surprise as she cupped my face to make me lock gazes with her. “You met Alpha Owen?”
I looked away because I didn’t want to tell her the details of what happened at the Crawford Police Station. “Yeah, he seemed nice enough.”
